Muse

Hey, dummies. I had a dream, and it was about a van, and I was in it with y'all. And I'm just hoping that the TPTL-a-thon ended on a high note. But Luke, you found me in the van putting my backpack on a seat, and you were angry. And Andrew, you were like, hey, where is my Serape? So this is from your friend, listener Clementine. And I hope you find that Serape, Andrew. And Luke, I'm very sorry that I put the backpack where you didn't want it. But the van was functioning. Peace out.

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They spell Bon and Voy. Well, those aren't words. Yeah, this generation is all hacky-sack and video games. Ain't that the truth?

Hi, yes, I am an elephant. Does anyone have any special skills? I can be sardonic. How'd it go?

Well, he's going to acknowledge me on Instagram, so I guess you could say it was one of the best conversations of my entire life. Are you ready to hear a really terrible podcast?

All right, strap yourself in. Here we go. All right, hello, good morning, and welcome to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. We're getting medium play on three independent radio stations in Central Europe. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. Oh, hey, y'all said my name. Here we are, everyone. We made it to June 1st, where it is supposed to be 95 degrees today in Portland, Oregon.

Jalapeno!

By the way, my part of the program is emanating from the Nest Broadcast Center high in the sky above Portland. where it is going to be steamy today and i got an email from the power company saying basically if i am careful and if i don't use any electricity today i'll be rewarded with some kind of i don't know special let's just see here uh they said we like your energy this is portland general electric you've signed up for peak time rebates this summer which means you can save on your bill by reducing your energy use on hot days when energy demand is high. You gotta be kidding me. No doi, power company. I live in an apartment that has a glass box that the sun radiates down onto from the hours of 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. I'm one of the people that needs to use a little more electricity, please, to have this place be habitable. I feel warm and I'm levitating. Anyway, we're gonna be fine, everyone. Everything is going to be okay here on episode 3,435 in a collector series. Look who dug their bell out of their suitcase, which I also unpacked. This was, you know, my deal with, of course, last week we were on the road doing the TBTL-a-thon 12 contentless delivery, which got a little news on that as well coming up. but uh i do one of two things with a suitcase that is still full of of clothes when i bring it back i guess it'd be weird if i brought it back empty i don't know what that would mean happened on the trip either i'm very organized and very on top of it and i will just like take all the dirty clothes out and wash those and take all the clean clothes out and put those back on the hangers etc i'll either do that within three hours of arriving home or three months today was uh or this trip was more of a three hours actually got that all taken care of i'm feeling very happy of myself about that and um yeah we are back to it baby here from our normal broadcast positions speaking of things getting back to it the movie theater industry is getting back to it by allowing people who say they are vaccinated to come into the theaters and be maskless. So I guess we'll see how that goes. I mean, scientifically, there's probably nothing super wrong with it, but there's something that feels a little, I don't know, inappropriate about that. Maybe that's just because my brain has sort of, I don't know, been biologically and fundamentally affected by the last year and whatever, however many months of our lives. Speaking of films, by the way, the first big pandemic era blockbuster has actually come out. It's the first line of the film, man.

It's got to be on the money here. A Quiet Place 2 made so much money in actual theaters. I don't know why I started saying theater like Moira from Schitt's Creek. Theaters.

Quiet Place 2 made so much money this week. It made as much money in a still somewhat pandemic-stricken America that it exceeded some of the estimates that they thought it was going to make before any of us knew the words COVID-19. So that's an interesting little plot development with this whole going back to seeing movies in real life stuff. Oh, and speaking of entertainment, I finally finished Mayor of Easttown last night.

Would you guys quit eating Wawa hoagies over the body, please? Sorry.

And I will try to give a little review of it without spoiling anything. But I do have some thoughts. Plus, we got emails and V-mails. And we've got this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He has been very clear on the show. He doesn't use emojis when he's texting. But oddly, he's just started speaking in them exclusively. Unicorn mind exploding He is Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now From the Roosevelt neighbor of Seattle, Washington Good morning my friend

Good morning, I don't know how we did it Luke I don't know if we mentioned the hotel we were staying at in Phoenix Or he's just a great sleuth slash stalker But Joe in Arizona has taken photos of the van Hashtag Delica Watch 2021 He found the van Where you parked it Where apparently it's still sitting As of 9.26 a.m.

At this point there's no reason being coy

FYI Luke and Andrew The van is still safely parked at the hotel Good call parking it under a shady canopy Hashtag Delica Watch 2021 Two photos attached Taken from a vehicle of some sort So somebody did drive by Joe did a drive by And actually, as stocky as that is, it also kind of comforts me.

I think that's great. That's actually really helpful. Joe, you're actually the legal owner of the van now. Or at least you're the responsible party. So when the caravan shows up to tow the Delica back to Portland, we need you to sign some paperwork and some other stuff. I'm with you that like were that like our places of our actual places of residence, Andrew, or even maybe a hotel that we were actively staying in. I might be like, well, that feels a little bit over the line. But considering we're long gone from Phoenix. Oh, by the way, I am checked out of the hotel now. They should have emailed you a receipt last night.

No, I'll follow up with them.

They didn't email you a receipt. I talked them through it last night.

One of the weirdest things about this photo of the van, though, I just got to say this one last thing, and we can talk about the hotel situation. And I'm trying to figure out how this is possible. But the podcast delivery signs are back on it. Oh, my God. And it must be something about the wind, right? I mean, at this point, the only suspect we have is Joe.

This is one of the main things you learn when you're watching Keith Morrison stuff on Dateline or even Mare of Easttown. It's, you know, the criminals always return to the scene of the crime. Yeah. So it's odd that Joe just so happens to be the person taking pictures of the van and also the signs show back up.

I don't know. Something's going on. Anyway. Yeah. So that was kind of weird. Do we want to talk about this? We have so much to talk about, actually.

Yeah, this is like the least interesting place to start it, which is what's going on with our hotel reservations and folio at the hotel we stayed at last week. I mean, the short version is just I had checked out on Sunday and flown home. I'm just trying to really go mayor of Easttown now. Flown home and E.T. flown home. Imagine if E.T. had landed in Delaware County. so that was just more like I don't know that was it that was the whole bit Andrew thank you and thank you for your support in this

that was the worst okay I'm imagining it go on let's go to a writer's room together shall we do you want to start a improv a staged improv like ya boys I'm blanking on their names right now middle middle ditch middle ditch and schwartz yeah it seems like i i've got no i have it all figured

out andrew it's et says phone home and then he's also holding a yingling in one hand so instead of reese's uh you know well reese's pieces which is i think how like he loved reese's pieces in that film uh they get him with yingling he has a drinking problem because i mean he's like What we don't realize is E.T. is like 600 years old He looks cute and small, but he's of age He's allowed to drink And they just keep plying him with yingling Until he says some stuff that's pretty racially dicey

Speaking of, I have a drop that I pulled yesterday From an episode of Children's Hospital That I thought would maybe be good in an intro But I actually don't think it is good in a montage so i'll just play it for it's also a little bit on the edge as far as what our humor is but um it didn't sound really good in a montage i'll just play it for you here in the clear you're an alcoholic please if anything i have a pill problem pills are medicine stupid it starts with him saying wow i know it's kind of rough anyway um yeah so i called the hotel yesterday that we stayed in in arizona to get a receipt and they said well he's still in there the guy in 404 It's okay for me to say that now, right? The guy on 4-4 is still in there. Take a picture, Joe. It'll last longer. He hasn't checked out yet. I'm like, no, I'm pretty sure he checked out. Like, he's in Portland.

I'm about to talk to him in 10 minutes from his apartment in Portland.

It was just a weird, because I knew you weren't there, but it was just a weird thing to hear him say, no, he, because he didn't say he hasn't checked out yet. He said he's still in there, which is kind of, it was a weird thing to hear somebody say.

A couple of jars of pee and some other Hughes-ian kind of accoutrement. Now, of course, what happened there was – and this is good. This is a good thing, Andrew. So I want you to understand that I'm saying this is a positive. But like you – because we were trying – we don't know what the limits are on our corporate cards as far as expenses and things. And we just wanted to make sure we were trying to spread the cost of of the hotel rooms and gas and things like that for the trip. So one of us didn't like hit some kind of limit we didn't know existed. And by we're not talking about tens of thousands of dollars here, but still, it was actually pretty reasonably priced. We stayed in many, including the place we were staying in Phoenix, pretty reason. I'll say this one thing. Mary, the TBTL Virgin, gave me a ride back to the hotel on Friday from Nora's house. Am I allowed to say that it was Nora's house? And recently reprimanded For some pushback I divulged a few Well one we got the We were calling it a turtle and it's not a turtle It was a tortoise This is the pet of Nora's family Yeah that was really bugging some of the members of Nora's family there Who heard the show And so anyway just to clarify It's a tortoise But anyway Mary gave me a ride back to the hotel And she asked where are you staying And I said the name of the hotel And she goes oh that's the place where the guy who owns it his mom cleans all the rooms now that would be quaint at a b&b yeah it's a pretty big hotel it's a little bit there are probably too many rooms for it to be that kind of family business and i would just say i had noted that in a few different ways not to not to be mean everybody was very nice but anyway there's some funkiness about the whole operation and uh anyway so you picked up you put those rooms your room in my room and christina's room on your card and uh in other places i put the rooms on my card it was just kind of the luck of the draw well of course you being the way you are wired once you knew i had checked out you were calling them to say hey can i get the folio because you're my guess is you'll have all these expenses done by today probably not today today's

a busy day for me but yeah i did find myself and not in a i don't think in a bad way i'm not like super anxious about it but i did get home i'm really enjoying having this huge project behind us right i feel like oh yeah kind of concentrate on some other things like i was putting off small smallish things like ordering a new pair of glasses i like just didn't have the mental space it's like i'll order it when i get back and all these things i'll do it when i get back so i sort of feel like yeah coming back and i was taking photos of my receipts i wasn't keeping track of them during the trip and so yesterday i had a few minutes before the show i was waiting for you to dial up i'm like i'll just take this moment to start like collecting these receipts in the concur system and that's when i realized oh i don't have a receipt for that hotel so i called them so yeah i'm a little on top of it i'm a little you are but even like when we were in

eureka you had to step out of the applebee's because you were in a protracted phone conversation with our first hotel yeah over the getting your folio from there like it was like and again that you're i'm it sounds like i'm trying to be like you're being extra about it you're not we just have different processes i think it probably for you it's good to check it off the list like i got the email now i have it just i have a different process which is one to four years from now When APM has withheld Multiple paychecks from me I will then call these places And ask them to send me the folios So if this were left So that I can file the expenses I.e. be on the phone With our colleague Rachel Dennis And have her walk me through The whole process once again Now so my point is Were it left to me I'd still be checked in Somewhere at the hotel in Phoenix

Because I would have never called them To double check Somehow you'd both be in Portland Yet they'd also be finding your body In the bathtub there somehow

I would just be like – honestly, it could go on for months with that place. It was a pretty ad hoc operation in certain ways, and they could – so it's good that you were in charge of that one thing because you flagged. Then when I called them yesterday, by the way, they said, oh, no, no, the night audit would have caught that you're not in the room. And I was like, I don't understand how that works, but okay, fine. So I was getting mixed messages from them, but allegedly –

I'm checked out and they were supposed to have emailed your email address with the receipt.

Now, I'll call him later and just get that. I'll get that in my inbox. Speaking of mysteries, what is this mystery package? Oh, God. Yes. God. There's so much I need to talk to you about. I also did the Sriracha thing last night, by the way. Maybe I can talk about that tomorrow on the show. I have I found myself. Oh, yes.

Like about Sriracha transfer project.

I took a photo. I think I had about I think I exaggerated on the show with you. I think I had like 20 to 30 packets of Sriracha. from like various takeout things. And also I inherited a whole bunch from a recent takeout thing for a big group of people. And so I was going to empty them into an empty Sriracha bottle, which I started that process last night. I'll tell you about it on tomorrow's show. That's how you sweep the quarter hour because I do have an update there. But what I will tell you is while I was getting ready for the TBTL-a-thon, I was anxiously, so, so anxiously anticipating a package from American Public Media that had some equipment in there shipped to us by our engineer, Eric, the Viking Stromstead. It got here just in the nick of time after I missed the delivery drop off the day before. We talked about this on the show. I was very nervous about it. But then on May 25th, which would have been, I think, a day after I was already on the road. Yeah, yeah. Tuesday, the 25th. I get a note. This is last week. You and I are in the delicate at this point um i get a note from fedex saying i got a shipment from american public media that's on its way to your house and i'm like i already got all my equipment from eric i don't need anything from american public media then a few days later when you and i are in arizona i get a photo sent to me by genevieve of one of those sticky notes that had been affixed to the outside of our door saying you missed the drop off we'll try again tomorrow or something like that and i was Like, I don't know what this package is. Like, this could be – I mean, is this – does this even exist? Does the FedEx organization – did they mistrack something? Is this from a different department at American Public Media? Could this be sent from the fundraising department? Nobody told me to be on the lookout for any of this. Anyway, FedEx tried to deliver it once. Like I said, I was on the road. I wasn't here. And now it's like we're not trying again. It's at that place down in Alaska Way or whatever, someplace.

and I described you're gonna have to leave a lot of post-it notes on this one yeah well it's not

coming back it's it's you know they're not and I'm on the website what if you leave a trail of

post-it notes starting on Alaskan way right down at the center and it just points arrows all the way back to the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle Washington I've never been to this place before I

hear it's kind of a hellish place to go as you would kind of expect and it's down in kind of like what we call the Soto area I believe which is kind of the industrial area of town which I actually like but it's a pain in the ass to kind of get around down there and I mean I just have so many questions number one what's in this package number two why did they only try to deliver it once and then they're like no no come down here to the bowels of our operation to pick it up like and then thirdly and most importantly there is a link on this like kind of email they sent me that says manage delivery delivery or or as i like to say it's delivery it's like a it's more of a groove more of a groove when you manage the delivery um and i'm clicking on it and it's not giving me any options people have written in to say you can you know contact them and have these packages rerouted to a FedEx store that is closer to you that sounds like really good advice or maybe I could contact them and say try it at my house again but I don't have to sign for it like but there's I cannot figure out now I just sound like an old man but I'm clicking on the manage delivery button it's not really giving me any managing options and I don't know how to do any of those things so I think I have an appointment this afternoon and I'm thinking after the appointment i might just drive to sodo and just see what the hell yeah exactly i'm just like get it out of the damn way right like i somehow like that just like it just seems like i'm at least i'll be taking fortune into my own hands a little bit even though it'll be a pain in the ass

i think you should because i'm curious uh what the package is does it have any kind of indicator if there's any kind of green liquid oozing from any of the lower corners of the package is that one

of the fields on the form it says there's some secret of the ooze oh okay okay yeah no definitely

you're gonna want to pick that up uh my guess is it will be extremely underwhelming when you get the package that's the thing so this is what happens in my apartment building here uh all the time which is i often order things you know thing like packages either from amazon or other stuff And usually it's – sometimes it's just highly practical. Sometimes it's like, oh, Nike Air slides that I wanted because they look like Air Max shoes, which I couldn't afford when I was a kid. And so now as an adult, I will have the flip-flop versions, although they're technically not flip-flops because they don't go in between your toes. And when something like that is in the mail, Andrew, it's, as I often say about lotto tickets and things, it's a little sunshine in my pocket. It's just like I know that out there in the universe, some.

Or, like, this thing that I bought that's so silly, Andrew, but so kind of fun, which is a case for my iPhone that has built onto the back of it a functioning mini Nintendo NES. Nothing is sweet. It was $20. I don't understand the economics of that, by the way. It was $20 for this. A case is $20. This is a functional iPhone case. and then also it's got more games built into it than all the Nintendo games we had as kids or the person who had the NES. You might have like five games. It's got like, I don't know, 60 or something games in it. Point is, when I have something like that ordered and it's out there floating around the universe, I just have this kind of slightly happy feeling like Christmas is coming. And then what happens is I will get a text from the Luxor company, which is the people that run the lockers in my apartment building where you know stuff that's too big to fit in your mailbox is sent and when i get that announcement from luxor saying your package has arrived i'm always like is it the nintendo iphone case is it the is it the nike air max slides and then what it'll be is i'll go downstairs and it will be a thick book that i have to read for yes yes in fact i am

looking at the information here and i just got a new piece of information on this and it says the package type is a it's an envelope so i know oh you know what i'll bet you it is i'll bet you it's a piece of mail that has been sent in by a listener that finally you know people have not been working at american public media you know at the actual headquarters because of covid and everything and all the work from home details um and so my guess is people are now returning to the office somebody found an envelope probably it could be like maybe a card from the christmas card exchange or something and they probably just shipped it to me in a fedex envelope would that be

your best guess yeah probably because you don't like you're not getting books and things mailed To you for work that you're not even aware Of you would know And you're also very I think you're pretty Aware of this kind of unless it unless Bob Walsh sent you something it's from I know it's from

American public media oh yeah Okay well yeah unless he started sending

Stuff through American public that would be weird

We have been rather chilly towards each other

Lately yeah yeah so Yeah I bet you it's I mean Now that now now the dynamic I've set up is If you go get this thing this envelope And it's just some like really sweet note from a listener like that's a letdown like if it's not nike air slides it's a letdown it'd be

really weird if it was nike air slides though i don't want to yeah i don't want to i don't want

to set the dynamic of that some listener being kind and sending us some kind of i'm gonna assume it's by the way this is good this means that maybe it's just because we just got the the results back from the thon last week's thon and it turns out we managed to hit the goal in fact even exceed it by a bit so thank you everyone so much honestly thank you so much for making last week's thing a success um but anyway uh these wonderful kind generous folks who who make the show possible if one of them sent a nice note in which again i like that i'm assuming it's a nice note it could be an angry note you're right it could be but i just i'm feeling very positive on this tuesday i got a great night's sleep last night again ate an entire small pizza from sizzle pie i don't know why that's on the that's probably why i slept well had like a mountain of carbs in my stomach anyway i'm feeling very good and positive i'm assuming it's going to be a nice note from a listener um and i don't want that to be like a bad outcome so just assume you're driving down to soto listen put on some sports radio roll the windows down let your hair flow in the wind wow i have hair in this scenario i love drew barrymore situation and um you know do that thing with your hand where you kind of make it like an airplane wing out the window yeah yeah oh can i just tell you my driving right now is literally a major disaster getting used to your car again i have ever i had to run an errand this morning i turned the windshield wipers on 24 times because everything you've everything is opposite i had my brain had just learned where the turn signal on the delica van was and now it has to relearn that where it is on a mazda uh whatever

i have c5 or something um i like that you don't know what you have either i'm so bad with cars i told you i had to drive your car back you know when we when we picked up the delica and so i had to drive your car and i think i told you i was you know a little nervous driving somebody else's car and it's a nicer newer car um and i think i just turn into a 16 year old and be like i don't want don't scrape Luke's car but then about halfway through the I don't know what is it 15 minute drive 10 minute drive I'm like what am I driving And, like, I look around, like, if something had happened and I had to fill out a police report, they'd say, what kind of car were you driving? I'd say, I don't know. They're like, well, give us a ballpark. Like, what is the manufacturer? I don't know. I looked down at the steering wheel and it had a logo. I couldn't even place the logo. I don't even know. I think I called it an SUV. You said it's not an SUV. I don't know the make of that car or even, like, what kind of car it is. I am so car blind.

Well, it's a Mazda, and I don't even know where the turn signals are, so I guess you and I are both in the dark on that. Anyway, I'm just saying, drive down there, get the package, but also go down there with the expectation that it's probably not Nike Airslide. I want you to be prepared for that emotionally. It's probably going to just be a nice note from a listener, and that needs to be enough for you to make the journey. You have to be ready for that.

I do think I'm picturing that one of the reasons I want to do this, too, is because maybe one it's kind of like my mapping thing when I am having social anxiety about going somewhere. I'll take a look at the establishment on Google Maps and maybe it's part maybe that's part of it. Like when I was expecting an important, an important package, I didn't want to go down to this place because I just heard it's kind of a nightmare. And maybe here when there's something a little bit less stressful on a day where I'll have a little bit of free time, I can go down there and I can just scope it out. So if I'm ever expecting something really serious, I won't be so intimidated by the process. Or, contrarily, I'll be more intimidated because I'll have confirmation that it's a nightmare. We'll find out.

I have a question for you, Andrew, about a tweet that I sent out the other day. Yesterday was Memorial Day. And the management of this apartment building, I think it's interesting because I have at times found it to be really challenging to work with them. And sometimes they're great, and they all seem like they're generally nice people. But sometimes there have been moments where I felt they maybe weren't as responsive as they could have been. There are times where their answers to my questions seem to go maybe unanswered for a day or two, or it's not the right – we've got to wait for this person to come in who can actually address that. But the one thing that I feel like they never, ever, ever sleep on is letting us know all the times they'll be closed. Like the office will be closed. It's a very high priority. there's two there's three things that appear to be the highest order of priority in this building one is the times when the office will be closed and letting us know that the other is coordinating food trucks that will be near the building which i i wonder there's got to be some financial remuneration there or something because like most of the emails they send out are like um so and so taco truck is going to be here on thursday in the in the parking lot next door And I'm like I mean we're all adults in this building except for the people who aren't except for the children So we all know how to get food We've all been nourishing ourselves sufficiently that we are living in the building and have the money to pay the rent I don't understand why they're really big on trying to get food trucks to park next to the building And it makes me think that there has to be something where like maybe the apartment building gets a percentage of the sales or something because it's just a weird thing for them to be super duper duper

communicative about people get so it's a little bit like the phenomenon of like when you're working in an office and everybody gets really excited about somebody you know bringing food in to share or a company bringing in food and it's like it doesn't even really matter if you really wanted food or if it's great it's just like people get really excited about it right and food trucks in portland are kind of like that yeah but i mean the thing about food trucks in

Portland is that they are everywhere yeah I mean it is you just can't I probably see five food trucks from where my perch right now and so the idea that you got a food truck I don't know why I'm being so negative about it's just it's it's it's weird to me because it's one of the main things they like to tell us about the other thing they like to tell us about is the pet of the month which I'm down with because pets are cute and the third thing is that some kind of yoga zoom yoga to help you deal or zoom meditation to help you deal with anger and as i've pointed out the main thing that makes me angry is when they won't let me move apartments in this building so they're both the creator and apparently the solution to the problem of my anger anyway so uh i get an email yesterday morning that's just like the office is closed on memorial day exclamation point and then i wrote on twitter nobody's more excited to not be open than my apartment management was that a little bit was that unnecessarily snarky because i mean again they're nice folks they're not doing anything wrong they just there's a chipperness to it that i think frustrates me when like i just don't know if you should ever say when you when what you're basically saying is we're not going to be providing you a service now should you ever use an exclamation point in that situation because it sounds like you're just excited about it and for me as somebody who pays rent to live in this building and would like to have as much access to help as possible them saying, hey, we're not going to be here for a day which by the way they do not miss a holiday here ever i mean it could be like arbor day canadian boxing day the office is closed i'm like okay i mean it's very bank hours around here am i just am i just being a curmudgeon okay a couple of questions here a couple of things

first one is a question the second thing is more of a comment than a question um sure did you delete this tweet because i'm not seeing it on your timeline so good did i delete it well then i think you already deleted it because i saw this on the show sheet this morning it just said you know should you know i had i tweeted something out about my apartment building was i too harsh and i was interested in knowing ahead of time because you know me luke i like to do as much prep as possible for the show i thought i should look at what this tweet is toss it around in my brain a little bit chew on it think about it think about the angles exactly uh marinate of east town um anyway um what i did see was i did not see that tweet but i did see a tweet where you screen capped the fact that lee harvey oswald is trending on twitter and you wrote oh my god what did he do this time with a couple of worried looking emojis that got me i gave you the old thumbs up on that oh did i get the coveted absolutely about an hour or two ago did i get the coveted like smash yes yes by the way thank you i don't see a lot of your tweets and i think it's because i still even though it keeps reverting back to the other the other way like i keep my Twitter on the setting that just shows me the latest, not the recommended. And you have to kind of like fight with it. It keeps reverting back to recommended. But there's something I like about Twitter, especially like kind of going back to the old days of just like, I don't want it to be curated. I don't want to see the top tweets. I just want to see the shit that is happening like right now, you know, especially when you're following sporting events. So for some reason, whenever you're tweeting, I happen to not be looking down at my phone. So don't take the fact that the, um, the, um, the, the rare heart from me, it means that my, my heart doesn't like what you're doing. Anyway. Um, I don't think that to answer your question, after all that rambling, I don't think that your tweet was too harsh. I dig exactly where you're coming from. What, you know, like I just, I gotta, I gotta bug up my ass about your apartment management. Like sure. They're fine people. And I don't know if that's the idiom, but sure. No, it's, I've got, Oh, sorry, I got 14 bugs up my bottom about your apartment management. In the clear.

Lynn, you know what to do.

That's the expression, though? Is that why I got it wrong the first time?

Yep, it is. Yeah, they used to say that all the time in the Old West. I got 14 bugs up my bottom. Well, now, great. Now I said it. Now that's also on the record. I believe it'll be on a different website. Cool.

I believe it was like kind of the gold miners who said that, I think. I don't know. I'll look it up later. Anyway, point is, yeah, you know what? like if you're going to not be providing the service that you pay for for one day and again it's just a tonal thing i'm not oh my god i can already see the emails and tweets from our angry manager our property manager we have one person and i'm not going to mention them because i don't

want them to feel embarrassed because they're actually a lovely human but we have somebody who works in this industry and it has appeared to have been somewhat triggering to them at times

when i talk about this apartment exactly so i want it on the record i'm not saying that they don't have a right to take the day off of course the staff should be able to take the day off if I you know ideally if you're providing a service that needs 24 hour attention I would like probably try to run run my organization so that things are fully staffed and people who work on the holiday maybe can comp that day and get some extra time as well like there are certain industries where you don't get certain days off but those people who have to work them will you know they'll they'll be made good for them down the line. Radio is one of those things. Radio stations don't just go quiet, you know, on Memorial Day. Ask yourself this.

What's the staffing policy at Jimmy John's? Right, exactly. Are they open? Maybe we should be open. Right. Like, maybe we pay people double time. Maybe we have some folks that can come in and cover. We figure it out because, you know, plumbing doesn't stop breaking on Memorial Day. I mean, again, it's like if there are, although I did, I'm going to tell you something very true yesterday, Andrew. I called a Jimmy John's to get a delivery, and they had run out of bread. Wow. Have you ever heard of that? In the old days, I think you would have been cool with that. Weren't you getting lettuce wraps from them for a while?

Yeah.

I mean, did you see me eating on this trip? I have clearly just thrown low-carb policies to the wind. But, yeah, I was shocked. I think it's because it was a beautiful Memorial Day in Portland, and everybody decided we're going to go to the beach or the river and we're going to bring sandwiches. And they all wanted sandwiches from the Broadway Jimmy John's because first I tried to do it on my phone through the app. Again, I have very mixed feelings about that place. I don't want to give them any free love because I think the owner is sort of the Papa John. In fact, they're both named John, I guess, or he's Jimmy. He's kind of the Papa John of the sandwich industry.

like you know i don't get the sense that the dude who owns that sandwich place is like the guy i would really vibe with um does a lot of that exotic game hunting i put in quotes where they you know take you out there and let you you know hunt an animal that i don't think should be hunted but anyway putting that aside i first tried to use the app and i said we're not delivering right now i thought well this just must be some kind of glitch and then i called him and some kid said oh sir we ran out of bread wow i know i was like that's amazing to me i mean it just gave me you know what it was weirdly life-affirming andrew because it just made me think nature is healing it made me think because first i was like that's how could that be and then i was like oh because it's a beautiful day and it's a holiday and a lot of people including the apartment management have that day off and people want these sandwiches because they're probably having backyard get togethers and they're probably doing fun stuff it just felt like it was some kind of like like financial indicator to me you know like of of a larger cultural trend of people having fun

in portland yesterday and it made me feel happy that's good going back to the sign for a second though i'm just kind of because i'm very sensitive to tone i don't know if we've ever discussed that on the show but yeah that's kind of like we're gonna be closed good news for everybody like i Right. Like that tone, like, you know, maybe even if you feel like kind of gilding the lily here, which I don't think I'm using that right either. If you feel like, you know, putting 14 bugs up your bottom, you can just say, hey, we're going to be closed on Memorial Day to give our, you know, our staff a much needed break. You know, like you could even say something that from Luke or to give our staff.

Why did they put that in the sign? That was honestly that felt personal.

But you could just say, hey, we're going to be – but it should be kind of like – it should be a little bit like, sorry, we're not going to be here. Here's how you can reach us in case of emergency. I'm sure that information was in there somewhere. But, yeah, but tonally it shouldn't be like, oh, yay, I'm celebrating that you're not going to be providing a service on this day.

And I think probably for me that's just generally speaking something that I find challenging about their whole vibe is, in my experience, usually giving me bad news but with an exclamation point after it. And it's like, eh, that somehow makes it feel a little bit worse to me. But anyway, we got through it. They're back open today. I've called them over seven times about various issues. You've had them deliver bread to you. I had them fresh bake some bread, take it to the Jimmy John's, and then bring it here so fast that I actually freaked. So, okay. Let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, we have some top stories to do involving Mare of Easttown and A Quiet Place, The Deuce. I'm not sure why they didn't decide to call it that, but apparently they know what they're doing because it was a big box office hit this weekend. So that's all coming up in a moment here on TBTL.

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

Well, what do we have here, Andrew? Hmm. Another dazzling donor. Late-breaking dazzling donor message. This actually goes back to this previous year, somebody who was generously donating and supporting the show, and I know listening because she reaches out to me on the occasion to give me feedback and responses to things that we've said on the show, because she is an actual IRL longtime dear friend of mine. Of course, I'm talking about the one, the only, Caitlin Duffy, a.k.a. Caitlin Dye. I did not realize that Caitlin is a longtime IRL friend of yours. Oh, yeah. We worked. I was her intern at I was her work study student on a weekday at KUOW. Really? Yeah. Caitlin was a producer of that show. And I remember being all of 20 years old. Actually, I wasn't even 20, like 19. I got that work study job at KUOW. Caitlin produced weekday. And I remember just sitting there in awe of her of her smarts and her producer skills as she, you know, like put shows together and booked guests and talk to the hosts and coordinated things. She just was like just absolutely like my my hero of that. I was just like someday I want to be as good at that as she is. And then we've gone on to collaborate on many a project, including that thing where I weirdly was wearing Clippy. Oh, yeah. Microsoft mascot. Sure. Yeah. That was because of my friend and friend of the show, Caitlin Duffy, who is today's Dazzling Donor. Yeah, she's been working over there and has done all kinds of cool projects and even let me be a part of a few of them. This is what Caitlin is saying with her message. I'm going to give a shout out to fellow 10. And I'm not going to say this 10's name right now, Andrew, because Caitlin says, guys, I love you, but please don't screw up the pronunciation of her name again. She was a Dazzling Donor in the past. Then it sounds like our colleague, Emily, had reached out and asked Caitlin, this is getting complicated, to please clarify how to pronounce the name of this other 10 and one time dazzling donor. And I guess Caitlin said it would be she would rather see if we can figure it out. And she said we're both celebrating milestone birthdays this summer. I have a sense I know what that birthday is for Kate Londi, but I won't say it because, you know, I don't want to speculate. You never it's never great to guess at someone's age. Here's what Caitlin says. TBTL has been a constant companion of mine since the show started many years ago on Cairo. Not to brag, but I contributed the drop. That's why I live in a teepee. Can you please play that drop today? Caitlin, of course we can. This would be the one, the only Matt Latanzi. And this is the drop. That's why I live in a teepee.

I don't remember Okay, we never said Are we still skipping the name of the person We're going to go back to that So give me the background on this drop Because I don't think I know that drop

There was a show, a reality show From many years ago Involving, I believe People trying to become Pop singers It wasn't like The Voice or American Idol It was more like I don't know how you describe it But it was more sort of like I think maybe people were even like living together in some house and they were all trying to break into the industry. And one of the people that was trying to do this, I could be wrong about the singing. It was some kind of, you know, entertainment type show. They were trying to break into some entertainment thing. And one of them was a young woman named I think her name was Chloe Latanzi. And she was the daughter of Olivia Newton-John.

Oh, OK.

But what jumped out, I guess, to Caitlin and maybe to Jen Flash Andrews at the time, who I think might have also been watching the show, was that they found when the producer of the show went to film Olivia Newton-John's baby daddy, he was a real character and he was living in a teepee, which was surprising. And I think, I can't remember what happened, but at some point, you know, things on the show got complicated or hot or people were getting mad or, I don't know, something was happening. And that was when Matt Latanzi famously uttered the line. That's why I live in a teepee. It just protects him from a lot of the drama. I guess, you know, save the drama for your mama. I'm going to be out here in this teepee. That's why I live in a teepee. Wow. So there you go. And I didn't remember that, but I guess Caitlin was the one who had submitted that or hipped us to it or something. So, Caitlin, thank you very much. Also, Caitlin says, if you have time and if you won't get sued by YouTube, can you please play Computer Love by Zap featuring Roger Muchlove, Caitlin, from Seattle? I think we can go out with that.

I got it right here. Yeah.

Computer Love. That song. I say this every time we play this song, but it's worth saying again, just when you hear this later on going out, you know, ending the show. It is remarkable to me That these guys wrote a song in the 1980s When computers were so nascent And they basically had already figured out That people were going to be meeting Their romantic partners via these computers It seemed sci-fi at the time I mean, yeah, this was And we've looked this up before But if you look at whatever year Computer Love came out And then what the computer I mean, there was no I mean, there was a very, very, very, very Probably rudimentary internet that only, like, people at DARPA knew about. DARPA and Zap and Roger, apparently. Like, I don't understand how. That is some, like, if they have a song about Bitcoin, forget it. It's officially over. I don't know how these guys knew what they knew. But anyway, I also just love the song. It's a jam. Okay, back to the name thing. So I am trying to figure out, because Caitlin's being unhelpful, and not telling us how to pronounce the name of this listener, who I do believe I have met. I have met this listener before, by the way. Okay. In question. Now, I am guessing, what I'm going to do is guess at how I mispronounced it in previous years and what that means about what I think the actual pronunciation is. When I first look at this name, my first thought was Sumathi. That's what it looks like to me. So my guess was that's what I said, but I bet you that where I messed up was the T-H. I was thinking the same thing. So I'm going to say it might be Sumathi. That's exactly what I That's exactly my thought process on that Okay, and we're never wrong about things Never We're going with a shout out to fellow 10 Sumati Guys, I love you, but please don't screw up the pronunciation Of her name again Which we probably did I don't know I'm giving it my best shot With limited information

And what is your nickname for Thank you. Caitlin, you were saying Katelyn-Dy?

Katelyn-Dy. Katelyn-Dy. I think that might have been, I'm probably wrong about this, but I feel like that was a nickname bestowed on her by one Bill Radke. Okay. Host at KUOW in Seattle. And then Caitlin will let me know what the origin of that is. But I feel, I think that might have been where that came from. I don't know. But, man, those were some heady years for me. I've been saying a version of this on the show so much lately, which probably indicates just kind of emotionally where I'm at with things, which is like excited for the future, but also at times a little wistful about the past and also just kind of assessing my life at 45 and why it is that I'm FedExing skateboards home from Phoenix, Arizona. Just it's a it's a moment to pause and take stock of things. And one of the things that I've noticed is really some of the happiest times in my life were when I'm like the work study student at KUOW I'm making no money and I'm like I'm super duper broke I'm stressed out because I have a two-year-old or three-year-old but I'm also working like nine jobs trying to pay my rent I'm in school full-time and also I have at the radio station the worst job you can have there in terms of like you know I just have to do all the stuff that the real employees don't want to do as far as listening to voicemails and stuff like that and yet thinking back about like it's And also, by the way, when I worked there in those days, this radio station was in the communications building at the University of Washington. So it was just sort of a glorified classroom that they had, like, taken all of the – they'd just taken all the desks out, and it was just kind of a big open room. But, I mean, it was absolutely – it was just very humble. And I was in a very humble position there. I was at the real, you know, lowest end of the flow chart. And yet I just have such great memories about that. I think because everybody seemed so cool to me. everybody just seemed like so smart so cool i just hung on their every word you know our friend robert smith recently uh left or i guess officially stepped back from the radio show planet money i guess i should say podcast is probably primarily what it is but the great npr program planet money because he's going to be leading i think it's like the night program at columbia now oh wow do i have the right the night thing night fellowship might be a stanford thing maybe he's leading a very like prestigious program now at Columbia University but what I'm thinking of is like back when and I could say this now because he's I think the statute of limitations have long since expired but one time we went snowboarding a bunch of us from the station on a Saturday and none of us had a big enough car and so we like we basically just like checked out the minivan that belonged to the station and took it snowboarding and and then like we picked up a guy named Aaron and I think he had a dog the dog was named monkey and the dog came with us and the dog reeked like the dog had gotten either like wet in the snow or something so when we drove the van back it's like a bunch

of us and the dog and then the dog's like stinking up the van the van kind of never smelled right again anyway those days were so much fun for me and and and yet nowadays i think oh the way for me to enjoy my life is to be at the the top of the flow chart and to to be financially uh you know compensated at the level i feel is i deserve and you know i i think about all these things that i think are going to give me satisfaction and it turns out the most satisfaction i ever felt was

when none of those things were in place yeah i remember being i mean being a young professional and feeling like you were just crawling your way up into a world where everybody was smarter and

more sophisticated than you and you wanted crawling your way up like a bug going into andrew's butt what i think you just that's such a weird thing to say you just said 14 bugs up your

butt i feel like you've been doing a lot of crawling i said i don't think i said we can go back to the tape i don't think i said that luke that's a weird you are going to edit that out and make me sound crazy oh my god what if god why are we streaming these shows why are we not

streaming i need gosh i'm trying to like think on the fly how do i document what andrew said that

he's now cut out of the show oh my god that would be so amazing if i think gaslighting gets overused

these days but that would truly be the most epic gaslighting and i would be forced to just really kind of tip my cap to you oh my goodness you should start doing that just randomly taking stuff out of the show that i then i reference it and it's like you're like i'm a little worried

about luke oh my god you know i'm sorry you know that i don't have to finish that thought i agree i know that feeling that you're talking about and certainly being in your um being in your early 20s and just feeling that the world is your oyster and at that point feeling like i received a lot of very positive feedback from managers and and adults who are working as professionals because i took my role very seriously when i started to have some of these opportunities as both a student And then a young, a very young underpaid. salaried employee in public radio um but it was all worth it because i felt like the world um you know like really the sky was the limit and i was on the upward trajectory and listen i have the best job in the world right now i don't want to make it sound like i'm a total failure but i'd also sometimes really worry about feeling like oh wow i am certainly not i am certainly not the the young uh ambitious person i i once was now you know again and you're you're still when we had pashman on the show recently you were talking about your ambition you two are still very ambitious people and sometimes i do worry about my lack of ambition as i um you know kind of reach middle age i don't want to get into all that i did want to tell you one thing though speaking of um nostalgia i do think that my brain is starting to sort something out i don't remember having many dreams during um the tb telethon when we were on the road i think i was you know when i was sleeping i was sleeping pretty deeply and so i didn't remember my dreams but But since I've been back. You look like a dream catcher came to life. Oh, boy. Dream catcher. Dream catcher. I won't go into details. Don't worry, everybody. Everybody who's about to hit 30 seconds fast forward a bunch of times on your pod catcher. I have had two dreams that involve my childhood home two nights in a row. The first one was just it just happened to be the setting. It was actually related to something else, but it was outside my childhood home, like at the end of the driveway. And then two nights ago, I went to sleep, and I woke up with the most vivid memory of a dream where I was in my childhood home. I was an adult again. And suddenly I realized, wow, this is probably the last time I'll be in this show. And I even texted you in the show. This will be the last time I'll ever be in this home because they're selling it, and this is my last chance. And so I was texting you saying, we got to talk about this on TBTL. And then I made my way to an old storage room we had and started digging through boxes and seeing a bunch of my old belongings, which were just kind of hazy. I can't, like, actually draw a specific line between what was in my dream and what I, you know, what would potentially be in boxes from my youth. But I thought, like, that is a very literal dream. It was so – the fact that I had two childhood home dreams in a row, I went to the dream dictionaries online. And I'll tell you this, God love the dream dictionary people, but none of them know how to write. I mean, it is astounding. I went to like five different places and they're all kind of similar and it's all very vague.

But none of them can piece like a sentence together, which I can't either right now. But like it's very it's it's I think it's telling that the people who are very into dreams don't know how to really write very well. I don't know if that's a snobby thing to say. So I don't know what's going on with me, but my brain is definitely trying to sort something out.

Did it say they've we've talked about this before and it's in there somewhere, but like overflowing toilet stuff, because I had a dream last night that we were at something. It was someone's house, but it was a big kind of grand house. And I can't remember what was going on. Maybe it was like a Thanksgiving dinner or some holiday get together. But then there was this other room that I was going back to where what I had thought there were some magazines and other stuff that was like in a sink. When I came back to the room, I guess it was more like a toilet because I went to like – my plan in this dream was to use the garbage disposal to sort of just like start running the garbage disposal, start running the water, and it was going to incinerate all of the stuff that was in the sink, which was crazy because none of it was like stuff that you would run through a garbage disposal. It was like some magazines and maybe a game. Remember, listener Mary gave me a copy of the game Sorry. Maybe that was in the back of my mind. So when I came back, this is like the most Pee Wee Herman dream of all time. It was like there was a snake wearing a vest and it was rolling a donut. But like I basically went to like flush this stuff down this sink and only at that point realized it was a toilet and there was like poop on it. And then I was like, now I got to hose this off. Anyway, that's when I woke up. I don't know what the point of that was, but it was a cousin of an overflowing toilet dream.

Here, can I read this to you? And I want to read this directly to give you a sense of the type of writing I'm talking about here. This is from luciding.com slash overflowing-toilet-dream. I'm efforting to be more luciding. To see an overflowing toilet in a dream is quite common. So if you think you're the only one who experienced this type of dream, think again. It's just such a weird way to start this. There's the sound of me thinking again, by the way. I can see the emoji. Toilet in itself is a symbol of our emotions and sentiments in life. In this article, we will try to define the meaning of your overflowing toilet dream. What's interesting here is that most of the dream books out there state that, in general, an overflowing toilet is a representation of your own emotions. And, more significantly, the toilet symbolizes that you are trying to get rid of the emotions that you are hiding.

I think that's a typo, but I'm reading directly here. You're trying to get rid of the emotions that you are hiding. When it comes to the dream lore, an overflowing toilet signifies that your, quote, emotions, unquote, are not being heard or listened. Likewise, there's a need for you to communicate your emotions. Maybe I wasn't listening. That's exactly my problem.

Nobody listens to me.

Yeah, I know.

And you know me. I'm very tight-lipped. I never share my emotions publicly. There's no venue for me to talk about my emotions.

If only there was somebody who would give you money, who would just like voluntarily hand over donations in order to hear about your emotions. In general, a dream about a toilet may mean that you are trying to relieve yourself of emotional baggage. So to speak. So to speak.

Hello and welcome to Top Story. I know it's a little late to get to Top Stories, but I think we can do this really quickly. because I know you're on a bit of a time crunch there, Andrew, as well. I'm good, though, for until noon, so don't worry about that. Okay, but still, it's usually by the hour mark. It's time to retire the notion of the top stories, but I don't think these need to take up a ton of time. First off, I finished Mayor of East Town, and I was very excited when I got home because since we were on the road the last two Sundays, I had the last two episodes to watch. because first I thought that the whole thing just I thought I'd watched all of season one and then somebody corrected me and said no there's like two more episodes they just haven't aired yet because by the time I started watching the show the first five episodes were all up and available so it was very rewarding because I was able to just like watch the last two episodes and I didn't have to wait for anything there was a twist ending I don't think I'm ruining anything for folks it was pretty good I will say what I realized about the show for me now just for me is anytime there was anything on the show that wasn't Kate Winslet walking around a house with a gun out I lost interest rapidly like remember I said that like I didn't think that they nailed the band thing very well like one of Kate Winslet's children she's in a band and it was just kind of one of those moments where the band was like a little bit too good to just be some dope smoking teenagers um i felt like everything like i went back and re-watched uh dirter murder dirter because i was like i wanted to grab this drop would you guys quit eating wawa hoagies over the body please and of course that snl sketch is played sort of for effect and it's it's intentionally like talking about it being dramatically a little over the top but it was like i think i think that that's i noticed that a lot more on the last two episodes because there was more things that weren't crime solving it was more like arcs for various characters and i didn't find those arcs very interesting at all i mean this just me personally i was the crime part and the whodunit part was what was always keeping me interested in the show i will say without giving anything away they also felt the need like at the very end of the show to kind of run through all the characters and kind of have all of the characters have their moment and everyone's moment again i'm i'm being more awkward than normal because i'm trying to make sure i don't spoil this for anybody but basically like they do that kind of thing that happens sometimes at the end of what i think of as a somewhat cheesy movie or cheesy tv show where you just sort of have this check-in moment with every character and every character is doing great like every character is living their absolute best their best existence

you know all of the things that have been challenging them um like let me think of a few examples that i don't think are spoilers it's like it's like uh her daughter the one who's in the band she's like do i go to cal berkeley or not because it's far away but she wants to stay close to home and she has a girlfriend that she's into or whatever and then it's like no she realizes it's time for her to go on so she like goes to berkeley and like uh kate winslet's boyfriend he's going off somewhere but they have like a precious moment at the end and her friend whose brother had battled drug addiction is seen you know having her sort of narrative arc come to a close where she's doing great and this a girl everybody is just having this kind of beautiful moment at the end the kind of moment that sort of doesn't ever happen in real life and that felt a little bit too many bows being put on too many plot lines in old east town pa um but that being said i found it generally watchable i guess i don't know it just seemed like i at the end of it all i thought this is totally not the kind of show that i would watch this is the kind of show that would normally be on like network television it would be starring mariska hargitay and it would just be something that's not really up my alley but because it had the it was at the h

HBO imprimatur.

And Kate Winslet, who I love. Yeah, of course. So it was like, because it started with that weird thing with the static where it makes that noise. Yeah. The groan. It's not television. It's HBO Max. Yeah. Because it was on HBO and had that prestige, because everybody was talking about it on places like New York Magazine, and because it's Kate Winslet, who I really like, I watched it. But I realized at the end, this is totally not the kind of show that I ever give a shit about.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, it's not nuance. I don't know why I'm thinking of this. I'm just thinking of like kind of the first of all, that that wrapping everything else up with a bow is irritating. I don't like that in any of my kind of fictional stories. Like I remember even in high school and certainly in college when I was reading a lot of books, I always liked the books where things just sort of the I've said this on the show before. They sort of just begin in some place and they end in some place and not everything is wrapped up like a candy, like a hard candy that is wrapped up neatly on each end. You know, like that's why I was attracted to like the Hemingways and the things where things sort of ended with a sigh. And and you don't really know exactly what the next chapter is for these folks. Actually, I love you were asking Kiki Lolo in the van if she liked the end of Sopranos. I was writing the newsletter, and also there was no need for me to interject into your conversation, but I love the ending of The Sopranos, and the more I think about it, the more I like it because it is so vague. But anyway, all of this talk of this show reminds me a little bit of my relationship with that show Broadchurch, which I don't think you ever end up watching much of.

My parents swear by it. My dad's constantly trying to slip thumb drives into my hand with Broadchurch on it.

It's your lucky day. I just got a VPN. You just met a old Burbank in the parking lot. exactly but um the second two seasons like you get done with the first season you are so hungry for more because of the relationships not because of the crime really like i just wanted to live in that universe some more it was beautiful to look at some of the and it's that's olivia coleman i believe too that was i think i think so that was my first exposure to her and she's just so goddamn brilliant and the other guy is one of the doctor who's i think yeah it's david tenet right oh yeah right and it's so just amazing and i was pretty unfamiliar with both of them And then they came out with Seasons 2 and 3. And if I recall, this is just my opinion, so not to ruffle any feathers for the big fans out there. I thought Season 2 was really terrible, and I thought Season 3 was a little bit better. But it was only terrible because I thought the plots were kind of terrible, the crimes and my suspension of disbelief had to really be cranked up. But I was still addicted to it because I didn't want to leave Broadchurch. I just didn't want to leave that universe, you know? And it sort of sounds like it's a little bit of the opposite with this one. Like all the relationships and side stories didn't really pay off for you.

Yeah, it had too many of those moments that I feel like there's a certain kind of like Dennis Lehane, like, you know, Mystic River shit. It's like always somebody like yelling up into the sky, my dirder, like unironically. I mean, the SNL thing is like, you know, for me, the thing about Mystic River that killed me was the end. And when and I forget now who the actor is who played Sean Penn's wife, but she's yelling like she's saying to him, like, you're the king, you're the king. And it's like everyone is just a little too much, whatever it is they're supposed to be in the thing. And like and like, I don't know, there are just these moments that just feel hokey to me and scenery chewy.

And that movie is so scenery chewy.

And they only they seem to you never there's never a movie like that that I can think of that set in like Lubbock. Where that happens It's always It feels It's like never in Phoenix I mean we're just in Phoenix Maybe we got Phoenix on the brain It's a certain kind Of self-importance That seems to be In the Northeast Interesting I don't mean people We have a lot of great listeners In the Northeast I don't even mean the people In the Northeast Are self-important I mean there's this kind of writing Of all of these Boston movies And now I think you can throw Mayor of Easttown on there Of this kind of like Basically it's like As they say in the SNL skit These are whites you haven't these are a different kind of whites these are whites from somewhere between dc and new york like there's just this certain kind of like my pain is so visceral that i have to yell into the sky about my dirt or being murdered that as long as like for me watching mayor as long as the momentum was going forward with the show because of the mystery i mean i genuinely wanted to know who had done it that was good i was into it but but every time they like took five minutes to detour about somebody's love life i it just got really hokey really fast for me um a quiet place to the deuce uh made a bunch of money at the box office this weekend uh it made 57 million dollars it was in 3726 theaters it Thank you. was the widest opening and the biggest new release since the onset of the COVID-19 era. In fact, it actually made more money. They thought than some estimates from like before there was a pandemic. So it actually, it's actually blowing away all of the, all of the estimates around it. They held this movie until you could, until it was safe to play it in theaters, by the way, when, when movie theaters were shut down, Obviously a ton of films just got shifted To like streaming platforms And John Krasinski I don't know how much I mean he wrote the film co-wrote the film And I don't know how much he probably had a lot of sway in it He was one of the people apparently who was like No this needs to be in a theater For people to fully experience it

And it was supposed to come out right in March right Like it was supposed to come out right at the beginning

So he wanted this to be A theatrical experience I don't know I mean I assume that some of that had to do with finances But probably a lot of it just had to do with his artistic vision for the film And how people would experience it Anyway, I guess he was right Because they waited and it did a crap load of money It did in four days what that film Tenet Which was the latest Christopher Nolan film Tenet's entire box office run I think was less than what A Quiet Place 2 did In its first four days

And they're kind of opposite in that way Like I know A Quiet Place was more of a low, a lower budget movie because the conceit was small and simple. And it kind of I think that's why there is a lot of excitement around it. I did see it in the theater. I thought it was pretty well done. And I had you know, it was it didn't feel like a low budget movie, but it was a movie that was more, you know, kind of conception, more conceit than big budget sets. And so you could do a lot. It reminded me of, you know, like more of a more of an approach that maybe a more of an art film would take in that way. Not that it was excessively arty in any way.

It had elements of being a psychological thriller. Yeah. It's just mostly John Krasinski looking at people going.

Exactly. And it's just incredibly small cast because it's just the family, if I recall. So and I think the second one, see, this is where I feel like they could have blown it because like then that that gets so much critical acclaim coming out of like the, you know, the festival circuit or whatever. And then it gets, you know, it actually makes a lot of money. I could see the studios or the studio, whatever it is, is Paramount. I was reading this earlier. I could see the studio, like, overestimating the sequel, right? Like, the first one was a surprise hit. So now we're going to big budget this and, you know, but it sounds like, no, they kind of, unless I misunderstood, it sounds like they kind of stuck with the same approach. Like, let's keep the bottom lines low and let's release it in theaters when the time is right. And also, that's just them really kind of lucking out and really just playing the game perfectly, right? Like, Tenet is the opposite. Big budget, high concept. I'm also so sick of Christopher Nolan at this point. Like, all of his movies need to be cut in half. Like, he is just like, he is just smelling his own farts so much right now. And then, like, and Tenet was such a special movie that we had to release it in theaters during the first wave of the pandemic or the second wave of the pandemic. That is somebody who nobody is telling him no enough, and everybody is treating him like far, far too much of a theater god, and that doesn't do anybody any favors.

I couldn't believe this is A Quiet Place. The original one was made for $17 million. Wow, see? Yeah. And it was a hit coming out of Sundance and then got all this buzz and then just made an astronomical amount of money considering how limited the actual shooting budget was. That's wild to me. and go Jim from The Office, I guess, right? Yeah, right, yeah. Because that was the other thing that this article, this was an article in Deadline Hollywood, by the way, that, I mean, I know, I guess he was in those, he hasn't been in some of those action films and, like, what are they, is he Jack Reacher?

No, not Jack Reacher, the Jack... Oh. Jack Ryan. Jack Ryan, who's the author? You always say that people read his books on iPads. Clancy, probably. Yeah, he's the Clancy one.

The number one writer that dads are reading on iPads somewhere in America has got to be Tom Clancy.

It's sad that that's how I had to get there. I couldn't remember the name. Whatever it takes, dude. Luke's got a joke about reading on iPads

and it involves Jack Ryan. So the major movie theater chains, AMC, Regal, and Cinemark, have announced that they are going to let people start coming into their theaters, people who claim to be vaccinated, they will let them come in and watch movies maskless now, Which I think is kind of interesting Because as I said at the beginning of the show I don't think there's anything Scientifically If people are vaccinated which is a big if Right That I don't think there's anything scientifically That says you can't be in a group Of people now maskless If you're vaccinated I think the issue is and I

I looked at this story pretty carefully. This was written over at vulture.com by Chris Lee. What I couldn't quite find is how they're going to, like, verify if anyone's vaccinated. I think it's kind of the honor system.

Yeah, they're not going to.

Which seems like probably a bad plan, just because I feel like a person who decided not to get vaccinated because they don't believe in science is also a person who wouldn't have any compunction. just saying they're vaccinated so that they can just be maskless like unfortunately the people who who who don't believe in science are the same people that don't want to wear the masks and so it's you know what i mean it's a it seems like it's a not the greatest system yeah for you know what they're doing in portland uh and oregon i think in general is establishments are allowed to now go maskless in some situations but they're also allowed to ask people if they're vaccinated And I believe ask for verification Now I mean there's a kind of Practical problem that of just like Verify like Just is there going to be like are you going to have A person who's dedicated to just looking over people's Paperwork at the you know The regal cinemas that seems like a big Lift for a 12 year old kid Or whoever's working at the ticket Booth but it's like I don't know I just didn't see wearing a Mask in a dark theater while I'm watching a movie As like the worst imposition on my life, to be honest with you. It just didn't seem like that big of a deal. It's not what's been keeping me away from the theater.

Yeah, you know, I don't know if I have time to get all of my complicated feelings about this, but, like, for starters, if I'm in a movie theater, I am chomping on popcorn almost the entire time, so my mask is going to be off anyway, and so those rules about, you know, when you can and cannot wear a mask, and I'm not eschewing them. I'm not saying that they come from a bad place, But at this point, as we kind of crawl out of this, you and I were in a restaurant that we didn't end up eating at. It was like a real kind of corny family-style restaurant in one of the first places we stopped on our trip. And they had too long of a wait. By the way, when I say corny, I mean it was like an old spaghetti factory or something.

Yeah, we were actually – I was very excited to eat there. Yeah, me too.

And they had a sign on the door that said, if you can prove you're vaccinated, you don't have to wear a mask when you enter this place. I'm like, yeah, but it's a restaurant. The only place we have to wear masks anyway is in the lobby and when we're going to use the restroom. And at this point with vaccination rates, like, aren't we splitting hairs here? And like, I don't mind. I had my vaccination cards with me just in case I've never been carded. I have no problem with establishments demanding that to protect their workers and their customers. Like, I really don't. But I do wonder, like, you know, am I really worried about the fact that it's going to be the anti-vaxxers and the anti-maskers who were just probably lying their way and you know through the movie theater do I really care about that because I am vaxxed and if I am concerned I can still wear a mask nobody's saying you can't wear a mask you know like I had this very kind of same emotional journey when we were at this hotel in Arizona in Phoenix and I think it was actually the perfect comparison like we were at a place where I don't know what the law is in Arizona right now not strict clearly Because, you know, we saw all the employees at this hotel in the attached bar and all the service people there were all wearing masks. Right. But the the clientele were really hit and miss. And I would say less than 50 percent of the people riding elevators, playing around the pool, coming in and out from the pool to the bar like none of them were wearing masks. Most of the time I'm on the elevator with some of these folks and I'm thinking, I don't know if they're vaccinated or not. I am. And I know that a vaccination, even, you know, double shot and past the two week mark, I know it's not like a guarantee that you will 100 percent be protected. I know that. But I don't really feel paranoid. But I wore my mask anyway because I figured, eh, why not? But all of this is to say this idea that maybe people like you and I might have about the non-vaxxers quote unquote getting away with it it's almost kind of just pettiness I'll speak for myself here it's kind of like a well I follow the rules I wish they would have to too but honestly if I'm being you know 100% honest and knowing what I know about the science and my own behavior if I'm wearing a mask and I'm double vaxxed it's probably not a threat to me if somebody else in that movie theater is eating popcorn and they didn't get vaccinated right yes here's the only

thing i would say variants so yeah the only downside would be i'm not in any i mean i've honestly i made out with over 20 people in arizona just random strangers all the people who hosted us that was like five right there joe which is how i enticed him to check up on the van no i'm not i'm so unworried about my own at this point i'm not super worried about contracting covet 19 what i the only concern i would have would be if we have large gatherings of people who are not vaccinated and they are not masked.

And they're passing the virus around between them, and it's evolving and mutating, and we get more variants. Now, I don't know enough about the science, and this is probably going to, you know, we've got listeners who are throwing their phones or throwing their medical degrees or whatever right now. I don't know enough about the science to say, I mean, the good news that I've heard is that so far, most of the vaccines have been pretty effective against variants as well. Mm hmm. But also that I mean, that's the number one thing that has me still feeling concerned is so. So, yeah. So I'm not too worried about getting it from someone. I'm worried about people, you know, who aren't vaxxed, passing it back and forth and then something really bad developing that we don't have the vaccine for.

That's a really good point. That's a really good, you know, I don't know.

It's like but I'm also with you. And I mean, I just we're we're going to be doing live live wire. I mean, unless something changes, we're going to be doing live shows this fall, like in person in a theater with people. And I don't know what our I mean, our policy will be, whatever the policy is at the time in the city of Portland. But I'm really curious because about how if people are going to come or not, because it's weird. It's like I just said I'm not afraid of getting covid myself because I've been vaccinated. I'm happy to wear a mask indoors. but the net the first time that i am with like let's say over a hundred people indoors it's going to be a mind f for me even though intellectually i understand that i'm not in danger and i'm assuming you know i don't it's also hard to just know what it's going to be like in september am i going to be looking out from the stage at like 400 people in masks are we only going to be allowed to have 150 people there is it going to be 200 people with no masks and will we all feel we will we have all just gotten over it by then to where we've had enough time being around people that doesn't feel something kind of weird about it or will we be in the fifth wave

with a new or god andrew walsh knock wood that that has that is not that doesn't come to pass because oh dear goodness gracious i don't know we don't have the emotional fortitude i don't think

i'm gonna be like that guy i'm gonna be like the the guy screaming they murdered my dirter as it rains down on me. I'm kind of combining Andy in The Shawshank Redemption with a character, even though, ironically, Andy is happy in that scene in The Shawshank Redemption because he's just climbed through a mile of shit to get to freedom. But you know what I mean. I am really hoping against that. That's for dang sure another wave. So I don't know. We will see what happens.

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not

from a female you know what i did andrew that i'm ecstatic about i labeled the as we would call them pots or the faders on my audio board nice because i moved things around when we came back from the trip and i knew that i was going to constantly be like turning the wrong volume up or down And so I actually made little, you know, wrote on some tape and have that on there. And now I can see where everything is. And it's like, I don't know why it took me this long to do it. It's absolutely a game changer here at the Nest Broadcast Center.

Nice. I brought some masking tape along with me on the trip so that I could label the pots or the sliders. But I forgot to use it. But, yeah, that's always a helpful thing. All right. I have a couple of emails here I'd like to share with you. There's one thing that I'm trying to figure out if we should deal with here. You know, let's do this here. Somebody sent in – I would like to do something. Let's wrap up in a murder-derder way. Let's put a clean wrap on the TB Telethon and answer a couple of questions that have been floating around that I've been seeing a lot of people asking. One person even submitted this as a hey dummies question for this week. But let's do it here so that everybody can hear it. A lot of people are are questioning why we chose a 1993 Delica for this trip and whether or not it was just so that we could find ourselves in trouble in some way. And some people like being so concerned, they were almost upset at us. And people are like, why didn't like literally one of the questions floating out there is why didn't you just drive an SUV? Like there are nice SUVs that you could have rented and driven around. And I will take the first stab at this, Luke, but then I'll hand the mic over to you. I don't want the mic because this was your idea. But the but actually it came from, I think, well, both of us kind of came up with the original idea of it's going to be covid times. We can't, you know, have live shows. We can't have big gatherings. We can't go into people's houses. But and I remember even using this example, like when you think about the old timey theater, Like back in like Shakespeare's day and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, right? Like people would be like kind of traveling theater troops where they had everything on their back and they could go. And so we went through various options. We were thinking, I think you've said this on the show before. Like maybe a taco truck or an ice cream truck or something where we could open up the flaps and perform for you and then close the flaps and be on our way again. That was the original idea. And then we went and you did a lot of work looking for the perfect vehicle for that so that we could set up a sort of stage. And what ended up working out until the end was the Delica. And it did kind of with this awning that was built into it, it kind of presented itself as a little traveling stage. That is why I, you know, not to be dismissive, but I just think that like doing the show, just like, I don't know, setting up a table outside of a Canyon Arrow isn't exactly the same thing, you know?

Yeah. No, that's I mean, I think that's the basic story was the original idea was we'll go around and we'll open like one of those kind of side hatches or flaps like we would do. like if we were it was a food truck one of my apartment building's favorite things to talk about and then deliver the show instead of delivering a food product and it turns out the logistics of that are insane those trucks are one person quoted me a hundred thousand dollars to rent a food truck that we were going to drive you know around to the listeners so we're going

to need a bigger dazzling donor we eventually landed that we first of all i did think the

delica was cute and funny looking i thought it was more interesting than if we would have just gotten a 2021 sprinter van which would have been fine but it wouldn't have been as much of a character in the show i think it would have been less entertaining i really liked the canopy thing and by the way i liked it throughout it totally worked i thought like the visuals of it that awesome sign that cheryl and corvallis the the tbtl letters yeah which by the way are being mailed home to me right now those will take a place of honor nice here in the uh in the nest broadcast center i'm gonna hang those up somewhere um and maybe you can just use it for future events but so i um so yeah that was the idea i can tell you this i don't know who that new character i like it though yeah he's this guy that gets worked up but is also stifling a burp i can tell you this i am still stifling a burp uh i can tell you that when we were standing at the middle of nowhere gas station in sentinel arizona and it was 99 degrees and there was green fluid spewing out of the delica i can promise you that was not a fun moment for any of us there's no way that we were hoping the thing would break down like that was bad like that was like one of those things where i kind of felt a little bit like i don't exactly know what the next move is we got very lucky that our guy Ruben was there but had he not been and even in that moment just not knowing what the whole deal was going to be it was a very very very bad feeling um so to anybody who thinks that we were hoping to break down I promise you we were not yeah um but um yeah that's I mean look if you've listened to the show long enough you know that we like never do anything the easy way um for whatever reason like it just would have been less entertaining we thought if we were just in a brand new vehicle and we're just like whisking around the the west and southwest and then dropping in and then doing the show and then being gone like we wanted there to be a little bit of an entertaining narrative it got too entertaining for a minute but now everything's fine joe's

monitoring the van down there in phoenix actually keep eyes on that so anyway so i just wanted to kind of clear that up and other people were questioning why we didn't have the van towed to marry the tbtl virgin's house i think that one is self-explanatory like we had you know we made our plans for the next day while we were in the back of a tow truck in the desert.

Literally, you and I were whispering to each other.

Yes, we had 12 hours to figure out what the best plan was, and of course we were getting the van towed back to where we were staying, a hotel room. We couldn't just pay for a tow truck to take it to Mary's and then tow it somewhere else and then tow it somewhere else. We had to get that thing parked, and then the reason we went to Norris was because we needed a home base. We were there all day. Christina and I were doing our TBTL work there. you were using that as a home base to find ways to get the van in front of a mechanic like listen mary was gracious and is gracious as any human being can possibly be and i'm sure she would have made us very welcome at her place but we needed a kind of a home base that we could sort of kind of you know that could be a place where we camped out for a while so i just want to clear those things up there's some confusion about that um also this is something that came up on today's show luke um you mentioned that in murder dirter or or in um the mayor of what is it east town The band is a little bit too good to be a high school band. And we got some people weighing in on other bands that are in TV shows or films that are actually kind of the perfect amount of bad. We got a long voicemail from our friend Angie down in Austin. Of course, IRL friend Angie, who says Gilmore Girls had the perfect high school band. Like, you know, you could see why the kids would be into it, but also not super good, not Hollywood good. And then Max, I believe this is Max in Brooklyn, says, hey. bozos i'm usually equally annoyed at the overly high or overly low quality of amateur bands and pop culture keep in mind here that if i am right about who max is max is an actor himself on cbs cbs right fbi on cbs sundays i believe so um there's a fairly believable band in the connie britain kyle chandler vehicle friday night lights you you are a big fan of that show right luke No, never watched it. Oh, really? Oh, I wasn't joking. No, Jen loved it. I've never seen it. Oh, it had been so hyped up that by the time I saw it, I thought it was a little, well, no need to be rude. I thought that maybe it didn't quite live up to the hype, but I only watched like the first four episodes or something back in the day. The band in the show is fronted by Jesse Plemons' character. They're kind of an indie rock, but incongruously named Crucifictorius. And they're, you know, pretty good, this Crucifictorius band. So Friday Night Lights gets it. Gilmore Girls gets it.

Nice. Okay. That's good to know. Crucifictorius. So about relating to crucifixion or to cruciferous vegetables. Is it either a cauliflower thing or Jesus? Those are hugely different experiences.

There could be some overlap there as well, though. A godly vegetable. Don't they say that cauliflower is the most godly of vegetables or no? I believe they do. Because could a godly vegetable be the show title? I was about to say, Luke, that was my next thought. Not that that should be the show title, but I'm looking down at my notebook. I don't have a show title. So I guess a godly vegetable could be it.

I like it. I'm in. All right. I guess we're going to go out with a little computer love today on the show. Dialed up right here. Okay, sweet. Thanks to our dazzling donor, Caitlin. Caitlin, that is. Or Caitlin. Now the thing is I'm going to mispronounce Caitlin's name. And then next year she won't tell us how it's pronounced and it'll have to be a whole other guessing game. That's how we keep you donating to the show, everyone. Anyway, hey, thanks for listening. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Until then, have a great Tuesday. Stay safe. Don't get over het as my, I guess, former father-in-law's. what would be Carrie's granddad that's my former in-law Rudy would say don't get overhead today if you're somewhere in America where it's going to be real warm and we'll see you tomorrow until then please remember no mountain too tall

and good luck to all

My special love with me And your eyes have that glow Could it be your face I've seen On my computer screen You're a special girl Here in my computer world No longer need astrology Thanks to my technology I want to love you, baby I want to love you, baby I want to love you, baby You know I've been around

Power out.