Muse

Are you rolling? Is that how you say action? Do you say action? You know what, we're having a conversation, and ignore the cameras. I know it's hard to because there's one right over my shoulder and I'm looking at one here. And then the lights seem very unnatural and they get a little warm, but just try to shut all of that out. And it's just us having a conversation like we did a half an hour ago when we met.

Can you just, do you mind saying action, just before you start? Just to, I've always wanted to be, like on the George Lopez show, I saw the behind the scenes of George Lopez, and it was on Entertainment Tonight. And before he started talking, somebody was like, action. So if you, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not George Lopez or anything like that, But if you just do it, I think it might kick it in a little bit better. Okay.

Action is usually reserved for film shoots when they do film because it actually syncs up the sound and the film, and we're shooting video today. So we don't really need to do that. But if you insist, we could do that. Yeah, it's just one word, if you don't mind.

Oh, snap! This comedian was crazy in the 80s with his raw and delirious routines. Oh, he's hilarious, dog.

Who is Rick Moranis?

I'd like to say that I'm passionate about walking, and I'm passionate about TBTL, and I think what a great combo. I love to walk and listen to TBTL at the same time.

I think the only promotion I'm interested in is promoting you guys to generals in my friendship army. Yes, sir. You know, this is beginning to seriously undermine my self-esteem.

All right, hello. Good morning, and welcome to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

It does not bother me. In fact, I kind of like it because I know there's somebody around.

My name is Luke Furbank. I am your host. You seem to me to be a pretty righteous hombre. Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center high in the sky above, Portland, Oregon, looking at another beautiful day. They had a beautiful Easter's weekend here in Portland. And boy, if it can just stay this way for the next 365 days, that would be great. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. I don't really think that's how weather patterns work. there's this sort of inherent tension between loving nice weather and also knowing sorry to start the monday show here but knowing that sometimes when it seems like the weather is like for instance in japan i believe it is the earliest cherry blossom bloom they've had in some ridiculous amount of time like hundreds if not thousands of years and it's being attributed likely to climate change i also i learned by the way that i think that's called um petular elongation the perfect moment of a uh of a cherry blossom between uh not open fully and now overly you know blossomed and it's falling off the tree anyway it's cool that the cherries are blossoming everywhere it's cool that's a beautiful day but you wonder if it's such a good thing okay that's where we're starting the show today everyone it can only go up from here i promise on episode three thousand three hundred and ninety four in a collector's series let the fun begin um now listening to that opening spiel from me you might think who would ever listen to this show and then build their entire entertainment operation around it but i can tell you who who will apparently saturday night live they did two sketches this weekend that were i mean

ripped right from the headlines of the tbtl world are you disrespecting my duplication

investigation i will take a listen to those also speaking of high profile media attention we may have been randomly referenced that's not true not randomly referenced but subtly referenced in a Reddit maybe it's a subreddit that was then a screen cap of which was posted on BuzzFeed so yeah

things are going to start happening to me now

our TBTL ship has finally come in so we'll get into that plus we had a lot of emails and emails people telling me what to do with my blue jeans that no matter how many times I wash them still want to deposit a blue dye on everything. Then I got another pair of blue jeans that don't do that, but they have a weird, funky smell to them.

them that it's associated with the dying process i think anyway all of that with the help of this guy the longest running cobro of the show uh he may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships and also for being i think at this point a if he's not the theo epstein of fantasy baseball then he's the tommy lasorda of it i mean my goodness is a simple game you throw the ball you hit the ball you catch the ball you pick the imaginary guys to be on your lineup which is what he's been doing a great job of i believe we're in first place right now in our league he is andrew walsh and he's joining me right now from the roosevelt neighborhood of seattle washington

good morning my friend good morning man i tried i sent a note to the commissioner this weekend and said okay we're in first place luke and i would like to cash in now we're done turns out that's not how it works we have like 159 more games that we still have to play we're not allowed to just like take our money and go home i did not realize that that was how this all works right because we

win if we win the league we win 600 simoleons is that what it is nice yeah i'm not in a lot of money one hundo and we could win six hundo after i mean and if you think about that if you if you break that down per hours that you're going to spend managing this team see what i'm doing here so list ever so slightly moving it more onto your plate then that's up if we win the 600 that will

come out to at least 40 cents an hour for your time well the thing is actually uh well not that i think this is where you want to take it but i actually um i want to make it very clear i feel like you are you want to be involved more but every time you text me i'm like i'm rattling off 500 texts at you explaining, well, this is why I made this move and this is why I made this move and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I feel like I'm actually blocking you out of the managerial role, which is something I wanted to talk to you about offline here. So, like, don't think that just because I'm in – like, last night, for a weird reason, I happened to have the time, inclination, and, like, realization that I should sit down and manage the team.

You had the opportunity and motive.

Right. Right. Yet the like two days before I hadn't really done anything or which I should have done. So there are some days where I'm sure I'll completely forget we have a team and I don't want you thinking, oh, I shouldn't touch it because Andrew's got some some master plan. It just happened to be this morning when you were texting me some questions about the lineup. I happen to be right on top of it because last night I happen to have some moments to dig into it. Although I did start a new notebook, Luke, just for my fantasy baseball moves, just so you know. So we moved Donaldson to the I.L. We picked up Adam Frazier, but benched.

Are you having are you having more fun with this than you thought you were going to have? Are you having less fun or about what you were expecting?

About what I was expecting, maybe leaning towards more. I mean, I'll tell you what, I didn't expect to be in first place. And we did. And listen, I know it's not going to last. I don't have my hopes up on this. I think it's a bit of a fluke. And also, there are some things coming down the pipe that we won't get into on the podcast that I think are going to change our fortunes a bit if we don't adjust our strategy. God, I just hurt myself. But anyway, so I don't I don't have any delusions about us ending in first place. I think it's a bit of a fluke right now, but we did maintain a first place position all weekend. It wasn't like just this morning we happened to be in first place. And I'll say that that's a good feeling like that. that leans more towards having more fun than I thought I was going to have, you know,

even though we were talking and for people who are just tuning in for the first time, maybe you saw us referenced in a subreddit page that was then screen captain put on Buzzfeed. So maybe that's what brought you here. But if you're just joining us, Andrew and I are on this pretend baseball team where we pick, we, we have our real players and then we, we line them up each day based on who we think is going to do well. And then they go against other people's real players on their pretend teams. And then, you know, that's how fantasy baseball works anyway. So so you even though we went into it saying, well, we don't really care if we win. We don't want to be competitive. You're saying the fact that we actually are clearly dominating the league and may lead wire to wire. That is making it more fun for you.

I do think that seeing that it's not all like, you know, I'm fumbling about like I'm not just learning how to play the fantasy baseball game. I'm learning a lot about baseball while I do this like I'm not going to pretend I'd heard of a lot of these people who are on our roster Luke like my my any knowledge I had about baseball at all was very myopically focused on the Mariners right and even then and some of these stat lines I had seen bandied about in the newspapers but I kind of glossed over them and I didn't know what they meant so as I'm digging deeper and deeper into this I'm learning. i like learning sort of so that at least in this case um so uh so yeah this has been more fun but also knowing that it's it's paying off in some way you know it's not like i'm floundering around trying to figure out what whip is and you know and who max kepler is i'm just looking at it right now i did not pull that from my head i couldn't if i closed my eyes i couldn't tell you could you close your eyes and list many people on our team i don't know if that would make good radio but you can just tell me yes or no if you think you could name do you think me closing my eyes and

not naming many people from our team from memory even better radio just that'd be the more likely i know we have that guy otani who's right had the uh the the inning to end all innings last night where he both threw an over 100 mile an hour pitch and hit a 415 foot home run i didn't even In the same inning, the same dude did both of those things.

I didn't even get to see. I walked away for a second because we had him as a pitcher, not a hitter yesterday, which is a bummer. You can't play him as both. So I'd walked away.

I had started him as a belly itcher, and that is why I'm not allowed to manage the team.

Anyway, but, yeah, so I missed the home run, and then I was like, oh, no, maybe we should have left him in as offense. But, yeah, that is incredible. Apparently, he swung into the very first pitch and just, like, knocked it out. So, anyway, we shouldn't talk too much baseball here.

Exactly, like me playing wiffle ball with my new wiffle ball set.

Oh, have you been doing that? Let's get into some more relatable content. Have you removed the cardboard from the bat that connects it to the ball?

Are they at least two objects? Even worse. I haven't removed the entire setup from my car. Oh, damn it. Where it's in the back seat. But I thought maybe I need to leave it in there because, like, I live in an apartment building, and, you know, there's no chance that a wiffle ball game is going to break out in my yard, Although that is also the name of the apartment building, which I...

Are we saying that? Are we just saying that now?

I don't know. People have figured it out, Andrew.

I couldn't remember where we were. Definitely on people's radar.

Definitely a thing people have been able to figure out.

I'll never forget that when Genevieve and I were looking for a new apartment, when we were still in Wallingford and we were looking for a new apartment, I described the apartment that was the apple of our eye, and it is the one that I'm living in now. And before we even – I think we had visited it once, but we hadn't certainly signed any papers yet. Already listeners were telling me that they had found out where I was moving to just based on the clues I had set out. So you and I are not really great. I don't even know if we really try that hard to protect her.

You have the people who spend their time on the internet solving crimes, right? Like figuring out – like there was that documentary Don't F with Cats, which is quite fascinating. and pretty it you know there's real dark elements to it and then you had that um the the one that was really burning up the charts on netflix that was about the cecil hotel in downtown la and a traveler who had been at the cecil and then had gone missing and what had happened to her and in both cases you just had this legion of people um just sitting you know on their computers all day and all night just cross-referencing pieces of information and security cameras and you know every bit of public data that you can get there are those people and then there are people who dedicate that time to figuring out where you and i live and right and then there's a smaller

population that try to figure out how to play fantasy baseball and that one is right um i will

say that i was very excited about that the cecil hotel uh dock because i do tend to go in for those true crime pictures over my kind of i have the like i have my my intellectual misgivings where i'm like and i've talked about this on the show a lot like uh should i get my entertainment from real events that have been a real tragedy in people's lives it's like no i shouldn't but i also find it very entertaining and i'm not quite sure i don't feel totally great about it and yet I tend to engage with that kind of content and I watched the first episode of the the one the Cecil Hotel one and I was like boy this is real what happened I mean this I was absolutely

perplexed do you remember when the actual story broke because I remember I think I think you would actually know the year because you just watched the documentary I think this story broke when I I was hosting the night show at Cairo Radio because I remember the story and I feel like I either talked about it on the radio or, you know, produced somebody to talk about it on the radio like you and Dave when I was producing your show. I'm not sure. But I got a text from my dad when this documentary was blowing up. He's like, have you heard of this Cecil Hotel? And I was like, yeah, I think that was actually – I think it was to pass it all the time. I can sort of picture because I think it's like it's one of those things. Tell me if I'm wrong where like the Cecil is painted on the outside of it on the.

wall and that kind of i believe so and so it rung a bell and then i looked at it in a map and i was like oh yeah this was right between two kind of regular haunts of mine i can't remember the names of the bars but it was kind of around that area because i know it was just outside of skid row but um or maybe the hotel's in skid row but these bars i was going to were not in skid row for the record um but anyway uh and then as my dad's texting me about it he's like oh there's a documentary about the crime i'm like oh i read the i just said something about right and he's

like yeah i'm like i remember well andrew here's the thing no that that's exactly what happened to me what you just did it got so well you didn't you were vague enough oh in a much less vague way so i go to have a nice hang with my sister uh sarah and her husband josh and we're sitting around addy's there and we're talking about this documentary and i can't remember who who said it but i'd only watched the first episode and somebody goes oh yeah that's the one where this happened And then they just literally just give the very end of it.

Oh, no, really? Well, see, that surprises me because, I mean, first of all, I told you, I mean, I guess I remember a little bit more. But here's why I'm confused by that because, first of all, I don't retain information that well. And even I remember that from a news story from a long time ago because it was very evocative. I thought that this documentary started with that premise because we all knew that already. That's the big reveal, what was in the newspapers?

Yes. And I, oddly enough, sort of pretty voracious news consumer that I am, had missed the news story, had no idea. If we talked about it on any of our shows, I had completely forgotten about it. So I had absolutely no idea how it ended, what had happened to the person in question. And within 30 seconds, somebody who I was sitting around with had literally just said, oh, that was where this thing happened. And then and then it was like, well, I guess I don't have to watch that now. So the good news is I've been able to control myself from watching one true crime documentary that I have mixed feelings about because it was absolutely 100 percent spoiled for me.

OK, wait, hold on. Two questions here. So first of all, I'm writing down a thing. All I said was two words, really just one important word, which I could bleep and make it more interesting because I don't I don't like spoiling things from people. I'm pretty I'm pretty sensitive to that myself. So would you like me? I think I should go back and maybe bleep those two words that I said that would be maybe spoilery. But did you say you so you didn't watch the documentary because you felt like it was spoiled or you know, it's a multiple. There's multiple episodes. Oh, OK. But you didn't watch that one. I'm just asking, I guess I'm flumb flumbering about here, as they classically say. Sure. Are you sure that that is the big reveal? And that's the starting off point. I guess I'm just so confused because I thought that the whole point of the documentary was it takes it so much further. It takes this news story and it it digs into what the newspaper is left behind. I guess that's what it might do that eventually.

What I can tell you is episode one of this. The Hotel Cecil episode one. The way it's set up is this woman comes from. I believe it's like British Columbia and she's visiting Los Angeles and she checks into the hotel and we don't know what happened to her. That's how episode one is set up. did she she's missing and it ends i believe with she is missing we don't know we've searched the entire hotel we have not found her and we don't know if she if if she has been you know kidnapped or if she has been some what we just don't know what has befallen her and that's where like episode one ends yeah i see so at the end i was like huh well boy this is a real this is a real true mystery for me to solve over the course of the next i don't know how many episodes there are by watching it now maybe i don't know what happens in subsequent episodes maybe at some point from a just plot device or narrative standpoint they kind of tell you more information and then they go back trying to solve that that may happen later on i don't know because i watched the first episode and then having a casual conversation about it somebody casually said oh that's the one where this happened and then i was like oh okay i mean uh and i you know maybe and now you know on our show today as we sit here uh monday april 5th it's been out for like a probably a month or two so there's been a little bit of time but when i heard that information it had been out i swear for like a week at least it had come into my awareness very recently because it was trending on netflix and uh i was uh but you know i mean i guess you know that happens in life things do get spoiled i will say and and i actually appreciate this you know what andrew i have to say we were talking about wandavision you and i a while ago and it was one of those semi-rare moments where you and i are both geeked up to use the words of bad baby where you and i are both geeked up on the same like movie or television show because i feel like that doesn't happen a lot usually if it's something that you're vibing with usually murder she wrote related it's not something it's not a space i'm playing in or like bojack horseman was like

My moment for that was like five years, and then we just settle into things at different times. I don't usually watch things when they're new either. It's just like kind of – when something strikes me, that's when I finally get into it, even if it's like five years later.

Right. So we're rarely getting onto the same stuff at the same time, and yet WandaVision was one of those things. And not only had – I had watched it all in one weekend, and not only had you watched it, you had like I think watched it twice?

I would watch one and then I would read some recaps and learn more about the world and then I'd re-watch it with Genevieve. It was my whole process.

Well, and so then we talked about it and then I said something casual, not casually, but I said something that was a bit of a spoiler. And my thought was it's been out for a long time. I think maybe had we even given any kind of a – anyway, point is I said something and after the show you said, hey, how about this? like it would how about we go back and we record a little warning for people because there's no way to edit that out and that's going to really ruin this for some people and it's like you rarely are that kind of sort of like um you're really that firm on something but it was pretty clear that you really wanted this to happen and um and you know what i'm glad you did because having had the cecil hotel ruined for me it's a bad feeling when things get spoiled so i'm glad that we hopefully

didn't do that with WandaVision I will okay a couple of things though on that not to not to be defensive here but I feel like there's a very first of all WandaVision was a you know fictional story that was very very very built up about withholding details and like the exploratory mystery of the show is at the heart of what it is and it was completely made up obviously it's fictional I just I feel like I mean I guess it just depends on people's various points of view on the news I know there have been other documentaries where you've said something before like the the now I was late to watching it but like the McDonald's scam one I remember we were talking about in the show and I was watching it and you said the monopoly one yeah the monopoly one and monopoly one and you said something I was like oh well I'm not there yet and you're like well it was a news story I feel like the documentaries are different like what I just did there was like I was just recalling something that was very public knowledge for a long time now it's it is i will say it's very rare that i with my pickled brain remember something like that but um so i can understand the surprise there but i don't know can you spoil a documentary

when it was like national news no that's a fair i think that's a fair question i do think that there's a difference um and in fact you know a lot of times what i do when i'm watching these these true crime shows is if it's a true crime that i was aware of like when it was in the news I find those to be less interesting because at the core of it the mystery component is really what draws me in I wonder why it is that mystery around real things draws me in very heavily like around things that actually happened but mystery around fictionalized things is less like sometimes I'll get into something like true detective and then usually I'll be let down but like if I'm watching a dateline there's a bunch of I have 50 dateline NBC's in my DVR and I watch the ones where i don't know the story first and then after a while i may go back and watch one that i haven't actually looked at yet but it's about an event that i kind of know that the the the various you know elements of because it was in the news but i always think those ones are less interesting for

some reason um if i if i know the story you know i bet you i talked about this at the time of course i was sitting here frantically googling because i couldn't remember anybody's name in this documentary the name of the documentary but now i have in front of me of course i'm talking about the Jinx uh the Robert Durst documentary and that was on HBO and it was being released but as it was being released episode by episode you know over the course of this amount of time it wasn't dumped all at once um the the documentary itself was affecting the news and I think what happened was I had missed almost all of it but then I the night before the finale I binged all of them or the day before the finale I binged all of them and then there was just like one I hadn't seen or no you know what it was I I'd gotten into it and I think I binged them all in one day because I started to see headlines come in and I I was purposely avoiding headlines so I could race through and finish the documentary so that headlines wouldn't ruin like quote-unquote ruin it for me and I remember at the time feeling very weird about that like I I had never like avoided spoilers when the spoilers were just updates on my phone from the New York Times you know what I mean and I was like yeah it was like watching a football game that I had pre-recorded sort of and avoiding my phone so it wouldn't be ruined and because the subject matter is so serious i remember feeling a little bit weird about that but i was like i don't want the news to ruin this viewing experience i

don't want the actual events in the real physical world that we all live in right to ruin this fun entertaining who done it right or what happened that i'm that i'm watching so let me just turn off the cnn alerts on my phone that was i mean i have to say like if we're ranking them again weird thing to do when you're talking about events that were very tragic in the lives of people i mean that one's got to be near the top right the jinx in that it just is so i mean just the way that it played out i i even hesitate to say because i don't want to spoil it for anyone although at this point it's on you if you haven't seen that and you're interested in it but um the way that it was really like the documentary like you said itself was was sort of mobilizing police activity and and the way that there's really meaningful stuff in the case that happens during the production of the documentary i mean that that's that's that one the staircase is a really fascinating one that that um i can't remember who produced it i almost think it might have been like a a company out of europe or something but that one was was was also quite compelling and if you if you found the jinx to be intriguing and you haven't seen the staircase i would recommend that one but um yeah that's got to be the jinx got to be kind of near the top of the list of those true crime things yeah i would

think so and again like it was kind of happening at a time when i mean you know the the genre had been well established but it was still i think in its formative stage as well as far as like these cultural phenomenons in fact it almost i think i think it came out not all that long after serial was a phenomenon uh and i think serial came first and then this and i think people it's kind of kind of the the earlier maybe golden age of people getting obsessed with

um these true crime docs do we think that serial because it it was kind of from the perspective of should this person adnan syed should he be incarcerated right now or not do we feel like serial was somehow morally more defensible than just say you're straight up

keith morrison dateline nbc trash right right or like even in the dark like you know it's

investigative sure that's like curtis flowers should not be in jail right probably i mean not that madeline would put her thumb on the scale that way but the reporting very clearly indicated

that and the reporting ended up affecting the real life as well and and sure and so there is that thing and i remember you know gushing about the first season of in the dark because i listened to it because you know it was on our network and i didn't know what it was and i listened to it and i got sucked in wederling abduction yeah good call yeah i could never have conjured that name unfortunately um uh but yeah and so i found it to be like fascinating and gripping but also just such good journalism like good solid public radio investigative journalism that is actually They weren't just picking stories that were going to be like, you know, that were going to be popular, but that were important and what they they wanted to use their journalistic skills and this this format to do it. And then you have, you know, Wonderly.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, if you haven't listened to In the Dark season one or two, they're about different stories. But, yeah, season one is is incredible, too, because of how it really just gets into policing and and particularly Stearns County in Minnesota and just how kind of basically how little we know about what police investigations tend to look like and how many mistakes can be made. And granted, you know, investigators are they're human beings. They're not going to be perfect, but they're just I don't know when I was growing up. I thought, well, if the police – first of all, I assume the police solved every crime. That was the starting point. And you find out that the clearance rates and the number of crimes that get solved, particularly very serious and violent crimes, is kind of shockingly low. Like there's just so much stuff that doesn't get solved. and and then also really avoidable mistakes and things that the that that particular that sheriff's department that county uh agency did that were really terrible uh around the solving of this crime of the murder of this this young boy jacob wetterling so that was a really interesting one and then yeah season two curtis flowers he's now out of prison and you have to think some of it is because of the way that in the dark was able to shine a spotlight uh curtis flowers was a guy in mississippi who had been tried i want to say four times for the same crime which insanely was not a violation of the double jeopardy principle i.e you can't get two bites of the apple you should not be tried twice for the same crime because of how the laws are written down there and one very spiteful da but now curtis flowers is out of prison after many years for a crime that there is real doubt around if he could have or did commit it so i mean i would just say in the dark tbtl we're all doing peabody level work here on this network i don't think snl has tried to

steal any of in the darks i'll call it reporting yet yeah They're definitely trying to rip us off, which we'll talk about right after this short break here on the yet to, but I assume one day Peabody award-winning podcast. Too beautiful to live. Stay with us. On your mark.

On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dattle.

All right. Let's thank some dazzling donors. Wonderful, generous folks keeping the show going. With their donations each month. Start by thanking Amy Lake of Eugene, Oregon. I don't know if there's been a shift, Andrew, to folks in Oregon or if I'm just noticing folks in Oregon more because I now live in Oregon. I feel like the locus has shifted. It used to be almost all of our donors were in Bellingham, and now I feel like almost all of them are in Oregon.

You know what you're like? You're like one of those magnetic games with the little metal shavings, and as you move around, we see everything sort of follow you around.

There's a thick, thick beard of magnetic filings on the face of TBTL, and that thick beard is in Oregon. That's right. I hope people know what I'm talking about. Otherwise, that reference made zero sense. No, it made sense to me. Even by our standards.

Although when I think of it, it automatically makes me think of bee beards. I don't know why, and those were so upsetting to me as a kid. I remember I think it was a Ranger Rick magazine had a famous bee beard cover. Really upsetting.

Yeah, I don't understand being in the flow state as somebody who's into all things. I think it's, well, I think a bee, like a beehive is technically called an apiary. All things bee related To where you could just sit there And let them crawl over you And know they're not going to sting you In fact when I did that story about murder hornets And we went out to some hives Out to an apiary Where a guy had lost like a whole hive of bees Like 60,000 bees to these so called murder hornets He's opening these beehives And he doesn't even have gloves on And he's pulling out these trays Where the honey is collecting And the bees are just crawling all over him And he's just he's so calm that the bees are not agitated. I don't I'm not overly afraid of them, but I could not get myself to that state of relaxation around them.

I know we need to get to Amy's message here, but you know about that bee whisperer woman who is like, yes, tick tock, right? She's yes. That even floated across my social media stream. So I know that she must be blowing up. Yeah, she's making an NFT out of that. Yeah, probably. OK, but probably not. Anyway, I read a fascinating article about NFTs and why they are basically a scam even against the artists who are trying to use it to monetize the digital art. I'm going to send it to you. It's by a wonderful writer. I've only recently discovered her. I think a lot of people know her. I want to say, and I apologize. I'm doing this from memory, and you know how I am. How about this? Emily Postaste or Postaste? I don't know. She seems like somebody that you would have even worked with at some point because she's a longtime Seattle artist and writer. and she's just apparently brilliant and she wrote an amazing piece that i read this weekend over breakfast about nfts and why we should be very cautious of this trend and why essentially it is a ponzi scheme and even the artists are not really it's not really good for them either fascinating piece thank you to the listener who sent it to me yeah will you send that to me because

i want to read more information about how nfts are bunk so i'm not mad at myself about not figuring out how to get on the ground floor of that because what i read this morning on an email that i get called the hustle was about some guy in australia who started out with four thousand bucks while he was in college and was getting in on that sweet sweet bitcoin and then leverage that you know into getting early nfts and he owns all these crypto punks they're called they're like you know those like like kind of intentionally pixelated you know drawings of like a duck smoking a cigarette with sunglasses on and these are like cool because they're nfts they're limited amount of them anyway i read basically a story this morning that made me feel so bad about my financial decision making in life that i haven't that i just completely missed the boat on all of that stuff that i'd like to kind of like cleanse my palate with a story about how it's all bs whether or not it's even true it would just make me feel better it's really well written and by

the way listener brian in seattle sent it to me and now it's in your inbox too luke well i'd like

to tell you though about listener emily lake who's here in oregon she's right in the middle of the thick bee beard of tbtl donations coming from this state and i don't know if she is into nfts or cryptocurrency or what but i know she's heavily leveraged and heavily invested in tbtl future

by donating to the show. Thank you, Emily, or Amy, rather. Amy says, you created the Wonderful Kids compilation for me last year. If you want to play that again, I would love it. Love the show. What is the Wonderful Kids compilation that you put together for listener and dazzling donor Amy last year, Andrew? And do you still have it?

I do. I think Amy just asked if I could put together a little compilation of all of the kids or a bunch of the kid-related drops we have, whether they're kids who listen to tbtl or just you know kids that went viral that we use their audio on tbtl a lot so i put together a little montage let us revisit it now kids and fantasy

i don't watch the news because i'm a kid and apparently every time apparently grandpa just gives me a remote after he watched the powerball have you ever had a dream that that you um you You have, you, you, you could, you do, you wish.

Can you say apple?

Apple.

Can you say banana?

Apple. It's embarrassing and it's gross, but at least it's kind of funny. The TV. Oh, TV. TV. TV. I was shaking. My tongue was shaking. My head was shaking. My arms were shaking. And my legs, my feet, too.

I'm slimy. I'm grimy. I need a shower. and I have a garbage situation.

Now, my whole house is great. I can do anything good. I like my school. I like anything. I like my dad. I like my cousins. I like my aunts. I like my Allison.

Bam! I came up with a TBTL sandwich made of tomato, bacon, turkey, and lettuce. I hope you mention it in the show. Ah!

Let's do uh-uh again. TV, T-L.

I feel, I feel, I feel happy of myself.

Kids and fantasy. That's good. Yeah, that's fun to make. I'm glad, I forgot about it. I'm glad Amy brought it back up. Me too. Anytime I can reuse work I've already made. Was I on the show last year when you played it, or was I taking a day off? I don't know. But yeah, anytime I can recycle shit that I already did, that's great for me, too. So thank you, Amy.

Thanks, Amy. And thank you so much for the donation.

Thanks for keeping the show going. The maestro? Okay, I knew that was going to happen. I got so in my head about playing the audio. I got to go back to the Dazzling Donors. On your mark. On your mark. Nobody noticed.

That bought me some time to take another sip of my coffee anyway.

Everybody rattles.

We've got to thank Kate Muller. Hold on. Kate Muller is in Seattle, Washington and is supporting the program today. Kate says, hi, Luke and Andrew. I'd like to use my dazzling donor message for some shameless self-promotion, if that's okay.

It's okay.

Absolutely, it's okay, Kate. My husband and I own the best small gym in Seattle, Green Lake Strength and Conditioning, and we would love for any 10s to check us out. We were formerly Northwest CrossFit, but we unaffiliated from CrossFit as soon as the former CEO revealed himself to be a racist jerk. We welcome and celebrate all bodies. Hmm, Kate, would you consider rephrasing that to bodies? I would love it if you go to the Green Lake Strength and Conditioning website, and they're like, we welcome and celebrate all bodies. And then people are just constantly emailing going, can you give a typo? And they're like, no, I'm sorry. Please, can we refer you to the podcast TBTL? We welcome and celebrate all bodies, all people, and all abilities. And we have coaches who can meet everyone where they are, fitness-wise. I am personally about the furthest from a CrossFit bro, as you could imagine, and I want everyone to experience the community acceptance and fun that I found at our gym. Bonus, we are mere blocks from the Roosevelt District of Seattle, Washington.

I know this place. I mean, I pass it all the time, sometimes carrying a giant tire. Amazing that there's a tan and a dazzling donor who is the co-owner of that place. Yeah, exactly. Can you picture it, too, from the outside? It's been a while since you've been in this neighborhood.

The only small gym I know about near Greenlake is literally in someone's garage. I think I might have told you about this. Vinny? No, I know we're promoting right now the Greenlake Strength and Conditioning Project, which is everybody who's interested in getting fit or whatever, go check. The website, by the way, is Greenlake Strength. Strength dot com. So I don't want to take any shine off of that. But there is somebody if you ever run the outside path of Green Lake, there is somebody who lives on Green Lake Way where there are these houses where the houses are up off the street and they have garages that are down at street level. And somebody has turned their I mean, they're very small, like their garage that could fit like a tiny car from the 1940s or something. And somebody has just got some weights in there and some kind of like white Christmas lights hung up. And every once in a while When I'm in Seattle If I'm jogging around Green Lake At the right time They've just got the garage door open And they're just in there Doing their thing And there's something Very picturesque about it Yeah Like the not depressing version Of Nighthawks The Hopper painting

It sounds very old school Sort of It retakes It is To harken back to a different time

Yes But That's my second favorite Small gym In the Green Lake area My first favorite Andrew Is Green Lake Strength And Conditioning The listener Kate continues If you want to check us out Go to Green Lake Strength dot com also please note that we are going above and beyond with all covid restrictions the doors are kept wide open we have excellent ventilation and everyone must wear a mask at all times now back to tbtl thank you for providing me something to look forward to every day especially during this last year thank you so much love you guys power out listener kate thanks kate wow thank you kate thanks for um donating and thanks for uh creating what sounds like a really awesome space for folks to come and and pursue their their goals whatever those goals might be it might be enough for me even to revisit the idea of this kind of exercising you know i used to do crossfit back in the day for a little while and then i did a cbs sunday morning commentary about how hard it was and then i think they saw it at the crossfit place in port townsend and i was not asked i was not explicitly asked not to come back but i felt like they did have a chilling effect on the whole

operation did they stack all of the giant tires in front of the door when they saw you coming

is that they would write up a fake wad so that i would see online that would make me not want to come in and then they would erase it and then they would write the real one down that's a whole thing by the way uh you know you write down the workout of the day on the dry erase board and you can that's a crossfit term and then and i know but what what amy and uh her husband are doing is not that it is strength and conditioning they're no longer using that branded name but um but that you know back in the day you'd go online and you would that's how you'd find out what the exercise plan was going to be that day and uh sometimes it was not it didn't look fun no it actually never looked fun but sometimes it looked especially unfun and i think maybe they wrote up a special bad one so that i would be dissuaded and then later they'd be like okay everybody you can come out and everyone would come out from their hiding places they'd write the real workout of the day

on the board and then they would do that one i am going this is not anything near that but i am i am dedicated to going on another um long walk today i mentioned this in the um tbtl newsletter and again i i want to be careful here too because i as i said in the newsletter i know we're supposed to love our bodies and i'm not beating up on my friend andy here but um i was doing the the tbtl newsletter video last week and i asked genevieve to tape it for me like if she could hold the the camera which is my phone luke the camera is inside you've got a camera on your phone dude it is nuts anyway it's a video camera too so anyway so i was gonna like kind of go through my box of uh of obsolete technology in the kitchen and have genevieve actually film me instead of trying to set up a set up a you know tripod or something like that uh and you know i feel like i have not i know that i've been getting no exercise i mentioned this on the show the other day obviously i haven't been to the gym in over a year now and uh the idea of going for walks just sort of got boring to me after a while if i'm just being totally frank about it and i just got in this bad habit of and i was just putting everything off i was just like i was drinking nothing but ipas which are really heavy beers i was eating whatever i wanted without thinking about it and i didn't notice a huge change i think some of my shirts felt a little bit tighter but i was like i'm kind getting away with something here and then seeing I'm so used to looking at myself straight on in the mirror or now in this day and age if I'm in a meeting or whatever I'm looking straight at the zoom that I'm looking at so I'm always seeing the same view of myself and I saw a profile of my face and I'll be honest I didn't even think I looked bad but I looked so much bigger than I've ever seen myself just in my facial area I just like wow that also probably wearing a mask a lot of the time so maybe if even if i'm catching my reflection walking down the street as you know i would check it out uh i don't think i realized looking free touching will cost you that's right so anyway i was chilled to my core and so and then something happened to the recording genevieve um was using my phone my phone which is also my camera is also like my calendar and uh people can send me text messages on it so anyway some text messages you say it's essentially like a

a person

Personal digital assistance?

It's like that, but it's also connected to, like, the internet, and you can make phone calls on it. It's astounding. It's astounding.

If you were to see a junkyard on a trip, would you be able to document that in this phone?

Yes. If I saw an Amish person using a cell phone on a road trip to Pittsburgh, I could use the notes function on this phone. Anyway, something ended up happening to the recording. A text message came in and filled up the screen, and then you tried to clear it out and accidentally stopped the recording. And I was like, you know what? I'm glad. It was one of those things where I was – I had already – I started off the video seeing myself on the screen a little bit and being shocked. And the first take of the video was also filled with stumbles and bumbles, and I didn't know what I was – one of those things, you and I are like – I think we talk about this sometimes. Sometimes you just need to start fresh on something. Oh, yeah. So I ended up just trashing that whole thing. I said, Viz, I'm going to go to my safe space in my office where I can stare directly into Zoom and look at the view of me that I'm used to and do this over. But then I said I'm going on a 10-mile walk Because I need to lose 100 pounds in a day No, I don't have body dysmorphia I'm not being crazy about this But yeah, you can't just eat junk at all hours of the day and night Not get any exercise for a year And expect yourself just to be the same You know, lean, mean fighting machine Not at our age, that's the problem

I mean, there was a time where you might have been able to And I might have been able to get away with that But that time is just over metabolically and um i don't even know what i look like anymore because i will no this is true you can't get me on camera unless the angle is so flattering and the light is so yellow like i even if it's just like you and me doing the draft i have like we were doing our fantasy baseball draft and you and i were zooming or i guess we were yeah i think we were using zoom to to sort of just like chat about what our next move was even in that i've got my camera on a tripod and that tripod is on a high that butcher block table in my kitchen that is i mean it is chosen because it's it's all by design because that is the most flattering angle of me because i mean at this point i really don't know what i look like because i have so skewed all kind of you know visible notion of what i look because of always having some kind of... I did not bring out a yellow light. I did not bring out a ring light for you and I just to talk to each other casually about Fantasy Draft. But the thought occurred to me, Andrew.

Okay, I have two things I'm going to say about this. Let me get them both out because I don't think we'll circle back to this. And these are two serious questions I have about this or observations and questions. First one, not technically a question. More of a comment. This is more of a comment than a question is, you know, when you say that, first of all, I thought, you know, when we were Zooming to do our fantasy draft thing, I wasn't really looking at the computer screen with you on it that much because I was looking at my other computer while we were trying to, like, you know, research things and, you know, actually pull the trigger on the draft options. I was mostly just using Zoom there because it was easier than being on the phone, but I was mostly just interested in talking with you, right? So I don't know if you noticed this or not, but you probably saw the side of – you probably saw that flattering profile of the side of my face for most of that anyway. In my mind's eye, I thought you just had your phone sitting on the counter. I don't even remember it being up high. So – and I was going to say, you know, last week –

Well, that's the whole idea. I make it look effortless. Yeah. And last week – It's very, very calculated.

We're having a very similar conversation about how, like, you know, we're trying to figure out if we're going to keep on using that technology that allows us to look at each other while we're doing the show, which has some real advantages to hosting a show together because you can play off of each other better, but how you were in your head a little bit about how you looked, and I wanted to say, and I probably did say, but it doesn't matter. First of all, nobody really cares how you look, or if you have a little pimple cream on, that's fine. We've been doing this together for a decade. I'm not judging you by how you look. Also, I'm incredibly non-observant when it comes to that stuff.

I do appreciate that about you.

Yeah, and so it doesn't matter.

I feel like I could have an open wound on my face.

I know, right?

I could actually need medical attention, and you wouldn't actually even probably notice.

Yeah. Oh, you could come up to me in a coffee shop and ask me if you could borrow the almond milk, and I wouldn't even know it's you. Still my favorite TBTL moment. Anyway, so all of that is to say I wanted to say to you, like, Luke, just try to get out of your head about it. I don't care what you look like. But the thing is, if you were to tell me, Andrew, for some reason, we need to do shirts and skins on TBTL Zoom. We're out of pennies. And you're like, I don't care what you look like with your shirt off. Honestly, I'm not even noticing. But you have to be skins today. Like, I couldn't do the show that way. I couldn't do the show with my shirt off. All I would think about. So it's like I do understand it. It's just for me, you know, I'm a little bit more used to looking schlubby. That was my first observation. My second question, though, I really am like that like that jerk at a book reading. Who's just like he's. Right.

the mic and won't stop talking but i just can't get over the idea of like what would the circumstances be that we needed to do tbtl as shirts and skins oh well it's definitely i mean and it's honestly it's intriguing i don't want to be skins either but like is it just so we can

remember what team we're on i mean i'm writing this down tbtl shirts and skins tbtl shirts and

skins it's possibly let's raise it with the membership folks for maybe something with the

tv telethon but okay here's what i was gonna say this is a legit question because you were saying that you don't know what you look like anymore because you won't step in front of a camera unless you have like complete control over like the lighting where it is but i assume that you have some control over that or some input over that when you're actually on the road doing tv things for cbs when you're not sitting in your studio controlling your mini camera so you must have to let go a little bit there and how are you feeling about that because the camera person i'm sure is getting over the shoulder shots of you or side views andrew i don't have control of that

and it i have to at some point just completely push it out of my mind because it is an intrusive thought now when we're doing what's called a sit down that is usually very well lit by the the awesome uh camera folks and so that's i wouldn't say it's flattering but it's given me the best chance of not looking absolutely hideous um and so that is i just kind of i just at that point i'm like okay this is what it is i feel like the editors do use the weirdest cutaway shots of me like i always look kind of i don't know what how i would describe the emotion on my face but it's somewhere between confused and holding in a fart when somebody will just say like like so the person i'm talking to will be talking and then there'll be a point where we edit one part of their comments and maybe they go on a tangent so we we skip ahead to the next part of their comments and we slice them all together and they need to show something else on camera when that edit is happening and it'll be me kind of looking like i just was like eating a too many pez candies and then the camera went right back on me i'm like like i'm like the cat that had the canary or something like pez because they're a little bit soury i don't know why i came up with pez that was a very weird it's like i put the whole pez thing in my mouth okay i didn't know what to do i put it all in there and now i'm just trying to act normal okay okay but that's the sit downs that that is what it is i don't love it but i try to just i just hope that at the end of the the day they're not going to use any questions from me uh which i have control of because i usually write the first draft of the scripts but anyway that's one part of it but the really part that's really hard for me is when we're out walking around with whoever it is that the story is about or wherever we are and now it becomes a thing where there is no professional lighting we're just the camera person just has the camera on their shoulder we're walking around sometimes they're shooting it from an angle that i know makes me look like the beginning of alfred hitchcock presents when It's just a drawing of him, just like his nine chins. I mean, it's like it is just I feel like dead on with the camera elevated and a lot of ring light going. I think, you know, it's semi passable what's happening for me in my physical body. But you start to shoot me from the side kind of behind the code for it is they'll say we're getting a lot of profile. It's getting real profile. That's what the camera guy will say, which basically means, bro, you look like Alfred Hitchcock right now. So then I'll reposition myself. And also, it seems like no matter what happens, there's one side like I feel like I have a good side. Well, what I feel like is I have a bad side and a less bad side. And I would like my less bad side to be what's being presented to the camera. But invariably, the camera person will reposition me and the person I'm talking to. Like if it's me and Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips and we're walking by his house in Oklahoma. Invariably, the camera person will want to orient us so that it's my bad side is primarily what's getting hit by the camera.

And in those moments, I just go with it because I feel like I'm not going to like I'm not going to I'm not going to contradict the camera person about what they need so that I can have what feels like my less bad side being presented. I feel like if as soon as I start doing that, I've officially moved into real heavy duty diva territory. Right, right, right. That I'm not trying to do. So it is. No, but Andrew, I don't have control of that. and it haunts me and I have to just tell myself I have a mantra which is nobody's paying as much attention to you as you are like I tell myself that over and over again nobody is paying as much attention to you as you are like nobody is nobody is looking at me as closely as I am sort of internally inspecting myself because of my narcissism insecurity self-obsession sometimes I have to just chant that in my brain so that I'll just calm down and get through or whatever indignity I have to go through involving cameras being pointed at me.

You know who doesn't have to worry about that stuff is Brian Unger.

I'm only bringing this up because I was the devastatingly handsome Brian Unger.

The tape that we heard at the beginning of the show is from the Zach Galifianakis stand up special. I think it's called Live at the Purple Onion. You can probably back me up on that, Luke. Do you know? Yeah, it's great.

Yeah. Really great special.

I remember loving it. I haven't seen it in a long time since I probably pulled that tape, which was probably like eight years ago or something. And I kind of stumbled on it in my archives this weekend. So I was like, oh, I should use that again as intro tape. But I'd forgotten that it's Brian Unger who let's not let's not get it twisted. I don't want to lie to you or the listeners. I couldn't quite remember his name. Of course, I'm terrible at names. And I was like, but did he also have a CBS Sunday morning connection? And I looked him up because, of course, most people know Brian Unger, I think, from The Daily Show. But I had forgotten he had an NPR segment on your old show. You guys must have worked together at Day to Day. You were both founding. You were a producer and he had something called the Unger Report I had totally forgotten about that

I know Brian from working on that show with him Although I didn't do a whole lot for him Those Unger Reports were kind of a specific producer A guy named Steve Profit Those were kind of his special projects So he and Brian would go out and do all kinds of weird, fun things And then craft these really great pieces But I knew Brian from that show And yeah, I see him In fact, I just saw him on TikTok the other day because he's the lawyer in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Oh, I don't think I ever knew that. And they've got this, like, now there's this account called, like, Sunny Lawyer, which is Brian Unger circa now, like, hanging out on TikTok and doing, like, you know, basically answering questions and doing things in the persona of the lawyer from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which there's a great scene where Charlie Day is trying to square off against Brian Unger in terms of legal knowledge. How does that turn out? Not great. And, yeah, you know, Brian is somebody who probably looks pretty good from just about every angle. Yep. Now, of course, I'm trying to find – you know, we started today saying that SNL is covering the same topics we are, and we're ending the show by not getting to that and by me now trying to find something called Charlie Kelly's Best Lawyer Moments on YouTube. Let's see. Okay, here we go. I think I found this scene. I want to apologize in advance if there's weird background music or whatever. I am playing this, of course, without any preview. But this, I believe, is Charlie Kelly, the character, facing off with Brian Unger. Here we go.

I know a lot about the law and various other lawyerings. I'm well-educated, well-versed. I know that situations like this, real estate-wise, they're very complex.

Actually, they're pretty simple. The forms are all standard boilerplate.

Okay. Well, we're all hungry. We're going to get to our hot plate soon enough. All right. No, it's not a leaf. Oh, no.

It's just going to be a montage. This is what I get for trusting something called Den of Geek.

Not the worst, though. Is it just going to be a montage? I'm still with it.

Well, no, but see, that scene, they cut it off too early because that scene goes on and on. And where like and of course it gets it gets more funny as it goes because his you know his legal skills are pretty questionable. And it's like in minute like one and a half where it really gets great. And of course they only included the first 15 seconds and then you cut to the next thing.

Were you playing the one I'm looking at you two here called Charlie and his lawyer rings.

I believe that was no maybe not maybe see if was that by something called Den of Geek. No, let me just try this.

This might really sink the show here, but no.

Various other lawyerings. I'm well-educated, well-versed. I know that situations like this, real estate-wise, they're very complex.

Actually, they're pretty simple. The forms are all standard, boilerplate.

Okay, well, we're all hungry. We're going to get to our hot plate soon enough, all right? But let's talk about the contract here.

Sorry, I forgot. Where did you go to law school again?

Well, I could ask you that very same question.

I went to Harvard. How about you? I'm pleading the fifth, sir I'd advise that you do that

And I'll take that advice into cooperation, alright? Now let's say you and I go toe-to-toe on bird law and see who comes out the victim

You know, I don't think I'm going to do anything close to that And I can see clearly you know nothing about the law It seems like you have a tenuous grasp on the English language in general

Okay, well, filibuster

Do you know what that word means? Yep Yeah, what's that mean?

just running through a door instead of opening it and running away and that i believe is seen i mean he's still now there's some more scenes from later on in the episode but i don't think we should just keep going on that Thank you.

But that's great. You know, this makes me want to watch that show again. I had stopped watching it. I can't believe it's still in production, man. It's still going? I think so. You can double check me on that. Maybe do a Google while I talk. I don't know why I said it that way. But, you know, I remember loving it when it was new and then getting to a point where Genevieve and I said, it's kind of too shouty. It just kind of like got like one of those things where we just want to relax. We're old now. Like, do we want to put on a show where there's a lot of it is people yelling at each other? Right. So we said it got too shouty and we thought we stopped watching like pretty well into it. And now it turns out like they've made so many seasons. I'll bet you I haven't seen a quarter of this, the episodes.

Yeah, it's still going in December, 2020, the series was renewed for a total of four additional seasons, bringing it to season 18. So if it was, so if it was, you know, a green lit for four more seasons, that should take us through like 2024. That's crazy. Yeah. I remember when everybody was always like, i was hearing a lot of people saying oh it's always sunny you got to watch i thought it was a weird name i was just kind of like it just i i don't know it didn't sound appealing to me and then i watched an episode of it eventually and i was like oh my god this is so funny and great and i got very into it and then the same thing i felt like at some point every scene just kind of started right at the most shouty part yeah right it didn't kind of work its way there but i bet you out of it's like the simpsons i mean there's been a million seasons of the simpsons And they're not all the same level of quality, but even within those seasons where maybe it's not as great overall, there are probably still some kind of amazing moments. So that might be worth revisiting.

Sorry, I just tried to email myself that video to see if there's more good intro tape in there, but I sent it to you instead. This is a real problem with my life. The people that I email the most in this order are, number one, me, and number two, you. And a lot of times I'm just emailing notes to myself, whether it's about the show. Often it's like about the show or a show that I work on to like remind myself, hey, pull this tape or this is an idea. And so I'll just send in. I don't have to give any context for it because I, you know, I'll know once I open the email. But I'm sure there have been times where you got some weird email from me and thought I was just drunk or something and didn't really pay much attention to it. but it was probably meant for me, and I sent it to you instead because the other person I'm emailing all the time with show-related stuff is you. So anyway, sorry.

A dangerous game for me, by the way, Dano, is that because I have Apple products, I can text from my laptop, and it's just whoever the last person I texted was moves to the top of the screen. So if I'm having sort of like, hold on, I'm going to sneeze here in a second. Am I going to sneeze? Should I say sneezy things?

Picture waterfalls. Wait, no, that's the wrong one. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm not sneezing, but I did pee in my pants. It's your cotton fields.

So, no, it's passed. But so I could be texting with like a few different people. And the like I said, whoever the last person I texted to, the thing just keeps automatically updating and moving whoever I sent a text to up to the top of the screen. And it is amazing that I have not just sent randomly, you know, totally unrelated text. text or if i'm like the ultimate danger would be if i was mildly dragging someone to one person while also interacting with the person who's being mildly dragged behind their text back like it this has never happened yet knock wood but it's amazing i haven't just texted the wrong person the absolute wrong thing thinking i was texting someone else about how

person a is doing something that i'm not loving you did that to me one time we never talked about it because i didn't want to make you feel worse about it but uh i don't know if you remember this or not and again and i only say this comfortable in saying this not because i don't think it's going to ruin your day because i don't i don't care i'm really not insulted by this and you're not necessarily wrong but one time we were planning something or we were talking about potentially doing kind of a project i'll just say the thing like why not it was for the thing festival and you were talking to the organizers of the thing festival about whether or not tbtl should have a role in there and you emailed me you're saying okay i'm talking to so and so about it um you can read all of our emails below and then i got another email from you immediately that said yeah actually it's all smooth it's all smooth you don't have to look at those emails and i was like oh oh i don't oh i don't and so i of course i looked at the cover up ever like what the hell why would you send me a separate email telling me i don't have to filibuster emails Filibuster. And you called me a fat F in those emails. No. You had just said – What did I say? Something about you being anxious? You just said, let me run it by Andrew. He's a little uptight or something like that, which isn't like –

Did I use the word uptight?

It was something.

I thought I used the word anxious. I don't know.

But I don't –

Because I don't think of you as uptight. I think of you as anxious. But I do – I know what you're talking about. And it was definitely like me kind of like a little I was it was it was me describing you in a way to somebody else kind of jokingly that I wouldn't. not have said to you to your face you know what i mean oh that's right i did i wrote back i think

i wrote back so i'm like yeah this all sounds good also i'm not anxious or i'm not uptight or something with a winky face or something i think i did like let you know but i wasn't i honestly was not like put off by that but i know that feeling of just like but it was just it's just you you talk to who's in the room i don't feel like oh you were talking tons of crap behind my back but it was just kind of like you know we have a certain tone for the way i was probably

talking to i was trying i was talking to this person probably in a way that you might talk to genevieve about me where it's like you know i i feel like you guys both love me and and and everything's good but i'm sure that there's a certain kind of just tone of voice and kind of way of talking to somebody in your life about somebody else that you know what i mean and i'm not saying that to make excuses it was just it was really it was definitely not the worst but i did it was not the best i was like oh i was and hence my attempt at the cover-up which is always worse

i wasn't even sure if you were going to remember that though because that was a while ago and it was a very minor thing but um but yeah so anyway no i remember i mean yeah no i definitely remember

that and it was definitely one of those like intense like oh no that reply all i think that

reply all replied to all this is including andrew and this is my you know if it was worse i think i'd have very different feelings about it but i think i even i could be wrong about this and now i'm trying to turn myself into like turn this into a hero narrative but i think like because i've done that a couple of times i can think of ones from very like a long long time ago where i i replied all to a group of people in a way that i was very very embarrassed i don't have to get in the details only because they're not that interesting and it was a long time ago but like i had recently been a student employee and i was working with a lot of colleagues who i respected a lot but they were all like a generation older than me and they were the people who had kind of taught me radio or whatever and I did one of those things where I started to reply to one of them and then I was like oh I'll copy a bunch of people on it and then I was like no I'm going to change this and just send it back to Vince but I forgot to take everybody off of it and I kind of I had said something about it was related to money or something in some way that was kind of gauche and talking about like a job opportunity that just like I don't know what it was but it was this probably happened in 2001 or two that's how long ago it happened when i think about that moment and i guarantee you nobody on that email remembers it anymore when i think about that moment it is like grabbing an electric fence of panic and pain that i still remember as soon as i hit send and realized what i had done um and so when the worst when you sent me that thing i i feel like again this is the hero narrative i almost feel like i was trying to like respond to you in a way that said like i see this you don't have to worry about it you know like it's right you know what i mean like not you know but i don't know if i achieved that i also don't know if i'm making that up you know here uh this year to make myself feel better about myself the real question

is had i not i i well whatever but we're i i don't remember a winky emoji i just remember you saying like hey this is all good for me and also by the way i'm not uptight that's like maybe true yeah Yeah, that's me, which I which I remember being like because of knowing how effusive you usually are in email conversations. It felt to me like you were being like you aren't being extra about it, but you were just being like, hey, I saw that. I'm not like this is not ruining my day, but I did see that just so you know. And let me clarify for this person. I don't know who's on the email that I'm not, you know, some overly anxious person.

But there's no way that I said there's no way that I use a winky face anyway, because I don't use winky face. So that's definitely a lie from me I don't think I've ever used the winky emoji in my life The only thing I'll do is a colon and a parenthesis to do a frowny face

Well, so, yeah, but I mean, it was I thought your response was good Because it indicated that you'd seen everything But it also, and I read it as you were like Eh, it didn't feel great to read that Oh, maybe But it wasn't like, you know, this partnership is over Like, it was just the right amount of like To me, it felt like the right amount of, you know, very, very subtle feedback that only I can read from you because you and I communicate all the time. I know, I'm good. But I was going to say, oh, yeah.

I was just going to say, we're finally talking about it, like, what, two years later? When was the Think Festival?

That makes it one of the more current things we discuss on TV show.

That is true.

So this was only two years ago? No, but the real question for me going forward is, had I not said nothing to see here in the email chain trying to get you to not look like four messages down the thread? Would you have even looked all the way down the thread I just need to know how to obfuscate this stuff next time That's a really good point Do I just let it lie Because I'm sure I was racking my brain thinking What makes it the least likely that Andrew will see This little kind of snarky thing I said Is it to just pretend like everything's fine Or is it to go in and try to actively dissuade him From looking at the message

Because, of course, that's going to make you look at the messages.

I think that the second message definitely made me look at it. I can't really tell it again because I'm already messing up some of the details and I'm already making myself sound better than I was in the moment.

You were you were not bad in the moment. I want it for the record. I want to say your response was totally appropriate. In fact, it was it could you could have been more like snarky back to me and you chose not to be. So it was I don't think you had a bad response.

I could have written, but you're no Brian Unger yourself. yeah but i don't know i don't think i can answer that question honestly because there are times where i am very detail oriented and i do look at stuff like that but also if it's a long chain between a bunch of you know what i mean and the top level is hey we're gonna do the thing festival i don't know that i go back and i read all of it or scan it so i don't know i can't answer that but anyways i'm actually very surprised you remember that so that was a little bit of you grabbing the

electric fence too then well it's because i don't um amazingly i don't grab i don't grab i don't step on that third rail of digital communication that often yeah so the times when it happens it's pretty vivid in my mind uh-huh and i'm kind of surprised it doesn't happen more not that you know to be honest with you though for a generally catty person i don't i feel like i try to not go too crazy on the on on being catty via like text or email because there's a permanent record of all of it and i kind of don't it's like i feel like i'm constantly being surveilled by the fbi like all my wires are tapped so i try to keep that chatter to a minimum only because you never know when that's going to come back to haunt you or somebody is going to you know i don't know just i just it's i don't like typing that stuff into the permanent record i like saying it out over beers into the impermanent record but probably too much yeah i mean i don't think that you and i

I don't think there's you know there's always a bit of a difference between what we say in the microphones and what we don't say in the microphones but I think that you and I are for the most part pretty true to our personalities here and I don't think that we're somebody who like if somebody were to record us over beers and then you would hear the conversation be shocked that Luke and Andrew would say those things there are some things that we might say a little bit sarcastically that's a little bit more edgy than we would say over the microphones because you have to have more responsibility when you talk over a microphone. And you can lose context if it were ever like, you know, you could just lose context if it's pulled out of context. And I think that goes back to the the email texting thing for me, which is something I'm probably a little bit more thoughtful about these days. Even some work stuff like there are this isn't often, but there are some work conversations where I'm thinking of one colleague in particular who I will text them on their phone if I want to have a conversation about some work-related stuff as opposed to just using work email or Slack or something. And it's not because I honestly think there's any world in which, and I want to make this clear, that like APM is reading my emails, but it's kind of like, well, maybe it's just better. Let's make this a phone conversation so that I can use my words and my tone and not worry that a text message without context implies something else or seems harsher, if that makes sense.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, listen. We have done absolutely, we've delivered on none of the top stories, but I think we have delivered on a much more interesting story, which is the story of the time when I mildly dragged Joe an email from two years ago that we're only now finally airing out. And I feel good about it. I hope you feel good about it, too.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man. It's not from a female.

What do we call that again? Did we just cross the river? We jumped the river?

I think we might have dried the river. I think we might have reversed the river. I don't know what we did.

Dry me a river. The classic Justin Timberlake song, Dry Me a River.

I wonder if that's a show title.

Maybe. Kind of like the shirts and skins. tbtl colon shirts and skins

I want to play another voicemail for you because I just still have a couple but before that let me just do a little bit of business here business I had mentioned or I tried to mention on the show the other day an early podcast that I listened to way way back in the day when I was like I'd update my iPad not my iPad I'd update my iPod go out to the barn smoke heaters drink beer played darts and listened to a podcast and i told you it was just like this um young-ish married couple that they described themselves as punks who had moved out to like oh right yeah and bought a farm uh several people got back at me the dawn and drew show and apparently it's still running in some iteration one listener said that they had gone away for a while then came back i don't know according to wikipedia the dawn and drew show There's a podcast.

Starring Don Michelli And Drew Domkiss If I'm saying that right He was in a band called The Scattered Few Which was a Christian punk band Apparently the hosts describe themselves As two ex-gutter punks who fall in love By a retired farmhouse in Wisconsin And then tell the world their dirty secrets Always profane, rarely profound I kind of want to go back And listen but also part of me Is kind of like I love the way I remember it And maybe shouldn't go back Not that I think it's terrible But like it's just of a very certain time and place for me. And also not that different than what you and I do. It's just two people like talking about their lives. I also wanted to circle back on dazzling donor Jeff, who used his message last week to say he remembered buying some coffee flavored Kit Kats in 2004. And then they all disappeared. And then like that day, he went back into the gas station and they were gone. And the store clerk was like, doesn't look like anything to me. And he said he spent his life trying to track him down. Well, Jojo in Japan, who was also a dazzling donor that same day, says here in Japan, we are the land of varied Kit Kats. I think I can maybe help my fellow same day dazzler Jeff with the mystery. Is it possible that Jeff got a Japanese Kit Kat? He sends a link of all of the Kit Kat products currently available. Some tea, no coffee. But in 2010, there was an espresso flavor and also a latte flavor. Did Jeff accidentally teleport to Japan? I feel like Jeff would remember that. Did he pick up a random box from Tokyo? So it could have been espresso or latte. Either way, thanks again. If we ever have a coffee Kit Kats here in Japan, I'd be delighted to send some to Jeff because that is the TBTL way, my friend. It sure is.

I wonder if there's any chance I'm trying to think of like Kit Kat from Japan could have somehow ended up in the supply chain of making it to a gas station in I feel like it was like Tulsa, Oklahoma or something like a very good memory and seemingly far flung place from from, you know, Japan. I wonder if that's even possible.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I do feel like – I mean, that's the interesting thing that it sounded like it was just like kind of a run-of-the-mill style convenience store or gas station, not like a boutique-y kind of place. Because, I mean, you do see weird promotions kind of float through like with test markets and what have you. But I always think that those are kind of more treasured and announced, not just like we're going to throw one box up. Right. They're hyped. Yeah, exactly. So, all right. Let me just play one.

Can I throw one in that I promoted? oh yeah please i didn't pay off on one thing do it do it do it listener sarah said hey luke um get some white vinegar for those blue jeans she said i'm also wondering if this process will work for the ones that smell weird she uh attaches a link to a wiki how article about how to set the dye in your in your clothes and it involves vinegar and salt and this certain like kind of solution and then you soak the fabric in there and then you rinse it off under cold water and then you run it in the dishwasher in the laundry machine on cold and it's supposed to kind of like sort of take care of all of that i guess i'm just thinking you know we live in 2021 we have a a rover on mars that's about to fly its own helicopter they can't just make it so that the jeans are not bleeding ink all like i got to do this to the jeans and then i got to do this to And I'll just mention, because they're not a sponsor to the show, even though I shop there a lot. It's J.Crew. Both of these pairs of jeans, I bought them on the same day at J.Crew because they were having a sale. And I liked the first pair that I tried on. So I got an air and a spare, as I like to do. And again, the first pair, the ink comes off of them. The second pair, ink is fine, but it smells weirdly almost sulfuric. And it has nothing to do with my hygiene, I'd like to say. It's not like I didn't step in anything or roll in something with the jeans. The jeans have always smelled funky. And I don't know if any other listeners have experienced that. It was like the dye went bad that they used on the jeans.

For the leaky color jeans, I was going to assume that maybe these were like high-end jeans, like that they were so – because, you know, there's like a jean culture. Was it Anderson Cooper? We talked about a story a long time ago that like I guess coworkers – I want to say Anderson Cooper. I could be wrong about that. But some network TV host, he kind of like his co-workers lovingly chided him that his jeans stunk all the time because he loved his jeans so much that he wouldn't wash them because he was like a true denim aficionado. And so I don't remember the details, but something along those lines. So when you're telling me you have this, I'm like, oh, because you probably went to some store where there's like they sell one tennis shoe and one. of jeans and they're like for the people who are denim lovers.

$75 jeans from J.Crew. Like, not some special, like you say, hand forged salvaged denim product or something. Like, you'd think that they'd have figured out the mass production of this so that you don't have to. I've had this happen with other jeans before, too, where like, Space Car 2 had like tan seats in it. And And the driver's seat just became this kind of weird color of blue from my blue jeans. I wonder if this is a bigger problem in America than we're talking about, Andrew. This may be the biggest problem facing America right now.

I assume it is. I assume we will see something in SNL about it tomorrow. Anyway, thanks for the tips, sir.

I may actually do that. Although, again, I've washed the pair that are leaking dye. I've washed them three or four times now in cold water, which seems like it should be enough. And the pair that don't smell great, those I've washed two or three times in cold water, and they still have the smell.

Do you want to go out with Forever in Blue Jeans by Neil Diamond?

Yes, I do. God, I love that song. I don't think I actually like this song. But it don't dance and it don't walk. I was once dragged into singing Forever in Blue Jeans at karaoke At LaLani Lanes In the LaLani Kai room By my old friend Emily Hall A writer from Seattle And I didn't know the song Andrew and I just tried to fake my way through it But what I realized at the end was I think it's actually quite a good song And so after that I became a fan And I now do kind of know it

I know it because my mom listened to Neil Diamond constantly she had an obsession with Neil Diamond growing up. She would see him, I think she saw him twice on the same tour one time, because he came to Cleveland twice or something. Yeah, and we weren't like big, we were not a big music family, right? Like, it was that and David Copperfield shows were the two things my mom went to. Wow, that's a real type. It is a real type, isn't it?

Like, Neil Diamond and David Copperfield have a very sort of like, I mean Neil Diamond is considerably older, but you put those guys next to each other, and that's a vibe.

Do you think that he is considerably older i actually kind of look this up um deal diamond age is okay i'm gonna look up david copperfield age and okay then we'll tell me we'll say them both at the exact same time

okay hold on and they're gonna probably give me the character from uh the dickens uh book which is gonna really leave me okay i've got it here in three two one eighty years wow you're right

big difference 80 and 64 so that's a generation but um yeah similar kind of vibe there so i grew up really disliking neil diamond because i was overexposed to it and i thought it was corny now that i'm an adult there is some neil diamond that i truly love i love the song song song blue i like the his early stuff that sounds like a lot of blue in the names of these songs yeah blue jeans song sung blue obsessed but yeah forever in blue jeans i remember this as still being corny it hasn't won me over yet fully but i'm excited to hear it again and rediscover it

and see if maybe i do like it all right uh that's we're going to go out with and uh tomorrow we may or may not get to uh the things that we didn't get to today we'll definitely get to our newfound reddit fame though because that's a biggie for me we're finally we're finally getting some of the recognition that we deserved andrew my friend it is a beautiful day here in portland oregon i I have a lot of work I got to do still today. But when that's all done, baby, I'm getting my teeny tiny barbecue grill operating again. I've still got a few light life veggie dogs. I've still got half an onion. And I got a Seattle Mariners game tonight, my friend. Oh, that's right. It's going to be fun.

What time is the game? Seven? Yeah, let's do this. Oh, I look forward to that. Yes. I know. I'll see you on the text chain, my friend. All right, buddy.

Thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back here tomorrow morning With more Imaginary Radio for you So please do join us for that Until then, have a great Monday Stay safe, go Mariners And please remember, no mountain too tall And good luck to all

Money talks But it don't sing and dance And it don't walk As long as I can have you here with me I'd much rather be Forever in blue jeans Honey, sweet But it ain't nothing next to baby's treat And if you'd pardon me I'd like to say We'd do okay Forever in blue jeans Baby tonight

Baby tonight by the fire all alone you and I Nothing around but the sound of my heart and your sighs

Money talks

But it can't sing and dance and it can't walk

As long as I can have you here with me

Power out