Muse

I don't know who you are, I don't know what you want, but I have a very particular lack of skills. I will never be able to find you, but what I do have is two dollars and a Casio wristwatch. You can have one of them. TBTL!

For the next little while, it's going to be you and me together alone. I want you to lock the door and turn the phone off and really concentrate on what we're going to do.

I keep losing it, Dale's, and I don't want to make it, Dale, anymore. You just drop in, just smack the lip, pull back, drop down, snap, and then after that, get pitted like that. Come on! I got so drunk last night, I think I thought a tube of toothpaste was astronaut food.

I'm the king of the castle, and you're the dirty rascal. Crash into me, crash into me. You bet I got something to say. You check it out.

Oh my god, man, we are seeing some s**t we ain't never seen before.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Microwave. My name is Luke Burbank, I am your host.

I'm a professional, look it up in the book.

Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon. Where we are looking at a, um, kind of a cloudy day. Impossible rain. Rained a bunch yesterday. I've been getting very used to it being warm and beautiful, and today, no sunshine. Hey, where's the freaking gabagoo? So we will, um, we'll just persevere. I'm sure that there'll be a point in the middle of summer when it's averaging 90 degrees here in Portland. I keep bringing this up on the show, but as a semi-recent transplant, I am learning that the weather is a bit different here than, say, Seattle or Bellingham, Washington, the Bay City. I just assumed it was all part of the same deal, but no, it is noticeably warmer here. So I'm sure there'll be a point when it's roasting this summer that I'll be wishing it was 74 degrees and overcast. So I'm going to just really try to treasure today, be present, and really just enjoy this for what it is. and hopefully you'll be able to be present for episode 3,439 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I mean, you are present. Like, you're here. Like, if we were taking attendance and I called your name, you would raise your hand. I just mean, like, emotionally present, mentally present. That's all we ask of the listeners of this show. We ask that you donate your hard-earned money to help us keep doing it for our job And that you block out all distractions and sit in quiet reflection and are totally and completely emotionally present for the next one to four hours of your life, five days a week, 52 weeks a year. Speaking of being emotionally present and emotionally raw, I got a chance last night to finally watch Bo Burnham's new comedy special, Inside.

How funny is that?

That's pretty funny. I mean, it's billed as a comedy special. He's known as a comedian. But boy, it's really something else. It is an emotional ride. And I am still trying to fully unpack how I feel about it. So I'll just do that on the air. Coming up here in the top stories. I figure I could emotionally unpack it on my own time or I could actually clock in and do it as part of the show. And well, it's more efficient this way. So that's what I'll be doing. Also, people, as the New York Times put it, people in the city of Rome in Italy are emerging from one plague and they are entering another kind of plague. Mm-mm-mm. I'm flying in hot for that hottie. That is a plague of attacking crows. Apparently it's especially bad in Rome because of the mice problem there and some other kind of circumstances. and people are being advised not to carry certain color handbags or umbrellas or they will further agitate the crows that are attacking people left and right. We'll talk about that. I'll tell you what really grabbed my interest, though. Now that's interesting. Was another story. You know how when you're reading a news piece at like the New York Times or Washington Post or Seattle Times, it'll say you might also enjoy this. Like it recommends other things that are in that general genre of stories. So because there's a bird related topic, the crows in Italy, it said 17 years later, a pardon and some free pepperoni. And I was like, OK, I'll click on that. And it was the story, again, from a few years ago of a guy who had had a lifetime ban from a fancy. hotel in uh victoria british columbia because of the damage a bunch of seagulls had done to his hotel room because of his attempt to keep some pepperoni from going bad in said hotel room don't miss the sausage fest so anyway uh there is there's a rumor about and that rumor by the way is started by one andrew walsh that we've actually talked about this topic like two years ago and i have completely men in black to myself men and blocked it out not my strongest work but just like you know let me warm up let me this is the first quarter of this game okay i'm easing into it everybody calm down uh maybe i've completely forgot that we literally talked about this topic if that's the case i need to see some kind of specialist because as i was reading this article last night i was delighted by in a way that only a person who's literally never laid eyes on it Pete Delight. And I may have already read the story once and talked about it on this show. Hey, speaking of my friend Andrew Wall, she is the longest-running co-bro of the show. He may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Now, I guess the deal is, I mean, I do a lot of extra jobs aside from TBTL. Of course, he's allowed to do that, too.

And so he didn't need to clear this with me, but I was surprised to find out that he also has now picked up the gig of doing the public address announcing at a major conglomerate.

Attention, Hudsucker employees.

Attention, Hudsucker employees. Whatever he needs to do to pay the bills, though, I respect that. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. I did it, buddy. I did it. I fully ran out the intro music.

I know, it feels weird. I'm floating in space here. No music behind me. No fanfare. Yeah, but here we are. I think we'll get through it. Happy Monday. That drop is literally called fanfare. Yeah, and it is fanfare. Happy Monday, my bud. I deserve it. I deserve that fanfare. Yeah, you do. How are you? I'm all right. I mean, we'll talk about it when we get there. I'm dying to find out. I think we're going to need the listener's help to figure out if we actually talk about this bird hotel story. And maybe, you know, I haven't read this one that you're talking about now, but just based on your description of it, it sounds like, oh, yeah, I remember sitting in, like, I thought the Wallingford apartment and talking about that with you.

The pepperoni story.

The pepperoni. It's about birds, though, right? Yes. Yeah, okay. We'll talk about it later. So I was doing some just cursory Googling during your intro, so I thought maybe I could be like, oh, yeah, here it was on this date in TBTL history. We talked about that, but I'm not finding anything, so we'll have to bring the listeners into that mystery. Meantime, I've had this date circled on my calendar for a few weeks now because when I get done with the show, get done talking with you, I am going to head over to a doctor's office in Wallingford where they're going to remove these pins that go all the way through my fingers, this little contraption thing that I've been talking about on the show since I broke my finger a month and a half ago or whatever it was. And, you know, Luke, I'm not great with doctor-related things in general. I'm very squeamish. I don't have a very high pain threshold. Got that thing where I want to pass out if anybody says the word needle. And so, you know, I'm prepared. No, actually, though, for the past week or two weeks, this thing has been – it doesn't hurt this contraption, right? Like for the most part, it's just this thing that's on the outside of my hand. And, you know, when you and I were on the road, I banged it a few times, got a cable caught in it once or twice, and that sucked. That was a bad feeling, but it would pass. Can I just say something really quick?

I just want the listeners to know this. I think you are being overly self-critical when you say you have a low pain threshold because, again, you almost ripped that thing out of your finger while we were at Listener Megan's house, and you casually mentioned it after the fact. Like you didn't yelp, you didn't like fall down on the ground crying Like I think it's one of those things like how you always think you ate too much Where I think you're just being a little extra hard on yourself Because I've never experienced you demonstrating what I would consider to be a low pain threshold

Well, I don't know I also feel like self-conscious talking about it a lot on the show Because I feel like I'm just really milking this whole Well, I'm just milking the finger, Luke Wasn't that an album in the late 1970s, Milk the Finger? Am I wrong about that? Something that people shouldn't Google. Right. Anyway, the truth is the last week or two, I actually found myself in a pretty good place because while I sort of had this date circled on the calendar thinking like, oh, the removal of these pins, I've been told it's not so bad, but it just doesn't sound great either. Also, it's this weird contraption. I don't even know how he's going to pull how my doctor is going to pull them out because it's like it's twisty and turny. So I assume there will be wire cutters involved to just get to the straight parts. I don't know. Anyway, all of it is to say, I was in a pretty good place with this last week because I just got annoyed by this thing. And I was like.

know what i'm actually feeling strong i'm feeling bold i'm feeling all andrew because we're gonna go in there and they're gonna remove this damn thing and that's all i'm gonna focus on because i am ready for this thing to be off my finger and for my next phase of life to begin and that's all i'm gonna focus on and i'm gonna be brave i am extraordinary and then over this weekend one of the pinholes got infected and right now yes and the doctor you know from the beginning i can't remember i think i've had this thing on my finger about a month maybe slightly more can't remember my surgery was what the end of march end of april whatever um and the doctor said you know in a couple of visits like you know just keep an eye on it these things don't usually get infected but they can and if they do you should let me know and you know just don't make

your world famous meatballs where there's a lot of like kneading the the burger and getting it all together but you were just like dang it you know what i'm pretty close to the finish line I'm starving for my famous Walsh family meatball recipe. I'm going to make it this weekend.

And just giving it – and just like giving it – like you watch the other people eat it. Like close-ups, like slow close-ups of this hand kneading this meat into meatballs and then cut two people.

Remind me after we hear about your finger for me to tell you about something related to that as far as just unpleasantry around body parts and restaurants. Oh, can't wait.

i'm one to talk given what i'm doing here but um yeah so anyway i've just been kind of like oh great can't wait to have this off just that that's my attitude just like don't don't pre-worry about the appointment whatever happens in the appointment you know in a couple of days from now i'll have this thing off my hand um and now i'm just now i'm really nervous again because oh i was starting to say like the doctors had said you know keep an eye on it they told me how to clean it my friend nicky came over the other day and the first thing she nursing student nursing student about to graduate i believe um and even um even said how's your pin care like she wanted to know taking care of my pins and i have been you know me i'm very meticulous i kind of like cleaning things i like you know i so i don't know what happened to this one you know the one i guess entry point where the pin is either coming in or coming out of my finger and depending on how you how you look at the world i guess um and so i i don't know what it is but it started just getting a little bit gunky and then but i was like okay whatever i'll just clean off the gunk and without getting graphic it's just like it's just infected now it's like it's my finger is swollen and pink and it just you know how it is when you have a little infection it can be a tiny tiny little infection around your fingernail or something but like you you bang it on something and it's just like super super sensitive and that's what i kind of have on my finger right now and so at the risk of being uh more whiny than usual i gotta say the timing on this is not ideal because i mean i'm hoping that it doesn't get in the way of them removing it today i think that would be a pretty slim chance but of course in the back of my head i'm thinking about all the scenarios where i go in and the doctor says well we got to take care of that infection before we can take this off um i doubt that'll be the case i'm still you know pretty confident i'll be walking out of that doctor's office uh pin free today but i am concerned that it's going to make the process more painful because right now if i even you know if i kind of touch anywhere around that area it hurts and honestly this is new this thing of all of my complaining about inconvenience and what have you it hasn't really hurt since the surgery or since my recovery from the surgery so now we'll

see can i propose an alternate theory and it's not my finger i'm not the one that's have to go into the doctor today but i could see a world in which you'd be so stoked that they're pulling it out today even more so because of the infection because when something gets infected when you have a little splinter you can't get to or like you said when if you've got a hangnail and you get that kind of moment where the skin around some area is kind of puffy kind of red maybe there's a dullish white underneath it it's like your body is trying to fight this thing and it's so painful like you said if you just bump the corner of it on something it's just really takes your breath away if you could pull out whatever is in there like you literally have basically people should think of it as like you have what looks like some kind of extra large paper clips like a rectangle of paper clips that have been like when we were kids in school and you would like take a paper clip and straighten it out like about that thickness of metal that in a rectangular form that is i guess holding your knuckle apart so that you can have some mobility in your finger right is that the

basic purpose of that thing yeah i kind of understood it more as just with these last set x-rays so i also have a pin that is actually the pin that is actually holding my bones together and trying to do like the um doing the work of repairing where i broke my knuckle essentially that pin is in my finger but it's totally internal we can't see the and it stays there we don't know yet he might he might have to take it out i don't know if that would be today or down the road he said that that's something we'd have to look at and if so they'd have to numb me up and make a tiny incision, pull it out.

but he says it's not that big of a deal. Obviously, I would like to avoid that, but we'll see.

No, that sounds... I would tell him you lost the pin.

I don't know, Doug. I think it's up by my brain somewhere. No, I'm sorry.

I haven't seen that pin for months. I think I peed it out. I don't know, man. Yeah, pull a Rubin, our Tochek driver, and just be like, I'm not going to stay for that procedure, sir. Just run out. Shaggy do it out of there. But I'm not going to... Wait, was Shaggy's last name do? Did he take Scooby's name? Shaggy doesn't do.

Or did he keep his... He doesn't drive the van.

he doesn't do doesn't drive the plot no but i i have to say like the idea that you have this painful infection but that the thing that is at the kind of center of it i mean it's the piece of metal that's that your body is reacting to i mean well it's it's the i guess you would say incision point yeah right the idea that you can actually someone can just i'm sure with a little like sterilized uh wire snip snip the you know kind of parts of the rectangle off and then you're You're just going to have two straight lines of metal coming out of your finger, and my guess is that the doctor will take them, and I'm not trying to be graphic for people that are squeamish, but just kind of yoink it out of there. The idea that they can yoink it out of the infected area, and then my guess is, again, I don't mean to be gross, but my guess is there may be some drainage, and just like the thing that's causing the problem can be taken out. That almost, I mean, that's like the ultimate peeling of the clear plastic off of the microwave door of your body.

I'm trying to think of it that way as well. I think probably if there is like some clipping going on and like trying to, like I say, take off this extraneous metal so they can pull it out. All of that might be a little bit more like tender now because of this. But yeah, at the end of the day, I am honestly like, you know, all of this aside, I am really trying to kind of keep a positive attitude about this. And like I say, keeping my eyes on the prize that, you know, at some point today, probably around by, I don't know, my appointments at three, I guess. So hopefully by four o'clock, you know, come hell or high water, I will have a wrap to Teddy's.

Yes. I'm not even kidding. Tell yourself that at four thirty you'll be sitting at Teddy's. There's no M's game today, but you'll be sitting at Teddy's, maybe with your book, enjoying a little adult beverage and you won't have that contraption in your finger. that's you just got to focus on the after part exactly hey this is i'm going to switch gears

here really quickly because there's something i didn't mean to tell you at the top of the show this isn't super interesting but i think you'll be happy to hear it luke um i have mentioned in the past that when i'm doing tbtl often theo my 20 year old beloved although cranky cat usually sits on this little chair next to me during the show we say you know in our house you develop a language. Vives and I will always say, is Theo coming to work with me today? And he's like my cubicle mate and all the language that goes along with that. When I was gone for a week during the TBTL-a-thon, cats and probably all pets, but our cats are very much creatures of habit, right? So then when something shakes up the usual daily routine, those habits will change. And so since I've been back, Vives and I have noticed a couple of things. Theo has been acting way way slower and kind of older you know he's he's old he's 20 and so we're always in the back of our head kind of ready to um you know be prepared to say goodbye when need be uh we rue the day but we're trying to be emotionally prepared for that and we've been seeing him definitely um kind of dolphin itly kind of slowing down in the past couple of weeks but i kept saying and and and part of that is he has not been sleeping um on the chair next to me during the show as of last week he was just kind of like he found a different spot he was upstairs on the bed and uh and i was like listen we broke up his routine also it was hot as hell here last week like he wasn't showing as much energy but it's also just like you know all cats shut down when it's in the 90s you know he's just doing a lot more laying around and i am happy to report that uh as of yesterday he started to act like my little shadow again following me everywhere jumping up on my lap at any given moment and as we speak right now to my right curled up like a little oreo cookie is my cat my co-worker my cubicle mate we are back in business baby sorry the bell was like across the way and um under a bunch of cables but i'm happy to have my co-worker back angel that poops in a box now here's the thing i have him next to me that's great i'm so glad to hear that because

you know as he was as he has been going through his journey of theonis there was the point where you would have like there were a number of shows where he would just be sort of standing outside the door of where you do the show and he'd want to come in and you'd have to stop sometimes hit pause on the show and go get him and then you basically got into the thing of just keeping him on your lap but it was kind of hard for you to do the show but it was like this is the only thing that calms him down or keep him on your lap and then put him on that chair yeah usually all it

took was like 30 to 60 seconds. on my lap, give him the hugs he needs and then put him on the chair and he would settle down and we were in a pretty good rhythm with that now, I almost guarantee you he'll probably wake up at some point during the show and go stand by the door and want to be let out, so I'm not promising that that's no longer going to happen, but I'd rather I can deal with that

Yeah, no, I guess my thought was, when we got back to doing the show from home after the TBT Eleathon 12, oh, BT Dubs slight update on the van Oh! Uh, you mentioned to me last week, you were like, oh, Theo's routine has changed because, uh, you know, you've been gone for a while and he's not coming and hanging out in here with me. And it was like, you were a little wistful about that. So I like, it's one of those things where it's like, even though sometimes it sounded to me like you're, you know, probably 5% putting it on and 5%, I don't know, just being a little curmudgeonly, like the way we all are with our pets where you're like, I got to deal with Theo again, but then not having him in that room with you was also, you kind of missed him.

Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. And also, I don't want to put anybody on Front Street, but you know we have some close friends who recently, just recently had to put down their kitty of 18 years. And we always felt very like, we would always compare stories with their cat and our cat because we're both parents of old cats and everything. So that really puts things into perspective for you, too. You start thinking, like, I took a photo. I was sleeping in late yesterday, and yeah, I think it was yesterday, and Genevieve was already up downstairs puttering around, and I'm up there on the bed, and I am scooched all the way to the edge of our queen bed because I got Theo, like, right in the middle of it in bananas, who's like, it's really hard to get her to snuggle with you. Like, she's down by my feet, and, like, I take a picture. we have this whole bed like an entire like three quarters of a bed is being unused but because of the way like just the morning rolled these cats over or whatever all the way at the edge of my bed just being like what is this world that i am crunched up here because i don't want to disturb these damn cats i took a photo and i sent it to genevieve downstairs and she just said appreciate what you got and i was like all right fair enough fair enough you know what i did last night which

is i haven't done in the longest time i full-on starfished in my king-size bed uh from uh our friends at eight sleep um in other words like i you know uh i sleep in bed by myself i have this huge bed because once in my experience once you have like a king-size bed you kind of it's hard to go back down or at least i don't know that has been something that i i really enjoyed like you know when i was living in bellingham we had a king-size bed i just like the bed being substantial So I have this huge bed And it's me just by myself in bed And I still sleep On a tiny sliver of the bed Even seven months After moving to this apartment And being here by myself And I had this weird thought lesson I was just like Why don't I just frigid sleep However I want to sleep in this bed I got this whole thing to myself And so I did I just like spread out my arms and my legs Like basically the way that anybody any of our listeners who have small children i guess the same goes for cats sometimes dogs but i remember the days of like when addie was little and she'd wake up early so i'd get her and put her in bed with me and then i swear to god they sleep like a freaking starfish like they are actively trying to take up as much room as possible and you find yourself in the tiniest sliver of bed i was like you know what this is my bed and i want it now i called jg wentworth i asked permission and then i just said yeah and it felt great i mean i'll probably go back to just sleeping on my tiny little piece of real estate again because i had to actually actively force myself to do that but it was kind of it was empowering i enjoyed it i picture you doing

like um snow angels sort of in the bed that was exactly it like i was just like i can i'm like

gonna reach to edge to edge of this bed also i was getting too warm in the spot that i was in so i moved over and it was colder yeah i know that so that was a real stewart scott moment cool as the other side of the pillow. R.I.P. Stuart Scott. And but, you know, like for 45, you know, for most of the last 25 years of my life, I've been in a serious relationship where I've usually slept in a bed with somebody else. And it takes a long time for my brain to untrain from just wanting to sort of keep in this one little section of the bed.

Yeah, I think I'm probably like that at hotels, right? If I'm, you know, at a hotel without Genevieve, I still will sleep. I'm trying to think, am I always choosing the same side of the bed when I sleep in a hotel? I don't think I do. I think it depends on what the setup is, like where the night table is, you know, or the nightstand and the plugs.

I would be, I guess that, no, I would still be deeply uncomfortable sleeping on the quote unquote wrong side of the bed. So if you're looking, if you're standing at the foot of the bed and if you're looking at like the headboard or whatever, the wall that the bed is pushed up against. So you're looking, you know, you're looking down the bed, I guess, if you will, or whatever. I am always on the left.

You're always on the left. So I'm standing at the foot of the bed and looking at the bed. You're on the left. Okay.

But I think before Carrie and I got together, I think I was on the right side. And I think she had something going on where it was like she wanted to be on the right side. So I had to shift. And that was a massive shift for me. And it was one I didn't know if I could make.

I'm actually, I'm trying to take an inventory of the beds that I slept in on our road trip. Because first hotel, I definitely was in, I'm also at home, I'm on the left, as you describe it, bed left, I think they say, enter bed left. Sure. And then at the first hotel, definitely bed left, but also that was in Portland and Vives was there. And then, then I'm a soul, I'm a man on the road. My signs were just stolen. And I'm in Corvallis, Washington. I'm pretty sure because, Oregon, sorry. And I'm pretty sure I was on the right side of the bed that second night because of the way the room was laid out and how i kind of used whatever part of the beds to check my equipment and charge some stuff up so yeah already night two i'm in corvallis just switching things up

i don't have that kind of flexibility i'm gonna be pretty much locked onto my side of the bed hey speaking of our trip andrew you want to change the subject i thought it's just getting interesting sorry so speaking of speaking of our trip and the van yeah what's up i just got a um I should really keep my TBTL Breaking News drop in a place, in a regular place where I can easily find it. I have this one line. This is a boring place to take it, but I'm looking at this piece of software called Farago, and it's just got all these little tiles on it, and each tile is a sound effect. And I have one line, the third line down, that's supposed to be – it's where I said I'm going to put all the things like TBTL Breaking News and stuff like that so that I can. I, like, stop the show, and this is, like, this is going to be the line for things I might need that are in that kind of category. And, of course, I don't have it in there. I do have this for some reason there. I don't know why this has now replaced the breaking news sound, if I can give this more important.

Yeah.

So, anyway, this is the new TBTL breaking news sounder. I got a text this morning from the owner of the Delica van saying that the van has arrived safely in Portland. Oh, by the way, I actually found the breaking news sound effects. So here we go. I think the Gabagool song is more fun. TVTL breaking news. So the van has now arrived in Portland. That's the good news, Andrew. um she had some questions about kind of like what it was that was going wrong with the van when we were you know driving around the desert and then she mentioned casually oh and have you seen the covers to the fog lights i can't seem to find those now the fog lights are these two really cool kind of old school um circular very bright yellow lights that are kind of Mounted near the bumper Of the front of the van So this van's a four wheel drive thing You could theoretically really get off road with it right And you and I were constantly Talking about the cover of these lights These light covers because I kept saying I wanted to pop them off When we were pulling up to people's houses To kind of make an impression Because they're cool and yellow And they just kind of stood out And then I just left them off at one point And you were like maybe we should put those back on And I was like why and you said I don't know I mean, maybe like a lot of bugs would accumulate on the on the lights.

Because I actually I think I mean, I think I just wondered aloud. I said, I wonder why you need those why you need those covers on the lights, because you're right. It looks cool without it. And I think I just speculated, oh, maybe it's bugs. So I remember I didn't have a strong opinion on it until then. I think at another stop, didn't you say, wow, a lot of bugs in the fog light?

Yeah, we drove somewhere and didn't have them on. And then it was covered in bugs. I was like, you might have been onto something there, Walsh. So anyway, we started putting them back on. I maybe took them off a couple times again for effect. But certainly by Friday, when the van was no longer functional, I think we had given up the kind of performative aspect of the van's arrival at places. And so anyway, I told you that I was kind of helping with the handoff of this van in Phoenix. And so I went – before I left Phoenix on Sunday, I took a bunch of pictures of the van because I just wanted it to be documented sort of what the condition was.

Yeah, no, good. Yeah, are they on in the photo?

They're on in the picture. Somebody stole – and I don't think they blew off, Andrew.

Well, actually, okay, well, first of all, I'm so glad you have that photo because I was in my head. And I don't know if you recall this, but here's how I remember. I remember speculating out loud, hey, I wonder why you need to cover these things anyway. And then we get to that next stop.

You're like, oh, you were right. It was bugs. So then I, at some stop, put those things back on. Now, they'd come off again later, but I remember putting them on, and they didn't snap on as hard as I thought they would. I thought there would be a more, like, satisfying sort of click or clunk as I put them on, but they didn't. I mean, they fit snugly, but I, you know, I already had it in my head that we probably, at this point, had lost those signs based on just, like, having this thing on the highway, motion and rumble and wind and everything. And I don't know if I said this out loud to you, Luke, but I said I remember thinking distinctly like, wow, they don't really snap on as much as I thought. And I remember thinking this would be such this would be a very, very Andrew move to do what I think is the right thing and the responsible thing to protect somebody's property. Let's put these things on when we're on the highway only to make a bigger mistake and be the one who loses them. and so when you say so as you're telling that story here i'm thinking oh my god i'll bet you i didn't put them on as um tightly as i should have at some point but seeing them so in the hotel parking lot they were on and i mean there's any chance that they came off you don't think that again just kind of on the back of a flatbed truck like kind of rumbling and bumbling no i would be

shocked if that was because i mean we drove through the desert with those things on like snapped on And they didn't fall off Like I think those are Unlike the signs Oh by the way I had occasion to drive South on I-5 This weekend Drove down Went to I went on a hike Down in An area called Silver Falls Really beautiful Like kind of waterfalls Down in I don't even know What the part of Oregon it is But what I know is It involved driving South on I-5 For a good while And I literally was Looking for our signs I thought it would have been The freaking Most hilarious thing Because I mean They're pretty bright Yellow It would have been the most hilarious thing if I saw one of them on the side of the road and pulled over. Alas, I did not.

One thing, did we talk about this on the show? I feel like Vives and I talked about it at some point off air. Imagine the, now that like we're all convinced that these things did fly off the side of the van, imagine the drivers who saw it fly off the side of the van. That must have been scary for them.

Yeah. And did they come off at the same time? Did they come off one and then the other? What was the whole, yeah, I wonder what that was like. anyway I'm so glad you have that photo I'm so well I am too but it makes me feel additionally bad because it's like it's just kind of like it's one more thing where it was like well if we would have been able to get that thing home I bet you those would have been on there also who steals who's going around that neighborhood of Phoenix thinking God I hope I see some fog light covers that I can take off of an old 1993 right side drive diesel van like it's such an i mean that was why the sign stealing also perplexed me this is even more perplexing unless the the guy who did the towing i'm gonna text the owner of the van after the show and say you know send her the picture and say yeah unfortunately they were on there when i last saw it which i don't know actually you know what andrew god unlike our signs i've got i think remember that picture that i sent you the other day i can't believe we're just doing this somebody

He sent you a photo of this thing on the back of the truck moving down the road.

Oh, my God, but it doesn't. The Tesla is blocking the fog light, Andrew. We can't. I just have a newfound respect for the people on all of those detective shows that I watch when they can't quite get the angle on the security camera. Because this does seem to happen more than you would have expected.

But that person might have taken more than this one photo, though. Maybe you should see if there are more photos. Because, Luke, honestly, I was the one who, like, it took me the longest to believe that this wasn't vandalism are signs being stolen in this case though like i am real like unless it's just totally random vandalism hey these things come off let's take it by the way i don't putting

the van in vandalism that's right i think we never get there on i guess because we think of

vandalism as more like graffiti yeah and we could call today's show that but i'm just i just don't think that i find that even i'm even more dubious that this was some sort of a petty crime like fog light covers like doesn't it seem to make more sense that maybe they came off uh in the in the hitching of this this thing was probably kind of hitched from the front and then pulled onto that flatbed just like we saw ruben do like maybe or they just doesn't make sense to me that somebody would take these stupid covers like who would do it yeah who would even know that they

came off yeah like right like i wouldn't have i mean if i was driving i also know nothing about vans but if i drove past this thing it wouldn't occur to me oh that's something i can harvest from this vehicle you know um i mean i guess listen if we want to really get serious about i don't know how much these things are to replace we could always reach out to the hotel and see if they have security cameras yeah there you go although the problem is the window of time is like three full days so it'd be very hard to figure out Thank you. if and when these things were swiped. So I guess the overarching good news is that the Delica van has safely returned to the 503 and more or less in one piece.

I would, I would though try to whoever sent this photo, the person who sent you this photo. And so the journey begins with the, with the van on the back of this truck behind the, behind the, what kind of car is that? You just said it. Is it a Tesla? Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's the whole joke. But anyway, yeah, I mean, there might be more photos. Like, if I had this job where I'm, like, hauling people's valuable possessions, like, I would take a lot of photos. In fact, I have a photo on my phone, Luke, that looks like it's from, like, a Guy Ritchie movie, and it is a photo from, I can't keep the day straight, but it was the day that I had a bag of your equipment that was, like, your mixing board, your microphone, and various things, and you kind of keep those in this bag that kind of looks like maybe a flight attendant bag. it's kind of a you know stylish little um bag that you would carry with your hands not strap across you uh your shoulders and um i have that sitting on i had to return that and the the keys to the delica and at this point the delica had already broken down there's only one set of keys like a lot of stuff had gone wrong for us i was just thinking like if anything were to happen to these keys like that would just create so many more problems and i was so paranoid and i think you left me the key card to your room to return this stuff and you were out somewhere and so i returned this bag and these keys and i set them in the middle of your bed and i took a photo of it because i was like if anything happens i just need for my own peace of mind to see that at least yes here here was the bag and here were the keys well i texted the mysterious number that had texted

me the journey begins or whatever yeah and i'll see if i can get to the bottom of this the great news is this van will be a plot line on this show for the next probably two to three years i'm kind

of surprised how involved you still are in this every time you say you get a note from the owner but i guess you're kind of remaining involved too and kind of taking responsibility and you

mentioned well yeah because i actually really hit it off with the owner of the van i mean their company is called this american van life yeah so we know they're good peeps and i again i feel a bit sad that this thing didn't we weren't able to triumphantly roll back into portland In the van The fact that, you know, I believe She said something to the effect of It's just another thing in the world's least profitable business Yeah, that's for sure You know, I think whatever we paid in renting the van Was then Absorbed in the towing of the van Home, so anyway I'm trying to not just completely wash my hands of things And also I'm just, I'm drawn into the mystery now Yeah This van is constantly being targeted for petty theft Yes, by the wind And we need content So it works on that level. Okay, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, we'll get to some of these top stories, as many as we can, before we have to wrap things up, and then emails and V-mails. So stay with us. It's TBTL. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right, this is just a quick clarification, apology, regretting of the error. We talked Surprisingly a lot on this show About the destination Of mayor Of Easttown's Erstwhile boyfriend I don't know if I used erstwhile correct there Former, past Sometimes Does erstwhile just mean past But no longer So like an erstwhile The erstwhile mariner would be like somebody who Now plays for another team

Yeah, I think so. Because I used to use it. I think I used to use it as you were using it there. But I just looked it up. It's former. I had to teach myself that.

Well, I think I make the I mean, I was wrong about it, but I think I make the argument that he's her former boyfriend and that he is going to teach at a college and their future is unclear. But I was wrong about the college. I said Colby College. I don't know where I pulled that from. Again, probably my high school years of checking liberal arts on the PSAT and then getting mailings from all kinds of random liberal arts colleges. But it's not Colby College. It's Bates College Both of Maine though right I don't even want to speculate On Bates because I think it is I always thought Bates was interesting because Where I grew up there was something called Bates Technical In Tacoma Washington Which was kind of like an ITT Tech I think it was a bit of a trade school And so when I heard about Bates College Which I think is a very well Respected university somewhere I always thought of Bates technical in my part of the world but um they're both in maine one is in lewiston bates is in lewiston colby is in waterville so we were waterville um so i just wanted to clarify i wanted to uh apologize for that because we also then it became a whole thing where we were asking Genevieve where Colby was we're doing a lot

of speculation on Colby when it was not even the right school well the thing is I feel a little bit well I don't know I feel a little bit dumb I guess or it was just kind of clunky of me I was just making a joke because you said that in the show mayor said where's Colby and he said I'll call you when I get there and it sounds like I was just making a dumb joke like why won't he tell her just tell her now like it was just like a dumb joke that was in my head and then when we like kind of impromptually that's not a word but when we impromptually um had Genevieve sit in the show and I didn't realize that she hadn't seen the final episode yet so we were kind of out of things to say I thought I would just call back my joke of just like why won't anybody tell me where Colby College is but of course Genevieve didn't get that joke because she wasn't here for the first time you said that so I wasn't really obsessed with like trying to figure out where Colby College was and I think you guys both said Maine anyway but I think there's been kind of a a fluster a fluster a flurry of activity of people saying it's in maine why don't you know it's in maine

i'm just like i was just spoofing um the uh bates college like social media feeds though have jumped on it oh i don't have these tweets right in front of me but somebody tweeted at us like a very oh here we go it was listener abby a listener abby who was involved in the who's been involved in the mayor of east town thread uh the one that i was talking about on the show the other day where The question was, like, was I reading that on-screen relationship between those two characters differently because of Mare being the kind of protagonist in the show and her being a woman? Would I have read it differently if it was a male protagonist? And I think I ended on, yeah, I probably would have. But anyway, Bates College is jumping on this whole thing of, like, him going and teaching at Bates. They're writing social media posts about it. Even their actual website has a piece on the finale of HBO's Mayor of Easttown. Richard of Bates writes Mary Poles, who I assume writes for the like PR department at Bates College. They're very excited to have been mentioned in the at the end of this very hit TV show.

Yeah, is that I saw something floating around this morning before the show. I don't know if that's the article you're referring to, but was there an article that has been tweeted at us now that sort of has your back about about. Oh, I see. no this is what you're talking about this is just yeah posted by Bates I thought that I hadn't had a chance to look at it and I thought that maybe somebody had written an article with your exact perspective on his role in the tv show and I thought maybe you were um uh validated um in this

article that Bates put out now I'm guessing god this show is amazing it's it's just it's like every show that we do and then we try to correct the record we just create a thousand more mistakes that need to be corrected i'm guessing that there's some sort of relationship between swarthmore and bates like maybe a bit a gentle rivalry or i don't know if one of them started off as a woman's college and then the men's college or what but somebody said that's some swarthmore shade right there somebody named emily bell who teaches at columbia journalism school said so obviously them mentioning bates was in in some way a dig at swarthmore throwing some shade at swarthmore there was and i'm just reading from this this piece at the bates website there was a spirited defense from associate professor of sociology michael rock that's cold mayor cold bates college deserves better rock tweeted andrew mountcastle assistant professor of biology weighed in with a suggestion that a future season might focus on the murder of a convertible jaguar by the main winter in other words point is that care that character was driving a jaguar out of there which I also thought was weird, that Maine winter is not going to be kind to that vehicle. No, it's not. By Monday morning, even Bates decided to join in on the fun with a tweet clearing the air as to whether Bates exists and where Mare can find it. Where Mare. Where Mare. So anyway, that's good. Everyone's having some fun with it, and I was wrong. It's not Colby. It's Bates. So sorry about that. I got a chance to watch this Bo Burnham, I guess, comedy special last night, Inside. it has been getting a lot of attention lots of reviews and lots of tweets um people talking about it and so i finally settled down and watch it now i'll say this like i can clearly i mean bo burnham has been on my radar for a long time because he was a very precocious um you know younger person who got very famous on youtube for writing these very very clever comedy songs i mean He's a I think he's a pretty talented musician and he's a very talented writer. And so I knew about the phenomenon of Joe Bo Burnham for a while. But I'm not somebody who really goes in for musical comedy all that much. You know, it's just generally speak. i don't know this not the it's not the comedy that speaks to me but i will tell you the so the premise of of this of this special is he sort of locks himself in this room in this little kind of back house i'm assuming in la somewhere in this very nondescript little living area that he's sort of cleared out from the normal living stuff and is now just filled with piles of audio cables and various you know lights and monitors and things and the conceit of this special is

that he is just going to be in this kind of little little back home without a crew shooting this special during the pandemic until he's done with it and so it's he you know it's mostly songs but there's a ton of interstitial stuff and i found the interstitial stuff to be fascinating like really really now I mean I don't know one of the things I kind of wonder about is to what degree he's performing even the interstitial parts you know like there's a moment towards the end where he has a pretty profound breakdown just trying to record kind of an update on where he's at and it's super moving and I found myself kind of wondering did this really happen or is he as a skilled performer is he sort of doing this because he knows that it's very affecting at this kind of point in the special but regardless i thought it was really worth watching and and and really interesting i mean it it also very much hit home for me because he starts off just with a song about basically like does does the world need him a white dude having like does he does the world need him saying anything else right now because of where we're at in the world and because of the fact that we white guys have been totally centered in every story for the longest time and he has this very clever moment where he's like maybe i should just shut up and then about two seconds goes by then the song he goes no i don't like that i'm bored and it very much resonated with me of course because i spend all day sitting in this room talking to you andrew and other people and filming myself and creating all this hashtag content which is another huge part of his i don't think i'm bo burnham i don't even think i'm like a uh you know a tiny like a a tiny little burr of some plant that gets caught on bo burnham's shoes in terms of my impact on the culture but i definitely relate to this idea of like everything in your life being content and how exhausting that is and how it's like i both really want everyone to pay attention to me a lot of the time and i also sometimes don't enjoy people paying attention to me like he's definitely somebody who's living through a much more amplified or much more public version of a lot of thoughts that i've had

Mm hmm. You know, I haven't seen this yet. It's I think I can say, is it highly recommended or is it just there's a fellow who listens to this show? Luke, you might have heard of him. His name is I have it written down somewhere. J-Dawg, I believe. Oh, sure. J-Dawg. And he was texting me this weekend saying, let me know if you watch the Bo Burnham thing. I'd really like your thoughts on it. I don't know if it was a full throated endorsement or not, but definitely kind of saying I would definitely like you to watch it. Let me know what you think, because it's definitely breaking, you know, some breaking some norms. And I like when people mess around with format. I, though, the funny thing is, is my my perspective on Bo Burnham is so backwards and weirdly myopic because I only know him as the director of eighth grade, which coincidentally I was thinking about just last week when you were talking about feeling a little uncomfortable at the pool. and me saying you know we had a conversation about how I've always been very uncomfortable at pool parties they've just never been a good part of my life and I avoid them and in eighth grade have did you see that coming of age film I did it okay but you know of

it right I do know he wrote and I think directed it yes and so the rest of the world knows

him as this YouTube celebrity who then made a movie and now has made this special I always have to do it backwards I'm like oh Bo Berman oh eighth grade oh that's right he was famous before that but for a bunch of stuff I don't know about and I also am not into musical comedy so is that the main part of this special it's like the interstitials sound very interesting and the kind of format breaking stuff but is the main kind of meat of the special that kind of comedy because that might be a little bit hard for me to get through Tim yes that is the main comedy I mean

it's I don't know how many songs it's like nine songs or something but I mean first of all the songs are as far as musical comedy goes they're the most like high functioning if that makes any sense like there's a guy god peace and love but there's a guy named randy rainbow who does parody songs and is very very popular in the online space and i bet you a lot of our listeners are real fans and i love that people love him he seems like a force for good that stuff is a little bit broad for me this is not that like i mean he has this song about the internet that is truly like sort of profound where he's just talking about and it's all couched in this kind of catchy jangly almost like carnival barker song but he's just talking about like the what the internet sort of does to us and what our expectations now are about our own lives and our experience and how we have a very limited tolerance for being bored etc and he couches it in this very punchy song that's still i'm thinking about it the next day so i don't want to say that the that the musical comedy stuff isn't without merit and i'm sure it's a lot of people's very favorite part about this special i was sort of getting through that sometimes to get to the next interstitial moment because he does some really genius stuff andrew there's this one part where i mean what he really has an amazingly keen eye for is internet culture at this moment so there's one point where he is playing he's like being like a a streamer on twitch who's trying out a new game so it's he's down in the sort of lower right hand corner of the screen that we're watching and he's got the headset on and he's totally got it down like he's got the patter down of being one of these twitch streamers like he's occasionally like thanking random people who are in his chat you know donating or have been watching thanks to jb112 for three months thank you know he's got if you've ever have you watched twitch very much have you ever watched someone really gaming on twitch not really

no i mean i know of it in little bits and pieces but i haven't there's a whole there's a whole like

world there obviously and a whole way that these streamers and gamers interact in real time with both the game and the people who are constantly there is just like a if it's a popular enough person there was just a crazy running stream of comments going on on you know of all the people that are watching and talking to each other etc he has it down pat but the game he's playing is called inside which is the name of the special and it's bo burnham sitting in this kind of shitty room and he's like controlling like the main thing the guy can do the video game could do is cry walk around the room try to open the door to leave has very limited functionality but he's playing this game of himself and it is as we like to say on the show very meta but it's very very well constructed he does this other one where he's doing a reaction video so it's him he plays a little song and then and then it's him with a headset on and a totally different screen doing this very youtubey thing which is him reacting to his own video and explaining kind of the backstory on it which goes on a lot but then so he's sitting there with the headset on reacting to his video But then the video that he's been watching starts to – when the song ends, it starts playing his reaction video. So now he's reacting to his reaction video, if that makes any sense. And then that one finishes and then his reaction to his reaction video is now part of the file. So a new window pops up. So he's reacting to his reaction to the reaction video. And it's – I mean it's very, very smart stuff and actually very, very well executed. So, yeah, I just I definitely would recommend it, even though not every single moment of it worked for me. But it was it was, I thought, really, really well done and really kind of provocative. But I mean, especially provocative for somebody, like I said, like me, who sits around all day in this apartment thinking, what sort of content can I create so as to make a living?

Right. Yeah. Well, I'm definitely interested in seeing it. And I like the fact that I just like the fact that people are out there kind of mixing things up. You know what I mean? Like I say, like I think of him first as this director of this of this, what I thought was to be a really touching kind of coming of age, sometimes painful, but beautiful coming of age film. And to know that that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg is kind of cool, too. I like it. Yeah, go ahead.

Well, I mean, the other because I am always centering myself in every experience I'm having. i'm also watching this the whole time i'm just thinking how did this guy get this much talent like he was 16 years old and he was making these videos that were kind of blowing up the internet and for a lot of people that would just be like okay you you know you were precocious and you peaked early and um you know that was cool you made some videos and now you're going to be like showing up at cons you know in character of whatever you know what i mean like it just oh and then also oh by the way he did these stand-up specials that were like very very very well received then he quit those because he was having panic attacks um before and during shows like on stage you'd be having panic attacks so he like stopped doing live stand-up then he goes off and writes and directs this film eighth grade which people love and gets really good reviews then the pandemic comes and he's dealing with all of these kind of you know mental health and emotional health issues. And what he does is he locks himself in a room and he creates what I think is probably It's probably one of the most unique pieces of, I guess if we're going to call it comedy, or maybe it's just commentary. But it's like then he just locks – during the pandemic, he just creates this incredibly innovative, interesting form of entertainment and I don't know what you would call it. And I'm just like, really, dude? And also here's another thing that bothered me. He can grow a fierce beard, but he also has no chest hair. he is like almost nude in a lot of this special he's just in his underwear a lot which i really appreciated because he um you know i don't get the sense that he's doing it because he's trying to show off i think he's doing it because he's trying to send a message of extreme vulnerability and without getting overly uh detailed about my body i have very very limited body hair i have no chest hair i am like some kind of weird hypoallergenic cat and i've always thought well you know that's i'm i also can't grow a beard but i was like well that's just my body type my body type is just non-hersuit i can't i can't grow a beard and i don't have any chest hair and that's just going to be kind of how i am in the world he is somehow somebody who has like a totally like rocking beard in fact the beard is almost part of the plot because it's getting longer and greasier through the special as is his hair which very much plays into this claustrophobic this feeling of his unraveling as the viewer but then he's also just got like i guess my point and my weird point about the chest hair thing is despite what your mom thought about tom sellick it has been commented to me from various people of the female persuasion that it's not the worst

thing to not have a thunderous thatch of chest hair because it can be kind of a lot some people love chest hair some people love chest hair less but somehow bo burnham seemed to really really get the best of both worlds not overwhelming on the chest hair front and very fierce very manly beard or he's taking care of the chest hair i didn't even think of that but you're absolutely right he could be this i don't know i mean again i don't know if i'm being toyed with as the viewer on this special but i get the feeling that he did absolutely nothing to try to gussy up his appearance for this and in fact it kind of went the other way like he was letting himself really degrade in front of us so that we could get a sense for kind of you know what this journey

was like for him just to be just for my own um personal reckoning here back hair is still sexy right like shoulder hair like that's what that whole bringing sexy back okay good i just want to make sure that i was on the right side of sexy history it's it's huge it's i really like everybody's favorite thing i just want to i'm just gonna i'm just gonna write down the right side of sexy history as a possible show title i'm not saying it's the best it's just something

to maybe consider the other thing i'll say real quickly about it and i can already tell you we're not going to get to these uh bird related stories but who knows maybe somebody will tell us by tomorrow if we already talked about the pepperoni story so we could spare everyone i but you know i

i gotta yeah i gotta come i gotta i gotta say one thing on that one it's if i can but go ahead

finish your thought uh just to wrap up the bo burnham thing this is also i think what you would really enjoy andrew the technical aspects of this thing that he made it's really really genius like the way he uses light the way he uses projection so he's got a projector in there with him and there's a lot of these songs where just like it's visually really interesting and he's running all of it so he had to learn I mean I assume he had to kind of learn how to program these like light machines he had to do because when they a lot of the interstitials are kind of like basically pulling the curtain back on him trying to figure out how to do some of the stuff like from a technical standpoint and he's got all these foot pedals so it's like he's changing the lights in the room during the songs again he's running graphics over himself it is a like just from a like tech standpoint it's really amazing what he manages to pull off by himself and all the scenes where he's just kind of like twiddling or you know kind of twiddling with things and trying to figure out how to make this light do this thing and stuff like for people who again nothing we do is on the level of bo burnham but even for like making the hey dummies videos or whatever just as people who sit at home and have to try to sometimes figure how to do tech stuff i think you'll find it totally interesting just from that standpoint yeah good

All right. I'm looking forward to checking it out.

Would you consider making your finger pin removal the Hey Dummies video this week?

I don't think I will have the state. First of all, I don't think anybody wants to see that for the Hey Dummies. It took me a second.

I don't even mean maybe not a shot of your finger. What about a shot of your face?

Oh, yeah. I think I'd probably be a little shy to do that in the doctor's office. The doctor already knows that I'm a little bit in my head about this stuff. I can describe.

you how he he almost took these pins out a couple of weeks ago before our road trip and then he realized oh actually it would be a little bit early because i was like really i feel like you just put these in he's like oh yeah maybe we should leave them in a little bit longer we'll take care of them when you get back um but he could tell that i was just so in my head just thinking about it that he put a calming hand on my a doctor has never done this before he didn't even say anything he literally and i really like this move by the way i really really like this doctor but he just like put his hand on my forearm and looked me in the eye and just sort of said like without saying a word just gave me this it's going to be okay a kind of vibe so i uh i like him i appreciate him um his comforting ways and i don't think i would be very comfortable trying to like kind of live vlog um this pin removal however jenny don't understand it's all content jenny really wants me to like keep the these metal pins if if possible in whatever form they're in so So, I don't know, maybe I'll make some kind of necklace, Nicolas Cage style. Yes, exactly. Or put them in a box. I can rattle. I can rattle at you and scare you.

All right. You just texted me something while we were talking, Andrew. I think that was just a photo. Or emailed me, I guess, an update on the story. Oh, shit.

Did I send that to you? I was trying to send that to myself for my notes so that we could talk about it tomorrow. I totally blew it. But, yeah, sorry. I'd been spending the last segment looking to see it. I figured you probably would. I thought for sure you and I had talked about the pepperoni seagull story. And you were right. I will also say, though, your brain is so much better at those things than mine.

It really isn't, though, apparently. Like, I mean, I saw that story yesterday. This was the thing we were going to talk about after we talked about the crows in Italy, which we're also not talking about. That's a new level, by the way. Have we hit the river yet when we basically realize a topic we haven't discussed has already been discussed? Where does that fit into? You want to talk about meta? You can keep your Bo Burnham. That's the ultimate show. Yeah. Us not getting to a story that we plan to talk about, but also realizing we've already discussed it years ago and I have blacked it out. That's right. Bo don't know middle age. Oh, OK. That's our show. Write it down. I just can't believe that I saw that. It's so distinctive. It is such a distinct event where this guy has this pepperoni that he has brought from, like, the other part of Canada out to Victoria because he's going to share it with some friends in Victoria who've requested he bring it from Nova Scotia, wherever he's from. He leaves it, but he's worried that it's going to go bad in the hotel room, so he leaves the window open and leaves it cooling on a table to try to keep it kind of at a good temperature. and of course these seagulls smell that they come in they're eating the pepperoni the pepperoni is tnt so it's spicy and so they're having all kinds of stomach reaction to spicy pepperoni they're crapping everywhere they're salivating everywhere the room is destroyed he's banned from the hotel and then he writes a letter 17 years later apologizing asking if they could please uh you know remove the ban and they do it's sort of a feel-good story um i don't know how i could have read all of that and we could have talked about on the show years ago and then I would see it again last night and I would have no memory of having encountered this information Andrew that's kind of kind of messing with me right now well you know

I know that I could have easily have done the same thing I'm even thinking about eighth grade which is only a movie from I think four years ago and I can only remember I just referenced it a bunch which is why I'm bringing

it up now but like you remember you saw

I remember I saw it I couldn't tell you much about the plot like I say I can remember this pool scene I can remember a couple of scenes with the with pardon me the main character and her father but like I actually couldn't tell you like what is that about so I know that feeling and I'm sure there are other things where I've done this exact thing before in this case though you had this link in the show rundown and I didn't reread the whole thing but I just saw that it involved a briefcase full of pepperoni and I just remember like yeah briefcase full of pepperoni I know we talked about this now you mentioned something before the show which also would have been possible which is that i had talked about it on some other show or maybe you were out and i was hosting with someone else or you know whatever but i just had a memory of sitting in wallingford and you telling me about

the briefcase full of course you did because it's such a weird story like it is the kind of story that should stick in your brain literally like when i'm on my deathbed like the guy in citizen cane i should my last word should be pepperoni suitcase they'll be like i thought he was vegetarian it's so it's just the weirdest story spicy pepperoni suitcase giving seagulls diarrhea

and destroying a hotel and by the way that sounds like refrigerator magnet poetry

the best pepperoni pepperoni suitcase giving seagulls diarrhea like that's just

so unusual it's not like a story about two people who dated and then lost contact and then eventually re hooked up through a dating app 70 years i don't know i'm trying to think of like a a kind of a dog that that that that went missing on a family camping trip and then somehow came home four years later i don't know stories that happen on somewhat on the regular yeah right i would guess that in the history, maybe of the world, Andrew, in the history of the world, I bet you this is the only time, certainly as it relates to the Fairmont Hotel in Victoria, B.C., this is the only time that seagulls going to the bathroom and throwing up because of eating spicy pepperoni from Nova Scotia that was left cooling near a window. In a briefcase. This is the only time that's happened, in a briefcase, in the history of the world. Yeah, probably. Of the world. And I forgot it

I forgot that we talked about it two years ago Well I'm sorry that your brain is now Discomfited by this But I will say I feel so much better I spent most of that last segment You need the W going into your thinking situation There's a spreadsheet That was created by Listener Christy and a bunch of other people Where they were actually documenting Actually going through and documenting Everything that was actually in episodes of TBTL Because you and I will just write very short descriptions And post them online and I was going through that doing all kinds of word searches and pepperoni, seagulls like all, nothing was coming up and I realized oh this project only went up to about 2014 and this was years after so then I was back at square one but I saw that the Little Red Bandwagon had one episode in April of 2018 when the story came out and it just said one thing which was like I don't remember if it was Christy says never get between a man and his briefcase full of pepperoni or something so I'm like there's something there There's something there. So I'm just glad that my brain can at least rest easy.

Listen, again, Andrew, since you're the one that is usually being really hard on yourself about maybe not remembering a celebrity's name or something, and I tend to think I still have some grasp on that, I'm happy to let you. If the outcome from this is that you're feeling a little better about your brain, I'm good with that outcome because I am feeling bad about my brain on this Monday. No, no. Dang it.

Here I go once again with the email every week. I hope that it's from a female.

Is this the regular email intro? I've never heard this before.

No, wait. Is this the Doogie? Why are you playing the Doogie theme song?

I don't know. Have we used this before?

I don't know, man. Don't you have the Gabagool song? Isn't that what we usually play here? Okay, I have. You know what? I'm going to start with a quick email. No, I'm not. I can save that. I have an email that I've been meaning to read to you for like months and months now, which I can, you know, share another day. This one here, this voicemail is a little bit more relevant to something we spoke about on the show recently. I don't think I have to set it up. It's basically a reaction to your reaction to the song Computer Love by Zap featuring Roger.

Hi, guys. I'm calling in because you were talking about the song Computer Love, and I felt like I had to tell you a little bit about computer dating, and then it goes back way longer than you might think. And the reason I know this is because I'm slightly older than both of you, but my parents actually met on a computer date in 1968. It actually got started in the early 60s, and it, of course, was not the way it is now. You would basically fill out a form, and then there was some crude matching algorithm that would match you up with someone. I don't think it was a very good algorithm because all my parents were really happy they had very little in common but anyway power out

there you go wait a minute more questions than answers right now was there an internet at that time

doesn't sound like it was internet it sounds like it was more of an algorithm and maybe volunteers could submit information about themselves this sounds like a punch card situation no yeah so it's a punch card and you

say i like these things i'm interested in this kind of person but then it's like is it the same computer do people go down to like they go down to the university and they put their punch card into the giant computer there and then it it sort of tries to match people up i mean these computers could not have been connected my guess would be that this listener's parents were not living in different places different cities and connecting by way of these computers right unless maybe you mailed the punch card around like i'm just this is fascinating to me but i feel like it's i'm more confused

about this topic now than, again, I'm having a very confusing Monday. Just another confusing Monday. Luke, I'm surprised.

We did a whole show about this exact topic. You don't remember? It was like 2017. You son of a bitch. No, I don't have any of those answers either. But, yeah, it sounds like especially that this would have been so long ago. My guess is people were experimenting with computers and trying to figure out, you know, what they could be used for. It might have even been part of maybe a college situation. I'm totally speculating here. But maybe maybe it was college students and they heard about this experiment and there was a call in the student paper saying, hey, submit your answer this questionnaire and we're going to put it into this computer. And then it's going to then you can go on a date with someone based on who the computer matches you with. It could have been something like that. Or like you said, it could be a male in a form as well. But, yeah, I don't think this has to do with computers like around the world or the country talking to each other.

I feel and again, I really appreciate the listener. If this listener could. Did you mention their name? No, I don't think there's a name on that voicemail. If this listener could maybe call back in with some more context, I would love to hear it because I'm just, again, I'm fascinated, but I'm also still kind of in the dark on it. But I was going to say, I don't feel like that necessarily changes my opinion of how radically futuristic that song from Zap featuring Roger was. Because even if that was going on, I don't understand how these two funky, soulful men who wrote this song were that up to speed on how computers were playing a role in love matches.

I don't actually know the lyrics to that song very well, but I'm just taking it at face value.

It says, could that be your face I see on my computer screen? Shoo-be-doo-bop, do-be-bop, I want to love you. Shoo-be-doo-bop, do-be-bop, I want to love you, baby. It's all right there in the text. Yeah, right, exactly. Now, granted, they were writing that song in like probably the early 80s. So computers were now more advanced than they had been at the time of this listener's parents hooking up. But I'm still just I just find it. I mean, it'd be like if somebody wrote a rap about Bitcoin in 1999, be like, how did you know that, Chingy?

Any other songs by computers or about computers? There's another song called Computer Love by Kraftwerk. I think I tried playing that for Genevieve and I Road Trip, and she almost broke up with me, though. So maybe we should do that.

Really? Not great? Yeah, you know, Genevieve really likes it. Is it just very German?

I remember kind of liking it, but... Should we try it? All right, let's just do it. Let's go out with this. It's seven minutes and 20 seconds long, so we'll play all of it twice.

Okay.

That's how we'll wrap things up today. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio and maybe top stories that we've discussed previously. I don't know. The past is history. The future is a mystery. And this thing right here is what we have. It's called Now. So thanks for being part of it. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, have a great Monday. Stay safe. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. We'll be right back.

I don't know what I want to do, I don't know what I want to do, I need a wrong day, I need a wrong day.

Power out.