Muse

You know, Roland, when you said you found a grill, this isn't exactly what I had in mind. What'd you expect, Johnny? Benihana? No, there's no dials, no tanks, no side burners. I mean, I wasn't expecting a built-in wine fridge, but this is nothing like what I'm used to. Come on, Johnny. You're talking to a grill master.

Do you know that I've been given three different aprons because of my barbecue skills? Let's see. I've got license to grill. I've got working grill. Oh, and I have grills, just want to have fun.

Just so you're aware, this has nothing to do with me not knowing my way around a grill. I've watched many a personal chef flip a burger in my day.

I've got the perfect apron for you. Poor little rich grill. I'll get it made up. T-B-T-L.

A lot of times in a meme war, it's all about speed. You've got to get to your memes quick. If you can't get to them quick, they'll just keep blasting you with memes, and you can't fire back.

I'm not trying to be disrespectful or anything, but I kind of feel like you're winging this and it's going bad.

I hope it feels good. You hope what feels good? I hope it feels so good to be right. There's nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there? How about, like, pranking an animal? Sure. Punch an elephant. Sure. Done. I'd punch an elephant. You cannot prank an animal. With him out of the way, I think we're just going to be 360 spins and slam-dug pointers.

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

Well, shit.

What are y'all doing? My name is Luke Burbank. I will be hosting things.

I'm not even supposed to be here today!

Yes, it is Memorial Day, but of course we are here bringing you TBTL and updating you on where we were, where we're going, and how we got there. Also, it is the first time that I have been home in a long time. Bring it back home, baby. Bring it back home. And a lot has changed here at the Ness Broadcast Center. High in the sky above Portland, Oregon, including the fact that I had to turn the AC on today. I slept in a little. I'm not going to apologize for that. It's a holiday. And I just woke up roasting. Turns out we have now officially entered, well, maybe not officially, but for all intents and purposes, we've entered summer here in Portland, Oregon. And it is warm in this apartment. So I turned the AC on. It appears to be working. The temperature has now dropped to a comfortable level, and we are good to go. also the awesome painting that my niece mary did for me that says tbtl as a painting of me and andrew fell off the wall thanks a lot gorilla tape so i'm gonna have to fix that later anyway we're back checked on randy he's doing well he had a little bit of separation anxiety but i think we're i think we're gonna be able to rebuild our relationship and bring you episode 3434 in a collector series oh my bell is in my backpack as well anyway here we are everybody let the fun begin and we are back from the tbt elephant 12 content list delivery wow it was great thank you so much to everybody who hosted us and were just so incredibly sweet generous kind people um letting us set up the van in their front yard and giving us gift bags and making us coffee and giving me massive amounts of Splenda. Also, thanks to all of you, the tens of listeners, for donating and just being amazing. Thanks. I think we're going to get to do this for another year. I haven't actually heard the official tally because it's a holiday weekend, but my sense is we have not been fired yet, so it must have worked. So thank you very much. Kind of a, as you can already tell, highly informal show today the higher we get the more informal it is so we're just going to kind of talk about our trip and reflect and then you know call it a day we can't of course do any of that before we welcome this guy to the program the longest running co-bro of the show he may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he feels so far away from me today we used to last week we were just mere feet from each other and now he's all the way up there in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington he's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now Good morning my friend or I should say good afternoon It's like 1230

I think after the show today Out of habit I might just Tear apart my studio Pack everything up again Wind up all the wires as fast as I can Throw them into a box and then every day I'll set it back up again Like we did on the road It gives you that energy It gives you that kind of I don't know.

know that that performance energy that we need to keep the energy levels up i'm gonna ask a

stranger if i can use their bathroom yeah i'm gonna that's what i would do after the show you would be uploading the show and putting it onto a thumb drive and breaking down the gear and i would just be like do we have um do you have a book of matches that i could i didn't do that whatever happened in there somebody else did it but i want to make it not smell so bad i think i

only used one per like we'll call them the people who are hosting us I only used one host's bathroom I'm not gonna say who it is because I they know who it is if they're listening right now and it was a somewhat awkward moment and I think it was on me although I'm not exactly sure why but after using said restroom I complimented the host on how good the soap smelled like the hand soap smelled after washing my hands in the restroom. And they seemed to not know how to respond to that. And I wasn't sure if that was kind of a déclasse thing to say.

Was it Ezra? Who's Ezra? Ezra in Sacramento, one of the children of Megan. Oh, Ezra. Sorry, no.

Oh, sorry. Sorry, Megan. Sorry, Ezra. No, it wasn't Ezra. But Ezra did make sure to get him and his brother's art back. So that's good.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. Well, anyway, that's all still in Phoenix. So Ezra or Julian or Irene or any of those kids that gave. Actually, you know what? Honestly, Ezra and Jonah, they repossessed their art, I believe, after. So we're just talking really about Irene and Julian. Those would be Cheryl and Lance's little ones in Corvallis. They made us some awesome art. that awesome art is in the van which is parked in the parking lot of the clarendon hotel in phoenix arizona so call them if you want your stuff back kids what else did we leave in that

van i tried to go through to make sure we didn't have too much stuff in there but i know that when i left the van i left we'll maybe get into this i left arizona a day before you because you had to stay behind to kind of you know negotiate how the van was going to get back eventually to portland and what our role or non-role would be and all of that and you just had to kind of take care of business in arizona i was able to fly out my days are getting confused today's monday right i was able to fly out on saturday correct yes i flew out on saturday i was able to get back here for saturday evening um and then yesterday sunday i had a really nice day grilled out for the first time it really felt like memorial day weekend in fact um nice but anyway so that's what's going on with me, but I did a once-over of the van before leaving to make sure all of my stuff was out of there. Of course, what was still in there was an 1980s looking boom box that we were using so that listeners, so that the hosts could hear the show we were doing. A skateboard. A couple of other bags of yours, I believe. I think we cleared out all the snack bags and care packages that people had given us by that point.

Those were in my hotel room, actually. I don't know if you and Christina availed yourself of those on, I guess it would have been Friday night. We were all hanging out, and then we all kind of went our separate ways. And I had all of the goodies from all the folks who had hosted us in my room. And I gave Christina my key card, and I was like, please, get whatever you want. I came in. There was still a full bag of Reuben sandwich-flavored potato chips.

Oh, I didn't avail them of some of those.

I think those were kind of like those had your name on it.

I know. I'm sorry that I didn't try those to the person who gave them to me, but I will hunt down another bag and try them. I had some of the sea salt popcorn on Saturday night or I'm sorry, on Friday night. I tried some of those Twizzlers that were like creamsicle Twizzlers with like it was orange on the outside and like white in the middle. And I took some of them smokehouse almonds. Oh, nice. Some of those as kind of a late-night dinner for me because I had just kind of snacked earlier in the day.

Well, to everybody who has been wondering all weekend what the status is, so the van obviously overheated outside of Phoenix. We got towed by our boy Ruben, our new social media manager-slash-influencer Ruben, of the middle-of-nowhere Mini-Mart gas station-slash-towing service.

It's weird that he gave us potato chips that were flavored like him.

I know. It was a little like thirst much, Ruben. But, yeah, so we got the van towed to the hotel, and then I took it to a place on Friday. I actually found a – after we recorded the show in our friend Nora's backyard, as the equipment was melting down, as everything was turning off because of the heat in Phoenix. After that, I went and took the van to a place. and the guy said I think it's the thermostat he's like the

problem is if i take the thermostat out it's i'm not gonna be able to put it back in and if i don't have i don't know what the part is like i have to take the thermostat out to actually see what the replacement part is and if i take it out and i don't have the part then you're just gonna live in phoenix now so it was decided that the best plan was to actually have the van towed back to portland and and uh and for us to fly back but yeah that did involve a bunch of ins and outs including me sending the weirdest shipment for a 45-year-old man yesterday, including the skateboard, the boombox, a bunch of other stuff. I had to stop up at the FedEx store. And the guy looked at me when I wheeled that stuff in, and it was just kind of like, this is really your life. You're bringing this in. You're mailing this home as a middle-aged dude. And so anyway, that stuff is on the way here. The van is safe. As far as I know, it's safely in the parking lot of the hotel. and we are now home so i guess all's well that ends well i don't know i took a bunch of pictures of the van too and sent them to the owner to just be like this is the condition that it was in when i left in fact it was very cinematic andrew like i got into the after mailing that other stuff uh through fedex and then getting everything all kind of packed up and whatever i then jumped in the Lyft and was driving past the parking lot of the hotel looking at the van.

That must have been a weird feeling.

It was a very weird feeling. I was just like, okay, well thank you. You served us well, Delica, and I'll see you on the other side. But yeah, it felt like something out of a movie, I guess.

Now, just to answer some questions that might be out there, I want listeners to know that again, as you said at the beginning.

I'm sorry. I am looking out the window at Cooch Street, and there is, would you believe it, a 1993 Mitsubishi Delica driving down the road? No, I don't believe it. Different color, the exact same van. I mean, down to the light.

That just happened right now?

I just looked at it. It was green. It took a left on MLK. Yes, a 1993 Mitsubishi Delica van just drove down Cooch Street here in Portland.

And you don't believe in a God.

Thank you. I do now.

I was going to say that I want to reiterate what you said at the beginning of the show. Thank you to everybody who donated during the TBTelethon. We're still waiting on the details, but it all it appears that it was a successful THON because here we are talking to you. But aside from that, also, I want to say that we are not on the hook for these van towings in case anybody thinks that's where your THON money is going. It sounds like the the owners and the insurance are taking care of all of the stuff.

Yeah, the insurance covered – like our insurance that we had to get covered the tow from Sentinel, Arizona into Phoenix. That was like 100 miles. And Andrea and her partner, the owners of the Delica, they are unfortunately having to absorb the towing cost of – she said something funny in a text. She was like, well, this is just another moment in the world's least profitable business. of renting out these old vans i think she does it they do it just because it's fun for them it's certainly not their primary income and my guess would be that this ended up being uh in the red for this american van life but hey if you uh are looking to rent a van in the portland area please do look them up because they are awesome and they did us a huge solid letting us rent the van and they are now in charge of getting the van home i i had to fill out this envelope with the keys in and i tried andrew i felt like i was channeling you i tried to cover every eventuality so i wrote like my name my email address my phone number what parking spot the van was in the name of the owner um i'm trying to think of other things i put your mom's maiden name on there

was that okay i just tried to like last four of my social i put your whole social good that's

covering your bases that's good no that's great yeah i tried i tried to just basically like i I don't know what's going to happen, but when this tow person shows up, I just want them to have every bit of information they could possibly need. And also, we only paid – now, this is a thing that we paid as American Public Media. And so I guess by extension, the tens of listeners, we did pay the parking, which is $10 a day, through Wednesday. So hopefully the guy will be there by Wednesday. Otherwise, I think it's just like free van. If anyone wants to go down there and get it, go for it.

That's exactly what the people at This American Van Life want to hear. What is it, this American van life? Yeah, this American van life. Anyway, yeah, so we are, you must be especially exhausted. Your flight came in really late last night, is this correct?

Yeah, I had to fly southwest, which is not, you know, my usual thing. There were not that many flights on Alaska yesterday. There was like one at 6 a.m.

i needed to be around for more van stuff and then all the other ones had like four connections so on alaska that is so i did southwest it was fine um but it was delayed so i got in really late last night and uh yeah i'm still kind of in a bit of a tizzy i'm jealous that you have been home now for you know two days and sounds like you're just kind of settling into normal life again i'm yeah i still feel quite discombobulated including the fact that it took us like an hour to get the audio equipment at my house working and i was sending you pictures right yeah yeah yeah no i

actually feel very grateful for that too i will say that i have a little bit of i don't even know how to describe the the feel like you and i and i'm you know no offense i'm glad we're not but there in our original plan you and i would be in that delica right now still like making our way to portland we were going to record today's show in the van um which you know could have been fun But like when you think about how the last, I don't know, three days of my life have transpired, it's very different than what the original plan was, which was still a pretty, you know, heavy schedule of driving every day to get that thing back up there. So while I was able to hop on a flight and I actually was able to book an Alaska flight for Saturday for myself, I booked it last night. I'm sorry. On Friday night, I booked an airplane for the first time just using the Concur app on my phone. And I swear there were less questions and complications than when I order from Pudge Brothers Pizza using my other app. Because like and that's not difficult. But I couldn't believe it. But, like, I grew up being very nervous booking airplane tickets because the first ones I ever booked, I was broke as hell. And I had never really flown until I was in my 20s. And, like, you know, making that final click on the website, I would recheck the schedule a million times. I was just always so nervous booking flights. Well, I've done it more in my adulthood, but I'm still a pretty high-strung person. So I'm still pretty, you know, pretty, what's the word I'm looking for? specific i'm looking over all of my decisions very carefully but on friday night when i realized oh i guess i should just see if there's a plane out tomorrow like i should just get out of here as fast as possible and i was like out on the town i was hanging out with christina and i just opened up the app and within two clicks it was like yep there's one alaska flight direct from phoenix to seattle like i can't remember it was like 11 o'clock in the morning i was like yeah okay i'll take this one and then it's like want to use your company card i was like i guess so and then it's like okay see you tomorrow bub it was like the easiest purchase i ever made i felt like i was missing something but uh everything went really well this is the first time hearing that i was supposed to book that through concur oh really yeah good luck good luck with that well it's on

their card so they're yeah ultimately they're gonna have to work it out right exactly so anyway

i did not remember that either by the way christina reminded me of it but i don't know i'm rambling we wanted to keep the show short today but i i just wanted to say that i am grateful to be back and that i did get a weekend back that i would have been on the road with you um you know because it was a long arduous trip what we just did the past week but i think i did have a little bit of i don't know if it was some sort of guilt that um that i was kind of getting this soft landing after breaking down in the desert good you should feel guilty um no i um yeah i'm i'm

with you it was it was a weird ending to the trip but it was probably for the best and also it was probably the right call because by the way when I drove the van to the FedEx place to send all that stuff and a different warning light came on in the van while I was driving around

yeah that actually you know what I'm actually this sounds terrible but I'm kind of glad to hear that because in the back of my head I was really kind of second guessing you know whether or not things were as bad as we thought and maybe we should have just taken a gamble i just i don't know man i'm just catholic right i grew up catholic so i just had this little guilt but it sounds like yeah i know something needs to be addressed with that thing we should roll the dice well the other

thing is the the guy that i talked to on friday said look even if this thing is totally functional driving it through the desert with three grown adult humans in the van and all your stuff over mountain passes is just asking for it to break down like this is a cool van and it's it's functional it probably does great in the northwest and does great on like relatively short trips but it's not something and then when we lost a day on thursday because the original plan was we were going to do the show at mary the tbtl virgins by the way what a absolutely lovely human being mary is we're supposed to do that show on friday and then literally jump in the van and then hightail it for los angeles and we lost a day because of the problems in sentinel arizona and so at that point the only way to get home in time was going to be to drive the thing for like 10 hours a day through very hot conditions which was just kind of as So even though you know me, I love to gamble, and I love to roll the dice on things, I think it was going to be asking for trouble to try to keep driving. Basically, the first day that we drove in the really hot desert with it, it had a problem. Yeah, yeah. Right? Like, it was doing great in Northern Cal, and it was doing fine on the grapevine and stuff, which is pretty hilly and pretty warm. But like that whole situation in Arizona, going from Oceanside to Arizona, that was a whole other animal. Oh, and by the way, some listeners I think were telling us on some social media platform that we shouldn't have gone by way of like the southern route, which they're probably not wrong. But the thing was Waze was very committed to that happening. In other words, I just put in when we were leaving listener Lisa's place in Oceanside, where we were going in Arizona, in Phoenix, and it was saying, you got to go this way. So I don't know if there was traffic up near Riverside or what, but we were just following the GPS. And it was great for a while. Everything was good. There's all these great videos that Christina was making that were super fun. It's like in the movie, the before moment, before anybody knew just how screwed they were.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I look back at those times. I was in the back. I felt like a kid in the back of the van writing the newsletter, just letting the adults up front take care of all the travel decisions. It was pretty nice. And then we broke down in the desert.

Yes, we did. So anyway, we're home safe. Thank you, everyone, including my sister Hannah, who was stressing. Oh, Hannah, I'm sorry. Because she listens very regularly and also follows these things on social. And she was like, I forget when it was. It must have been Saturday. By the way, I just saw another Amazon truck.

Did the listeners know about that? Yeah, we told them about that, right?

I'm sitting here. I look at I-84 in Portland, Andrew. You always have that now. When we were sound checking, I saw one, and now I'm seeing one. I can't get that out of my head, so I think we're at 64. Okay, good.

I didn't see any on the flight home.

Okay, I saw a couple, but I have really good eyesight. I was looking down from space. Anyway, yeah. So, Hannah, we're fine. I survived. She sent me this message. Are you trying to drive that van right now in the desert? She was very worried. But anyway, thanks, everyone, for the well wishes. Thanks, everybody, for donating. And thanks for making the TV Telethon 12 a big success, we assume. We can't get in touch with any of the people who actually know the finances. But we're assuming that everything went well. So thanks, folks, for being so generous. Okay, let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, I don't know, an update on what it's like to join and unjoin Facebook for one week a year. We'll thank a couple of daily donors that fell through the cracks last year and maybe an email or email or two. And then we'll get out of here because it's Memorial Day. And as we like to say, Andrew, we're not even supposed to be here today. Back with more TVTL in a moment. Hey, let's thank some donors of the day. These are wonderful, generous folks who made donations to TBTL. And for whatever reason, we did not have them on the list. And so we want to make sure that we tidy everything up and, you know, handle all of our dot, all of our eyes and cross all of our T's before we move on to the next year's or I should say this year's folks we're going to thank. So let's thank Alex Strawn Alex Long time listener Alex I remember Being I think like we did a TBT like we did some kind of event In the basement of Cairo Oh I can't remember what that was

Was it like how to be a pod man

Maybe I feel like we hung out at the Azteca Across the street which is you know R.I.P. That Azteca But yeah Alex has been been listening to the show for evs thanks alex david uh zacharias zacharias zacharias zacharias maybe maybe i mean david has been on my front porch that's the thing

david is in a band the smittens oh david right right right sorry i didn't think i would know

how to say david's last name david's only been donating for a long time and has only actually played music on my former front porch and yet not 100 sure on the last name but david thank you so much we really appreciate you and thanks for all the emails and keeping in touch and keeping us posted on cool stuff music and then jenny evans what was that i'm sorry to interrupt i just want

to say also music recommendations david is often sending us great music recommendations yes thank

you david and thanks jenny evans for um also donating we really appreciate the generosity and appreciate i mean You're gone and forgot

I'm going to yes I'm excited we get to do the show for another year I don't I'm like what I really want to do is wrap this up today and then go take a nap but I am very appreciative that this is our job tomorrow when I wake up fully rested and real life starts again I'm going to be especially thankful that we had a successful fawn and that we get to keep doing this for our job today being that it's Memorial Day being that I'm a little tired from my late night flight I am ready to

I'm ready to take a nap. You know, the Mariners game is starting in about 20 minutes. You can't sleep through that. The white hot Seattle Mariners. That's right.

They're at 500, baby. Wow. I did not see that coming. Every time I emotionally, every time I release desire on that team, that's when they keep pulling me back in. That's when they actually win a few games. They swept the Texas Rangers, if I understand.

They did indeed. They did indeed.

One of the many things that I could be following on Facebook, except Andrew, I'm not on Facebook anymore. I deleted my account. And I don't like – I have to say like I love that the Stens page exists because I know it's a great place for everybody to interact. And I really have a fun time dipping in once a year and saying hi to everybody and running – I don't know if running is the right term. But like doing the, you know, eagle soaring thing, a little club for running and exercising and just doing whatever it is your body allows. But I'm also not sad that I'm now off of Facebook because just in that week, my phone was blowing up. I don't maybe I had the notification set wrong. Then I got really paranoid because there's just I feel like when there's so much news about Facebook all the time. And please, I want to be clear. I'm not trying to tell people not to engage with us on Facebook because the Stens page is a hugely important place to the show. But I'm just saying my personal experience is when there are these stories about Facebook and all the downsides of Facebook, I'm always just blissfully unengaged with that. You know what I mean? I'm always just like, yeah, well, not my problem because I'm not on Facebook. And then I was like paranoid yesterday when I logged off that like it was going to be tracking me or that I was not fully logging off. They do make it very hard to get rid of – like they were asking me, like, do you want to archive your account? And I was like, archive? Bro, I have no friends on Facebook and in real life. I had zero interactions. There was a picture of Rudy on there. And then – in fact, you know what? I didn't even know how to post on Facebook anymore. Like I was trying to post to the Stens page and then instead I just put a bunch of pictures of me running up on my personal Facebook page.

Which nobody saw because you had no friends, right?

Right, although I think it was all public, you know what I mean? So, like, if during – like, basically, if during last week somebody looked me up and they were on Facebook and they were, oh, this is Luke Burbank, he's on Facebook, all they saw was one post from, I guess, Corvallis with, like, ten pictures of me running. Like, they must have thought, like, this is a very – I mean, they weren't wrong, but they were like, this is a very self-centered dude.

well I don't mean it that way I was going to say a real Peter Sagal over here not that I think Peter Sagal is self-centered but I just know that running is a big part of his his kind of identity right he has a book about running if not more than one book about running he has one yeah I think

it's called the idiot's guide to running and it's it's the thing that's cool about that book I will say is it's ostensibly about running but it's also just about his life and kind of how running really helped him because he was in kind of a personal low point uh before he started running and it really has really given him some uh it gave him sort of a new purpose in life and then really helped him in a lot of ways i will say that last week and i didn't run very far at all i was impressed by the way um by uh some of the i mean we got some some real olympians checking in on the eagle soaring thing people were running long distances i wasn't i was only running a little bit but i'll tell you what that saved me that trip like there was probably let's see so there would have been five mornings that i ran and i would say three of those mornings it was the last thing that i wanted to do andrew but when i got out there and i broke a little sweat uh and then we were getting together to do the show i was so relieved that i did it because it kind of like put

my mind in the right place i believe it yeah and yeah some of those were tough especially i mean i guess you were out there in the mornings so the heat wasn't quite as intense but i mean some of those and i know we're in some neighborhoods that were not super running or walking friendly um so yeah good on you for for getting out there i was going to say um you know while you're is extricating a word luke we're back in it by the way we're back into it as you're extricating yourself from facebook um i am dipping my toes slightly further and further into the world of um clubhouse now clubhouse is that app where people it's like a it's a conversation app right It's basically like a party call app. Remember the party lines? I mean, I guess we've already talked about it.

about this but you know it's just it's an audio only app um like kind of a social media kind of situation where people are going in and they're finding like-minded people who are interested in certain topics and and chatting about it just via the audio on your phone and i got um sucked into this because listener steven um and listener jennifer there uh in dc have set up a they're

the people who crashed a live wire event by the way they will forever they will forever have that claim to fame we did like a live wire bus thing in dc and they just like wisely showed up and we're like let's go and i was like okay you're you're on the bus what are you gonna do make

them cry kick them off physically um so anyway yeah they were too strong they started doing they started doing these um these tbtl chats on thursdays i don't know if it's every thursday or every other they'll usually post it to social media when it's going on and uh listener steven kept on encouraging me to join them for one. And so while I was like kind of testing out some of the gear for the TBTL-a-thon, I was in a pretty anxious kind of mode, you know, two days before hitting the road. I realized, hey, I have a few minutes here at the allotted time or, you know, at the specified time. So I'll hop on and say a quick hello, which I did. There was a gang of maybe, I don't know, between 10 and 20 people in there maybe. And it was fun. There's some folks who I've met before and some folks who I haven't met before and we just had a you know conversation for an hour and that was fun um now since then of course I have the app on my phone and it keeps sending me little notifications like hey there's this conversation like it sucked in I let it do this usually I don't let new social media apps do this but it said hey do you want us to kind of like make contact with everybody who's in your phone in your contact list in your phone who's on this app I'm like I don't care I don't care what you do is what I said to the app And so I'm getting all these notifications from, like, people who I met once at a conference, but they're, like, you know, they're having a conversation about user interface or whatever. I'm like, yeah, I'm not really interested in that. And I'm trying to now, like.

I'm sure your contacts are the most clubhouse rich, like, contacts because so many people we know work in audio content already. Don't you think?

Maybe. But what I'm finding, I don't think so, actually. Like, maybe between the two of us, but, like, most of this is, like, it seems like it's a lot of, like, kind of coding and Silicon Valley-ish and, like, self-improvement. I got to be honest with you, right now, and Stephen tells me that if I spend more time on the app and I make different contacts, eventually it'll start recommending things that maybe are more in my wheelhouse. But, like, so much of it is just, like, coders talking about coding issues or self-help or, like, it's all, like, how to be successful at blank, you know? and it's like I have no desire to like log on to an app to listen to a bunch of people talk about how to be more successful at blank when a lot of these probably people probably have like you know well whatever why am I going to be rude about it I don't know that all the people who are going to tell me how to be more successful on clubhouse or especially successful because why would they be hanging out on clubhouse so much maybe that's rude and I shouldn't say that but like as of right now I'm not super impressed with what I'm seeing but I'm still tempted right and so I opened up the app for the first time I'm kind of decompressing after this trip and I actually have some some mental space to actually kind of like you know just relax my mind and see what's going on so I open it up and it's recommending that I join this room I think they're called rooms or this conversation about alien talk and it was a bunch of people talking about their encounters with aliens and what they'd heard and philosophies and it turns out that was recommended to me because listener Stephen was in that room so I'm just like I didn't even know that I'm just like I'll listen to these people talk about aliens in the background for a little bit and then all of a sudden i'm getting this invite that says would you like to be a speaker in this room i'm like no no i would not like to be a speaker in this room but thank you steven um and and then he and i were texting back and forth and he's like yeah you just got to kind of find your rooms like i like this alien room it's good like kind of background um and so there might be some other things but i immediately thought like oh you know what would be a good room for me like the lebitard show or Or the cup of tea in a chat with our friend Bean? Like, are there other fan bases of people kind of geeking out on podcasts or TV shows? I couldn't find any that were right up my alley, which really made me realize that, hey, I kind of I like what Jennifer and Stephen are doing because, like, that's what I want out of this app. Like a TBTL-esque experience, you know?

I love that the listeners are like, we are not getting enough of Luke and Andrew droning on about nothing. Let's see if we can get them on the clubhouse. like we have been sorry we were doing clubhouse long before there was a clubhouse right yeah well

that's kind of why and in the and i want to join more of these too i don't know if i can every time but i'm going to make a concerted effort like you know if the timing aligns like i can just hop in and hop out but what i don't want and this sounds this might come off as sounding weird but i'm being honest and i was telling you this in the van i think at one point which is like I don't know.

I don't want to pop into one of these rooms and then feel like I have to be the one who's talking like quite the opposite. I'd like to just like kind of hang out and like hear what other people are saying. Now, if people are using these rooms to maybe kind of say, hey, I didn't like that segment of TBTL. I don't have to be in there. I don't think that's what's going on. I think it's just people who have, you know, the same interest, which in this case happens to be TBTL, and just checking in once every couple of weeks with each other and building a community. I like that, but I don't want there to be an expectation that when I jump in, hey, one of the hosts is here. Like, that's exactly – in real life, I don't want that. You know what I mean? Like, there's nothing I want less than to walk into a room and have everybody's eyes shift towards me, you know?

You know, I had to rent a car yesterday to get home from the airport because there is a Lyft and Uber shortage, driver shortage in Portland, and it was going to be like two hours. Actually, they were just saying we don't have anyone.

Is this because things are – because there was – it seems like there was a shortage everywhere we went.

I think there's like a national shortage of rideshare driver people. So I land at the airport, and there are no cars. And so I was like, eh, you know what? I'll just rent a car. It ended up being cheaper than the Lyft was going to be. The Lyft was going to be like $50 or something. So I rent the car, and when I turn it on, it just happens to be on the Fox News AM station in Portland, which I didn't even know existed. And they were playing Coast to Coast, and it was sublime, Andrew. Sublime. Speaking of alien talk, it wasn't George Norrie. It was, I think, a guy named George Knapp, who's actually probably my favorite right now. I think George Knapp is actually maybe out of the Twin Cities. Okay. And I feel like he should have the job. He's better at it than George Norrie, in my opinion. But they were talking aliens. And actually, you know what they were talking about was animal. First, it was aliens. And then it moved on to, like, animal rights. And get a load of this, Andrew. Wild Mustang culling. You know something about that What are the chances That in the last like What are the chances that as of Five days ago I didn't know that was a thing And now I can't stop hearing about it

That is amazing of course we're referring To the fact that Ruben's daughter Right is a 17 year old Podcaster who podcasts All about her work you know Taming and training wild stallions By the way quick aside I think you kind of alluded to this in your intro today. Ruben is on Facebook doing more promotion for TBTL than you, me, and APM put together over the course of the past five years. He's like linking to our show on his page. He's telling people exactly where he and his family are mentioned in the show. Like we might get a whole bunch of new listeners thanks to Ruben. I know.

Take a note, APM. Right? I don't know whose job that is at APM, but tell you what, Ruben is killing it. He is crushing it at promoting TVTL. But, yeah, so it was crazy. I thought it was so hilarious that this guy – now, I will say this. This guy's point of view on it was that these horses – now, listen, to Ruben, his family, and Ruben's friends who are now listening. I'm not trying to start any kind of a kerfuffle. but this guy's perspective was that uh these mustangs these wild horses that the bureau of land management is culling and rounding up there are basically we should just leave them alone is his point of view he thinks that they will when you take horses out of the environment they naturally then want to reproduce more or actually maybe more to the point there's more resources and so the like he thinks that the the herd will manage itself in terms of reproduction but if you start taking them out it just means there's more resources for the ones that are left and so they'll be able to have more horses and so if we're trying to like his his point of view is we should just leave the wild horses alone but um anyway it was just crazy to me that i had no idea

that was a thing and now i can't stop hearing about it and and and you saw a delica just moments

ago when we were talking i did dry as i was talking about the van our van which i did i'm not even kidding i felt very emotional about not very emotional i felt somewhat emotional about that van like that van really you know did yeoman's work for us right up until it couldn't anymore um and so i will always love those vans and yeah what are the chances that one was just driving

down cooch street here in portland here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female oh man it's not from a female all right you got a quick email or email before we

get out of here i have a quick voicemail that i am fascinated by luke i've been dying to play this for you i heard this this is about wild mustangs it is this was left on our voicemail line a while back actually i finally just um heard it the other day when i was in the hotel room actually in arizona um or arizona um we were talking never not say arizona for the rest of my life.

it. I really think you I know one of these days you're going to sit down to watch what we do in the shadows and it's fine that you're not there yet. Like I'm that way with TV all the time but I think you're going to enjoy it when you do but we were talking several weeks ago now. It probably feels like a couple of lifetimes ago Luke. You were talking about how you watched Goodfellas for the very first time and when you were done with it you had this urge to watch My Blue Heaven which is you know which is another movie a very very different movie starring Steve Martin about somebody in the witness protection program and we were talking about how maybe they actually exist in the same universe you know um well we got this voicemail explaining that this is less of a coincidence than we thought hi this is emily from minnesota and while you were

talking about how my blue heaven could be a sequel to goodfellas i remembered that there's a reason for this so goodfellas was based on a non-fiction book called wise guy by nicholas poletti he fairly extensively researched it including doing a lot of interviews with henry hill he also co-wrote the screenplay for goodfellas with martin scorsese and wrote the book casino and co-wrote that screenplay as well he was married to nora efron so she basically used nicholas pludgy's same research and maybe also sat in on some of the interviews with henry hill to write my blue heaven it's just a more fictionalized comedic take of the life of henry hill just the witness protection part so yeah they pretty much are sequels

unicorn mind exploding at least on my you know the weirdest thing you knew it oh i did because

i just saw a whole tiktok about this the other day but you know the weirdest thing is that my blue heaven came out a week before goodfellas that's not true seriously yeah if this person on tiktok is to be believed i actually meant to tell you about this yeah i saw a tiktok to this exact point just like i'm you know just out of the blue out of the blue heaven it said hey here's something you don't know about these movies my blue heaven is more or less a like it's it's the sequel to goodfellas which we had sort of said on the show and i think i mentioned in passing that my blue heaven i think it was it it was in theaters a week before goodfellas and that's

interesting that this is popping up now like I'm assuming that you saw it because it's kind of trending or trendy and this only came up on our show just very specifically because of your personal experience you had never it wasn't like oh they're celebrating an anniversary of Goodfellas and so you finally watch it it was just like our conversation about it randomly led you to decide I believe on a Wednesday night or something I'm gonna watch this movie at like 10 p.m. which is

the perfect time right to start a you know two plus hour movie and then when it finished my brain went to because it you know now i'm not spoiling anything but of course it just ends with he's going ray leot is going into witness protection and like my thought was i should watch my blue heaven like that's just naturally occurred to me and then i downloaded it and i only got like halfway through my blue heaven but um yeah my blue heaven doesn't hold

up as much as as you'd hope for a steve martin film i just i i said this at the time and there's

no reason to be negative not on Memorial Day not when we're not even supposed to be here today Andrew but like it's weird because it's so sticky that it's like it feels like it's a little like maybe it was because I just watched Goodfellas this very kind of hyper realistic film I guess or what I think of as being hyper realistic and then you went right into this kind of sticky version of Mafia life as portrayed by Steve Martin it just felt like I would have hoped that Steve Martin would have I mean maybe if they would have released my blue heaven a week after goodfellas steve martin would have had a chance to watch goodfellas and he would have worked on his character more right but it was just kind of like it just felt like hey over here where's the gabagoo actually i do like that part i mean it was it was very like you know which again steve martin is just so genius that i just feel like he usually Kind of figures out the nuance of a character Actually maybe he doesn't though I mean if you think about Steve Martin's like is the jerk a Nuanced performance Is the man with two brains A nuanced performance maybe Steve Martin maybe this whole time because Steve Martin is so smart and he's so like When he's interviewed he's Just so kind of cerebral That I think I think of him as being an Understated person but there's nothing Understated about any of the characters that he

Portrays no no and if you think about his early work that made him famous. It was like the King Tut. the head arrow through the head and like he's smart he's a genius he knows i do think that he's a genius and he knows what he's doing but i would never describe his kind of comedy as being subtle you know as an author he was subtle i read shop girl that's kind of a subtle little novelette

no no i didn't read uh his um he wrote a book i think called like born standing up which carrie devoured and loved and was telling me about and i got the sense that like sort of his whole stand-up career was itself kind of a meta commentary on stand-up like he's just a extremely smart person and so you know he's he's in on the joke when he's being the jerk when he's being naven like he's in on how over the top it is but but even so it's like he's not a subtle he's not a subtle comedic performer when it comes to his films no not at

all hey Luke quick reminder that on Monday's show I know I'm sorry last Thursday's show we were thanking dazzling donor Ryan Young who asked us to play a song called don't be denied by Neil Young and I said no we can't play that because we ironically he was denied that's a really good point well we're going to deny him no longer we don't have the YouTube streaming issues with Copyrighted music anymore And now that we're podcast only And APM has our back with the licensing We can play this today So this is a Don't Be Denied by Neil Young And we'll use that as going out music today

Alright, God, it's great to be back Just living in the free and easy space of podcasting None of those YouTube heavies coming after us Every time I try to play bossa nova hold music Before the show

I know, but we got a taste of that live broadcasting I have a feeling we're going to find a way I think we're going to find a way to maybe do a little bit more of that. Don't you think? Yeah, that was really fun. Yeah, yeah. We can't go live all the time.

And I think that the listeners, I mean, the whole Stens movement grew out of, you know, doing the show, you know, streaming it live as it was happening. So, all right. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Thanks again for all of the generosity last week. And it just really meant so much to us. And thanks to everybody who hosted us. Thanks to our friend Christina for riding along with us and Eric the Viking for helping with the tech side. Anyway, that's going to be today's show. Have a great Memorial Day. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Don't be denied Don't be denied Don't be denied

Don't be denied

Don't be denied Don't be denied Well, pretty soon I met a friend He played guitar We used to sit on our steps at school And dream of being stars

Power out!