Muse

Hey there, a friend of mine left me a note, um, in my handwriting, and he said that you might be able to set me up with the pill that makes the memories go away, like a, like a shame wow. See, I did something a little out of character, and, um, the window is kind of closing in on, you know, before it lodges in the long term, um, what do you call it, um, what do you call it? brains long term brains TBTL

why are you wasting your time with this podcast stuff because I have nothing else going on

we are still on for this afternoon right operation monkey brain you paint your bald spot

I don't know what you're talking about sir my hair grows you paint your bald spot oh my god one hundo a day both of us five hundo a week that's rich that's it

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

You know, this show is like a dynasty. You hold it and then you hand it off to the next person.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I don't do this for the clout. I don't do this for the fame.

Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center high in the sky above Portland, Oregon, where we're looking at a cloudy but dry Tuesday, which is always nice. Got out for my little morning jog along the Willamette River today, and I encountered kind of a pack of geese. and I'm going to be totally honest with you I'm a little bit scared of geese like they're pretty big and they can be pretty aggressive and it was this narrow part of the trail and I don't know it was maybe like four adult geese and they were kind of big and they were kind of blocking the trail and I was like god crap this is going to be like a west side story thing where I got to like dance fight these geese to get past As I got closer, I realized why these geese were in this formation. It was because they were surrounding and protecting eight unbelievably adorable goslings. I don't mean Ryan Gosling. I mean baby geese. Like with the little, like, I don't even know what you call that fluff. It's not feathers yet. And they were, like, golden, these little, like, geese. And I, like, looked at, like, we just had a moment. I looked at the adult geese. They looked at me. They were like, this is what we're doing here. I was like, got you. I kind of just skirted around them. They went on their way. I went on my way. And it was, like, made my whole morning, I got to tell you. See, you know, see nature doing its thing out there. TBTL is going to keep doing its thing on this Tuesday with episode 3410 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Speaking of animals, we got an update on Prancer, the chihuahua, the high-maintenance chihuahua that somebody was trying to adopt out. They'd been fostering Prancer. And I believe in the, like, ad, if you will, for Prancer, they described Prancer. I don't know if I realized Prancer was a male dog, but they described Prancer as a ghost of a Victorian doll. like that's just like speaks to prancer's mental state that dog is barking that is not my dog well somebody has adopted prancer and so we'll uh tell you who was in the market for a haunted victorian doll of a chihuahua and then continuing to speak of animals apparently that's mostly what we're doing today a town in canada had its internet go out they couldn't figure out what was going on they went over to the local beaver dam where inside the dam they found the the internet cable that used to be buried in the ground in pvc pipe i will send you the finest

lubrication agent made by the sweat of 17 hard-working canadian beavers so we'll um give

you the details on that story as well plus the tbtl drops of stupider the deuce rolls on our attempt to identify the greatest moment in tbtl history the best moment of tbtl all that plus emails and vmails and this guy the longest running cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships as you know as a regular listener i sustained a hand injury last week which has been feeling a little bit better but he went to the doctor yesterday Okay.

And we may need emergency surgery in the studio. He is Andrew. Well, she is joining us right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. Let's hope that the surgery doesn't happen in the studio. But I guess it could. What about that? Has any podcast? Have they done that yet, Luke? We're still looking. I once had a tattoo.

I once I once got a tattoo live during the show. and I will tell you what it hurt way more than I expected it to um and uh you know that was not the first time I'd gotten a tattoo and I remember this is at my old house in Seattle it was our friend Lucky from Lucky's Tattoo in Seattle and uh I I remember trying to host the show and get the tattoo and starting to have that feeling where the blood is kind of draining from your head and you're starting to get a little woozy slash you could maybe throw up um and um it was not a great feeling. So I would recommend, particularly with your kind of sensitivity around medical intervention, I would say don't get the surgery live on the show. I always thought you did that on the radio.

No. Yeah, I guess I didn't really set you up for more there. That's interesting. And this was your second tattoo, right? This wasn't the first time you ever had a needle. Where was this tattoo on your body?

Well, the thing was, the reason it didn't happen on the radio show was because for about the duration that we were about the time that we were on the airwaves in seattle that whatever it was a year and six months or something i was in the process of having a tattoo removed so i had a tattoo that had addy's name on it it had my first wife's name on it and then when van and i started dating at some point and it wasn't like a big thing but i think it was we had a conversation and you know it was sort of like hey you know wouldn't be the wouldn't be the worst thing if you didn't have as fabulous says if you didn't have your x tatted on your frame uh so i was like okay so i i started going into this place and having the tattoo removed which was a shockingly painless process they shot it up with some lidocaine and then they just passed a little laser over it but that took like i don't know eight months because you get the they sort of burn part of the tattoo off and then it heals it takes a long time to heal and then when it's all better and there's like now there's like 20 less tattoo you go in and they do it again

i thought and so i thought that's the painful part maybe with other what's really i know we

need to talk about your finger not a tattoo that i had removed 12 years ago but it a lot of it has to do with the color of ink believe it or not certain ink is easier to break up under the skin black ink is the easiest to remove i was told that's interesting i know you wouldn't think right that seems like the most staining would be the black but there's something about it at least that this is what the person who did the removal told me back then and um it was uh it was i had i think i had what because it was just you know somebody's name it was just n-i-c the letters n-i-c in in black ink on this like horseshoe that had kind of a ribbon running across it that's why you

have that tattoo for nicorette gum now i always wondered i'm like i didn't even know you ever smoked let alone use nicorette to quit smoking i was like wow it really worked you're really

committed to the brand well the part that really hurt was the disclaimer i had to get tattooed on my rib cage do not use nicorette if you're allergic to nicorette if your cravings last for more than four hours see a doctor nicorette may not be right for all patients like that the fact that legally i had to do that yeah uh was kind of something i hadn't really thought through But anyway, so it wasn't until after we were off the radio that I had now this blank spot on my arm on this ribbon that used to have two names on it, and now it just had Addy on it. And so I had Lucky, who also did my Joy tattoo. I have a tattoo of a Joy bottle on my arm, and Lucky did an incredible job. To this day, people go, wow, that is really, really interesting, and also that tattoo is really holding up well. anyway i had him put grace which is addy's middle name in the spot where the other name had been so that's what was happening on the air and that's why it was painful because you're getting a tattoo over a tattoo maybe that was it i don't know i hadn't really uh again at that point i probably had like one i think i'm i had a few tattoos at that point so it was like i was not nervous going in i'd been through the process but maybe because it was covering up yeah like maybe because it was in a place where there'd already been a tattoo. It was just, I had this moment where I was like, really felt like I might pass out, and thought, this is, I really did not plan this out very well.

Yeah, although, I mean, not to take anything away from that, but in my head, you were always live on the radio in that case, which that, the stakes is high there, isn't it? Totally. If you pass out during a podcast. You would just, you know, somehow fix it in post or not or whatever. But you're in your own home.

That should be a pretty good episode. It'd also be good live radio. To be honest with you, I should have just gone with it. It'd be amazing live radio, yeah. I should have just let the vapors take me. Okay, so back to possibly passing out live on the air on the podcast. If you don't mind, and I don't want to violate any HIPAA stuff, and I don't want you to feel like you have to talk about something you're not into talking about, But it sounds like the situation with the finger is plural, not super great.

Well, I was just weirdly optimistic. And I mean, I think the lesson that I learned at a young age is never be optimistic. And then I don't know why I decided to try out optimism again. It sucks. Like, just always expect the worst. Now, let me say what I got yesterday when I went for my first, you know, post fracture hand doctor appointment was not the worst. I haven't heard anything about ligaments being torn. Do I say ligaments funny? I think I said ligament, ligaments or ligaments. None of those have been torn. I didn't hear about any tendon damage, but I will say that I was in the waiting room and I always get pretty anxious in doctors waiting rooms, even even for just checkups. It's just not my comfort zone. But I remember being I was I'm not going to say I wasn't nervous at all, but I just kept saying, I mean, you're going to go in there. Here's what I thought was going to happen. I'm going to go in these folks make their money I mean and I'm not somebody who's a skeptic of the medical system usually but I think this process of like being bounced between various providers and seeing how difficult it is to like get my information from one medical facility to another and people referring me and following up and wanting to know why I'm not getting my surgery with a different department like it's sort of in the back of my head I was like well I guess these folks do make their money by offering surgery. So here's how I think it's going to go down. I'm going to go in. They're going to say, oh, you took a tumble, didn't you? Well, here's a lollipop. We're going to keep that. I didn't get a lollipop, by the way.

Oh, not even. Our insurance doesn't cover that.

No, they gave me a stick. They gave me a white stick that was soggy on one end where a lollipop had been. Anyway, I just really thought they were going to say, you know, we're going to keep that splint on there. your finger won't heal perfectly it'll probably look a little bit funny if you want to correct for that we can have some surgery but also you'll but otherwise you'll just be fine you know you don't have to get the elective surgery to make your hand look better it's just kind of how I assumed it would be but instead I went in and the physician's assistant or nurse or whoever she was she very gently took the bandage off of my finger which at a certain point it's so delicate that like it started sticking on her a little bit and she said i'm gonna go get some scissors i said you know what it might just make sense for me to pull the rest of this off like i kind of know what my pain points are and like i can gingerly do that so i just ended up it was the first time i'd taken the splint off since uh i fell exactly a week ago almost to the hour by the way um and so the fingers exposed for the first time and it's a little bit sore from taking the bandage off and i'm sitting in there and i'm trying not to look at it i told her i'm pretty squeamish but I'm like, okay, this will be good. She's going to clean it up. The doctor is going to look at it and then rewrap it. But instead, the doctor comes in. Now, here are the good things. And I don't know. This makes no sense at all, and it's ageist. But I liked that the doctor was older than me and not super interested in glossing over things. Like, he kind of came in and kind of sighed, and he was like, ooh, this is a bad one. I was like, are you kidding me? And again, I can't explain to you enough that the way he talked to me, I really appreciated it. He was just like straightforward with me. He's like, you got a bunch of little pieces of bone floating around in there, which I could tell that one chunk of bone was like a corner of one of my bones had been chipped off. But again, I was like, I don't know. I'm taking some supplements that are called bone strong that have like calcium in it. Like I think like bone strong in a splint. I should be good. But he's like, no, you just see the one. but there's a bunch of little floaties in there like you're you're that whole knuckle area is pretty messed up and he said like try making try making a fist or like even just a partial fist which i could barely barely do but it's like pretty clear he's like look how all your fingers he's like do it on the other hand look how all your fingers kind of move in a kind of a same direction kind of um kind of bend a little bit towards the thumb when you make a gentle fist like that and then do look what your other one is trying to do and it's like trying to bend and trying to bend in the wrong direction it's kind of pointing in the wrong direction so he's like that's what we got to take care of and I'm like but I'm like how like how are you going to do that I'm kind of like I'm feeling a little faint at this point I'm just like oh fuck because he's like describing what they're going to do and he's like well we're going to use a bunch of wires and we're going to try to tie it up and maybe it's a bunch of little tiny screws and we might even leave those wires sticking out of the skin i'll have to make up my mind during surgery and we can pull the wires out later that way or and i'm just like uh because at one point i'm like oh are the wires just going to

disintegrate by themselves he's like no you're going to come back we're going to take those out and i was like oh god i just really thought that it was just like i don't know it's a broken finger people break fingers all the time i mean i just thought this would be a simple one a nice easy entry into my world of breaking things but um it's a little bit again could be way worse but it's way more complicated than I wanted to hear. And, you know, it's just I'm getting my my COVID shot on Wednesday, which I have not been nervous about at all. But people are saying, hey, be ready for Thursday to be a tough day. And I've been saying mind over matter. I'll be fine on Thursday. But in the back of my head, trying to prepare a little bit. And now it's like, OK, now Thursday might be rough. And then I can start fasting on Thursday night so I can go in for surgery on Friday. Like everything just feels everything just feels messed up right now. And I'm just a little grumpy. And I apologize for being grumpy but that's where we are what do you think would have happened

if we if this were the 1800s you know and there were no x-rays and you and i were you know we just worked on a farm together and we just talked for about an hour a day while farming that's my idea of what a medieval podcast was just the conversation that people had while they were doing something actually useful right right and you broke your finger like this and And then just like they didn't have wires that they could put in and then pull out later. Like, what do you think would happen if you just don't go back?

Have you ever seen those cave paintings where there's like one of those stick figures running after a garbage truck yelling, you missed my bin? I think that might have been that.

Oh, my God. I'd never. Yeah. Absolutely right. That was early podcast. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, like, what if you just don't go back? What happens? I mean, your finger's not going to fall off, right? It'll just heal real bad.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's pointing in the wrong direction when I try to bend it. He even said, like, even after the surgery, he's like, you won't be able to bend the finger. Like, it'll just be. Wow. Yeah, he's like, the finger's not good.

You mean, like, ever again? Like, that finger is done moving?

No, not never be able to bend it, but never be able to bend it all the way. He's like, you won't ever be able to make a fist with that hand again. We'll just get you so that you can type and stuff. Oh, and then I told you this before. Yeah, I know. My boxing and my piano career. I told you before the show, too, and I did feel vindicated because I've, you know, I can never tell. when I'm being overly dramatic on this stuff. I haven't had a lot of injuries in my life. But my favorite thing was at the end of the consultation, he said, oh, yeah, you fractured your pinky, too. But that thing will just go on itself. And I'm just like, I knew that thing really hurt. I knew it shouldn't be so blue and swollen. So anyway.

Not to frame things like this, but, like, does part of you feel a little bit macho that, like, you have a broken finger that's not even the problem?

Yeah, no, that's what I mean. Yeah, no, I felt, because, you know, again, like, I don't know like I I'm texting with you guys the night of and I just have no way of well it's really hard to compare pain I mean listen you know my brother-in-law Genevieve's brother was over here um this weekend he was visiting as he was coming through town and um you know he uh he did to his knee basically what I did to my finger when he was skiing about what 10 10 years ago or something Now, he was in his 20s then. He's a very healthy guy. But, you know, like he shattered his knee like I shattered one knuckle on my finger, you know, like again, like things things can always be worse. So I'm not trying to make too big of a deal of it. But I am kind of glad to know that when I was, you know, telling you on Tuesday, like, oh, this really sucked, it really hurt. Like, I'm glad to know that, yeah, I actually did kind of fracture a couple of fingers and it's, you know, it's not completely in my head. I'm not being a total a total mamby pamby about this.

So you've got this. This surgery is going to supposedly going to happen sometime on Friday.

Yeah. And that's weird, too.

Like, it's so you're getting your second vax dose tomorrow and then rolling right into a surgery. That's a yeah, a lot for Andy's.

Yeah. So it's a lot for Andy's. And also, like, and again, this isn't a huge, but it's just like the whole thing is strange. Like I did not have to get a covid test to get my to, you know, have my doctor's appointment yesterday. But apparently for surgery, I do. So I have to drive into a garage that is connected to the place where I'm getting my surgery done. And then they'll administer the covid test in the garage and somehow turn it over in time for me to then get like, I don't know if I'm going to sit in the car for an hour. Like I'm waiting for all these instructions. Somebody is supposed to call me tomorrow and they don't even have a time for me yet. I don't know if they have to leave that a little bit loose until a couple of days before, depending on what other emergency surgeries they have. But I know that they said this one couldn't wait. Like the doctor said, we need you in here like as soon as possible. And I'm like, well, I mean, I think Friday maybe could work. And then I go out to make the appointment with the scheduler. And she has me down there by like May 11th or something. I'm like, oh. is that okay i thought the doctor wanted me in here as soon as possible and then she went and talked to the doctor she's like oh yeah we got to get you in here fast so that's one of the reasons why i know that like they're not i don't think that they're just trying to and again i feel even bad thinking that but part of me was just kind of like you know how much of this stuff is always necessary and how much of it is them saying well this is our business so let's let's do our job and do what's right for the patient and also you know did they tell you they're reusing the gauze

to save the whales they said you would like new gauze leave it on the floor but exactly if you put it on the countertop they'll reuse it so as to help the environment because that's bullshit in

my opinion yeah i think that's such an ugly look by the way like i growing up or just throughout my life you hear people who like really distrust the medical community and everything's a racket and you know like i'm definitely definitely definitely not one of those people but this is just kind of a new space i'm playing in here also i just sort of also because i'm not a good advocate for myself and I'm intimidated by the system I feel like I always end up somehow like oh well that referral didn't actually like you find out later when you're negotiating with your insurance company like oh that referral was a referral B you needed a referral A in order for this to you know actually be covered by insurance so I'm just sort of like I feel like there's a million things I should be doing right now to advocate for myself more but I don't even really know what those things are they say that oh also it's like they say I can make up I can decide on the spot what kind of anesthesia i want like if i yeah whether it's a local or a because i said i need to go like i said doctor like i can barely stand this conversation like you got you just got to knock me out for this that's the only thing i care about he's like yeah he's like you can get totally uh knocked out totally sedated or like there are various options he's like you can decide i'm like well when do i decide he's like you just tell him then i'm just like that just seems so strange i'm just gonna like like ordering a cocktail he actually did say he's like yeah we have some pretty good he may actually made a cocktail related joke about it he said we have some pretty good mixologists or something along those lines but um yeah so i don't know i'm a little bit confused and intimidated by the whole thing and i feel like i'm probably not asking all

the all the right questions but well i mean this is you're kind of uniquely you're uniquely set up for this to be a bad experience because as as you've said you really don't feel super comfortable in the medical environment i don't think anyone feels great in that environment but you feel especially uncomfortable yeah and also you don't like not knowing what the plan is and this is sounds like a bunch of stuff that's up in the air so because you i mean you would like to know what time everything's going to happen so you can figure out if you can do tbtl on friday and if you can't how do you let whoever needs to know how to get the show on the internet like you i know the way your brain works and so the fact that it's not only a thing you don't want to do but the fact that so much of it is actually tbd is just those are like your two least probably favorite feelings

to have yeah that's that's not great as well i mean for the surgery thing i i can't um i'm just yeah i the idea of going in there for the surgery is pretty intimidating for me i think i think i'm putting a lot of energy into some of the other things around it right now because i kind of don't want to think about that too much but that's definitely the that's definitely the main thing there i also uh forgot to ask like what we're talking about as far as like next day recovery and pain levels um i think again usually it's just the procedure itself like once it's just pain it's like okay i can deal with that but it's like the looming any kind of looming situation where somebody's gonna uh cut me open is even if it's just a little bit in my finger it's just kind of uh you know kind of upsetting to me but yeah i'm looking forward to being on the other side of it oh he did say it's gonna be like three full months before i probably even get to the physical therapy

side of things so so you're gonna have like uh some kind of thing on your finger for three months

I think so some sort of splint my guess is as these you know they might um they might become less hulking as time goes on I don't know I'm just sort of guessing that although the splints I have on now are not super hulking oh that's the other thing so they rewrapped my finger up instead of putting the splint underneath like kind of underneath my finger palm side they put a different kind of splint on the top of my finger and I don't know what the difference is but the way they wrapped this thing back up is there's like a little ledge now sticking out on this gd splint and twice so I I walked home from the doctor yesterday by the way watching me walk outside on the sidewalk now is like watching Bambi walk on ice like I am so careful every step because I think I'm gonna fall on my hand again um and uh but they they tied up the splint in this way where part of it is kind of hanging off my finger a little bit kind of off the back of my hand by my knuckle and twice yesterday i caught it on something because it's totally like it's just different i was used to navigating the other one and twice i tweaked this thing and it hurts

oh a bad luke but are you what's your what is your uh relationship with the pain meds right now

Like when that happens, are you completely not on anything that's helping with the pain?

I was off them. I took them for a few days, but then I was like, yeah, you know, if I don't – I didn't want to get in a – I like taking those things, so I need to be careful taking those things, right? So I took them for a few days but was being like pretty careful with it, and then I think last Friday – whatever, several days ago, I stopped taking them, and there was still plenty left in the bottle. I probably took less than half. But then yesterday, after I tweaked it twice on various things, and it was throbbing last night, I did take one again. I was glad I had it.

Gosh. Well, I'm sorry, man. That really sucks.

It's all right. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. I hope that we'll get through this week. Of course, like I told you, I'm putting all my energy into trying to figure out other problems, like what this means for the show on Friday and the newsletter. Well, that helps me. Yeah, exactly.

I'm glad that the way you're processing your anxiety is making it less hard on me to try to solo. I mean, we were joking about, or not even joking, we were just talking about this, but it's like the process of getting people who are hearing this right now. I mean, we actually talk about it a lot, so maybe they have some sense of it, but like you just kind of think like, I don't know, podcast. You go on wherever you get your podcast and you hit play and then it starts playing and maybe those people just, they kind of like emailed it to the internet and now it's here. It's like the process that has evolved at our workplace for getting the show to the listeners is so incredibly complex that like – I mean I stopped understanding it years ago and it sounds like it's only gotten – what I'm trying to say is if there's no show on Friday, don't blame us. Blame the system.

Have we ever – I mean we have never done that. We even always ran a rerun or something.

We've never not put a show up in in however many years that the shows existed. There's never not been a show that I can remember.

Right. And the thing is, it's like recording the show isn't the problem. Like you and I were talking before the show. You can record a show. Like I said, I went through the voicemail line. It's not going to be good. I can record a show by myself. It's not good when I'm here either. So the consistency, my friend. But, you know, like I went through the voicemail line. I have like tons of voicemails you could play if you went solo. I know you could bring somebody else on. You could get Nora on the line. And she could try to steal my goddamn job again Like there are options but it is it's like Weird it's like the unfun part is The biggest barrier here like you got to have One person with a key in Minnesota turning At the same exact time I turn a key Nuclear code in Seattle Like there's I believe there's a troll that Asks you three questions One of which is your favorite color I don't know So it's a very complicated process And you know that I am not I have not done a good job of Of like training

Well of training somebody

take a well but honestly like this is what i was going to say before like the process of uploading the show picture every day is probably twice as complicated as the old process for uploading the entire show back when you were doing this at cairo radio or using their system you know what i mean like just uploading a photo is so complicated now that that alone and that's that's still the easy part you know so they're just a lot of different they're like three different systems you have to log into and make sure they're all talking to each other you know

blah blah blah so anyway i gotta is it that they're afraid someone's gonna hack into the system and like like i don't know put their own podcast up i wonder why it is that these systems need be so

complex yeah i think it's a combination of things i think it's because it is they are systems that are built internally and i think a lot of people in all industries know that feeling of like well we have this software because I'm in this specific industry and like, we're not using any third party software, right? Like I can get done with one of my other shows and pop that thing up to SoundCloud or I tap, not like TASCA. What's the Libsyn. I never say that. Libsyn. And you know, those are user friendly, but we work for a network and we're not going to be using third party stuff. So they create all their own stuff, which is then more complicated. And also I think it has to do with the fact that these are systems that are built to meet all the different needs of a whole bunch of different shows that have a bunch of different needs you know and and things had transferred slowly over i mean you got legacy shows on the classical music side of things that are still adapting to these systems so my guess is it's complicated because it's trying to serve a whole bunch of needs this just got really boring i'm sorry you ever have that no i asked i hear yourself talking you're like oh no no no you were

answering a question that i asked so that's not on you my friend i just want to let the listeners know there's a decent chance that on Friday the way the show is going to occur is I'm going to be standing, I'm looking at it right now on the roof of Stark's Vacuum Repair at the intersection of it's at Burnside and MS MLK in Portland, Oregon, okay, I will be standing on that roof like the B-Sharps in the Simpsons or the Beatles in their final concert, and I will just have a—I'm going to have to go find some kind of megaphone somewhere, and I'm just going to be doing the show to whoever wants to gather down there. That's how we're going to distribute the show on Friday.

Hey, human, fly here.

so i just want to let everybody know that may be that's the plan b is me on the roof of a vacuum repair shop just talking as loudly as i can to whoever can make it to that spot or just raining

like just taking handfuls and handfuls of usb drives that have the show on them and just like making it rain off the building under the street below it's your lucky day

All right, let's take a quick break, and then we have lots of animal stories to share with you coming up in a moment here on TBTL. Stay with us.

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

Everybody rattle, dazzle. Let's thank some dazzling donors. These are donors who are dazzling us with their donation of dough each month Very, very, very essential to the show existing It's part of how we've been able to put a show up five days a week For the last, whatever, 12 years Up until Friday when that streak comes to an end The way that we've been able to do it historically though Is due to the generosity of the TBTL listeners The tens of listeners and folks like Alan Christensen of Normandy Park, Washington.

He's our boy.

Alan's been riding with us for years and years. And Alan says, I thought that being retired, it would be easy to keep up with the show, but I have found that it is not the case. It was much easier when I could listen at work. One last thing. Release the Burbank cut of the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players documentary. Wow, Alan. Much to unpack from this message Well, first of all, thank you, buddy Really nice to hear from you Hope you're doing well, man We're thinking of you always

Luke, he's not really keeping up with the show much You can say anything you want You don't have to be nice Well, I mean, that's the thing

People, I've said this before about radio shows Like, if you're ever, like, you know If you're ever working with a radio host Or somebody who is feeling very, very I don't know Essential to the world And essential to their listeners Wait until those listeners commutes change By one hour I've had this experience myself as a listener Like something that I was like Oh my god I never missed that show And then you know My schedule at work would change And then I'd be like Is that still on? I don't know Guess I'm a Larry Mantle guy now Right exactly So it's like I bet that that happens a lot where it's like somebody's doing a certain kind of job that affords them the ability to listen to podcasts, and they're like, hey, this one's great. I listen to it every day. It's a big part of my life. And then something changes about that or their commute changes or what have you. So, Alan, totally understand. We're honored that you're still a dazzling donor and that you're at least trying to keep up with the show. Appreciate you on that one. Also Released the Burbank cut of the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players Documentary Man, I gotta figure out where that thing even is I think it's in an attic In the attic at the Burbank Springs Broadcast Center up in Bellingham

You have like one copy of it?

Maybe What kind of format would it be on?

I don't really know film formats very well Well

So I know that it's on Like a Betamax tape because i had to get it duped and i was not disrespecting your duplication well i did investigate i wasn't even thinking that luke um i had to i think i actually told this story not that long ago on the show but i um so i made this documentary about this um really quirky band in seattle they were a family they're called the trackenbergs their deal was they would go to estate sales and they would buy boxes of slides from you know people they'd never met And then they would write songs about the slides and the people in the slides, and then they would show the slides, sing the songs. Their daughter, Rachel, who at the time was Addie's—well, they're still the same age, but at the time was like seven or something—would play the drums. It was very adorable. And Jason Trachtenberg, the dad, is actually, I think, a really talented singer-songwriter. Like, I really like his music. Well, it got into the CMJ Film Festival in New York, and they said, here's what you need to send it in on.

It needs to be on some kind of a – and I think it's called a Betamax. It's like a large format VHS tape-looking thing, but bigger than – you know what I mean? Like it's something like a news crew might use back in the 90s. And I was living in L.A. at the time, and I didn't know how to do this. I didn't have that equipment, so I jumped on old Craigslist, and I found – you know where this story is going. I ended up in Chatsworth, up in the Porn Fernando Valley, and the guy, who was very nice and duped it for me, and I don't know what it cost me, but he had this whole elaborate rig, and I was like, wow, this is pretty fancy in your house. He was like, yeah, well, I wanted to be a porn editor, but apparently everybody else in the valley got the same idea. We all bought all this equipment. There's not enough editing work to go around, and so most of us are on Craigslist just offering to duplicate things. I wonder how he's doing. I can't imagine that the industry has moved more in the direction of guys in their garage in Chatsworth. I wouldn't guess. With their antiquated, now antiquated gear. Yeah, right? I mean, you always want to get in on the hardware side of any kind of entertainment.

Isn't any kind of content busy? I mean, honestly, though, Boogie Nights is about format, right? Like, at the end of the day, a big plot point is about whether or not the porn industry is going to go with one, like, I guess, VHS beta or something along those lines, right?

Right, it's going to go probably like off of film and onto videotape or something. Yeah, yeah. That's what it was, yeah. If you ever have a chance in the content business to get in on the kind of brick and mortar side of it, to get in on the hardware, that's really where the money is because that never becomes antiquated.

Right, right.

But, you know, my dream with this movie – okay, so like I didn't know what I was doing. I was like 24. I was toting Addie around because I had her on the weekends and we were always shooting on the weekends. So she'd be like you'd see her in the back of shots and stuff just because it was just like it was like it was daddy Addy time slash documentary film production. And I edited it on a computer that I had to bought like an Apple computer or a Mac, I should say, that I bought like for the project. I didn't know what I was doing. I cut it in Final Cut, but I was really very, very inexperienced. So it's not great. But what I would like to do, my dream has always been to basically take that whole thing that was an hour or whatever and just boil it down to the most interesting 30 minutes or 20 minutes and then go shoot, like go catch up with the Trachtenbergs now.

Oh, sure. Yeah.

Because, like, they're still out there. I don't think they're playing slideshow stuff anymore. But, like, for a while, Rachel Trachtenberg, the daughter, was represented by the Elite Modeling Agency. And she's had her own bands that have been written up and stuff. She's a musician in her own right and an entertainer. Tina Pina Trachtenberg, the mom, is now known as the Pigeon Lady of New York. She dresses up like a pigeon. What? There was a New Yorker – there was like a talk of the town about the pigeon lady of New York, and they mentioned at some point casually her name is Tina Pina Trachtenberg. Oh, they moved to New York, by the way, FYI. And I'm reading this thing about this woman who dresses up like a pigeon and sits amidst the pigeons in like whatever park in New York and has a whole thing going. And I'm like, wow, this lady sounds quirky, and it's Tina from the Trachtenbergs. Jason's off doing his thing, playing music, whatever. So I would like to go catch up with them 20 years later and just kind of, like, see where their life's at and then make that the last 30 minutes. To me, that would be maybe a watchable film.

Is there any chance that we will be releasing Friday's TBTL on Betamax format? Will you be editing the show on Friday? I got to call that guy in Chatsworth. Yeah, Final Cut Pro, like, version 1.1 from 2001.

exactly because i wouldn't know how to uh i wouldn't know how to like even i don't even know how to turn final cut on isn't it weird like i edited an entire film in this like using this piece of software there was a point at which i knew how to make a thing with it that was at least sort of watchable enough that a film festival slash music festival was like yeah we'll put this in i think i might have gotten into one other festival too i can't remember which one silver lake i think it was in the silver lake festival can't can't oh yes you know what that was what it was it was the can film festival but um that i actually knew how to do that and now if you put a gun to my head which would be the weirdest way to have me edit a film yeah

but i would you know but it does sort of sound like alan is doing that here yeah wow yeah alan's

like he stopped listening to the show he's demanding a snyder cut um the burbank cut um i wouldn't even know how to begin to input the footage like i wouldn't even know how to like Get the raw footage into Like how to batch capture or whatever I used to like know how to do all that shit And it is not like Riding a bicycle

No because the bicycles have been changing A lot, you know.

And it went from being a bicycle to being a land speeder from friggin' Return of the Jedi.

Yeah, even if you had access to your old software, you know, and if it worked on modern computers, like, it would still be – it had just been a long time since you've done that. So it would be a lot of new teaching yourself. But also, yeah, the technology has come a long way. the like the Photoshop version of Photoshop I had on my computer for years and years and years and years I think I had the 2003 version of Photoshop which was pretty slick at the time and it was before everything was a subscription model right like now if you want Photoshop you pay monthly for it and I do through through the company because I need it for my job but like I'm justifying it here i need it lily i need photoshop uh but uh anyway so i was using that for years and years and i didn't want to give it up because i couldn't afford to go onto a subscription-based model with the latest version of photoshop and then um recently with a new computer that old version just it just finally just did not work anymore with my new computer so i'm now you know using the apm account and oh my goodness gracious luke photoshop has come a long way i mean you can do more with it but also it's also more user friendly that's kind of the surprising thing for some reason i thought oh this is this technology will have gotten more and more complicated for the hardcore photoshop heads um but actually because everybody is making their own content now it is actually way more powerful but also way more intuitive if you know the right

basics that's most of the time when i'm trying to use a piece of technology that i've been avoiding for a long time because i haven't wanted to or like an update to a piece of software because i know how to use the the older version usually when i finally break down and an update or whatever what i find is after like a few scary moments where i'm like i don't know where anything is it turns out everything is now more intuitive right right with some exceptions but it's like that's where everything is going and it's almost always i'm like well shit they don't even why'd get rid of that and then like that function and that's you gotta be kidding me and then it's like oh no it's actually just right there right right you just move your finger that way on that screen

and then like oh there it is you gotta bring up moving fingers you son of a

oh man uh alan thanks man thanks for being part of the show for all these years we really

appreciate you uh maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go everybody

We've got to thank dazzling donor Danny Crawford in New York City. Danny is one of, I believe, two TV show listeners in New York who have been featured on the television show FBI.

That's true.

Which is a lot, considering we don't have that many listeners. Two of our listeners would have been on the TV show FBI. And in the same scene.

I mean, that's the amazing thing.

Danny says, hiya friendos, just wanted to add my voice to the number of tens who've already expressed their gratitude for everything you've given us, especially this past year. Oh boy, this past year, it's been a doozy, hasn't it? But decades from now, when with grandchildren on my knee, I find myself reflecting upon my experience living through the harrowing events of the year 2020. And they ask me, but grandpa, how are you able to get through it all? I'll look at them in the eye and I'll say

Well kids I had your grandmother I had a great dog And I had two dummies Luke and Andrew On a personal note

I just want to say that I've been incredibly fortunate To have a regular job in show business Or the business of show That I've been able to work since October Watch FBI Tuesdays at 9 Eastern on CBS That's a great TV network by the way Do you know somebody who works there? I know people who know people. Did I ever... I know that I told you this. Like, I'm sure that this has come up on the show. But when Carrie and I moved into the place in Bellingham, and we became friends with Rich and Linda, who very much are real people, our neighbors. Of course they are. And we, you know, got to know each other a bit. And, you know, I was talking about how I work for CBS Sunday morning. At some point, Rich apparently said to Carrie, That he knew somebody at CBS or had family or friends or distant relatives who worked CBS, and they'd heard that I was very difficult at CBS Sunday morning. Oh, that rings a vague bell. Which I was – and this has been also discussed on the program before, but I was shocked by that not because it would be impossible for me to be difficult, but that would be the one place I wouldn't be.

Yeah.

Like, if somebody at APM or LiveWire was like, he's difficult, I'd be like, okay, that's definitely probably some honest feedback.

I think you'd be surprised if somebody— at 8 p.m. thought you were difficult we haven't had many difficult no maybe elusive maybe elusive maybe unhelpful i mean unless it was me talking sure from 8 p.m. right right but no aside as soon

as i replace you with nora though that'll yeah problem will be solved um can you imagine me and

nora trying to keep this thing going you know what nora will upload this to cody for you i'm sure

Just like the two people who have siloed themselves the most off from any part of our programs except the talking part.

You and Nora are remarkably similar and incredibly likable. I mean, there's something about that. There's a reason you're both cults of personality, right?

But just, I mean, it would be hilarious to see us trying to do any of the stuff that has to happen for this to go on the internet. Anyway, point being, Danny has been working at CBS on FBI. Please watch it, 9 Eastern, particularly if you're a Nielsen family.

What would that be, Mountain Time?

God, it's hard to know. But so many of my incredibly talented friends and colleagues have really struggled this past year, Danny continues. So every now and then when you're at a restaurant or a coffee shop or in a lift or really availing yourself of any of the numerous services in which tips are involved, consider giving that person a little gift, because whether it's their full-time job or just a survival gig, it might go a long way. At the very least, it'll be a ray of kindness in what has largely been an overcast year. Thanks, guys. Power in. Signed, listener Danny. um yeah that's a great point um if you can if you're in the position where financially you can swing it and you're out either you're ordering food maybe and getting it delivered or picking it up or you're at a some kind of safe restaurant environment yeah anything you can do i i don't say this to like pat myself on the back but since we've been fortunate to keep our jobs through this i've definitely been trying to kind of pay that forward like through gratuity in any any possible

way you know i just i just don't believe in tipping though like i'm paying for a service yeah no me too actually one thing for is because i i just wanted to see if you could let that lie

i was just sitting there quietly saying how long is it gonna take andrew to to clarify that that's not his real opinion because of course that so isn't and i don't you know i don't know anybody who's more thoughtful towards service folks than yourself maybe everybody thinks they're a good

tipper but i've always felt like i'm a not not a super like over the top this is gonna go viral kind of tipper but i always i always do all the rounding up you know i take the total i'm not i'm not like like taking off the tax or you know doing alcohol oh god do people do that anyway oh sure

yeah yeah people will do that they'll be like i don't tip on alcohol because it's like or like if you get a bottle of wine and maybe it's like an expensive bottle of wine and that really jacks the bill up it's like should you be tipping you know on the on this $80 bottle of wine or something it's like look if you can buy an $80 bottle of wine friggin tip right don't get an $80 bottle of wine then if you if you're gonna that's where you're gonna try to like save the money exactly

I got $79 and really want this bottle of wine but I do you know ever since the pandemic has started and we have services whether it was the you know people delivering food to our door or as things slowly reopened you know getting drinks or food somewhere like you know i've increased that like whatever my math is it's like more generous now it's like now uh you know i used to just do 20 on the total like that was it whatever it ended up being but now it's always like well whatever the total is i round it up to a round number and then i do 20 on that and then sometimes i'll often just throw of you know some more throw a little bit more sugar on top of that candy on there just R.I.P. Newman. And I do wonder, and I assume that that is the case with most people. I know there are people who are different when it comes to tipping. But I wonder if, generally speaking, because now I don't know that I'll ever be comfortable going back. Like, at what point will I say, y'all have had it too good for too long, and so now I'm going to start scaling back my tipping again? I wonder if, generally speaking, tipping will just stay a little bit more generous going forward. Actually, I hope so. Again, I mean, to what you can afford, but I'm always just doing the math thinking, like, if I can afford to be at this restaurant racking up this tab, then I can afford three more dollars, you know, or whatever it is over the top of the tip. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, just to increase that percentage. It doesn't take that much money to increase that percentage into something that will just add up for this server if they get enough people doing that.

Yeah. I mean, to me, it's like the obviously everybody's in a different position financially. and for some people $2 here and $2 there really does add up and I respect that but it's just like I'm going to try my personal policy is going to be and has been if i if i don't feel like i have the money to to properly or you know sort of tip everyone then i'll just maybe not go out that night or maybe i'll you know whatever just it's like once you're in the restaurant and once you're eating the food once someone is doing their job and the other big thing is if i can throw in a quick plug for my sister uh sarah and my brother in law josh's restaurant pollo bravo which is moving this summer by the way one of the cool things that they're going to do is they are going to be dividing everybody like they're going to be dividing the money up evenly between back of house and front of house which is a huge thing in this industry like they have to because for years and years the folks that work in the kitchen have been working often for not a lot of money and they don't get tips and they work very very very long hours and it's hard work it's very physical you know and um and then you know front of house is often you know if you're working at a nice place you could really really clean up and that kind of front of house back of house thing is it's not really fair if you think about it it's just one of those things it's always kind of been that way can i ask you a question though and this

is a legit question this sounds like i'm going to be doing like the buscemi character in reservoir dogs no is it buscemi who doesn't tip whoever the character is in that but i'm not doing that but i am i am um curious about something because obviously not all jobs just generally speaking are tippable jobs right some are and some aren't and so i guess in my head the for whatever reason we have this system where we pay our servers less but they can make up for it with tips so i guess i was just thinking well in an in an equitable society the back of house people are making more in straight wages for their work as opposed to the tips because they're not interacting with the the public i mean is it just that they've just been getting screwed for a long time because

are kind of stuck in the middle yeah i mean that's it and that's i think pretty industry wide the back of house folks like i mean if you're the chef you know you might make some dough and maybe if you're the sous chef kind of the second in command but there's a lot of people that are kind of doing their time in the trenches of the kitchens of america and and it's seen as an apprenticeship in a way it's just kind of like part of the culture like you know you're just going to you know and so and also by the way you know a place like portland actually i don't know because i haven't lived here that long i don't know what the what the minimum wage is my guess is it's if it's not 15 an hour it soon will be here i mean that's becoming i think that's becoming pretty standard in most large american cities so my get my sense is the people front of house are going to make 15 and the people back house are going to make 15 but if the people front of house are also getting the tips on top of their their their minimum wage that's the same as the minimum wage again i don't i'm now this is where i can't speak to what's specifically happening at that restaurant in portland that my sister owns because i don't know what their different levels are going to be set at what they're paying people hourly but what i know is that they're interested in and they're going to really try to re sort of shape how that restaurant is compensates its employees because there has really been historically a pretty big imbalance in the business you'll have bartenders that can kind of roll in like bartender is like as we learned from the movie cocktail as we learned from um i can't believe i'm going to do this for the second week in a row whatever the character's law whatever the character is who who teaches tom cruise how to be a cocktail guy um that guy's law anyway as we learned from the movie cocktail you can kind of breeze in as a bartender sometimes depending on the place you work and you know make drinks work really hard but you're kind of the rock star of the show and you might get a lot of tips. And it's like, if you open a beer, you get a dollar. And if you make a nice cocktail, you get a dollar, maybe more. And you can leave with a considerable amount of money after being there for four or five hours. Meanwhile, somebody has been in the kitchen cutting up, you know, turnips for four hours in prep work. And it's not quite as glamorous, the thing. And also it doesn't necessarily pay as much unless there's a way to more equitably distribute the gratuity as well.

Also like just so this, trend of of a turnip based uh restaurants too much right too much turnips uh-huh aren't you

i'm trying to come up i'm just trying to come up with a by the way look look for that i mean yeah turnips haven't had their moment yet but like brussels sprouts had their image rehabbed um what else like you know there's just every year there's another thing that we decide like oh this is the thing that we're all doing now and look for turnips they're about to have radishes i feel like radishes really had a moment where like a lot of places and i kind of was into it but you get that like it's kind of nice like artisanal like you know small batch grown like organic farmed radishes that would then be cut in half and they'd be like with some chunky sea salt on them and some butter that was a thing i don't know if i've ever had them prepared like that i will say though radishes have been I'm going to go ahead. maybe not a sleeper i was gonna say a sleeper but maybe they've had their moment and i just missed it but uh just they weren't serving them at the mecca cafe yeah the um the uh i love like you have gotten more and more like i think that you look down at my taste really i do think that yeah

i'm not trying to okay okay maybe explain i just i feel like you know i mean you like we do like

different things but i feel like there's a little bit of a um there was one time on the show and i don't know why this stuck with me but i was just talking about a sandwich that was good at kind of a you know just like a a place on the ave and i remember you sort of used that as like well those are the kinds of places you like and i was like well no that's just a cafe where i grabbed a lunch sandwich that was pretty good because it was on a buttery roll but like i think generally i know the place you're talking yeah and like i i would never describe that as my kind of place and maybe that just lives in my head a little bit that it's like i i guess i'm having i'm i'm a little bit confused as to what you think i like i guess i here's what i think the difference in how we eat

is i think you're a much better cook than i am and i think you like to like cook at home and do projects and you're you're actually really good at that stuff i don't know how to do any of that so i eat out a lot i mean you know some of this is more pre-pandemic and also because of like my just work situation if i'm if i'm somewhere on a trip for cbs and i have per diem for dinner anyway i'm probably just more likely to go to places that are i i guess i would say trendier like i'm not i wouldn't even say that i'm like i know you know what's going on in the restaurant scene in portland or whatever but it would be fairly common for me and carrie to go out in bellingham and go to a place like there's a restaurant called hundred north where they would likely on the menu have some kind of like radishes that are cut in half and and whatever and that's the kind of cuisine that i feel like i end up interacting with more than you just because i don't know how to make anything and i think of you as being not that you don't eat out but that you're more inclined to be like doing a cool barbecue at your house in the summertime and i'm more likely to be sitting at some outdoor table overpaying for something that's the trendy food yeah and i think i miss no reading that no and i i'm not even sure why i called you out on

that because i don't know that that's necessarily fair called me in or called you in because honestly and i'm just i'm honestly just talking this out i'm not like trying to to air anything here because maybe that was an unfair thing for me to say because i mean what do i do i go on rants about like the trendy food experience and how it's going to be a whole it's not just dinner experience and we're going to like you know list all of these specials and exactly what the chef is doing back there i mean i've spent a long time on this show talking about how irritating i find that so i guess it is not unfair for me to say i like when i'm hungry or really in the mood to go out i'm always basing it on the place where i'm going to be sitting like even more than the food i'm going to be eating often it's the place i'm going to be sitting and what is the place it's never a it's never a place that um has buttered radishes it is a place where i can sit at a diner style you know when you could do that a diner style uh bar or counter and uh and yeah and low brow and just comfortable or something that even harkens back to my childhood i was thinking about that early-onset grumpiness tape that we played yesterday. Would you rather go to a restaurant that is much less good but doesn't have a line? Of course. Do you see people's faces when they're waiting in line? Are we going to eat or are we going to wait in line here? I am like that. So, no, that's fair. I apologize for making it awkward.

No, I think we can blame listener Danny. Yeah, yeah. What the F? Come on. Let's stop covering for dazzling donor Danny who brought this whole thing up by talking about tipping um so anyway but in all honesty danny thank you for the donation and also to alan we love you guys hello and welcome to top story all right a quick update on uh prancer the chihuahua who uh i think i said haunted victorian doll it's actually haunted Victorian child. That was how this very kind of insecure, high-maintenance chihuahua was described by a woman named Tiffany Fortuna who had been fostering Prancer but was looking for a forever home, as they say, for the chihuahua. And the thing on Twitter made me laugh so much, or at least it made its way onto Twitter. I think she had posted on a dog rescue site. But it was just talking about how like this this little chihuahua prancer was just would refuse to you know sort of be friends with any males with any like you know men with any other animals with like it's just this dog just sounded like a lot um and yet i also figured that somebody would see this ad

And would like basically do the kind of thing where like I can fix him. Because I almost had that thought when I saw it. Maybe I'm just in a weird emotional place. But I was like, maybe me and Prancer. Maybe that's my version of we bought a zoo. We adopted a Prancer. Like I just like get this really, really problematic Chihuahua. And then in like helping this Chihuahua heal, I heal myself, Andrew.

We're all broken in the same places. And we grow stronger in those broken places.

Exactly. I mean, who rescued who? Right. I mean, honestly, but I did not because I also know myself and I would have probably been really annoyed at Prancer after about four hours. So luckily, a woman named Ariel Davis of New Haven, Connecticut has adopted Prancer, and she seems to fit all of the sort of – she ticks all the boxes of somebody who would be good for Prancer. She describes herself as a single lesbian who lives with a female roommate, so like no male energy, no problematic male energy. and she actually works at a rehab place that's for women so she got prancer she takes prancer into the rehab place apparently apparently prancer is really vibing with the residents of the rehab place um and the kind of interesting thing is this uh woman ariel davis apparently had a dog very much like prancer um that was had the same kind of nervousness and and she had really connected with her her old dog and her dogs had been taken away because she actually had to go to rehab for marijuana addiction which that's got to be a pretty serious marijuana addiction

um well not only that i mean i actually think this is kind of the most interesting part of the story and again i i'm not trying to do like sort of you know hot take radio here or anything obviously i mean i think there are some people who say oh come on marijuana uh isn't addictive but then you I believe you can be addicted to anything you can have an unhealthy relationship with anything if you can be addicted to technology you can certainly in an unhealthy way which I believe you can be or pornography or any other like thing that people are addicted to I think you can be addicted to marijuana in your own personal way the thing that blew my mind though is she went to rehab for marijuana addiction and I keep rereading this over and over again and spent two years in the rehab facility for weed? That surprises me. Because I haven't heard of any kind of actual in-facility rehab. Obviously, rehab potentially can take the rest of your life, right? You're always working. But two years in a facility, that shocks me.

My guess, based on a careful study of the TV show Intervention, is that what happened, probably what happened for this woman, Ariel Davis, was she went to the rehab place to deal with this addiction. She probably uncovered some other stuff going on for her that was really what she was trying to self-medicate with and then probably maybe moved to the sober living portion of the rehab place. So there's a lot like, and you could live in sober living for probably as long as you feel like it's something that's helping you and that is helping keep you kind of on the path that you want to be on. So my guess would be that she was living there and at some point, you know, probably it was more of a sober living kind of situation than an intensive, you know, you're going to be in kind of group therapy all day working on your addiction issues. That makes a lot of sense.

And again, I want to make it very clear that like I was just like really curious about those lines. I'm not trying to be like disrespectful or something.

No, no. I mean, no, I think people hear hear what you're saying, because because, yeah, I was also kind of like I mean, I'm the last person that can say anything informed about marijuana and, you know, its addictive properties or non addictive properties. I mean I know people to this day that are pretty much constantly high you know like get up in the morning and you know either take something or smoke something and it's a sort of a continuous thing throughout their day and some of those people seem like they're pretty functional some of those people seem like they're not as functional as they could be. But I'm with you that, like, you can – I mean, you can be addicted to literally anything. Any kind of a thing that you're using to kind of, like, interrupt feelings or to mask feelings that are feelings you don't really want to be feeling, anything you're doing with that has a potential to become something that you're addicted to. I speak from a lot of personal experience on a lot of fronts with this. So anyway, the good news is Prancer has a home. prancer seems to be doing very well and so um good news yeah can i say one more thing on the

story that i really like because i i just i love this follow-up story when we had the original one and the person who who made that post that went viral there's always part of my brain that says like how much were you hoping that this thing would go viral or because this person it sounded Like, you know, they they had.

I believe the scientific term is a shit ton of animals, right? It sounded like it was almost a, was it almost a borderline, like, I don't know, hoarding is a strong word. But, like, they had, this chihuahua came from, you know, a house that just had so many cats and so many dogs.

Well, you mean the woman who was fostering?

Yeah. Yeah, Tiffany Fortuna. The one who wrote this really, really dramatic thing. And in the back of my head, I'm like, well, we all know we're living in the Internet age, as I like to call it. And, you know, you can write something like this and it'll go viral and it'll help you maybe find a home for your pet if you're being super dramatic about it. What I love about this follow up is that the person who adopted it just sounds like very low drama. And she's just saying like, yeah, like I took I kind of scanned this article earlier, so I might have some of this wrong. But, you know, she's slowly letting this dog meet other people in her life. and I think took it to work or some sort of group of people.

She works at the rehab place where she was living for two years because of the weed.

Right, right. And so it sounded like just carefully introducing it to people. And I think there's even a quote in here like, it wasn't super dramatic. The dog was a little nervous, but we're working on that, but the dog was well-behaved. I think she keeps saying he was a perfect gentleman. I just really like this story.

She keeps describing him as a perfect gentleman. Yeah, it makes me happy because, you know, like I wouldn't say that like I am the most drawn naturally to chihuahuas as dogs like they're it's it's just not the kind of dog that I tend to go towards. But these pictures of Prancer really did kind of like, you know, you saw this little this this little guy who was, you know, most of the I mean, people that are actual we have like real like people that train animals and that know a lot about like animal behavior in our audience. But my sense is when an animal acts out, particularly when a dog acts out, it's because they're scared. It's because they're insecure. And when they're acting aggressively, it's because they're feeling threatened. And so I would see those pictures of little Prancer with his little face all kind of – his ears pulled back and him baring his teeth. It's like, oh, this is a scared little dude. So the idea that now this scared little dude has somebody taking care of him and that for this woman, Ariel, I'm sure it's kind of a really nice experience to have this connection to this dog. It's just a good outcome. A less good animal. Oh, by the way, I want to say thanks to listener Spritzy on Twitter. I don't know that person's actual name, but they go by Sprizzy on Twitter. They were the ones who forwarded me or they tweeted at me the update on this story. So thank you.

sprizzy sprizzy is somebody i i see that um you know sprizzy is somebody who's been uh communicating with us via twitter for a really long time but i don't know my guess is i know who that person is but i have no idea how that lines up with irl right so thank you to whoever that is for hipping

us to that story uh turns out there's a certain amount of beaver related drama going on in canada Andrew, if you didn't know, because I didn't until I read this article. This is in the BBC. Canadian beavers chomped down on town's Internet. Beavers have been blamed after a town in the Canadian province of British Columbia lost their Internet service for 12 hours. The provider, TELUS, said that parts of the underground cabling servicing the town of Tumblr Ridge had been found in a beaver's dam. Some 900 internet users And 60 television customers were affected Basically The internet and TV went out In this town of Tumbler's Ridge And so they sent the crews out Who went to where the internet Cable and TV was running into this town Which had been buried, Andrew Three feet underground And was protected by a four and a half inch Thick conduit That's really thick

Yeah it is, I was going to say At first, I thought that burying only three feet, I thought the point was they didn't bury it deep enough. But, no, I don't know what the conduit is made of. But, yeah, that is very thick.

That's, like, ridiculously thick conduit for this to be also three feet underground. And they said that the beavers had chewed down into the ground. They had dug down to where the conduit was. They had chewed through the conduit, had chewed the wires up, and had dragged the wires out and had brought them into their dam for some reason. Now this is where the controversy comes This article says beavers are Canada's national animal However they have a mixed reputation The rodents are loved by some As the ultimate environmental engineers Whose dam building skills Bring an array of ecological benefits But their incredibly strong teeth can cause extensive damage And farmers in particular Worry about the havoc That they can cause on crops and trees Just two weeks ago The mayor of Grenville-sur-la-Rouge A town in Quebec blamed them for extensive flooding, which damaged property and infrastructure.

roughly 800 beavers had created some 200 dams around the town and mayor tom arnold can i assume not the guy from roseanne i don't know boy that tom arnold you can't keep him down i mean he's always like that he's probably on his ninth act and now it's like a mayor of a town in quebec uh tom arnold said they need more flexibility to manage the rodents it's a problem that we need to get rid of the beavers have to be eradicated he was quoted by the cbc it's a hard line on beavers i know whoa god why did i talk over that um i have to say that like i find i mean i just find beavers to be an incredible animal with what they are able to accomplish yeah like anytime i see a beaver dam like if i'm out in the wilderness on a hike or whatever i am absolutely mesmerized again at just like how they can just do that with their teeth and just a lot of hard work um it is interesting though that when in this article they refer to them as rodents they move down in my mind in terms of my like oh a rodent oh our town is being overrun by rodents that chew through everything gross oh our town has a population of proud beautiful beavers busy beavers that's like you know that seems cool like you want to have that in your town but i guess

maybe you know it's not always a good thing well that's exactly what i was thinking when you were reading that i mean this is a total pr issue the people who want to quote unquote eradicate them are calling them rodents other people are calling them the engineers of nature you know they are a they are a fascinating animal like they have more engineering skills than i do it's just a completely i mean they're spinning this in different ways and i was even thinking like well maybe like what if they get the same pr person that like groundhogs have right or you PR animal, maybe, that groundhogs have. But then it's like, no, like, groundhogs don't have anything else going for them. They need the shadow shit, right? But beavers, they don't need that shadow. That's all just bells and whistles. I mean, they're recreating. They're turning rivers backwards, so I hear. I think that's how they did it in Chicago. You know, they're changing the world around them. They don't need some PR. They don't need some flack telling them that their shadow is important.

could we start training them put all of this to put by the way there is a i don't know if this is good for the beavers or not i assume it's not but there is i have seen some people on tiktok who for whatever reason have beavers living in their home oh goodness i don't want to do that that sounds like a recipe for disaster everybody you're gonna come home and your dining room table is gonna be in a pile in the corner right but i have seen that and i have to say they are freaking cute obviously but yeah if we could just train them if we could somehow harness their their sort of uh you know evolutionary and biological imperative i guess you could call it that's more biological imperative i think just means reproducing but if you could somehow harness the fact that they are just designed to like chew thing chew wood down to like you know smaller amounts and then pile it up somewhere couldn't let you like the army corps of engineers just like release release a bunch of beavers into like areas where they need to like have stuff

done if they need to damn something up well now we're putting lumberjacks out of work luke and you know i can't get behind that what with running for office and everything yes sure of course for this town i want to take tom arnold's job that's just absolute stupidity all right it's the um

Penultimate day of round one of the drops of stupider, the deuce.

That's right.

Wherein we are trying to figure out the best moment in TBTL history. What are we going to hear today?

This is a lot of fun. Damn it. Maybe fun isn't the right word. I was fascinated grabbing this tape yesterday because the number three seed today is our friend Mike Frizzell, a.k.a. Drew McFrizz, as he used to be known on TBTL. That was his broadcast guest name. Drew McFrizz talking about his entire experience of finding himself addicted to prescription medication and then how that addiction led him to a honest to God life of crime where he started robbing banks and then ended up leading him to prison where he spent time in prison. And you and Jen, back in the radio days, I mean, this is some of the earliest stuff you did. This is January of 2009. You set aside one broadcast hour every night for a full week talking to him in depth about his experiences. And ironically, Luke, this is I don't know why I need to bring this up. Ironically, I don't think any of these hours live on the APM website right now. Thank you to our friends The archivists The volunteer archivists Like Ben Quick Who took these And uploaded them To the internet archive I can share this link Basically the B

The beavers of TBTL listeners.

Yes, yes, the busy beavers. And I can share this link with folks. Maybe I'll put it in this week's newsletter if possible. But all five hours are available in a nice little easy-to-access package at the Internet Archive. And I was clicking through them yesterday, Luke, looking for a piece of tape to play for you. And, I mean, there's just so much. It's so hard to find the moment in these five hours, again, five broadcast hours. I mean, I just I'm sure Mike might hear this, but I think I just forgot what a compelling storyteller he is. I mean, I think you and Jen, the three of you in that studio together just do a perfect job of letting this story flow and like kind of just knowing how to manage it. I think about my story sometimes about how I'm I have all this information. I just want to blurt it out all at once, you know, and like you guys just told the story. And Drew being very, you know, Mike Frizzell being very just so honest and vulnerable, but also just doing such a good job of telling telling this very personal story. So it's that up against hell pizza. All right.

Oh, like a moment, in fact, almost a decade in the life of someone who we love and appreciate on this show that that took them to the absolute edge of even staying alive on this planet. right that has features unimaginable highs and and unfathomable lows and then the other is

mike frizell's story how did i not see that i don't know i only decided to do that at the end

i only decided to do that at the end i even had faked myself with that you got you you joked

yourself uh but yeah i mean the the background on hell pizza is one day way back in 2012 i was pretty new on tbtl at this point but um you had the idea actually why don't you set this up because you remember the background of what this hot sauce was right i yes um so i i think a listener

in australia you might be surprised to hear that still remains basically our hottest zip yep i think somebody in australia maybe forwarded us a story about an australian pizza joint that was doing this kind of bit where you could order like a hell pizza and it would come with whatever, all but one slice would be normal and then one slice would have some kind of crazy hot stuff in it and it would just be kind of like a fun party thing with your friends. So we decided to reenact that, like roulette. Yeah, pizza roulette. But if I remember right, we had to go and get this. So I think I could be wrong about this part, but I feel like a sort of a parallel part of the story was my obsession with this very, very hot sauce called The Man that you used to be able to get at this place called Dixie's Barbecue over in the kind of greater Bellevue area. And the story on Dixie's Barbecue, and I believe the guy that ran it has since passed, but Dixie's Barbecue was this joint that it was a guy had like an automotive garage, like he would fix cars and stuff. But he also just loved barbecue and making barbecue. And he would – so he would make barbecue and he would make this really crazy sauce called The Man. And I think he would sort of just maybe like give it away to clients and customers and stuff or maybe he was selling it. I don't know, but eventually the barbecue thing became more popular than the automotive repair. And so when I would go over for lunch sometimes with our friend Robert Smith, a public radio person from Planet Money and other places, it was still an auto repair place that just didn't fix cars anymore. You just would go in there and get this barbecue, and he would walk around with this pot with the sauce in it, and he would go, have you met the man? You should meet the man. and he would just like dip a toothpick into this sauce. The man, he would give you the toothpick and you would taste the end of the toothpick with no even visible sauce on it and your face would fall off. So anyway, I think that that's the sauce that we were putting. I think we put the man and I believe that we, was the mummy in charge of applying the man? Because we needed someone to put it on the piece that then the rest of us, I think it was you, me, Radke.

Yep, Bill Radke of K-O-W. Sean DeTorey was there. The Mummy was the one who was administering this. So we got one of those Papa Murphy's pizzas, heated it up at your place, and then the Mummy slid the man underneath one of the pieces, or maybe two of the pieces, I can't recall. And then hilarity ensued because we weren't sure who was going to get it. So let's start with that. this is the moment where one Shonda Tori, Japan's number one mixer, gets a taste

of the man. Maybe you're just good at spicy.

Yeah, we're going to find out. I'll find out in about

two hours and I'm running the board for Ron

and I'm going to have to get out of there. You're going to put the runs in the running the board. There we go. It's in his mouth.

This is going to be trouble.

That was brave. What's up? It's slowly coming on.

I kind of like I want to say I listened to this tape a lot yesterday because I kind of had to edit this together. I kind of like Radke's very straightforward question there. He's just like, you know, we're watching Sean Sean starting to sweat and Radke's very precise question Is what's up like you just Want Sean to talk about what he's going through

It's almost like we had a radio Professional there at least There was one radio professional on the

Case and there's something but also I'm just like

Slugging I'm like slugging whiskey And right just kind of you know probably Like thinking about going to the casino Later my guess is this was on a Friday And Radke is like oh Maybe we should actually get Sean describing

the experience on the recording he also sort of sounds like a tough guy though he doesn't sound like the rad key that i think of just like what's up um do you remember by the way we had a bar set up like a quenching bar for the person like there was bread white bread milk yogurt i can't remember what else you put out and of course whiskey because everybody knows that that puts out the

absolutely let me also uh if i can just interject here my if i remember right wasn't it a thing where basically like the pizza thing didn't totally pay off and that's why we ended up just having Sean.

Sean got a little bit of it, but I think the mummy, surprisingly, the mummy showed too much restraint. It's just not a sentence that came up a lot.

That's ever been said again about that person.

But yeah, I was kind of glossing over that because it was a little, people really enjoyed this episode. So it was fun and it was a pizza party and you were like playing music at times and it was almost, it was kind of a weird mix that had an interesting energy to it. And I know why people like this, but if we're being 100% honest, yeah, Sean got the pizza and I kind of edited this together here. Sean got the piece with the hot sauce on it and he was like, yeah, I think I got it, but it wasn't quite that bad. So then we're like, well, can we give you more, Sean?

In classic, like a bunch of eight-year-old boys getting together. Then it was like, okay, just take the whole bottle.

Right, and so then you start putting it on a piece of crust for him And then at some point, somebody yelled, whoa, Luke, what is it? And then I think you said, oh, is this not raspberry jam? So that's about the amount. You put a big globule, apparently, on a piece of crust. Maybe you're just good at spicy.

Yeah. Here we go. We're going to find out. I'll find out in about two hours when I'm running the board for Ron. I'm going to have to get out of there.

You're going to put the runs in the running the board. There we go. It's in his mouth. That was a man.

This is going to be trouble.

That was brave. What's up? It's slowly coming on.

it's burning the back of my throat and it's just like like i ate uh he's sweating a couple of upper lip it's like i've bit into like maybe a habanero pepper lips are burning back of the throat is burning tongue is burning what colors are you seeing i'm seeing red i have to keep

breathing in can i get you something yeah would you like some of the bread that we have there Orangina, have you tried the hot chili peppers?

I like a little glass of milk. In honesty, at my angle, I can see your upper lip glistening from here.

Really? Yeah, just a little.

Yeah, I am sweating. I imagine it glistening all the time, so it's nothing new for me. Here, try this.

That's quite an extinguisher. It worked? It worked. Yeah, the milk is good, but it's still really burning.

There you go. Hell pizza from Mac in 20. I learned something.

You'd think I would have known this between Hell Pizza and a time on Live Wire in Arizona. Remember where I ate whatever that was? A Carolina Reaper.

Yeah.

I can't believe I only recently learned this. But the reason that drinking water makes it worse is because it just serves to kind of spread the capsaicin around your mouth.

That makes sense. It's like whatever it is that's too hot What does bread do Do you know do you remember

I don't know I just was like watching something Or reading something about About you know eating spicy food And the article just mentioned casually That water doesn't help because it only spreads around The thing That is already causing the discomfort I don't know if the bread absorbs it and the milk I don't know if it just coats differently But I mean we all know that experience of like You eat something that's way too hot And then it's burning And then you take a drink of water Which for like one second Makes it better And then as soon as the water's gone It's like worse Which is a bummer

Because I'm not a big dairy person I'm also not like going into situations Often where I'm like trying to challenge myself with

With spiciness, I just, you know, I do like things spicy, but I don't like things that are so spicy. Not like for stunt purposes. Yeah, exactly. That's going to make me sweat. But I do know that, like, that's one reason why Genevieve likes, I'm going to get this wrong, but lassi? Is that what you get? Like if you go to a mango lassi or something, if you go to an Indian restaurant and you have something that's kind of spicy. But then you have, do you know what a lassi is? I think I'm going to describe this wrong. I believe it it's like a it's a kind of a fruit shake with some dairy in there as well with I think I'm guessing a mild sweetness to it. But it's like just enough. So it's not a you know, it's not like you're sitting there drinking a milkshake or a big glass of milk, but it's enough to kind of like cut down.

You would hate this. But what I love my like honestly, my favorite thing at an Indian restaurant is actually a side. It's called Raita and it's like a cucumber kind of yogurt type of deal. And it's the best. And, like, so I'll get something, you know, kind of spicy, but then I'll throw that on there as well, which kind of, like, sort of mellows it out a little bit. But it's very much not for you. It's the consistency of, like, a ranch dressing.

I was going to say, is it kind of a mayonnaise-based? And I haven't really – and it's not – are there actual cucumbers in it? Because my mom –

Yes, it's not mayonnaise-based, but it's dairy-based. It's like a yogurt with cucumbers, diced up cucumbers in it. And it is my favorite thing. Like, I've ordered Indian food and had it delivered, and they, like, forgot the raita. And I've like driven to the place, gotten the side of right to this was in Bellingham and driven home. That's how essential it is to the meal.

Well, we're going to skip the Mike Frizzell tape today because it's just not that compelling after hell. No, actually, I'm going to let this breathe a little bit. I don't know how tight we are on time here, Luke, but it was just really hard to find the moment, you know, of this great story. So take a listen to this. This is from January of 2009. This was the second episode in this series. And Mike is talking about the moment. And again, this is a little bit telescoped again. He's talking about the moment that he woke up in a hotel room. He knew that his plan today was to rob his first bank. He had made sure to get out of town so it wasn't too near his house. And he woke up in the hotel room and had his note all ready to go. And I'll let him take it over from here.

I walked out of my hotel room and I got in the van and started to drive. And by the time I got to the edge of the parking lot, I had to park the car, and I had to go back in the lobby, the hotel room, and use the bathroom because I know we like to tell poop stories on TVTL. I had the runs from nervousness, absolute nervousness. The bowels were given away. Wow. So I spent about 15 minutes in the lobby bathroom.

Did you have a thought then, like, maybe I'm not cut out for this line of work? Yes. I'm crapping. my brains out in the Holiday Inn lobby. I haven't even got out of the parking lot.

Yeah, it did cross my mind. But I walked in there and like I said, I'd planned to be there when the bank first opened to sort of be the first person to walk in or one of the first people to walk in. I walked in there and there were two or three people in line. And that was really the moment when I almost backed out. Because in my mind, this was just going to be a transaction between me and the bank then now there's other people here and what if someone sees what's going on and wants to try to do something but then i decided um i'll just wait in line just like a normal person going to the bank on a thursday morning and people came in line and got behind me and i was still really paranoid about that vigilante type scenario Well, when I got motioned over to one of the tellers, I went over to her and I, you know, I'm sort of a big guy at the time. And by the time I got up there, I figured my bulk as a human being is going to block most of this transaction because I don't really have to pull a gun at all. And everyone slides a piece of paper of some kind, you know. So I just slid my piece of paper like it was a deposit slip or a withdrawal slip across and let her read it. I don't remember her reaction, and I just remember showing her the note, and then I met her eyes. It was kind of that moment where she's looking up, is this a joke? Is this a test or something? And I think I just gave her the right, you know, this is real right now stare. and she started putting the cash on the counter and she just emptied the top drawer which I would find out later there's more money to be had there so she emptied the top drawer and she put the cash on the counter and I felt through it all put it in the bag and then I walked out and I walked around the corner to my van and I drove off nobody saw me

it's an amazing story wow tiny bit of it Thank you.

jeez yeah man i understand why people i don't know if i've ever listened back to it i was obviously there for the initial telling of it and we had replayed it a few times the kind of whole you know the whole i guess story if you will but i don't know if i've listened back to it but my goodness gracious even just that snippet what a what a crazy and compelling story i to this day probably once every two weeks tell somebody about mike's story yeah you know like it it's not even my story it's mike's story and yet like often comes up well it comes up if ever prescription drug addiction comes up which is pretty frequent in this day and age i'll say well yeah i've got a friend who had battled that and it led him to rob like 65 banks or whatever it was and then i get into the like him hosting a sports radio show in san diego from across you know coming across the border etc like so anyway i've been dining out on mike's story for years right right right so

what i'm going to try to do is if i can get the newsletter out on friday which i might not be able to no pressure it out on friday i'll just i'm happy to just yell it from the top of the vacuum the 10 of the week is yes um but anyway i'll try to put a link because again those don't i don't think most of those or any of those live on the apm website tbtl.net so i'll put a link to them where you can find them online now again we don't get credit for the clicks so you know don't don't rush to listen but if you do want to hear it it really is compelling hey maybe for our um

going out music we could go since we were just playing hell pizza we could go out with a little hot hot heat also i believe hot hot heat is from british columbia so it ties back in with the

beaver story as well i've heard of hot hot heat but i don't i always assume that that is that i always assume for some reason that that was an english soul band huh how close am i not super

close okay um they were they're like a indie band that had real kind of catchy catchy indie music uh in the probably kind of mid 2000s oh i thought they were a 60s band oh my god no no they're from they're they're recent and um that they're i used to list their album elevator was a biggie addy and i would would listen to it a ton so maybe like um maybe good night good night by hot hot heat

Okay, all right, I'll find that here.

Actually, how about Running Out of Time? Okay, let me find it. I like Running Out of Time. I mean, I like every song on this album. This was still back in the day, pre, like, a ton of digital music, where it was still, it wasn't, like, I had a Hot, Hot Heat CD.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, so, even though, obviously, like, you know, Apple Music and Napster, stuff like that existed, but it wasn't just the default for everything. And so I remember, like, playing this Hot Hot Heat CD, like, in my car while driving around with Addy.

Yeah, I see this record came out. This is the elevator that you mentioned. 2005 is the year. So that's about right. That's, like, the waning days of people like you and me still having that draw to buying CDs.

So that's what we'll go out with. And we'll thank all of you for spending this time with us today. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that. Until then, stay safe. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners. And please remember, don't mountain too tall.

Good luck to all. Just laughing. This is not 60s British soul at all.

We'll be right back. Thanks to himself, thank God the bar's left to hide Just look at his face and then you'll see why Running out of time

Running out of time Running out of time Running out of time

Power out