Muse

11-01-18-16 is the item number on this one. And the nice thing about these practice katanas... Oh! Oh, that hurt. Oh, that hurt big time. A piece of that just... the tip just got me, Odell. Oh, that got me good. You all right? A piece of that tip just got me. Oh, right now... We, uh, may need emergency surgery in the studio.

TBTL!

Basically, it's Tommy by way of Cirque du Soleil, set in space with heavy erotic overtones and the gripping psychodrama of a thriller with plenty of heart and more than a little humor.

Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boops. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boops. I don't know who that is, and I don't care to find out.

Notice me, senpai, notice me.

That is obviously what is clear that our view is we don't support that view.

Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, The show that just might be too beautiful to live It's an audiophile's nightmare My name is Luke Burbank, I am your host I'm an activist and house party enthusiast Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center high in the sky Above Portland, Oregon Where it is just an absolutely beautiful Albeit chilly day Here in the 503 Blue skies, sunshine California got sunshine. I didn't realize like how kind of crisp it was. Or I guess I should say how cold it was this morning. I went out for my little morning jog. And I had that thing happen sometimes where your eyes start watering. You start basically like, it just looks like you're just kind of heavy duty crying. and I came around a corner and there was a young woman who was cleaning the windows of this apartment building near my apartment building. And she looked over and she had this look in her eyes just like, buddy, whatever you're going through, it's going to get better. Which was a nice moment of human connection even if she was misunderstanding why it looked like I was getting emotional in that moment. Anyway, I can't promise I won't get emotional during this show. Sometimes it happens. You never know with episode 3380 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

I don't know if you've seen the, like, pictures that were, I think about a year ago, they were really going around the Internet of this guy kind of known as Salt Bae. He is this ridiculous chef in Miami whose whole go-to is, like, giant pieces of meat that he then salts very sort of theatrically.

The Miami meat tent.

Anyway, his restaurant in Miami sells a particular sort of giant steak that comes out to your table, like, wrapped in gold. Sounds expensive. And apparently, this restaurant had to call the cops three times in the last, I don't know, five months on its customers. to get them to pay for these cold-plated steaks that, by the way, look terrible. But we'll see what is going on with that. And speaking of food, last night I innocently posted a picture of some grilled cheese sandwiches on the Internet, like one does, and the response shocked me.

I was cyberbullied within an inch of my life last night.

So I will tell you what's going on with that. And then if you are like most of us, you are trapped in many a Zoom meeting that you wish you could get out of. Well, guess what? There's something called the Zoom Escaper. It's a widget for your computer, and it plays a variety of annoying sounds that are guaranteed to get you off of that call. So we'll talk about Zoom escaping, as well as emails and V-mails, all while talking to this guy. Now, he's somebody I can really get into. He is the longest-running co-bro of the show. He may be best known for his drawings of the tall ships. He's a handsome young stranger. He's got kind of a big announcement today on the show. I'm telling you, I took the vaccine, and I'm fine! He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood, Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. I guess there's no... way that wasn't coming back to bite me in the ass but that's on me so fine um hi luke i was seriously going to say to you first words out of my mouth today we're going to be we can't talk about food on today's show because i'm i'm coming in hungry i always end what happened yesterday by

the way because we went through a whole journey where first we're talking about subways product placement in south korean television dramas and you were like i'm gonna have to go get me a sub sandwich and then i think by the end it shifted to teriyaki because we were talking about the k-pop artist kim gunmo and wow i used to go get teriyaki at a place where they would play his music

and then and then i said i wonder if they have a teriyaki sandwich at um at subway and you reminded me that they did and i've had that before and i came very close to getting that um but then i ended up so hungry after yesterday's show that i couldn't make up my mind on anything i don't know if you ever get like that where you just get increasingly cranky and hungry and it's like the world is your oyster i had a car i had my footsies i could have walked around the neighborhood grabbed any kind of cuisine i could have gotten in my car driven anywhere in the city but suddenly i was it's the tyranny of unlimited options oh my goodness so what did i do

stood over the sink and yeah and ate a reheated sausage from last night no that was the thing

our cupboards were bare i don't keep my sausage in cupboards but proverbially speaking the cupboards were bare in the house i had to go to the grocery store so that might have added to my irritation what i ended up doing was i walked to the um el camion burrito slash taco truck which is about two or three blocks from my house and uh and i got too many tacos in fact in fact here we are talking about can it's so damn good but here's the deal uh usually if i'm If I'm going to get a meal from there in the evening, I get a burrito. It's so big. I mean, they're so big and dense. I usually finish it, but it's a lot of food. For my lunch breaks, I usually don't get the burrito because it's a lot for the middle of the day. I will not be productive after eating a burrito like that. So I get tacos. But then here's where I'm going to get a little confessional on you here, Luke. The taco plates come with two tacos. that seems like a little bit too little for me. And they're big tacos, too. They're street-style tacos, but they're pretty well-packed with meat. And so then I get four, and then I always eat four, and then I regret it. So yesterday— Tacos! Hot tacos here! I legit finished three tacos and looked at the last one and said, no, not today. I will, like, you know, I told you— Well, I said that. I didn't follow through. Wait for the end. But Genevieve's friend, Jessica, who's a sage in her own way, used to quote like her uncle or grandpa who said, like, if you're eating food when you're no longer hungry for that food, you're eating garbage. Just throw it away. And I tried to do that yesterday. I looked at the taco. I said, you're garbage right now. No offense, but I'm full. I don't need you. And then it sat there for about, I'm going to say, that mentality lasted, I'm going to say more than 30 seconds less than 60 before I started eating it. I think I left, like, one bite of the last taco just to show that I could leave a tiny bit of food on my plate, and I was pretty full afterwards.

I can't think of a time when I would ever leave. I mean, it would not matter how full I was. I would never leave a man behind. You never leave a taco behind because, for me, I'm such an emotional eater. like but those emotions go in a lot of directions and my behaviors are kind of wildly varied because most of the time i don't eat at all during the day or you know probably about five on average of five days a week i don't eat any food until about 5 p.m but then when i do start eating at 5 p.m it is it's it's breathtaking to watch because of how much food i'll consume and and also how much food i'll consume when i'm full because i like the experience of eating and i feel like i've somehow earned it the other thing is if i do crack the seal andrew and eat in the middle of the day look out it ain't a salad because that's the other part of my like i don't have a middle gear for things so if i'm you know getting my red x and i'm being quote unquote good and i'm only talking about myself here i'm not telling anybody else how to live or i don't want trigger anybody over what their relationship with food might be but if i'm being quote unquote good in my mind which means kind of intermittent fasting then it's nothing but if i eat as so much as two planters peanuts in the middle of the day like if i find myself hungry and this has happened before where i will open the cupboard and i'll think you're trying to fast but you're a little bit hungry i'll throw like two peanuts in or i'll eat like a pickle from there i will end up consuming four to five thousand calories because I have broken the seal and now it's like now it's just like you know all of the I don't know whatever all of the things that are now escaping from the Ark of the Covenant that was my self-discipline so all of that to say I like I eat so much food when I know that I'm not even hungry anymore because I love the taste of food and I did see it might have been the might have been Hilary Duff Some ingenue of the era of Hilary Duff once said their key to portion control was when they were full, they dumped their water out on their plate onto whatever food was left. And I did do that for about three months, I think. And it does work.

Genevieve, and again, I connect this with her friend Jessica as well, who is the one who had the uncle or grandfather who said you're eating garbage if you keep eating. They were watching some sort of reality TV show Like literally 20 years ago But somebody said Listen I'm going to eat one bite of this cupcake Because I need to know how it tastes And then I spray the rest with Windex Oh wow

That's next level You definitely want to make sure You have tossed that cupcake Yeah Like you don't want to leave that thing out With half a bite in it And the rest of it Windex That sounds like an accidental poisoning waiting to happen.

Yeah, right. But it really gets the point across, right? Like, if you really don't trust yourself, douse it with some cleaner, and then there you go. So anyway, the whole goal of not talking about food today did not work. Although I was going to say, if you have food on the agenda on the show sheet, which you do sort of.

I do, my friend.

But I'm glad that it's grilled cheese because I have no connection to grilled cheese. I am not tempted by grilled cheese. It does not sound good to me. So thank you for that.

There's zero chance of this sending you straight to the grilled cheese shop. Exactly. The old grilled cheese shop. So I do know going into this conversation that it's going to be a stretch for you to have thoughts on it because it is a world. It's a space that you don't play in. But speaking of my weird emotional relationship with food, I was having kind of a strange day yesterday. I felt like maybe I was having a low-level panic attack all day. Like, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I just felt unsettled. and it's the odd thing about our jobs is that it's like you can kind of I don't know if you can but I can sort of push that stuff to the side like while we're doing the show and I did it we recorded a bunch of stuff for live wire yesterday so it's like I can kind of push the stuff aside and then we and then do this and then when I'm not doing this it kind of comes creeping back in whatever the sort of agita that I'm having on a particular day and and so yesterday was a weird day for me And two things actually It's very strange Two things calmed me One, I was listening to our friend And our most famous friend, I'll stress Chris Hayes' podcast Why is this happening? And he was talking to Michelle Goldberg Who's a brilliant person Who's on his TV show a lot And they were just kind of talking about the pandemic One year in And it was just two smart people Who were being very human Talking about the pandemic It's basically them doing what we were trying to accomplish the other day But better Two smarts smarting it up. Yeah, exactly. Whereas we're two farts farting it up, which is a much less good experience. Anyway, there was something very odd. I'm just going to do this, Andrew, if it's okay. This was not the plan. I wasn't planning on talking about grilled cheese sandwiches in this context. But if you will permit it, I was having a really kind of a rough day, and I started listening to that podcast, and I found it to be weirdly soothing. and where my brain went with it was, you know what? What Andrew and I do provides this to other people. I don't know why. I know I just said we're two farts farting it up, but realistically, based on the feedback we get, there is a certain number of people in the world for whom hearing you and me talk probably calms them down a little bit,

and that somehow... Sorry, I wasn't sure if you needed an amen from me. No, I muted my mic to clear my throat. I'll give you an amen anyway, just in the clear, amen.

Thank you. We'll put that in in post. Um, like there was something about how I was feeling comforted by hearing these two people talk and then me thinking, maybe I was just feeling yesterday like, eh, nothing I do adds up to anything. Maybe that was the kind of somewhere the low key thought I was having. It's like I'd spent all this time in this room talking into this microphone or talking into a zoom thing that's being recorded for whatever media outlet I'm working for. And like, does it even matter? I think was maybe low key what I was feeling, but listening to their, that show and feeling Really like it comforted me then it made Me realize oh what we're doing actually does that For other people and that gave me a sense of like Oh this does matter Right So that was a good feeling that kind of like took me that kind of shook me out of my like malaise. And then I got the idea I'm going to make some bitching grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner tonight. And that really had me excited, too, because I got this whole system that I learned from Francis Lamb where you use mayo instead of butter. Another favorite of yours on the outside.

I've come a long way on mayo, by the way. I often – like if I'm ordering a sandwich, I often don't even – because I feel like I always said no cheese, no mayo, and it just is exhausting. And so little by little, I've just been like accepting the mayonnaise. Right.

That may come back to haunt you as well. Anyway, so I got excited about – like once I knew that what we do for our job matters, Andrew, at least to some people, And that I had a solid plan for dinner that I could look forward to. I snapped right out of it. All of a sudden, my day and my life had a purpose. And so I go to the Whole Foods and I realized that I really want to make these grilled cheese sandwiches out of American cheese. But Whole Foods doesn't have, you know, Kraft singles. That's not their speed. So I look all around in the kind of like prepackaged cheese area and they don't have anything. So I have to go up to the cheesemongers and say, do you have American cheese? And I will tell you this. They were the woman who actually got the American cheese for me was totally nice and did not make me feel bad. I felt embarrassed asking for American cheese at Whole Foods. The other fellow who was behind the counter, I couldn't get a read on him. I think he was a little less than impressed.

But I mean, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. So only because I'm not part of cheese culture. So the embarrassment would stem from the fact that this is more of a day class A cheese. It's a working man's cheese and you're in a Whole Foods.

But it's a Kraft single, right? And did you as a kid ever have Kraft singles, even with your kind of cheese aversion?

No. I mean, I do think that my mom made grilled cheese for us growing up. I don't know when I stopped eating that, but I'd never ate like any kind of cold, unmelted cheese like that. But you're in a fragile place Actually it's kind of funny I had very similar feelings after yesterday

I'm okay now I feel like my life has purpose

I was in a fragile place Now I'm confuerso Okay good I'm going to break you back down But like you think that You think that Like your level of Paranoia is a very strong word But I have bought things I've purchased things before Where I do wonder if the person Who is checking me out Might or you know At the register Might be judging me in some way Or at least in the back of their brain Maybe thinking something about the products I'm buying I know that feeling But I don't think I've ever thought that like the person Who isn't even helping me but just like the colleague Of the other person cares so much Like this person sees so much cheese and meat Purchased in a day I just doubt that the person who's not dealing with you The chance that they are even noticing you Or judging your cheese purchase I just feel like that's kind of A reach, no?

It was the fact that i had to go it was like going in the video store and asking where the adult section is like it was the fact that i couldn't just grab a pack because yeah i mean as a non-cheese person by the way i don't think i think it's fuerte fuerte i think that's spanish for i feel strong or strength um i said fuerza so which is probably not even a word um it's because you're not part of cheese world like yeah american cheese is a somewhat maligned cheese these days when everyone's eating you know all kinds of fancy um you know cheeses from wherever uh with with the you know complicated names i mean american cheese is what everybody was eating on wonder bread in the 80s you know it's craft singles it's you know it's it's probably not even cheese i think sometimes it's called cheese food some versions of it which is a way of saying it's not even like like you can't even legally call it cheese for some reason so the fact that i walked up to these cheese mongers who really know their cheese and have a can recommend all kinds of cool things and said do you have the lowest rent version of this product that you're an expert at it made me feel embarrassed now i'm not saying they were shading me i'm just saying i felt embarrassed okay and were i in a safe way they just have freaking packages of craft singles everywhere i could just walked and got them whole foods is not that kind of place they have to cut it from a huge block there's a whole process to it so anyway it occurred to me that that was maybe a kind of a funny experience people could relate to so of course i turned to my one true friend twitter and uh and tweeted that out that i had just bought some american cheese a pound of it and now i was banned from portland ha ha ha uh that's a pretty good spoof okay so then people i'm tweeting back and forth people people. People are interacting with the tweet. I'm getting a lot of hashtag engagement. And so then later on, and somebody had said in the thread, like, you know, American cheese is really underrated for grilled cheese sandwiches. And so I made my grilled cheese sandwiches that I was very excited about where I use like a, oh, man, I don't have it right in front of me, the kind of bun that I'm using now. But it's like a, what is that very kind of buttery, oh, brioche. So they have these brioche buns at Whole Foods that are so good. And that's my favorite thing is to use the brioche bun instead of like typical bread. And also one of the things that our buddy Francis Lamb taught me was chop up onions, almost like the consistency that you'd have on a McDonald's hamburger. So dice up onions like pretty fine and put those in the grilled cheese as well into the cheese and you grill it all up. and then at the end you throw a little more cheese in the pan and you flip the sandwich over and that so you get this kind of crust of cheese on it anyway it's very yummy if you go in for that kind of thing which you don't Andrew but what where things started to take a turn was

our friend Chris Hayes interacted with the tweet meaning he said oh that looks really good you could charge 16 bucks for that at a gastropub now that was probably tweeted by a man that was on his way home from his TV job and was feeling peckish

you know um he was on his recumbent bike as he was sure i don't think he's on a recumbent bike in fact i'm i'd be surprised if he was but i do think he bikes into work and for some reason sometimes i picture it as a recumbent bike and i don't know why and i don't know if that's an insult and if it is i don't mean it to be and if now i'm insulting recumbent bikers i apologize to

them yeah you're really digging that hole deeper because i i don't know who i don't think chris has a recumbent bicycle but also i can't rule out some of our listeners being recumbent bicycle enthusiasts right sure um however incumbent you want to be while biking we respect that whether you want to incumbent once or recumbent that's all up to you um so uh what happens when chris interacts with one of our tweets is it brings a bunch of attention from people who are not tens and people who don't understand are very very fragile fragile um uh egos and so chris was just being nice and saying it looks yummy and then the people were saying like i would there was a bunch of gifts about are those raw onions in there which i mean they're not raw they were like cooked along with the sandwich but they're also not grilled i don't know if this is something you have thoughts on injury but i don't like grilled onions that much i'm not they're not the worst thing but if i have a choice between a raw onion and a grilled onion on something i like

the raw onion is that craziness i don't think it's crazy everybody's got their own taste i do like a good caramelized onion i love the process of doing it i love the smell of it i love the the

i like the smell of caramelizing an onion you know in a pan with some oil and all that but and if it's on something it doesn't it's not doesn't gross me out but like if i was having a hot dog or a veggie dog i would much rather have diced onion than caramelized onion in fact if i'm having a burger i'd much rather have that kind of ring of like of raw onion on it than a caramelized onion that's just that's just my taste i guess i like i like that and in fact again see previous francis lamb comments the host of the splendid table told me that's how you're supposed to do it but people like putting gifts up of onions being sauteed so as to say you should saute your onions people are like it's somebody's going to chris like what are you talking about what even is this is this even cooking somebody's like oh chris that's so sad i mean i think people mostly meant this in in good fun but like somebody said all that is is a sarni and some tomato soup now sarni is that like a britishism for a sandwich or i don't i don't know i was gonna ask you i

I don't know.

It sounds Australian, doesn't it? Yeah, I'm Googling Sarni right now. A bacon sandwich. A sandwich? Where did Sarni come from? It's a small city in Ukraine. Okay. So somebody was basically just saying, like, in a way that wasn't like, I mean, it certainly was not the most toxic part of Twitter last night at all. But it was like people just who don't know me and my vibe and don't really know Chris either, but just like are constantly hurling themselves against the castle walls of his Twitter account. We're just like, oh, dude, you think that looks good? Come over to my house. Or like everyone was having a thought on my stupid little sandwich thing. And like, what? How is that even a recipe? By the way, I put recipe in quotes when I tweeted this back to Chris. I said, this is from our guy Francis Lamb, because it's not a big recipe. It's just applying heat to some bread and cheese. but you know the particular combination um i would not be doing it that way if not for the

advice of of francis so anyway i guess what i learned is i go on that twitter wanting attention but if it's not the exact kind of attention i want to get then i don't enjoy it i don't know

that i cannot be hypocritical here because what i want to say is like this style of interaction online or even not online i find exhausting like everybody's got their tried and true like these are the rules for food if you don't write that french toast is the best then you're wrong you're welcome you know like that i'm just like oh god damn who gives a shit but i had so much fun over the course of probably three weeks arguing about whether or not thousand island is a is a condiment because it was just like it was something fun to engage with that i didn't really care that much about but you can kind of foe heated about so like i say i don't think i can i cannot be a hypocrite But I guess when I do it, it's OK. And when everybody else does it, it's wrong. I guess that's just the way it's going to be because, yeah, that exact kind of – and you've heard me. I've been saying that for 10 years now or whatever it's been, just kind of like people getting on my case being like, Bud Light, when I meet you, I'm going to teach you about a real beer. I'm like, no, I don't need anybody to freaking teach me about real beer. Like people like what they like. For what it's worth, since I started drinking Miller Lite, I now no longer like Bud Light, and I can tell the difference between them. So what do you think of that? Like, you know, I don't think that if somebody drinks a Bud Light and they're like, ew, this isn't for me. I don't think they're lying, but I don't like them saying, you're wrong. End of story. You know, just like those kinds of lines. Oh, you put ketchup on a hot dog. You're a child. You're doing it wrong. I'm from Chicago, but I'm from New York. Our pizza is different. I'll die on this pizza. Shut up. I'm like, Jesus, H. Christ, eat what you want. We do have a show title, which is I'll die on this pizza. I probably said I'll die on this. What should I have said there? I die on this pizza mountain or I don't know. But like, yeah, anyway, that was a rant. I actually kind of went into a fugue state there. So I enjoyed it. I honestly enjoyed it.

Like, but to me, what it really pointed out was I am just because I I don't I know exactly what you're saying about the Thousand Island conversation. Like, it's fun to kind of act like overly invested in something that doesn't mean anything. And I think that was the spirit that everybody who was interacting with me was, you know, that's the spirit they were engaging in this in. But it's funny because since I don't really tweet very much about like politics or or real issues because I just don't I don't want to be fighting with people on Twitter. So mostly it's just pictures of Rudy, which, by the way, to the listeners. So Carrie sent me this very funny video from the Burbank Springs Broadcast Center up in Bellingham of there's a woodpecker, I guess, that like pecks on the chimney and olive. The Bay Kitty tries to climb up the inside of the chimney to get the woodpecker, which doesn't work. But Rudy is afraid of the woodpecker sound and hides. And so Carrie sent me this funny video of like Olive trying to catch the woodpecker and then Rudy eventually getting up the courage to come back into the living room. And Rudy just kind of peeks around the side of this kitchen island. It made me laugh. So I took a picture of that And of course also put that on the internet And said something on Sunday night Like when you realize it's Sunday night And then people were being oh my god is Rudy At the Nest Broadcast Center No Rudy is still up in Bellingham I'm still down here but just to clarify for people

Can I ask you a couple more questions This is probably a bad I got a couple of emails from people Explaining to me that I'm going to tell my kids That this is so and so Is an existing meme on Twitter yeah oh it is aware of that we didn't say that specifically yesterday but when we were talking about um the tony hawk tweet i think some people thought we were missing the fact that that is an established thing we were not missing that um but i did this morning when i saw that you wanted to talk about your cheese story and that it involved twitter i opened up your twitter account and um this last thing that you tweeted i feel like it should be in my wheelhouse i feel like i should connect all the dots on it but i don't understand it so you retweeted a tweet from the daily news that says that pete carroll coach of the seahawks uh has a high opinion of sam darnold the quarterback for the jets right yes there yeah um and so there's all this talk about a possible russell wilson leaving the seahawks situation and what that might look like and what you retweeted it with, though, is a photo of Tim Heidecker. Has he ever been mentioned on the the show before um in the skit from i think you should leave where he's holding a bag of i think those are walnuts right where be your nutcracker where be your nutcracker so i think i'm missing the and i is this am i missing the context of a wider internet meme am i just not getting the sports thing what's going on here i just have always thought that sort of slightly dyspeptic

look on tim heidecker's face in that skit it is good it's just kind of a mood and it's kind of what i feel like internally when i hear that we might trade we might basically relieve ourselves of one of the greatest quarterbacks of the last decade for a guy who was once out for half the season for having mononucleosis that's just like it's not it's the look on his face okay i wasn't sure yeah it wasn't a it's not a reference to the nuts or or or the guy who played the horn with the kink in it it's just i don't know why tim heidecker's face there it just represents internally how i feel when these conversations start to pick up some momentum around us not having russell wilson

and the replacement being sam darnold i um i think about so this story about russell wilson we don't have to get into it it does not matter all you have to know is that we've had this great franchise quarterback and now it looks like there's a chance that he could leave seattle just it's it's it's wild um uh but i am following that's why i had low level anxiety all day yeah And I've been following it just very casually. Like I listen to more Seattle sports radio than you, at least I do right now. And so it's all I mean, we're like before the baseball season, we don't have a basketball team like this is everything that they've been talking about on Seattle sports radio for a few weeks now. But I also have not been listening that intently or following that. But, you know, just keeping, like I say, casual attention to this story. But every time I read it, I now think of what you said on the show the other day. I asked you a question about it or your opinion about it, and you just said, I'm just, like, ignoring it. Like, I'm just not reading those articles because I can't have that in my life right now. There's no need for me to do it. Let's just see where things end up. And, you know, it is just sports, so why not? And I always think that that's a pretty good attitude. But it looks like also not unlike your hunger when you're fasting and you have one nut, it sounds like the tiny little crack, the little fissure is showing up in the dam

that is holding everything back right that's i mean well you know what happened was mina tweeted something about it and so then it kind of was like well she's engaging with the content that's that's a you know may makes me think maybe it's more likely to be a real thing and then i go on a whole journey which is i think i probably said this last time i become very anxious thinking about us not having russell wilson but then i force myself to think of all the times that russell Wilson has held onto the ball for 1.5 seconds too long or you know done something that frustrated me and then I also remind myself that for the last however many years six seasons teams that don't have Russell Wilson have won Super Bowls so I just have to keep reminding myself of that to kind of manage my anxiety around that yeah although who knows maybe that could finally help me break the uh kind of um dysfunctional relationship i have with football no you know a sam darnold helmed seattle seahawks with like their upteenth like rejiggered line of like we've we just uh we just drafted a rugby player we're going to teach him how to play left guard we think he's a real grader like he's just like this is going to work and then it's like and We also were able to reanimate the bones of Lawrence Taylor. We're bringing him in at outside linebacker. Like that version of the Seahawks with Pete Carroll just like chomping gum and becoming increasingly confused on the sideline. That could be enough. Like I feel like it's a lot. Sorry, we're just doing this. I was going to say, I don't think so. As long as we have Russell Wilson, we have a chance to win every football game we're involved in. if you take russell wilson out of the equation i think it falls apart pretty fast because we don't have a bunch of other like super you know like super like upgrade you know like our win over replacement at a lot of positions as it were is not that high we don't have we don't have a we don't have a chunt uh you know running attack we don't have some we don't have a bunch of a great defensive line we just don't have anything really russell wilson is our special thing If we lose Russell Wilson, we don't have any special thing and we will probably be in the wilderness for a long time as a team. So which, you know, happens to teams, I guess.

I just don't think that you'll be able to turn it off, though, even if it's just like depressing and it's like a Pete Carroll led Sam Darnold team. I still think I just don't. I can't imagine. But I feel that aggressively. I feel that. Excessively chewing gum and clapping as the other team runs back another pick six right past Pete Carroll. And no, his facial expression is unchanged. That's what I see the Sam Darnold era as being.

Somebody wake up the quarterback. Yeah, no, but I still don't see. I just don't see you. It's just too much. It's too much a part of our culture.

No, I will never be able to. Until they cancel it, I will never be able to. you know it's like when you're being electrocuted my hand is stuck on the you know the electrical wire and my arm's just going but I'm unable to pull myself away from this destructive thing called NFL football yeah all right on that note let's take a quick break and then when we come back I want to tell you about what is going on at this restaurant in miami with these gold covered steaks maybe that's food content you can get into andrew oh wow we have so much food on the rundown you were like you dodged a bullet with the grilled cheese but what about gold plated steaks is that going to send you directly to the gold plated steak store in seattle cash for gold steak all right let's take a quick break and then we'll be back with

more at tbtl on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go everybody rattle

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the wonderful, generous people donating a dazzling amount of dough each month, which keeps the show going. These are people who could have traveled to Miami and purchased one to two gold-plated steaks. They said, no, I want to redirect that donation to TBT. That's not even true, by the way. I think one of these gold-plated steaks is like being a dazzling donor for like five years. But we still appreciate the prioritization on the part of Christina Homer of San Francisco, California. Christina says, outside of being a 10, I'm an infectious disease doctor at a large hospital. Wow, Christina. Thank you. I would say what you're doing is almost as important as what we're doing on this podcast. Since I've seen the effects of the pandemic firsthand, I wanted to dazzle the listeners with a PSA about our COVID vaccines. Myself, my friends and my family are all either vaccinated already or have plans to do so when their turn comes up. These vaccines are all safe and more effective than anyone could have asked for. I wouldn't want to see anyone miss out on this great opportunity to take care of their health. So if you have a loved one who may be having second thoughts, I found that making those personal connections and having direct conversations with people can go a long way. It's interesting advice because I was just seeing last night on TV that we are very soon going to be at the point, Andrew, where the issue is not vaccine supply. It's going to be people agreeing to go in and get it like there will be more vaccine than there is than there are a number of people who are willing to go and actually get it. So, yeah, Christina, Dr. Christina Homer, that is. That's a good piece of advice, you know, to try to like reach out to the people in your life who might be a little bit apprehensive and try to relate to them on a human level. christina continues thanks to luke and andrew and the tens for helping us all get through the last

year and beyond um what do you think the ethical i don't think it's ethical implications but a conversation that genevieve and i were having this weekend was she had heard about somebody who lives here in the seattle area who lost their job um i don't know at some point so they have a lot of time on their hands so they drove i think it's like two and a half hours out to wenatchee which is a part of the state that is more conservative and so there's a lot more distrust of the vaccine and just got somehow on their waiting list and uh and like drove out there spent a day drove out there got the vaccine and drove back probably had to do that twice but because you have these areas of the state where it's not a supply issue like you say but it's not being it's not being taken

advantage of well that's sort of what happened with me um uh you know down in salem um so i guess i I mean, maybe I'm a little biased on this. I don't think that's unethical. If you are depriving somebody who's a frontline worker or immunocompromised or a teacher or fill in the blank, if I as a podcaster or as if this person who went to Wenatchee is whatever their job is, if it's not one of those things and they take a shot that was going to go into the arm of someone else, I think that would be really bad. but if there is more supply than there is demand I think I the feedback I got when I was puzzling over this when I was asking kind of the audience I guess which is a weird way for me to run my life was more shots in arms you know and so I think I don't think that's unethical what that person did what did you where did you come down on it yeah you know I wish I hadn't set

it up that way because I don't think it's unethical either I think I just wanted to bring that up as something that Genevieve and I were kind of talking about and tempted by although I don't think that we have the I don't think that we have the flexibility in our days right now to just kind of be on that waiting list and then you know again it's quite a drive and then the process and then back that's almost a full day but I kind of I kind of like the idea of you know taking advantage of some of these things, especially if we have storage issues and longevity issues for the vaccine itself, then getting us out to these areas where people are not taking advantage of it, it feels sort of good, actually.

Right. Because the idea of it, I mean, I think we can all agree that the worst outcome would be for one drop of vaccine to go to waste. Like, the priority should be the people who really need it because of their health, their age, or what they're doing with their lives. That's the priority. then people like me and you and Genevieve, but the worst outcome would be it not getting used. And I think it's going to be crazy when we get to that point where there's plenty of vaccine, and it's the point where you're trying to talk as many people into it who might be hesitant as you can. But good advice from Dr. Christina Homer of San Francisco, California. And, Christina, thank you also for being a dazzling donor. We really do appreciate it. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set.

now ready ready go everybody rattle sassle everybody rattle sassle we've also got to thank that was a weird one i muted my microphone so as to clear my throat and then i hit it to unmute it and it didn't work so then i was like all right cool i got one more second to clear my throat and then it slowly unmuted is that what we heard that's what you were hearing was the mic the microphone mute button has now taken on a mind of its own what i wanted to say was we also need to thank dazzling donor aaron zinert of spokane washington aaron says hey dummies i don't have much to say here other than thank you for providing countless hours of entertainment in summer of 2020 i started a practice of gratitude journaling each morning probably that would go, I started a practice of gratitude journaling each morning. And the first item in my very first entry says Luke and Andrew at TBTL. That show continually brings me joy. Wow. That's humbling. So truly, thank you. And thank you to my fellow tens for supporting TBTL so I can have this wellspring of delight. See, it's what I was telling you earlier, Andrew. People like this show. Despite what you tell me off-air, people enjoy

this program. No, they like this show. they don't like you is what i got it okay i'm gonna go eat my feelings with four grilled cheese

sandwiches and put it on the internet um aaron continues speaking of delight i humbly request you play one of my favorite throwback youtube clips where an ice cream taste tester offers his expertise and please consider the last three seconds as an audio drop for referring to the tens from here on out now i have not actually watched this tape or heard this tape um should i play it

from here do you want to play it from i'll play it from here because i've already watched it so what you're going to see here is a well an ice cream tester exactly how aaron describes it it's a a man in a white lab coat and it looks like this is footage from it looks like maybe the 1980s potentially earlier than that but it looks like the 80s it's got that quality he's got several um little tubs of eddie's yogurt or eddie's um i say yogurt ice cream in front of him uh we're a we're a heart smart family so we only eat frozen yogurt that's not true sure but he's got the the eddie's ice cream do you eat ice cream yeah i like ice cream okay i don't eat much of it these days but i go through phases man the thing about ice cream with me if i can can i have a moment can i have 30 seconds on ice cream yep this is kind of gross but um eating ice cream directly out of the container is 100 better to me than eating it out of a bowl the only thing that's ideal would be i guess a la mode i do like a warm piece of like berry pie with ice cream on top but if you're just eating by the way i'm going to say no question about it no question is not the proper response oh you agree yeah yeah i agree 100 just like the as it slowly kind of melt as it's you know kind of as you have it out and then you can kind of scrape along the sides and the in the spoon is just creating those uh beautiful curls as you're constantly kind of

digging and the ice cream is melting which is satisfying because you can work with it more easily as you go along yes which is dangerous right it starts off with like i'm gonna do like three bites of this rock hard thing and then by the time there's just one little dollop left because it's become more

and more manageable. I got a spoon in the drawer that won't rest, that won't nest nicely with the rest of the spoons because I gave it a real one-two on some ice cream that wasn't melted enough when I first started. Anyway, so that is how I enjoy my ice cream. So here we have an ice cream tester in the lab, and he's going to take a little dollop of ice cream, and he is going to put it in his mouth in a very specific way, which I believe he will describe here.

So in tasting, what we do is take a small amount right off the top. It doesn't take much. That's the warmest part right here. I'm going to invert the spoon. Cover all 9,000 taste buds.

So when he says invert the spoon, he doesn't eat it like you might eat soup or cereal with a spoon. He takes the spoon upside down and then drags the ice cream off into his mouth.

He's really calling it Dan Pashman here.

Oh, yeah. Is it specifically a Dan Pashman or is it just Pashman-esque?

Pashman-esque in that Dan's big on inverting food so that the flavor gets to the right parts of your mouth. Right. So here we go.

I'm going to invert the spoon. Cover all 9,000 taste buds. Aerate it. Warm it up. Driving up that top note, that cream, pure vanilla. Sweeteners. That's a 10.

i've never heard that tape before oh me neither me neither uh until until aaron sent it but um

yeah that's wonderful aaron thank you gosh you i mean your generosity knows no bounds you're dazzling us with your donation and you're putting some really great tape into uh our world so thank you for that we appreciate you um wouldn't be here without you Hello and welcome to Top Story. Are you familiar at all, Andrew, with this dude that I've been alluding to throughout the show who does the salting from like a weirdly high height from the meat? Do you know this guy? No, I don't think so. Why don't you Google Salt Bay or Google Nooser Et, which is the restaurants that this guy has. I don't know what his real name is But I feel like If you see a picture of him You'll be like oh that dude Like he almost looks Like if the guy from Weekend at Bernie's If Bernie wasn't dead And was a little bit younger And really tan And had a ponytail Now we're getting pretty far afield From the original Bernie concept And was 6'4 And was black

no this guy is like a sailor and a pirate with a with an eye patch but no this guy is like i i used

to see pictures of him or like weird videos that would show up you know online of him just very theatrically like salting these like gigantic steaks and stuff and like using these huge knives to cut things up he's a very performative chef who appears for all the world to have long since left the bounds of of really even being about cooking and more he's about just like weird celebrity and salting things he loves to salt stuff hence the name salt bay i see he's got a

whole move when you say he's from above he's his whole brand is sort of holding his hand in a certain way and sprinkling salt even when he's not even when he's at like a red carpet event he's doing his little like i am salting you right now motion right it's it's very yeah it's it's so

kind of like sticky that like it's you know it's it's almost like no soup for you except it's some salt for you but it's like his deal now so he's got uh i think a few restaurants i i think that the the cuisine would be considered turkish maybe um or or i just know that on this this um this receipt that is the in question in this article um by the way i saw this in esquire um this receipt there's one of the things on it is turkish tea and then Nusret Baklava so those are things that I would associate with like a certain part of of you know the kind of the Middle East or Turkey I guess anyway what happened was uh some people were eating at this restaurant in Miami and they ordered um a couple of tomahawk steaks and those are the ones that are also very popular now at these at like kind of fancy or attempting to be fancy steak houses where it's a steak but it's got a bone still in it that's like so huge it's like comically huge you know and it almost looks like a tomahawk i guess hence the name you know

what it looks like to me i didn't know about these steaks but it looks like a very large version of a um like a piece of lamb like when you get a rack right sure no that's a good uh that's a good

comparison.

people can probably picture yeah it's like that i have obviously i don't eat steak but i am aware of this because you know i'm usually traveling a lot and anytime i'm in like the hotel like there's a steakhouse in the whatever hotel it's like they love it's always like a guy in like a lab coat just like wheeling around a bunch of these concoctions on like ice it's a whole thing now So I've seen these before But I guess they go for $275 Per At this place So these people said that they ordered two of them And then When the bill came The bill for their meal was $5,012.28 I mean they ordered a lot of other stuff too But the reason was because The restaurant Had brought out the version of these steaks That are coated in Gold In like a gold leaf And if you want to do that It's a thousand dollars per stake

But why do you want to do that And why are you serving that If they didn't ask for it Why did you serve that

Well that was their contention Was that they did not ask for it It just came out that way And they just thought Well that's what they do here Like they did not ask for the thousand dollar version of the stake And so when the bill came They were like why is it a thousand dollars per stake Which, I have to be honest with you, I'm surprised they even figured out they'd been overcharged by, you know, $1,800 or whatever. It would be $1,500, I guess. Because this bill is so ridiculous. The ordering that I can see on this receipt was so, you know, sort of—they were just ordering anything and everything. Like, I'm surprised that they even noted that it was more than they thought it was going to be. This seemed like the kind of thing where somebody has an Amex black card and all bets are off.

Yeah, there's a bunch of really high-end booze orders on here. But the thing, and does the article, I'm looking at the picture in the article, but I haven't read the article. I'm looking at the picture of the bill. There's also something called Open Food that went for $1,000. Do we know what that is?

No, I don't know what that is.

Open Food.

You see the steaks. Two golden tomahawks are listed for $2,000. you've also got uh for four vos you know a vos is it's that like kind of like tube of water that sometimes if you're staying in a nice hotel you'll see i i like i assume those are twenty thousand dollars a piece i've never opened a tube of vos in my life it's always if i somehow i'm in a very high-end hotel that like probably cbs is paying for and i see that and i'm like

no tokenada that's the one that looks looks like it would if you if you were a child in the 1980s in the back seat of your mom's oldsmobile and she went to the bank and the paperwork was right through pneumatic tubes this is the water that looks like it's in one of the little capsules

that runs through the tubes yes or if you were an embryonic child in a sci-fi movie you would be inside the tube or or that i think we're a clone now so the four of those things of voss were 40 So it's $10 per tube of water. It was, yeah, like, you know, two Tito's Martinis were $56. Two Glenn Fittich 12-year was $52. If this was two people, by the way, which I guess it probably was because everything is kind of in twos, and they got two of those steaks. Listen, I'm not one to talk. I have overindulged in alcohol many times in my life, regrettably so.

I am pretty shocked at how much booze these people were able to consume. They have one glass of wine on here for $275, so that's classy. Two Grey Goose martinis, ran them $56.

The Tito's ones, they were like, those were fine, but let's switch it up. Let's go Grey Goose for the next two. Don Julio Blanco was a mere $25. They did get some baklava, two of the baklava at the end for $50. The Turkish tea is free, by the way, Andrew.

Well, that's how— If you go to this restaurant, get the Turkish tea. That's why it's a deal, yeah.

But what's funny to me is that, like, they—when they got the check, they said, we didn't—that wasn't the kind we were trying to order. And the restaurant, instead of saying, oh, sorry, that was a miscommunication, they called the police on them. And this apparently is a fairly common practice. According to a newspaper, this restaurant has called the police at least a dozen times, almost once every two months since it opened in Miami back in 2017. Like, that's hardcore. Like, they will, if you have a dispute with this restaurant over some ridiculous food situation, they will straight up call the police on you.

I want to talk about the steak itself here for a second because there's a picture of the chef holding it up. Now, I've never had any kind of, you know. food that is dusted with gold flakes but you hear about it from time to time right like and in my head it's just like a very it's almost symbolic it's um you know like you see a touch of it and it means ah a touch of class um and that's the end of it the chef what's his damn name can't remember his name well we're gonna call him salt bay okay salt bay here is holding up this giant steak and of course a big part of that is the bone but he's holding up this giant steak and it looks like it is wrapped in golden tin foil like it does not look like when you were describing salting steak before this is how hungry I am but I do love a good steak and a part of a good steak is when it's buttery and salted really well on the outside and so I'm picturing that but like this looks this doesn't look it doesn't look edible let alone let alone like appealing to me in any way like i don't understand like what is but it's i mean not to be snobby but i

guess that's kind of that's kind of miami huh it is and i used to live in miami so i feel i mean a long time ago but still i feel comfortable weighing in on that part of it this isn't this is the most miami restaurant and miami story that you could ever imagine by the way that the picture of him with the steak this salt bay guy he looks he looks like a cross between bernie from weekend at bernie's and robert downey jr if they're if they made weekend at bernie's three and they had robert downey jr play him that's exactly what this dude looks like and you're right to me the gold would be a disincentive apparently it's it's flavorless and it's not harmful to you like you know what i mean like your body just clears it even grandparents can tolerate gold flake but like i can't think of anything i would want less well i can think of some things but it would not be appealing to me i mean that's a that is a point where and i i watch a lot of uh american greed i love that show so much and i'm running out of episodes andrew and it's really i'm greedy for the show american greed i just want more of it i want more a stacy keach narrated stories about people who run flim flam operations because there's always the point where they're riding high and for some reason i'm fascinated with the absolute bullshit they waste their money on you know it's always like uh you know livonia michigan's king of cars was living the lavish life you know and it's like and it's like he was eating gold steaks like they're always doing something like this that makes no they had a jacuzzi put into their hot tub and filled with champagne you know and it's just like for some reason i find that's just to be very fascinating and it kind of relaxes my brain but yeah i would if i could choose gold or no gold i would choose no gold but this is a kind of performative eating i mean and by the way apparently these people did not order this so i guess this isn't even really on them but for the people who have ordered it what is wrong with you like how i mean i speak as a person who is very open about my own struggles with emotional well-being on this show but what is broken inside you that you want to show off so hard that you're going to eat a steak wrapped in flavorless gold leafing yeah and you know i

I always, I mean, it's probably funny for you to see me through your eyes because I'm sure I seem pretty, I don't know if cheap is the right word, but like, you know, I don't go in for like the more expensive things in life. And then when I do want to buy something like a new computer or even a new iPad, like I kind of wring my hands a lot because I feel like if I'm going to be spending $700 on this, I need to justify it, you know, and I have to really think it through.

I find that to be a really good quality of yours, by the way.

Good. Yeah. But on the other hand, though, I'm not really great with money on the small things, you know, like I told you I went to the Eagles this weekend. I think I put like forty five dollars worth of jukebox money into my account and spent a great deal of it just listening to Edie Raquel. You know, like like I will be in, you know, in poll tabs and what have you. Like there's a big chunk of money that I just like I'm like, well, I'm not going to count every penny. Right. But then that stuff adds up pretty quickly. But I'm trying to think of something that is in my life that is like a luxury, like a temporary luxury that I'm happy to pay for. I think part of it is growing up, I never appreciated – and I don't think I got this from my family, but maybe I did. I just remember being – as I grew up and I was thinking about my relationship with money, it confused me why anybody would spend a lot of money on something that isn't permanent in your life. You know, like, OK, you can buy that steak or you can buy this this stereo system by the stereo system. You will have that. You know what I mean? Like I think that at a young age, I was just like, why in the world would you ever or as a gift? Why would you give a gift that I will just eat? and it disappears give me a cassette tape of phil collins like no jacket required just came out like why am why are you not giving me that um so i'm trying to think of like a luxury kind of a disposable luxury good that i even kind of come close to being tempted by and i'm not coming up

with anything right now i'm sure you have a list um yeah i do although i'm i'm like you on that I mean, I wish I was better with money as well in that I think I tend to sometimes spend money out of, like, anxiety and wanting to just kind of, like, feel okay in a moment. But I am not the kind of person who, if I'm looking at the menu, will be, like, tempted by the $200 bottle of wine. Yeah, yeah. It's because, first of all, I don't have a very refined palate. But, like, I would maybe consider getting a $45 bottle of wine if I was feeling like it was a really special night. Sure, yeah. because of thinking well this is gonna go great with the pasta and it's a treat you know um but i am same thing with like real high end for some reason all alcohol related today but like you know like a shot of a i don't know johnny walker purple or something you know that's like a hundred dollars a shot it's like i don't care about that i don't need that like i my palate will not even register that yeah like to me there's a ceiling like the difference between a a two dollar bottle of wine like two buck chuck and a twenty dollar bottle of wine is huge the difference between a twenty dollar bottle of wine and a two hundred dollar bottle of wine much smaller to me like i probably couldn't tell you which was which um so anyway i i'm trying i'm not giving you any good

examples no and i brought it up and i didn't have any good examples either but it's just like i was

going to ask you like a nice maybe a nice glass of wine would you consider maybe treating yourself to the something that's a little bit nicer than you know than is necessary but because that was

appealing that's appealing to you well like you say like i'm not going to count pennies on a special night if i'm taking genevieve out and we want to have a special night and so yeah maybe that's a you know on a rare occasion a 50 bottle of wine but like i'm doing it more for the people i'm out with or the person i'm out with or whatever and that's fine but like for myself Like, if I were – I mean, my thing is, like, my fancy taste is also kind of rooted in kind of – well, like, for me, I think steakhouse type of dining is my thing, you know, which is very accessible. It's not, like, kind of – it's not, well, inaccessible and kind of fancy in some ways, but it can get up there. And, like, I remember going to – I don't know. I was on a business trip. We were probably in St. Paul or something. And like it was my first night in and all I wanted was I didn't want to think about the price at all. I just wanted to have a, you know, a super dry martini and a bowl of onion soup and a steak and, you know, and the fixings that go along with it, you know, like just like a typical like that is kind of my most comforting kind of meal that also comes with a that can end up coming with a pretty big, you know, check at the end of the meal. But, you know, even that is, you know, that's just not I'm just not a big fancy restaurant kind of guy.

you know right well i back in my meat eating days i'm with you like that would be sometimes i would just get in the mood for that and it would almost always be when i was traveling for work and it would be this kind of reward where i'd be it it's like a reward that was a big tiktok mean this summer which was christoph how do you say his last name vaults oh yeah uh from um django unchained and he's like drinking a beer he's trying to explain i think to jango something about a bounty and he says he's sipping his beer and he says it's like a reward i people that are people of tiktok who are like me will know that's why i footnoted that because i can't say i can't say that that without thinking of christoph vaults but anyway i it's kind of like a reward for me you know back in the day where i was like i would i just would really look forward to that moment of having this well-made steak although if i were at this um miami place which honestly like my guess is that i would want to fight 80 to 90 percent of the people in the restaurant both well not necessarily the employees because they're just trying to make a living but a hundred percent the customers i would want to fight because the kind of person that's like we've got a we've got a a bunch of options here let's go to the place where that robert downey jr meets weekend at bernie's guy is theatrically salting stakes and covering them with gold if somebody saw that and said that's where we want to go and be seen that's not going to be the person i'm vibing with but i also if i went to that place i'd be the one person being like can i have my gold stake

well done and i wonder what the response then would be right this is we have come really full circle to the point where um stories that you present on tbtl now i'm just really hoping I'm going to go. that they cover them also on the levitard show being a you know my cuban miami podcast radio and i love how much dan i mean this is a weird place to take our podcast to just talk about dan levitard but i love how much in an episode i was listening to yesterday he was talking about how much he just really loves miami culture and it's so far outside of what you and i find pleasurable you know just like kind of and um because they were talking about how he owns i'm sure it's a beautiful place but he owns i believe his home is maybe in a high rise somewhere but it's like right in the heart of like miami culture right and like during the pandemic he's been talking about how it's getting pretty wild out there and can be pretty scary and he's seeing people like fight people in the street with forks and like you know not making super light of it but just being like it's just been weird but also they're in the middle of like starting to see all these people from around the country coming down there for spring break because of the relax rules and And, you know, he's got he doesn't like that aspect of any of this. But somebody said, yeah, I'll bet you you regret, you know, living where you live now. And he's like, are you kidding me? No, he's like, maybe like right now. I mean, it's a pandemic. Things are bad. And but like, no, like, I love it. He's like, I don't have to go out into it. But I just love being right up against the hot, steamy Miami, ridiculous culture. And I love it. I love that he loves that. It makes me when you hear other people talk about stuff like that. It just rubs off on you and makes you appreciate it. And it makes me like read this story like through those eyes. Right. Not just like kind of just looking down at or across at a culture that I don't understand. But knowing that some people who like in many ways think like me really also just really appreciate that.

Well, I will tell you this. If I were if I had Dan Lebitard money and I'm not saying this like to be critical of him or your take at all, but I could totally see enjoying living in South Beach. if I if you had enough money where you could live in a really nice place and you had a view of the ocean and also if you were in a relationship so you weren't trying to go out to the scene all the time like if I think when I lived there it was a weird time because uh you know I was working for NPR I had Addy with me for uh you know a good portion of the uh of the time that I was down there because it was summertime it was a trillion degrees I didn't know anyone I was married to somebody who was living in LA so I wasn't going out to the clubs and my impression of Miami of South Beach and South Beach and Miami are really different things right because Miami has the city has a lot of different parts of it and those are different can be different ethnic makeups they can be different socioeconomics they can be like there are really cool parts of Miami South Beach is kind of where all of the people that have a lot of money and are from other places tend to kind of congregate and then show off and eat gold steaks out of their ferraris that are driving down colony and that part of the scene wasn't really for me but i could also see a world in which you know if i was able to kind of like live in that weather which you know when it's not the dead of summer is amazing like i'll tell you where i want to be in in november is miami because it's warm uh if you could live in it but then only interact with as much of it as you found interesting I could see that being very appealing And also, you know, he's Cuban-American And there's a really huge Cuban-American community there Obvs So I could see that being appealing And just, you know Like, they were doing that show in the before times There was a point at which they were doing that show In the Cleveland Hotel, right?

Yeah, that's when I was And they're still doing it They actually bought their space in the Cleveland Hotel now

Like, I mean, part of my initial obsession with that show Was just this notion That this was a thing that could exist It was almost like the first time I saw swingers The movie Not people trading their sexual partner Will you tell me about the first time you saw that Though later I was at a Nudist colony in Osceola Florida and I'll tell you what God they love volleyball They love volleyball those nudists No It was almost like I remember just like watching and listening To that show and being like you're just doing your radio show that's so fun from a rad hotel in south beach with a swimming pool where when people get in trouble they have to go sit in the swimming pool or go into the ocean that's your job like and i have a very fun job talking to you and my other jobs i find to be really fun like i am lucky to have these jobs but i was like what do i gotta do to have that job Right. Right. So they actually got there. They're back to do it. Is that where the shipping container is?

Yeah. As far as I mean, they during the pandemic and again, now we're just talking about the different podcast. But yeah, during the pandemic, they had to like kind of retreat back to their homes like a lot of us did. And some of them are still doing the show from home. But the home base is still in the Cleveland. They bought their space there. And and.

That's where, you know, Dan and Stugatz are still are going back there every day now. And I believe some of the producers are as well. But, yeah, that's still where they're doing it, even though it's not ESPN headquarters anymore. I think that basically ESPN, like ESPN basically, you know, built that or built that studio space for them because they were Miami ESPN. And now they're not on the network anymore.

So they had to acquire their old thing. And by the way, you're right. Sorry. I was saying the Cleveland hotels, the Clevelander, which is what I'm going to start calling you, my favorite Clevelander. There you go. Anyway, now I'm just a scribe.

Can you tell how highly uncomfortable I am?

You are making all of the listeners very hungry for Dan Lebitard today.

I told you. No food and no Lebitard today.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man. It's not from a female.

All right. Emails? V-mails? What do you got, my friend? I really did myself dirty today, Luke. You did me dirty. You did me dirty. You did me dirty.

At some point during the show, I had to stop. I'm sure listeners heard Theo, my cat, was just making way more racket than usual. The good news is I honestly think that it's springtime, and now he's kind of got the spring zoomies. He doesn't want to just sleep in my office all day, which is really nice. I mean, for an old cat, I'm glad he's showing so much life, but he's so loud and so he was making a lot of noise and then at one point i had to stop the recording and tell you i'm walking away for a second i put him in a room upstairs and locked him in i don't like to do that he's unhappy i can barely hear him but he's up there screaming his head off um but the thing is when i paused my recording at some point during the dazzling donors i did not remember to unpause it so we're gonna need your backup recording today i'm gonna I'm going to need to stitch it together with mine, which is like all of this is just extra work for me because of Theo. So I don't know.

Anyway, you got to train him to do tape syncs, because if he's going to really create the problem, he also needs to be the solution.

I agree. So your recording is looking good over there, right? I'm OK, buddy. All right. OK, so here is something from listener Ryan. I had mentioned that I have been having trouble finding baseball cards. I'm not looking for specific baseball cards. I just like when the weather starts to change and I'm in the grocery or in the drugstore and I see some a new pack of, you know, 2021 baseball cards, I think I'll just pick one up. Why not? You know, like you say, Luke, it's like a little sunshine in your pocket. I'm not a big baseball card collector by any means. It's just something I've been doing the past couple of seasons. And now they're nowhere to be found. And it turns out because there's a lot of complicated collecting going on where people are really investing in this stuff. And we've been getting some interesting emails from people about, like, why it's hard to find baseball cards right now. And it's kind of tied up into just this weird collecting and investing trend that's going on with the non-fungible tokens and what have you and some unboxing videos people were describing to us. But anyway, got a nice email from listener Ryan who said, hey, I got a whole bunch of baseball cards from the 90s that I haven't looked at in forever. Are you trying to find any specific cards? I can take a look. And I wrote back, oh, thanks. No, no, I just, you know, I just buy baseball card packs just as a little as a lark. I'm not looking to collect here, but that's a really sweet offer. Have fun going through those things. Right now, Ryan just wrote back this morning and said, I have been going through them and I need to show someone what I found. And Ryan has sent a two minute video here. I have not watched this yet. I watched like the first few seconds of it, but I wanted to share this with you, Luke, at the same time. So if this gets very visual, I will pause it and explain. But let's let Ryan take it away.

I'll try to keep this short, but I was just looking through my cards, and it was getting hyper nostalgic. And I wanted to brag about some of them, and I figured I don't know who else to share this with other than TBTL. But check these out. Hold on a sec.

Yeah. Can you pause it? Yeah. Does he have the Jurassic Park soundtrack going on? I can't tell what it is. Clever girl.

Do you really think it's Jurassic Park?

Yes, that's 100% the Jurassic Park soundtrack.

I would never know that, but somebody must be watching it. Maybe somebody's watching it in another room, or maybe he just loves the... It's just epic. I love it. Yeah, he loves the OST. Let's take a look.

I'll share this with other than TBTL. But check these out. I got these baseball ones right here, including Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa. That's like the extent of my baseball knowledge. But, you know. Wow. I got some Mars Attack.

Three well-known rule observers when it comes to performance enhancement. I almost said the Bash Brothers, but that was Jose.

canseco and mark mcguire they were the bash brothers at oakland but that's funny because i mean that there was that year where mcguire and uh sosa and bonds i mean there was a couple year period where they were just mashing and they were all roiding too yeah right um i see

one of those cards is the classic i think i was describing it on the show the other day i think it's the 1990 or maybe 91 Donruss card which is the red border with it's kind of got the kind of black ink splash marks on it if you can kind of picture that is that the Mark McGuire

I can't tell I've got some Mars attacks Star Wars Muggsy Bogues right there Nightmare Before

Christmas Muggsy Bogues who's that basketball yeah he was Muggsy Bogues was a Charlotte Hornet For many years I believe he came in at about He probably lied and said He was 5'4 He was probably 5'3 And he had like You know Spud Webb was a really Famous kind of diminutive Basketball player who won the dunk contest one year As an Atlanta Hawk but Muggsy Bogues Was for my money actually a much more interesting Player because he was really pretty Effective and he would score points And it would be wild to see this like 5'3 Guy just in the timbers In the tall trees just like

putting shots up sorry about that extra noise there i started looking at what other uh videos ryan has posted before i got real snoopy there for a second let's go let's go back to this uh

a really long limousine i think these are like world records these really weird ones are like

um what are these okay he's holding up a card that seems to have some sort of a grim reaper on the front of it. Kind of a classically illustrated Grim Reaper, a skeleton in a black robe, and then he turns it over and there's some sort of gothic writing on the back of it. Is the Grim Reaper eating a Subway sandwich?

They're like folklore or something, but that one's really pretty goth and badass. I've got these peanuts, Home Alone 2, Jurassic Park, which is why I have the Jurassic Park music going. There you go, Luke, Robin Hood, Pense of Thieves, The Rocketeer, Aladdin, Batman, Batman Forever. Three Musketeers, Flintstones, I've got a lot of Flintstones, Lion King, a lot of Looney Tunes, Baseball, Disney, some sort of comic book. These are, I never saw this in my life, Indiana Jones Chronicles, not sure why I have that. Speed Racer, Snow White, TNMNT, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Wait, wait, can you pause there?

Yeah, yeah.

Are all of these things he's talking about cards? These are all cards, these are all collector's cards. So they just made cards about all of these different topics. Yes, you can still – And universes.

Like I have a bunch of Batman cards because I collected Batman cards. I had Series 1 and Series 2. And there's a little store – I just was there actually the other day, and they don't have as many as they used to. But there is a store in Fremont here in Seattle that's called the, I think, Vintage Mall or the Antique Mall. And they had like elf cards. And almost every TV show going through like the 80s and 90s had a card as well as – Oh, also, Ryan is playing this music off of maybe like a Series 2 iPod, by the way, like classic looking iPod. I see it sitting there on his counter. I'll bet you that was in the same box as these cards, although I could be wrong.

I love the attention to detail, though, in terms of like I love the multimedia nature of Ryan's call. Yeah. Well, it's a video, but he's got a soundtrack going in the background, which is relevant to the cards that he has. I think this is a sign everybody needs to up their game when sending us stuff because Ryan's really crushing it Frankly, I feel like I need to up my game Oh yeah, I was talking about us You and me

X-Men, basketball including some Michael Jordan Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman Shaquille O'Neal World Tour Disney U.S. Olympics Hall of Fame female basketball, some football one I don't know how I got one Dick Tracy card there's two Wayne Gretzky and oddly enough well I have some bible where's Waldo some bible heroes and then some military planes to start us young on idolizing death

I wonder if like the bible cards is it just like if you get a rookie Jesus I mean is that what is it worth do you think Yeah. I don't know. Is it autographed? Like, I wonder if, like, what's the hierarchy of Bible? What's the valuables of Bible heroes? If you were to get, like, a Zacchaeus, if you get just, like, a limited edition, they dropped, like, three Zacchaeuses. I'm trying desperately to figure out which one is on top here.

Is that Samson? I don't know. I don't know if the video seems like that would be a pretty good. I feel like Samson would be a pretty good get. Yeah, but you know what? Later on.

They figured out performance-enhancing hair. Oh, no. Just like Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa and Barry Bond.

P.E.H.'s again. They had to strip.

He will never be in the hall.

Well, he'll make it with a hair strix. No.

Oh, wow. I love it.

No, you don't.

No, I love it when you try. I hate you. I'm not kidding. I like it when you don't. No, that sounded like I was dragging you. I like it when you go for it, because when you self-edit, I think the show is less fun. And I like when you let it fly, man.

Well, I can edit afterwards. Anyway, Ryan, I found that enjoyable. By the way, it reminded me. Great call, Ryan. I did get a pack of, and I think we opened them on TBTL years ago when I was in my Wallingford apartment, a pack of Desert Storm cards. I either found those and I had a Norman Schwarzkopf in there. There was not one in my pack, but, like, that is the Jesus rookie card of the first Gulf War cards. So I think I have those floating around somewhere as well.

When you were a kid, I can't – we need to wrap up. I can't believe I'm trying to open this can of propaganda at this point in the show. But, like, I just remember being a kid when Desert – like, the first, like, Desert Storm happened with, like, Norman Schwarzkopf. and just being all in for it like having no sense of like is this you know is this something we should be doing is this justified I was just like oh my I was totally down with it I thought Norman Schwarzkopf was the coolest guy ever I thought it was cool that we won this war like in a day I was just into it did you have any misgivings as a kid like or what was your take

on that whole era no I certainly didn't have any misgivings because I wasn't I you know I just didn't follow my i didn't follow the news and i didn't follow world events i mean i knew it was happening don't get me wrong i'm not saying that i didn't know this was happening but to me like i definitely was of the perfect age just to fall for the whole like the first cnn war right like right i'm putting the tracers on the names of the missiles and being a kid and you know i'm literally eating gummy candies that are in the shape of war planes and stealth bombers right

And you probably just stopped playing with GI Joes or maybe still are like I was probably only a couple of years removed from GI Joe, which I also watched every day and was totally like, you know, you just see how people get inculcated, right? Because it was just like everything was telling me this is this is awesome how this is going, you know, right?

And then, you know, I mean, they did a great job of branding that war. And again, I was what was I 12, maybe 13. So, you know, like I wasn't looking at this critically at all, but like they branded that war. We knew the names of the missiles, right? It was like Star Wars, like red lightsaber versus green. You knew which missiles you were rooting for. And then the tracers on them to make it really photogenic. I mean, they sold the shit out of that war. And I also remember being this age of just being like, wow, there hasn't been a war in forever since those Rolling Stones records were coming out, you know, because I just associated like the Vietnam with the pop culture aspects of it. And, you know, I didn't realize then how close, relatively speaking, 1991 was to when did they pull out of Vietnam? Seventy seven. No, boy, good question. No, because I don't think I was born yet. I want to say seventy four. Yeah. Yeah. Way earlier than that. I swing and a miss. Well, you like it when I try. But anyway, yeah, no, I years.

Three years. Yeah. You weren't even born. You didn't say like eighty seven. You know, and by the way, seventy four could be wrong, too. I don't know. I'm guessing.

I am looking up here. It was 75. So there you go.

Right in the middle.

I mean, you went over by a year, so I get both showcases. Oh, shit. You get both missiles.

I get all of the PTSD and the – okay, we can stop making Vietnam-era jokes now. What were you going to say?

Let me just read one quick email, and we can get out of here. I just find this is a very charming email, and it's a good place to end today so we don't have the taste of war in our mouth. and says this is an email with the subject line stuck in an elevator would recommend several years ago my parents and I got stuck in an elevator in a parking garage quick aside I promise not to make this too long but quick aside see that seems like the type of elevator you do not want to be stuck in like a parking garage elevator seems kind of cold and you know like less cozy windowless right there's a building I go to Genevieve got me a nice kind of vintage watch for my birthday and um i've had to take it to get it looked at a couple of times and this is a a person who has a um it's called jerry's watch repair i can't remember the name of the building but it's in an old downtown does he live in my old marina no different jerry but um he has an office in this office building on like the fifth floor of like kind of an old school seattle downtown office building and when you go in the elevator it's like totally like kind of lush and it's got those kinds of uh buttons from the like 70s or 80s where you you push the floor but you don't even feel a mechanism it just the ring just lights up around your finger as you kind of you know that kind of touch that's the kind of elevator that i want to get stuck in um if i got stuck in one not a parking

garage elevator but anyway has probably like um you know there's like a taco bell wrapper in the corner somebody's like tried to scratch some graffiti into the stainless steel paneling yes

Yes, you know what's in there, too, like one of those plastic floss pick things and a discarded hand wipe. Anyway, Anne says, we didn't have a cell signal in this elevator that got stuck, but we used the call button and the fire department was dispatched. They arrived after a while and wrenched open the doors only to discover we were stuck between floors. I assumed they would crank the elevator car up to the next floor or something, but they just said, we'll pull you out. Grab our hands. Whoa. Reader, I felt like a damsel in a fantasy novel. I have no idea. I had no idea this would be so thrilling, but they plucked me out of that elevator car like I was a mere feather. I blushed when we were face to face. They could not have cared less, but it's a cherished memory. If you ever have the opportunity to be lifted effortlessly into the air by strong men in uniform, I would recommend it. Power out, says Anne.

Nice. Well, I'm glad that that worked out Yeah I was Because I think Last time this came up I was saying I mean, the firefighters Know what they're doing But I was like Everybody's got to be careful If you get stuck in an elevator And it's between floors It seems like That's when people get really hurt Is if they're You know, they try to crawl out And the elevator starts moving Or something But I'm glad that For a listener, Ann This all worked out Yeah She got to interact With some hunky firefighters Yeah There is a Fire station, Andrew How would you feel about me After I become a lawyer becoming a firefighter and doing this show from the portland fire station that is on the willamette river because it is the freaking coolest place i've ever seen maybe in my life let me just lay it out for you it's it's this they have not only do they have a fire truck well first of all the building is is recently built but it's built in kind of a mid it's like a modern not mid-century style but it's glass and brushed aluminum and it's it's it's just like a very stylish building and it's in the style of buildings that i really like if that makes sense it's on the river it has a gym in it no it has also these bitchin fire boats that are in like a kind of a um a garage that's on the river like a boathouse i guess what you'd call it so these like incredible like super expensive boats that they can jump in and go put out fires if a boat were to catch on fire and then they've also got like a regular fire truck so they can drive off and take care of fires it is the Clevelander hotel of being a firefighter and every time I jog past it because it's on my route I just am like I think that would be the coolest flipping place to work

I can see you wanting

to be the boat firefighter yes well then we hear from we have a firefighter in the audience who's called in before and has said that a lot of firefighting now is really emt work because buildings are just built so differently there's fire suppression systems the building materials are usually rated you know fireproof and um and so you just like things don't catch on fire as much they used to we still have a lot of firefighters and their job is kind of transitioned into doing a lot of like emt and like sometimes mental health stuff which is interesting that they

drive those big old trucks yeah well yeah i mean yeah i'm sort of yeah and it kind of gets back to like we do sort of seem to have kind of a patchwork of like just like we have emergency people right we're sending cops i mean that's the whole thing right we're sending cops out to things that aren't crimes we're sending uh firefighters out to things that aren't fires like it does seem like maybe a

reimagining is due yeah I would I think that that wouldn't be the worst thing maybe on tomorrow's show I could now this will this won't work for a podcast but we're talking about building materials I read this fascinating article the other day about why sort of all apartment buildings kind of look the same now as far as like all the apartment buildings that have been built like in the last 10 years oh yeah like I'm staring I'm staring at one that's being built I'm also staring at one that was completed I know if I took a picture of one of these buildings Andrew you'd be like oh yeah totally that's all of seattle now you know that that kind that's it's sort of a mid-rise so it'll have like you know uh restaurants and stores on the ground level juice bars what have you and then it goes up about five stories yes and it's usually that too tone i think often yep always that is because of the building codes around how much building you're allowed to build out of wood these days yeah did you know that no i it's i'll just do this now because i'm going to give you all 30 seconds of my interesting content on this that i am just paraphrasing from the article basically like you can't build really big buildings out of wood uh for a variety of reasons um but wood is the cheapest building material which i was kind of surprised by actually in in this day and age so because of how like the zoning works in the permitting you can do one of those buildings that we're talking about the ground floor is not considered one of the floors so you do the ground floor maybe out of some other material and then you are allowed to put five stories on top of it and still fall within the like like the you know zoning parameters so that is why everybody is building those buildings all the time because they are relatively cheap to build, but they are they fall within the code of things you're allowed to build out of wood. But you get this whole freebie on the ground floor of all of this

like retail space. No kidding. I mean, I knew that I knew that it was an economic thing. I mean, the buildings that are being built, and I don't know, it sounds like after reading this article, Luke, you believe that this is happening all over the place. But I always think of it definitely as a Seattle thing, right? You have all these new Seattle buildings. And it sounds like definitely in Portland, too, that I assume that they're all these cookie cutter kind of unattractive buildings. Because of economics, they're going to try to get the most bang for their buck. And then also because, of course, the mixed-use thing too, right? They're tearing down various businesses, and they want to build mixed-use buildings so that they can have the businesses and the people living. But I didn't realize that wood came into it. I'm Jerry Wood Store. I don't have a wood store.

Yeah, I'm looking at this one they're building that I keep narrating. Actually, you know what? I'm glad I read the article because, let's see, one, two, three, four, five. I know they're now on the top floor. My concern was that they were going to endlessly build this thing, but it's totally made out of wood. I'm looking at it. And it's five floors above the kind of ground level retail thing. So I know that that means that's where they're going to have to stop.

There you go. Yep.

We just had a bunch that were five over five or something. There's some name for this kind of building.

There's a bunch that just popped up in our neighborhood. They've been working on it, I think, almost since we've lived here. It went from being kind of a vacant lot to a hole in the ground, too. And now they're at that stage where it's all built, but I can tell nobody's moved in quite yet, right, because the windows still have the window stickers on them in each unit, you know, but it definitely seems very cookie-cuttery. One plus five, sorry. That's what they're called, a one plus five? Yeah, or a five over one or a one plus five is the name for those buildings. That makes sense. But, yeah, I am worried not to be like one of those neighbors because density is good and, you know, discouraging us to drive everywhere is good. But I do wonder what it's going to be like. Parking has not been an issue since we've been in this apartment for three years. But I have a feeling that as soon as people start moving in there, it might be one of those things where you don't even want to move your car, you know, because you may never get a space back.

i have found and part of this just because of my weird life of being a podcaster and working in this room but like i never use my car right welcome to my world we have a parking garage in this building and the most time-consuming part of me driving somewhere is wandering the parking levels trying to find where the car was yeah i never know i have to come up with a system because it'll be like a week and i haven't driven and i just have to wander the garage trying to like

click my clicker and figure out where the car is yeah it is not it is not unusual for us to go a week or you know maybe like one run to the grocery store during the week but like you know we like i say like if i run out for lunch it's all in my neighborhood i do like where we live it's a isn't

it freeing in a way just like yeah i mean i i i actually like car culture i like being in my car um i like driving places but yeah it's almost like i'm like do i need a car like i mean i what are the economics of if i just well now i have a lease which by the way i'm very happy with i was able to report to the hold on let me call you and survey people to get your thought call comes in from the 626 this is trouble anyway um okay that was a real just digression at the end of the show but um for the three people that were still listening um i hope you enjoyed it okay uh

here's what we're gonna go out with oh okay you got a song idea well i do unless you had something else i just wanted something about gold because i was just like while we were talking there i was a little distracted because i was like going through all the songs that i know about gold i landed on a band called fool's gold um the song surprise hotel you probably know them they were

kind of um yeah i used to i used to catch and they were kind of like not trippy but like a little electro right no they're more like vampire weekend oh you know what i'm

Yeah, maybe I'm confusing it with – wasn't there a – oh, my gosh. Wasn't Fool's Gold – there was a song, I think, called Fool's Gold. Did the Stone Roses do a song called Fool's Gold?

I think I just saw that in my searching, but I don't know that song. That was also on the, like – They have an album, I think.

And one of the songs from that was, like, the guy, Richie, used it in, you know, one of those movies where you don't know what anyone's saying because it's so British. you know

actually it is a song not an album sorry by the Stone Roses but I don't know it do you want to do that instead? actually I think you'll like Fool's Gold

let me listen to the new one but I do like that I would recommend that Fool's Gold song by Stone Roses as well Snatch is the movie I think I'm thinking of yeah I never saw any of those you wouldn't have known what they were saying it's so accented alright thanks for listening everyone we're going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you So please join us for that. Until then, enjoy your Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Stay safe. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

We'll be right back.

Power out.