Muse

Hello, everyone. Well, the Ball State softball team continued to play this weekend. Tomorrow's game will be the meeting between the two, beating both... First... The Indiana Pacers are looking for a measure of revenge tonight against the New Jersey Nets and to strengthen their playoff hopes. The Nets won the last Sunday's matchup, 94-85, which left the Pacers one game behind the Chicago in the 7th series spot. Let's check out the highlights. Steven Jackson's David. Reggie Miller's looking good. He shoots a three, and it's good. Later he gets the rebound, passes it to the man, shoots it, and boom goes the dynamite. The final scores ended up with the Pacers 63 to the net 61. Okay, great. Thanks a lot for that look into sports, Brian. Yeah.

TBTL! It is always 67 degrees with a 40% chance of rain. Always.

Did you do anything to spare your touche at all? I mean, was it just hard swing and keep moving?

Uh-huh. I had a mate bring me a kiwi fruit pillow and a few hours in, eh?

You are legit crazy. You are losing your malleables. As you know, my goal, as always, is to value and respect your time. And as such, I will now impart the necessary knowledge in a concise but emotionally resonant way.

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

It's a tuna, bro.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

There's a Hidden Valley Ranch party in my mouth.

If I sound kind of out of breath, it's because I just had the weirdest, like, intrusive impulse. As that Boom Goes the Dynamite tape was playing. By the way, coming to you from the Ness Broadcast Center high in the sky above Portland, Oregon. as that boom goes the dynamite tape was playing I realized that I had forgotten to make my bed this morning and I had gotten up to go make some coffee and thought I'll come back in the bedroom I'll straighten everything up and then you know it'll be time to do the show and all that but it just forgot to do it and it became very important to me in that moment that I run over to the bedroom. Straighten the bed out. So, I don't know. So that when I'm done doing the show, it will just look nice if I walk into the bedroom. I don't even understand it, but it became imperative that I accomplish that task. And I did. And then I ran back here, and that's why I was out of breath. Okay. Now that that's handled, let's... We do not have time for this kind of silliness. Let's get into this. Episode 3,440 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. i just found out that uh tbtl has a yelp page and the reviews are in it stinks actually i don't know what the reviews say because i've never looked at it or maybe i've looked at it and we've talked about it on the show and i've completely forgotten that we talked about it that happened yesterday with that seagull story. Like a flood of emails that came in from people who were listening to the show and they heard us kind of trying to remember if we'd talked about that seagulls eating the pepperoni and crapping all over the guy's hotel room story. Of course, we ultimately realized, yes, we have talked about it. But people were emailing furiously in real time. You've talked about it! Yeah, we know. We figured it out. Anyway, there's a Yelp page. We're going to look at it. Emotionally prepare myself for whatever it is people are saying. Speaking of emotions, I've talked a lot about the strong bond that I have with my Roomba, Randy.

Does this sound like our musical robot?

Question is, is it time for me to upgrade to the robotic cat to keep me company?

There is something about the soul of a cat.

There's an amazing article in the New Yorker about robots keeping particularly elderly people company sent along by a listener, Jason, in Brooklyn. So we'll get into that. And then speaking of technological life hacks, sounds like they're getting pretty close to being able to control our dreams. Have I ever shown you my shattered dreams box?

It's upstairs in my disappointment closet.

like scientists now

We'll do this thing where they have somebody do a VR, like a virtual reality activity, and then the people are very likely to dream about whatever they were doing in the virtual reality world. So we'll get into that, plus emails and V-mails. And this guy, longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Summer is here. He's ready to hit the beach. Back hair is still sexy, right? He is Andrew Walsh, and he is joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I forgot to close the loop on a story from like a week or two ago. Okay. It was a credit card. The mysterious package that was trying to make its way from American public media to my home that I had to get rerouted and then pick up at the grocery store. After I'd already gone to the grocery store, went shopping, drove home, the whatever, five blocks of this home, was parking the car, then remembered, wait, I was supposed to pick up the package that I had rerouted to the grocery store, went back to the grocery store, went back in, said hello to everybody again. You know how you leave a party and you say goodbye to everybody? It's like that when I go to the grocery store. I say goodbye to everybody, make the rounds. Then I had to show up again, go around, say hi to everybody, explain that I'd forgotten my package, picked up the package. inside was a single envelope that had already been opened it was opened by somebody at APM what was inside but a new company issued credit card because mine expired right right after the TB Telethon trip I still I don't think I said this on the show Luke I know I said it to you off air I don't keep track of when like I have a I have one APM company credit card that I mostly use once a year it's usually around tb telethon events um and i had no idea when it expired and i looked down right as i was starting to like have to purchase things related to this trip and i realized this thing expires the week after the tb telethon if we had scheduled that tb telethon a week later i would have been in a real pickle that would have been such an andrew situation to go on this long road trip and and have to rely on your card for everything um and you know god knows with the towing and everything i don't know exactly how that would have uh worked out but anyway um that's what was in the package it was a credit card from apm i don't know what my limit

is but i guess drinks on me yeah we'll meet you at teddy's yeah hey speaking of did you go to teddy's and celebrate yesterday uh the removal of your body art aka that metal thing that was keeping your finger in the right position uh did they take it out yesterday how did it go they did

take it out yeah it went um it went okay i think i told myself that i was getting worked up over like literally nothing i thought it'd be like yeah i probably won't even feel it at all when they're taking it off i felt it again one of the one of the um pinpoints on my finger had become a little infected so i think that made everything a little bit more you know it listen it wasn't torture it wasn't the the pit of the pit of despair or anything it wasn't a torture don't I didn't even think about trying to escape. But, you know, so I had this, you described it well on the show yesterday, if you can sort of picture like you bend a paperclip when you're a kid or whatever, you make a rectangle out of it. Imagine that kind of like setting on top of my finger, only it was going through my finger. And then there was some other kind of contraption on there, these weird green bead things at the joints for some reason. But anyway, he had to cut off all of the extraneous stuff so that he was just pulling two straight wires out of my finger, if that makes sense. So he did use basically wire cutters. And imagine using wire cutters. I think almost everybody's done this at some point. You need to take apart a wire hanger for some reason. And you have some wire cutters that maybe aren't the newest in the world. And you know they're going to get the job done, but you have to put a lot of pressure on it. and then eventually it snaps and the whole hanger kind of. It was like that, and it was kind of uncomfortable.

By the way, I don't exactly know why you're cutting up so many wire hangers. Honestly? But I'm going to go with you.

Do you want to talk about it? I mean, I feel like I'm using wire hangers for a lot of things, maybe cleaning related. You know my policy on them, no more. Oh, I thought it was more. I thought it was more wire hangers. Oh, it's the opposite. Oh, no, wait. Why do you have a wire hanger store called No More Wire Hangers? It seems counterintuitive. But I use them for cleaning and unclogging things, it seems like, a lot. Or every now and then you might need, like, the hooks. Usually I'm just trying to isolate the straight part at the bottom, but sometimes you might actually need the hook part. So anyway, it was like that. It was, like, kind of uncomfortable as he had to make three cuts for some reason on those things. And it wasn't, you know, it was a weird sensation. And, again, my finger being sensitive didn't make it feel great. And then the pulling out of the pins was, I can't remember what I was texting with you right afterwards. And it was like, was it the worst thing in the world? Absolutely not. It was nowhere near the worst thing in the world. But I wouldn't recommend it. Like, it wasn't like fun. Just because it was painful. You described it kind of, you described it as being uncomfortable in the text you sent me. But I couldn't quite sort of decode that. Does that mean it was painful or it just felt weird? It felt weird and unpleasant. You know, like feeling weird is when you put hydrogen peroxide in your ears to clean it out. You ever do that? That's a fun little feeling, right? And that's weird. I would describe that as kind of a weird feeling, but it's not unpleasant. It's just weird. This was, I would describe it as unpleasant, but I also don't want to overstate it. Like, as far as procedures are concerned, I just don't think it was probably that big of a deal. I get very anxious in these moments and everybody who has had this happen said you know it's not that big of a deal it's not painful it's a weird sensation and yeah it is a weird sensation but it's an unpleasant sensation and again with my finger being a little infected I think that probably made it worse I asked him for an ice pack ahead of time he's like oh you need an ice pack I'm like yeah I'm a little uncomfortable with this kind of stuff he said oh well now why don't you lay down I think originally I was just going to sit in the chair loop my arm over like the kind of bed thing and he was just going to kind of pull them out. But I laid down for it, so I wasn't watching what he was doing. But, like, so once he had the parts cut off, like all the extraneous stuff, and so it should have just looked like a couple of pins down there. And, again, I'm not looking at this point. Then he takes some device that almost feels like I bet you they were, like, some sort of vice grips, you know? Because, again, picture you're pulling a wire hanger out of something. If you have regular pliers, there's a chance that they could slip, right? He doesn't want to slip on this. So he's got something that I can sort of hear is clamping down on it with a little clicking sound like that. And then he's like, OK, I'm going to pull it out now. And then he kind of goes to pull it out. But he definitely, you know, there's count down like one, two, three. No, but he did. Let me know what he's doing. One, two, three, yank. He did tell me exactly when he was going to do it.

When he did it, it wasn't like it just slid out like butter, you know, like it took a little it took a little pulling, you know, not again, not terrible. but you felt it you know so anyway i see i don't think you're being a wuss because these are pieces of metal that are literally pierced through your finger through my bone yeah my tiny little bone in there wait they were actually going through your bone yeah i think i think so yeah oh i oh well wow okay that's way worse yeah i didn't realize they were going through but i'm pretty sure you even said like well it's a it's a sensation it's a wire going through your bone I'm pretty sure you even said that. That's been my assumption, the whole point. Yeah, because that couldn't have just been a flesh thing because the whole point of that thing was to pull my bones apart so that they didn't crunch over at the knuckle. I see. Of course. That would only make sense. This whole time, I thought they were just going through the meat of your finger. No, I think that would turn. By the way, I hope everyone's enjoying their lunch. Exactly, right. Oh, God. Remind me, when we're done with this conversation, to close the loop on something I mentioned yesterday and didn't follow up on, which was the number one TV show that shouldn't be playing at restaurants. Oh, I'm interested in hearing that. Here's what I want everybody to do. Here's what I want everybody to do. I want everybody to take a wire hanger, okay? Yes. Just the straight part, and then poke it through a hot dog, okay? And then actually two wire hangers through a hot dog, and then bend those things so that they kind of connect. I asked him how he put this contraption on, and it is true that he put two long wires through my finger, and then all of those bends and joints and everything, he did with some sort of medical tools he bent it all up and turned it and you were asleep for this right hell yeah right so he must have drilled through your bone i don't know what he did i don't want to know but um anyway so i want everybody to take a wire hanger put it through two parts of a hot dog then bend them around each other so that you kind of got a square going through the hot dog freeze that hot dog then once it's frozen pull it out of the pull it out of the freezer then you know use wire cutters to snap off the bent parts again and then use you know vice grips to pull the the hangers out of the hot dog and that's what it was like please submit the videos or photos of this and maybe it'll be hey dummies this week okay anyway uh so that's it i'll tell you this though uh i was very glad when it was done it's a very strange sensation to have that thing off of my finger especially the first couple of hours i mean i felt like i had this phantom because I my other fingers had to kind of I was kind of keeping them that thing was kind of wide at the at its widest part so I couldn't like kind of hold my fingers next to that finger normally and now like it was almost like they wanted to stay spread apart like they were avoiding something that wasn't there anymore and it was such a nice feeling to like you know now it's just sort of tender this morning those those little holes are almost completely healed up and it's still swollen like a broken finger but he said that should go

down pretty quickly if it doesn't let them know and it's just very tender now and it's the first time in like a month and a half or whatever it's been that I haven't had like anything on the finger you know like I don't have a what do you call it not a stint but a splint a splint that's not you know that was on there for a couple of weeks before it was replaced by this weird contraption and now for the first time in a long time I'm just free and easy out here now it's concerning because now this is where physical therapy or occupational therapy comes in I still can't move it now it's the weirdest thing because like if you were to look at me trying to make a fist right now I mean it's funny it's it's kind of funny um they simply do not move and it's weird to know that oh it wasn't the device it wasn't the splint like these guys just don't move anymore but I guess we're going to be working on that so but I'm glad to have it off yeah so it's tender but it's not in pain it's tender and like for the first time now I can kind of just touch it straight And I can sort of feel like, oh, yeah, there's still some bone healing going on in there. But it doesn't hurt. If I were to accidentally thwop it on the table, it probably hurt a bit. But no, it's not in pain. I just got to kind of favor it a little bit probably for a day or two. But we're getting there. And, again, it was almost a euphoric feeling, especially after going through that thing, which was kind of high anxiety for me, you know, sitting in the doctor's office waiting for like an hour. And then they finally took it out. And by the time I left, I think my head was kind of swimming and it was a combination of relief that I had gotten through that. And then also just like kind of this euphoria of like, oh, I have a mostly normal looking finger again. I mean, it's twice the size of a normal finger. And I got big hands anyway. So I'm a little bit like a monster. I was going to say, your hands are already twice the size of normal hands.

So now we're talking four times the size of the average person's hand.

But anyway, but yeah, so that's where I am now. And I think that finger talk can recede to the background for a little bit, hopefully.

And Alex Smith leg injury talk can move to the fore. Oh, no. I was eating in this Mexican restaurant like a week ago. Is that what they were showing? And, you know, they've got the games on like 8 million TVs in this particular place. And so it's on ESPN. But, you know, there's like nine ESPN channels. And I don't blame the people that worked there because, again, they're probably just, you know, they're putting on all the sports. So people can see what they want to see. But what they could not have known was that there was going to be like an hour-long special on the sort of inspirational story of one-time Washington football team quarterback Alex Smith's very gruesome leg injury.

Oh, my God. First of all, I didn't know. He went to Wazoo?

The team that plays in Washington that had the racist name.

Oh, I see. Yeah, I'm sorry. Gotcha. Yeah, no, this was this was I don't think I've ever seen footage of the injury itself. But I know that it was so bad that they thought for a while that he may lose the entire leg. Am I right about this?

I mean, this was happening. Of course, it was muted. I couldn't hear it. But boy, could I see it, Andrew? And it wasn't just like him getting injured on the field, which actually I don't even know if they showed that part. But what they showed were what felt like at least and I hope look, if you're eating right now and you're easily grossed out by these things, you know, maybe turn the podcast down for a minute. But what they showed were just a series of very gruesome medical photos of the leg post-surgery, of the leg pre-surgery, but like on the surgeon's table, of the leg literally like cut open like a hot dog, like that friend's, the one weird friend's dad who would flay the hot dogs. his leg was filleted open Andrew with the bone showing and I was like I mean first forget being at a Mexican restaurant ESPN better have been running some kind of major disclaimer before that because if I was sitting at home I wouldn't have wanted to see that let alone while I was eating I also ordered the Alex Smith leg bone yeah which was weird timing because I don't even eat that kind of stuff I was going to say I'm surprised

it's vegetarian yeah yeah boy my frozen hot dog with wires going through it isn't so bad anymore is it oh my god it was so

disgusting and i carry used to point this out i guess i'm actually a little bit when it comes to eating and things that are sort of suggestive around bodily functions or gruesomeness i guess i'm like maybe overly sensitive or extra sensitive because there would be times where like we'd be eating and she would start talking telling a story about something or someone and i would say Like not to be extra But I'd be like Can we have this conversation After I finish this food Like I really don't Some people I guess It doesn't bother them I guess it really bothers me Because I don't enjoy Like Chewing on something And at the same time Hearing a description of something That I would never

want to be chewing on i remember one time i think we're at the thing festival before the thing festival and of course there was a lot going on that day and like we were being we were waiting for some magician to finish up or an illusion or whatever there's a lot going on but i remember we were you me and carrie were sitting somewhere just grabbing a quick bite to eat at some sort of artist tent or something and you were eating something like a taco and i had just mentioned like oh yeah maybe carrie had said something about getting ice cream like yeah i can't really eat ice cream because and this is admittedly kind of a gross thing I'm not proud of this but I say I can't really eat ice cream cones because you know I have to almost take a shower afterwards otherwise that ice cream will kind of get stuck in my in my mustache and then you know it'll smell bad the rest of the day and you were just like could you not like you were like that yeah you were like that is making me sick I'm trying to eat here I'm like oh wow about my face hider you weren't by the way you were not rude about it I'm kind of making you sound like you were rude you were not rude about it but it just stuck in my head because I was like yeah that that seemed like a pretty sensitive gag response to you oh good but i want to say that my story about my smelly beard is not exactly pleasant either like not a lot of people are signing up

for that um i guess it must be something that i'm a little extra sensitive around so you can imagine my horror at this at this particular uh piece of espn programming that i was staring and it just kept being like i couldn't believe it just kept getting more graphic like were you

I was like, we get it something to somebody almost for like the for the good of the community.

Yes, but they were very busy. They were kind of running everybody. You know, there was like they were understaffed, as I've noticed, is often the case now. Anywhere you go, they've got signs now like we're hiring. I saw this crazy headline in the Wall Street Journal the other day that was basically like the economic boom is here and it's going to be unlike anything any of us have seen. because you just have this like really crazy perfect storm of a lot of people not everybody but a lot of people who have been home saving money people were fortunate enough to keep their jobs but who weren't going out as much and taking trips people have been itching to get out and interact with the world and people have more discretionary income than normal and it's going

to make this summer just kind of bananas yeah and i was reading there was a big piece in the sunday Seattle Times it's funny because I actually went to a little diner around here just like a family style kind of low-end diner you probably know of it called Patty's Egg Nest you know it's just like oh yeah and I just had like I wanted to grab a quick sandwich so I got like a French dip and you know what I wanted like sometimes I leave the house I'm like really hungry but I can't exactly figure out what I want and then suddenly I was like you know what I want I want to be at one of those kind of kind of cheapo restaurants that always has mediocre clam chowder which again we're kind of getting into gross beard talk again i think but like you know that mediocre clam chowder you can get it just at a diner and like i was and it comes with those oyster crackers that or saltines this one was saltines i was like i just want that where can i get that i'm like oh patty so i went there and i got like that and a sandwich and it paid off but they were slammed you know some tables are still closed because of the the um covid protocol um but they were as busy as you could be given it and the manager is kind of sitting me down and i'm like wow it's good to see you guys so busy it's like oh we're understaffed and then um and then i open up my phone while i'm waiting for my clam chowder and i'm reading this article about how restaurants really are having trouble staffing for a variety of reasons like people have left the industry during this time and found jobs elsewhere food service is just really hard um and also just like you know um uh you know the kind of pay and benefits aren't necessarily there compared to some other sectors too so it's interesting to see like i know there's there's a very small profit margin for restaurants and i know that obviously you're close to this because your family runs a you know your sister runs a small restaurant and i'm sure that they're probably they probably do not have very big margins to stay open but on the other hand too it's kind of a workers thing too it's like well you also want to see a shift where maybe these jobs are uh earning more money as well because they are so hard but what is that going to mean for the marketplace doesn't mean it's going to shake out that we're going to have fewer like family-owned businesses and is it going to be like the only the chains that can survive this is me just theorizing now i sure hope not i mean

i think my guess is that it will just cost more you know for your clam chow true yeah yeah um which will then hopefully uh allow these these smaller places yeah like my sister and josh's place which is moving by the way they're closed for a month they're moving to a new location which is going to be super exciting um so uh you know if you're in portland please do support the family brand uh pollo bravo but anyway um yeah like hopefully uh there will be a way to keep those those smaller restaurants in business because i mean i can only go to applebee's once

A year, Andrew. It's with you during a TBTelethon trip. Exactly, right.

But it's necessary, though, too. Yeah.

All right. Let's take a quick break. And then speaking of restaurants and Yelp reviews and things like that, apparently we have a Yelp page. And I'm going to ask Andrew to only read me the good reviews coming up on the other side of this break. Stay with us. It's TBTL. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. Our Top Story, Andrew, it may be time for me to get a robotic cat friend called the Joy for All cat. Dude, we've talked about this.

Just joking.

Don't, please. I'm just so fragile right now. Sorry. This Yelp thing has me very, very nervous. As I already said, I'm half certain we already talked about it once. Because you said, have you looked at the page? I know we're supposed to be talking about the cat, but now we're talking about Yelp. Yeah, sorry, I got you off track. No, that's okay. Let's do Yelp first, actually, and then we'll get into the cat thing. I don't remember talking about this Yelp page, but I also feel like if we would have known about it, it definitely would have been the kind of thing we would have gotten into.

I think this is new. Here's all I know. I'm on the Slack channel the other day, and our friend, Mary, the former TBTL virgin, who's now apparently listening to the show and enjoying the show. Oh, wow. Apparently heard you say on an episode, you were probably just making an offhanded remark. You said, according to her post, do we even have a Yelp? And then Mary says, yes, now you do, and more people should visit it, and she put a link in the Slack thing. And so I'm pretty sure that Mary created a Yelp page for TPTL, which I did not know you could do. I thought you had to be an actual, well, I thought you had to provide some good to the world. No, I thought you had to be, I don't know, I was going to say like a physical location, like a restaurant or a venue. But I guess maybe Yelp is for services as well, like cleaning services. And we, you know, clean information out of your head and leave you with a blank slate. So, you know. Sure. So I'm on the Yelp page now. And I actually have not. I saw this when it was brand new, and there was only one review, and I think it was maybe Mary's. But now it looks like there are nine reviews. At first glance, it looks like we have five stars. And I'm not joking, by the way. I really have not. I kind of wanted to be surprised about this as well. So it looks like we do have five stars, five out of five. So that's pretty good. It says you should contact the business directly for more information about recent service changes due to COVID-19. I don't think – I mean, we haven't done any live shows. A location in ours We're apparently on First Hill in Seattle So that's good That's kind of the hospital district That's good Maybe because of my finger I don't know Amenities It says not good for kids I would disagree with that I feel like we're great for kids We have a lot of children who are listeners, right? And yeah It looks like nine reviews All giving us five stars And some of them are longer than others I won't read one of the long ones but we got julia saying i love this show sadly i never caught it while it was on the air at cairo but the podcast is more than fulfilling this is all very sweet stuff i like this uh note at the end by somebody named jay and renton who says brilliant show if you like all things considered arrested development bobcats and the kraken this show is for you release it wait a second

i'm wrong this review was left in 2010 i was gonna say with all due respect to that person they were referencing a lot of kind of old school tbtl tropes like the kraken and things like that

everything i've said is wrong mary must have just uncovered this there are mary has uncovered it and reposted it so we do have two new reviews from you know the past couple of weeks or four it looks like maybe the rest of these are from 2009 2009 2010 and even going back to 2008 so this thing has been kicking around for a long time luke and we still have five stars a yelp

review is going to pop up this is an okay show but they constantly forget that they've talked about things including this yelp page which they discussed in 2011 do you think that you

Do you think that I made this whole thing up just to make you feel better about yesterday's forgetfulness? Anyway, sorry. I really bungled this whole segment. But anyway, we apparently have a Yelp page. It's been up for a long time. Some people are adding new reviews. They're all nice. They're five stars. And let's see what happens.

Because Yelp is a real kind of protection racket. Yeah. I've said this before. Like, I mean, the thing about Yelp is it's like they have, although I guess also maybe it's the kind of thing where, like, your Thanksgiving dinner. that never was. There needs to be some public accountability for that. So maybe in that case, it's good that there's a mechanism if people were to go on Yelp and say, hey, this was a really bad experience for us. But there's also this thing where I believe we definitely – Andrew, we have had this conversation and I don't know where we landed on it. But I was under the impression for a while that there was a way to pay extra for Yelp to have a little – like as a business to have some sort of more say in what comments were showed or what the kind of – how they were ranked or prioritized. And maybe that's changed or maybe that was just bad information. But I was under the impression at one time that Yelp was this kind of thing where basically they create this service and then people can go to this service and say bad things about your business. And then you have to kind of like pay them to try to do reputational management.

Yeah, if that was ever true, I know a listener with some personal experience. Somebody said it's not true. I think it might have even been listener Christine who her and her family run a business. I can't remember what it was. but I'm pretty sure she wrote a long email describing because oh I think they might even be in the law yeah I think it was a law office maybe it wasn't an attorney and like she said there was no shortcuts to cleaning up some bad reputation stuff that some people had trolled on her she was like if that was a service it is definitely not anymore well nobody troll us please

our little fragile egos can't take it

so I don't know if this was really a top top story given the fact that this is well it's a top story from 2008 so that's cool yeah um okay

back to these uh robot cats by the way thanks to listener jason and brooklyn for sending this really incredible and also very kind of melancholy piece in the new yorker by katie englehart you know how you were talking about that like scrooge mcduck piece in the new yorker that didn't quite have that sort of new yorker article quality for you where it's like you're just totally drawn into something a topic that you would have never thought you were interested in

yeah i mean the hallmark of a new yorker piece this is the opposite by the way i finished that yesterday will you read that and just let me know if you know what i'm talking about we don't have to talk about on air i just want to feel vindicated or tell me if you think i'm wrong but anyway yeah this is the opposite right because i only read the first couple of uh paragraphs of this

and i got so sucked in like emotionally yeah it's a really really well written piece um that sort of gets into how lonely people are in america and in particular um older folks and and uh and especially during the pandemic and it starts off profiling a woman named virginia kellner who got one of these like robot cats from um the department of of the aging in cataragos county in upstate new york i'm sure i said that wrong but eventually we'll have a dazzling donor from that place and then i'll get to say it wrong again um and uh anyway it's talking about these uh these cats that are called joy for all cats and then again it gets it really expands into just how physically devastating loneliness is um and how like she talks like john cheever wrote that he could taste his loneliness other people likened theirs to hunger virginia this the centerpiece of this article virginia said her loneliness came and went and felt sort of like sadness and like not having anyone to call and they just i mean to skip to the end of the piece the the beautiful and heartbreaking touch at the end of this piece is that the the woman who wrote it katie englehart talks about basically everybody that she interviewed in the piece never wanted to hang up the phone with her oh and like wanted her to come back and visit them and we're like these people were so i I mean, they were legitimately so deeply lonely that when she would call them back to follow up on something, she could hear in their voices how excited they were that she had called them back.

And she's, like, notoriously annoying, too, right? That tells you how lonely these people are. She's just – isn't she labeled the least likable New Yorker writer, 2020? Or am I wrong about that? No. Check the Yelp page. Obviously, I'm joking. But, yeah, no, that's really touching.

Yeah, and it just – I mean, I had this moment. I have this kind of intrusive animal empathy at times where if I start thinking about animal suffering on a global scale, it kind of overwhelms me because it just makes me so sad. Sometimes it will happen if I'm on the freeway and I go by like a cattle truck or one of those trucks that's got a bunch of chickens in it or some livestock and there's like one eye of like a cow looking out through those little holes. And then I just start to think about all the animals in the world that are being mistreated and it really gets on top of me. I had that moment thinking this morning about all of the people in the world who are lonely. And I mean, we we sort of jokingly say that the show is trying to cure.

loneliness, which we kind of are. I mean, a lot of people, particularly during the thon and in their donor messages, you know, confirmed that this is companionship for a lot of people. And so I'm happy about that. But to just think about the people in this article and and how lonely they are. And it just was it was heartbreaking. And also in it was instructive because it made me make a kind of mental list of people in my own life who are kind of in that category, you know, maybe a bit older. I maybe don't have a lot of family near them, and it made me decide that I need to be better about being in contact with some people.

Can I say something here? I don't want to derail it from the story because I actually think the cat stuff is interesting, and I know I think we have some sound we want to play. Plus, I know that we really kind of spiked the vulnerability needle with some conversations last week. I don't want to get super, super serious here, but I am going to be honest with you. i have had feelings of you know sadness and melancholy and even i think depression i don't know if and when i've ever felt what you would describe as lonely like i felt on the outside of things you know like i felt um like when the cool kids wouldn't invite me to things or they did invite me to things and it was very uncomfortable for me because i was an outcast or whatever like those were feelings of various kinds of emotional pain but actual loneliness like i don't there are times where genevieve will like go on a trip like back in the old days right like she'd go on a trip for a week and you know i i don't make any qualms about it i'd get kind of excited at first be like hey i have the house to myself and then usually there's a time maybe even on the first night where i'm just like oh i miss vives and i do you know like i will miss vives i will miss that presence but i don't know that i've ever had what you would describe as loneliness and And maybe I'm very lucky in that way or maybe it's like actually – I don't know. Maybe it's unhealthy that I don't have that particular emotion.

My guess would be that some of that is because your age and because of the way that we are super connected and because of the job we have. I know you're going back to childhood. Yeah, yeah. But like I think some of it – I mean I think it has to do with our age in life right now because I think if we were – And maybe people of our generation will have the good fortune to suffer less loneliness when we get into our elderly years because of how connected everything is. But if you're somebody – imagine you're somebody in this article. There's this woman. She's 81 years old in Florida. Her name is Deanna DeZern. She got this little, like, robot called Ellie Q installed on her kitchen countertop. If you're 81 years old and you are not married anymore – she's divorced, by the way. She has a great line in this piece. she says let me see if I can find it you know she's got this little this robot that she talks to when she's feeling lonely or whatever and she says my last husband was a robot but he wasn't as good as her it's a real Virginia stuff going on burn but like if you're 81 years old and you're you know divorced or your spouse has passed away and your kids live far away and they're living their lives I think it's probably a different experience than us being in our mid-40s and feeling sad sometimes but always knowing that most of our family members are alive yeah and that we have you know in your case a partner who who you live with and you know what i mean i but i don't know i mean i guess it'll be interesting to see how it plays out in your life also some people just enjoy being solitary and and you certainly love your andy times so maybe uh you know someday when you're much older and who knows you know what your life will look like but maybe you'll be the kind of person who will enjoy um you know having a kind of solitary time i i also have never had to really contemplate that very much like loneliness because i have a lot of people in my life although i have again not to go to emo town but i also have thought lately that i have the ability to sometimes be lonely i think that there's a famous like turn of phrase it's like feeling alone in a crowded room of people like i think i i've definitely found ways to do that at times in my life where it's like i'm in a relationship with someone but i feel lonely you know or i'm surrounded by people but i also feel lonely because i'm not maybe in that moment very good at um opening myself up to everyone if that makes sense so it's not purely a numbers game in terms of like if you just have a bunch of people in your life it means you're automatically not lonely but um but i'm i'm very privileged in that at this moment in my life i know that i could reach out to any number of people and um and feel connected and again i feel really lucky i feel especially lucky about that now that i read this piece and i'm just imagining these folks particularly these older folks who are um suffering extreme loneliness which is where the joy Okay.

For all cat comes in, which, of course, Andrew, when I heard about this thing, I had to Google it and see how realistic the cat was. The answer, not very realistic. Yeah, not as realistic as I was hoping, considering where we are with like A.I. and science. And I guess part of the thing is because this just started off as a kid's toy. Like it was just a cat that made some sounds and was kind of extra responsive, had some sensors on it. So if you were to pet it, it would do something. But then somebody, I think, at Hasbro, like the person who was in charge of this division of their toys, noticed that people had started to buy these cats for people who were lonely and people who couldn't have pets themselves for whatever reason, maybe where they lived, maybe their age, etc. And so this guy, I think, then went off and started his own company. I think he bought the rights to these cats and is now marketing them really more as a companion for older people. So I put in Joy for All Cat into the Internet, and then I want to watch a video of it. And, of course, the first thing that comes up, the most viewed thing related to these cats is on QVC. And it's like art. But what's so funny about it to me is the people, like the producers, the Odell's of this particular situation forgot to turn the cats on for this lady who is sending the strongest Karen vibes you have ever – peace and love to our listeners named Karen. We need to come up with a new term for that. How about this? She is sending the strongest I need to talk to a manager vibes that I have seen, you know, since yesterday, Andrew, since I was at the bank making a deposit and I was waiting forever because there was a very can I talk to a manager woman in front of me, white woman of a certain age who was like taking forever with this transaction and was like so weirdly dismissive to the teller. And was she aggrieved as well? She had the physical bearing of somebody who's at the rental car counter holding a printout from Expedia, but not getting the car they thought they reserved. You know, that kind of just that energy.

That's a very specific energy, but I know exactly what you're talking about.

She had one of those, like, bill, like, it's like a zip-up kind of vinyl little, what would you call it, pouch that has the name of the bank on it. she probably like runs a business or something and was like bringing maybe the till or something but something was going wrong and she was not pleased about it and then the person had printed the balance that she wanted and she was like i need you to verify that and he said well it's right here on this receipt and she goes i can't read that so he was like well would you like me to write it in larger letters she's like yeah so he had to like write her balance he had a hand write her balance in larger letters i will mention this woman was not like did not appear to be someone who was visually impaired or at an age where she like can't see like she would just seem like she was annoyed with everything that this person was doing anyway this uh a host on qvc now now here's the thing here's what and i'm probably way overselling this now but what i thought was interesting was how much she's on television right she's so she has to keep it together but i feel like there's a simmering rage i agree i watched it too like beneath like a simmering rage about but nobody turned the cats on yeah and she's trying to tap dance and by the way i can kind of identify with this in a small way because it's a bad feeling when you're the person who's standing on the stage or they're pointing the camera at you and you feel foolish yeah and it's kind of because of somebody else not um you know dotting their eyes and crossing their tees like it is a weirdly rage inducing thing i'll bet you that job is hard too i'll bet

you i'll bet you they are really long shifts i do you know i'm not well steep in the qvc world i know you have watched a lot more of it um but like i'll bet you those those on-air shifts are probably very long uh and there is a lot of tap dancing and it's underappreciated you know it's not like you're not you're not getting a there are not award shows for best um swordsmanship in a QVC spot.

Well, we know who wouldn't win it. The guy that broke the damn sword.

Odell, the Odell's partner. So anyway, yeah, like in a certain way, and she's probably working with these people, and probably some of them are boneheads. You know what I mean? Like, I'll bet you that is a really hard, underappreciated job as far as like vamping is concerned.

Yeah, like, you know, what's her name? Kelly Ripa of like the Kelly and Ryan show. Boy, that thing's come far afield from Regis and Kathy Lee. Who's Ryan? They're as good as two hosts could be. Ryan Seacrest.

Oh, is that who it is now?

Interesting. I think it was like Regis and...

kathy lee and then it was regis and kelly and then it was kelly and whomever and then it was

kelly and michael strahan i was gonna say there's a footballer in there somewhere stray and then

michael strahan left to host like good morning america and so now it's kelly and ryan or ryan and kelly it's like one of ryan seacrest's 90 media jobs hope he's doing okay financially they're upset howard stern for some reason is obsessed with what's up with ryan seacrest's work schedule like he spent a week trying to analyze like how he even gets from because he does he also hosts American Idol and he was like we took up a lot of time on that show just an analyzing how he got from LA on a Sunday night because I think American Idol is live a lot of the time okay to right Kelly and Ryan or whatever his show on Monday is and it has to do with a lot of funky pre-taping of things that are sort of general, and it has to do with red-eye flights on a private jet across the country. I mean, it's a whole thing. But anyway, you're right. This host on QVC is not making the kind of money. In fact, this is arguably a way harder job than a lot of the highly paid TV hosts have. And yet here she is. No one has turned on her cats, and I can tell

that she's not super excited about it. From Hasbro, which is a toy company, but these are so much more than just a toy uh these cats are called the lifelike joy for all companion cats i hope you guys turned my cats on did you turn i didn't see who put these out here but this one seems to be

asleep somebody's in trouble odell's in trouble i didn't see who put these out here it's dawning on her as she's petting the cat furiously and it's not doing anything that this cat is not on but of course the on switch is somewhere buried in the fur like because they don't want doesn't have a big like an easy button on the back of it because it's supposed to be lifelike so she has no chance on live television apparently i've never been on live television before she has no chance of diagnosing this situation in real time yes exactly and you know she probably just and again

i don't know why i'm defending her so much but like no you she probably just got done like i don't know selling baseball mitts right and now she's got this electronic thing and she's trying to talk and it's embarrassing when the thing that you're trying to show off is apparently not

working i mean that's the worst case scenario absolutely no i mean it's a very very very

poor proof of concept so boy for all companion cats i hope you guys turned my cats on did you turn i didn't see who put these out here but this one seems to be asleep wake up kitty all right hold please maybe we have another one that's working out here she grabs a different cat

It's off the table, starts furiously patting its head to see if it will turn on.

All right. I'm going to hand you one. Can you make sure this is working? Because this is going to be a moot point if my cat does nothing.

OK, so there's a lot. There's a lot in that statement. There it is. She has handed the cat off screen. They're now cutting to stock footage of elderly people playing with this cat.

This cat. We're going to look at some video till we get ours working. These kitty cats are so realistic and lifelike. They are customer top rated, and they are like an adult cat size. What they are is a cat that does sound effects and movements like a real cat. They have smart sensors on their heads, their cheeks, their back, and their tummies. Now they're turned on. Hear them purring and meowing. Okay, so they come with the 4C batteries that they need. So, again, you don't have to buy batteries. And they give... Poor kitty. Did he just throw you back on the table? All right.

We don't see that, right? Unfortunately, it doesn't cut. It comes back to her from the B-roll just too late to miss. Because you can hear a click of Odell throwing that cat from off screen onto her table.

Again, because the poor producer is at this point probably freaking out. So they got the cat turned on. But they don't want to they're not going to there. I'm sure that this is why it was such a big deal when Odell had to come on camera after the samurai sword, because I think the first rule of QVC club is if you're the producer, you don't go on camera. So this person has probably thrown the cat from off camera onto this table to try to, like, get it to this host. But you can just also hear in the host's voice, I just feel like she's now mad that someone threw the cat. And she's doing that thing that people sometimes do. Speaking of strong, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf lives, where people will talk to their pets so that their partner will overhear them.

Oh, somebody didn't feed you, did they? Oh, you're super hungry because somebody didn't feed you.

Well, somebody thought it was more important to play Fortnite. Yeah, somebody wanted to buy a gamer chair instead of getting you your latest shots.

Oh, it might have been the same.

person who forgot our anniversary isn't that funny no no money for a special anniversary trip

huh but boy that gamer chair sure looks yeah i guess they i guess somebody has a really awesome gamer chair with speakers built into the headrest anyway kitty she's so i love that she's talking

to the cat but negging the again you don't have to buy batteries and uh they give poor kitty did he just throw you back on the table all right oh i'm so sorry little boo um so um when you pet

their head anyway i have a feeling and maybe this kind of stuff happens all the time maybe like you said by the end of her shift after she'd sold you know 300 um like jadeite bracelet matching bracelet necklace combos on stretch pay maybe she had forgotten about this whole thing maybe this is the kind of thing that happens so much that she was over it but i could also see a world in which whenever this is over when when she tags out for the next person to come in and do their whole sales pitch thing there was probably hell to pay you know hearing the reaction i love it's

funny that you and i have never talked about this and again it might be because i'm not a qvc watcher even you dropping whatever that necklace thing you just said is you've clocked some hours clearly Oh, yeah, dude. Camaro, Kevin, I would watch a lot of this guy called Don West. Anyway, keep going. I was just going to say that doesn't surprise me because there is something that the reason you and I, I think, work well together and bonded over radio stuff is because of a shared appreciation for a certain type of radio and a certain type of broadcasting. And that is usually when you can just sort of hear people off mic. You know, like that was something that I loved about TBT on the old days. You could hear people kind of coming and going out of the studio, not really on mic. And like you get that vibe with this. Is there any upside? And for us to make a sincere effort to see if somebody would let us do like two hours on QVC or like. TBTL-a-thon 13? Like seriously. I don't know how that works. I would be so into that. That would be super cool. I bet you it would be hard, but we could train for it.

I would be so into that. Does anybody know anyone at QVC? Or the good news is there's like 20 of these channels now. Yeah. Let me play a little bit of this Don West baseball blowout extravaganza part one. This is just on YouTube. I have not previewed this. This is the guy that Camaro Kevin I would always talk about because he was always there was something called gem mint tin that he was always talking about. And I don't even know what that means. We're going to needle drop this. Okay.

best chance for those of you 99 you better get online unbelievable and if that happens that is a cool deal all right last call on these now we're gonna go to a brand new deal and i'm gonna kind of switch midstream here because uh that is uh i'm not sure if we got our our chicago cable on right now if you're in the chicago area and you're watching That is a cool deal. Let an operator know, give me your number, and confirm to me that we're on the Chicago area right now. That is a cool deal.

Let me see.

I'm going to skip ahead. Before Upper Deck Collector's Choice factory set. We've got a 1991 score factory set. We've got a 1990 Upper Deck, a 1992 Donruss factory set. We've got a 1988 Donruss

First of all, is it Donruss? I always say Donruss Everyone I know has said Donruss Except for Don West of QVC Of Shopping Home

Factory set We've got a 1990 Donruss These are the worst baseball cards too We've got a 91 Donruss

I know

This is like the era of glut This is when I bought a few packs of baseball cards I didn't even watch baseball But I was like, everybody's buying them And it's like exactly this It's like 90 through 93 Donruss, just like you couldn't turn over the earth without finding one of those. I just really want him to say gem mint tin at some point.

Factory set. We got a 1989 Topps. Factory set. We got a 1987 Fleer. Factory set. 1987 Fleer. We got a 1988 Fleer. Factory set. We got a 1990 score. Factory set We got a 1991 Fleer Make sure to keep this from falling here

Anyway So is this tin mint This is like a mint in other words like mint Cards is this guy always doing cards I think his thing was sports

Cards and there was yeah there was something About like I can't I just know that Kamara used to always make me laugh At some point in the drunken evening by Yelling gem mint tin In a Don West voice what's also interesting to me is that 80

thousand views of this and it's not particularly notable i don't think anything happens again a samurai sword doesn't break and cut him i just think this is the testament of the earlier days of television and how there just weren't as many channels i mean even though in in our childhood there was cable tv which was still a lot of channels but like don west there's a reason that i sought this out today and why 82 000 other people have looked at this and it's because they grew up with don west being on television late at night screaming and it made an impression on them it's don you know actually don west made a real impression on them because like it's almost like the content is almost irrelevant if it's just there's probably some there's probably some part of tbtl's durability is also related to this concept which is it's like at some point the content is almost secondary to the regularity oh yeah oh yeah definitely yeah like anything you just put on tv five nights a week uh for a long enough time will develop a fan base just because of its uh its being there every night it's your stories i mean yeah i mean i know i go to it a lot

but i've got several podcasts in my life that are like that it's just like now the the thing about this is though it's it's very shouty and so for me i i don't get so much into the shouty thing so having this on in the background i think would put me on edge but yeah you just get kind of um of course i remember when i was first listening to levitard some people some listeners were saying i tried but it was kind of shouty and then i listened back with those ears and i was like oh yeah i guess there it is kind of shouty i just kind of like they turned the water up on that slow slowly for me so i didn't kind of notice how you always notice it when somebody else is listening for the first time right like i'll listen to hours and hours of levitard in my ears and then i'm on a road trip with genevieve i'll be like well let's just try this one hour and And you're just like, oh, this isn't what it's usually like. I swear, you know, it just sounds like, oh, my God, everybody's just shouting a stupid joke over and over and over again. This is terrible. Why do I even listen to it?

I am. I'm texting Camaro Kev. What the hell was a Don West gem mint tin? And if we catch him during a break in his day, maybe he'll get back to us before the show's over. I know we've sort of moved on from the robot stuff, but I have to say, like, I'm not just trying to, like, generate content for the show when I say that I definitely talk to the Roomba here. And I definitely, like, sometimes I've come home and the batteries have died and it's just sitting in the hall.

Oh.

And it almost feels like it's just staring at me like, where have you been? Like, I'm coming home at 3 a.m. with lipstick on my collar. Like, again, I've I've I guess anthropomorphize this thing extensively, but I absolutely could see having something like this, this this little cat and, you know, feeling very connected to it. And the people in the story all talk about how they really like these cats and that really they know that they're not real. But then this is what I found surprisingly, I don't know, negative. The philosopher Robert Sparrow has made an ethical critique of these kinds of things. I guess he put out a paper called The March of the Robot Dogs. This is from this philosopher. Quote, for an individual to benefit significantly from ownership of a robot pet, they must systematically delude themselves regarding the real nature of their relation with the animal. He wrote it requires sentimentality of a morally deplorable sort such sentimentality violates an ethical imperative, which is to apprehend the world accurately out of here with that shit.

Yeah, well, also, I mean, if you're talking about this, like we live in a future where there are no real pets and everybody is just playing with robots like, OK, maybe. But also in this case, I don't think I don't think anybody wants that. We're talking about a 92-year-old woman who's, like, shuffling around her little, like, apartment in her graduated care facility with a pair of scissors hanging off of her walker so she can open the mail. And that's basically all she has to look forward to every day. I got that from the first two graphs of the story before it said you need to pay to read more. And so, like, I just— Take that, David Remnick. You'll never get Andrew's money. Actually, this article has really got me. I want to—actually, I'm going to talk to Veeves. I think we have a subscription to The Atlantic. Not that we can't have two magazine subscriptions, but I feel like we should prioritize The New Yorker over The Atlantic. I'm not reading a lot of Atlantic stuff these days. But anyway, no need to get into that. Here's my one thing about this, Luke, is I could see you getting this, but the big letdown for me when I finally saw what it looked like is the fact that it doesn't move freely around like a Roomba. That's the big difference. This is something that sits still, and if you pet it, It will blink its eyes just like those dolls that my sister used to have where you would, like, if you set it back on its back, her eyes would close.

would like sit it forward and the doll's eyes would open um but uh so the eyes kind of look like that only they're you know they're controlled by mechanics of some sort and it's activated by you petting it but if you don't touch it it just sits there in the same position all the time right i would want one that has more of the technology like you know the the the kind of human or pet qualities pet like qualities of randy the roomba is there's a bit of um chaos there are randomness I should say. You don't know where it's going to end up. Randiness. Randiness, exactly.

Random Randiness? Show title? I don't know. That also just sounds like we're trying to make passionate love to the listeners. Anyone up for some random Randiness? No, you know, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely—every example of me interacting with that Roomba and kind of thinking of it as having human characteristics are when it's moving around. Yeah. Like it gets stuck somewhere, its battery dies, it won't do something because it's saying Its bin is full but I know I just changed its bin These are all of the things And this unpredictability Those are when I'm like going You know your bin's not full Like I'll say that to the room If I had to go over The thing with these cats is You do have to interact with them And pick them up and put them on your lap Which even for me is probably a bridge too far At this point in my life But I don't agree with this Philosopher's take that we're somehow It's like morally reprehensible to develop a bond with a piece of machinery if it's designed to make somebody feel less alone in the world.

Because, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, that's it. Oh, I was just gonna say, because you also don't know, like, does this philosopher also have a treatise on stuffed animals, generally speaking, or stuffies, as the kids call them today?

Oh, I know, that's, I don't know how I feel about that, by the way.

Yeah, calling it stuffies, I know, I'm just like an old man, It's like, well, it's not what we called them. I call them teddy bears.

Which is so silly, but that always throws me. Everyone's calling them stuffies now.

People correct me if I just say teddy bear, but I'm talking about, like, Henry the stuffed dog I used to have. Because I think I referred to him as my teddy bear over and over. But he's not a bear. He's a dog. Yeah. I don't care. But anyway, whether you call it a stuffy, a stuffed animal, a teddy bear, what have you. Like, I don't think there's some, like, moral imperative to eschew them, right? Like, it's just like, oh, well, they're for kids. And now we live in a society where maybe it's even we're more willing to accept it if an adult has, you know, has an affinity towards stuffed animals, you know, like whatever. Everybody's sure. Everybody's on their own journey and dealing with their own stuff in their own way. If if you're a 30 year old person, you have a favorite stuffed animal. I'm not going to make fun of you about it to your face. No, no, I'm not going to make fun of you about it at all. And so anyway, like, OK, so that's that. Now, what if you give it blinky eyes now? Is it suddenly immoral? immoral okay well what if you give it a purring sound like at what point does this cross the line

to robotics that suddenly has this guy all worried yeah i mean to me it's i i actually think this is kind of cool that they can that they've got some stuff they're working on that could make people less lonely because you know in 30 years or whatever my not even 30 years my guess is that They'll have very sophisticated things that, like, I don't think anybody who has the option of having an actual human being in their life as of right now, none of the people in this article are like, I'll take this robot cat over my granddaughter. Right, right. They just, their granddaughter doesn't visit them because she's a little shit. Talking to you, Tammy. No, but like, but you know what I mean? Peace and love to any of our listeners named Tammy. You know what I mean? like it's not nobody in this article is like i prefer this to human contact and also side note if you did fine it's your business yeah but in this article it's like people are deeply lonely they're isolated these little cats are making them feel a little less lonely they know that the cats aren't real i just don't see who's being harmed by this and i could very much see myself someday years from now as the technology gets better and better like having a a meaningful friendship with something that is robotic they the studies on this are pretty crazy though like they made this one kind of little robot that would like turn away from people when they were talking to it and this was in a study and the people felt very like their feelings were very hurt by the robot turning away from them while they were oh wow wow even though they understand that it doesn't have feelings there's we're so programmed socially that way right yeah definitely um but anyway so so yeah i i probably won't get one of these cats but um if they come out with something they come out with a free roaming cat i think that there's like a little dog right wasn't there a dog that was big at like ces a couple years ago that was like made in japan that was kind of a well it was a you know it was a robot dog but it was supposed to do all kinds of fun cutesy things that you know you could kind of have it in lieu of an actual dog that sounds right

I don't know if it's just the type of thing I hear coming out of there or if we talked about that. By the way, quick update on Don West from our friend Camaro Kev before we go to emails. I said, what was Don West talking about with gem mint tin? He said, I believe it's the way they grade baseball cards. He put, quote, this Griffey Don Russ rated rookie is only a seven, but this George Brett Fleer is a gem mint tin. A gem mint. Oh, he was saying ten, not tin. Ten. But his act. Gem mint. Gem mint tin. That would make so much more sense. And then I wrote to Kevin, did you notice he says Donruss instead of Donruss, like we all said? And he goes, he also used to say the Billingham Mariners instead of Bellingham. Wait, is there a local connection that I missed? No, but my guess would be Ken Griffey Jr. cards were very popular, and he was a Bellingham Mariner in the day. Interesting. So probably that's why it would have come up on Don West's sports card show. But anyway, gem mint 10, not tin. So for anybody who's composing an email, we got there.

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.

All right, any emails or V-mails before we get out of here?

Something from listener Nigel just came in. The subject line is Anthony Weiner is selling NFTs of his crotch shot. I don't even want to open that

We could do it as a topic tomorrow If I start talking about it now it'll just be the topic But like Ben Smith Who's the media writer for the New York Times Basically did this Like sit down with Anthony Weiner The disgraced politician And convicted I guess you would say pedophile About the New York mayor's race Because he was once Before he got derailed He was considered to be a front runner to win the position of mayor of New York City. And so Ben Smith was kind of like talking to Anthony Weiner about the current candidates and getting his take on things. But then it also served as a bit of a like, where is he now? And where he is, is completely still blacklisted from, you know, politics and life because he did time for communicating in a sexual nature with a minor. But he also just mentions at the end of the piece All casually That he's interested in like crypto And non-fungible tokens And he was musing about the idea Of making one of his like The email that Oh it was the tweet Because remember how that story unfolded He sent out some kind of a tweet Accidentally that was really weird And I think he was trying to DM someone

Oh is that how it came I didn't remember that detail

I think he was trying to DM someone, but he accidentally tweeted it and it was up for just like a minute. But somebody screen capped it. And then remember, he had this he was he had told a whole series of lies about the nature of the tweet, which sort of like made no sense. And then it just started unraveling. And then the whole thing unraveled. So he was talking about maybe making that tweet and non fungible token, which is like, yeah, profit off of that.

Like even, you know, I was just scanning this, too. Okay, so he's writing a book about his experience, and so he'll try to make some profit off the experience in that way. That's kind of a road well-traveled for these types of politicians and disgraced politicians. But literally taking the offensive photograph that you sent to a minor.

Well, not the one he sent to a minor, if that matters. I think the initial thing that got him in trouble was not communicating with a minor. It was communicating with a person who was of age, but it was just scandalous because he was married to Huma Abedin, Hillary's body person, who was a phenomenon in her own right. And the idea that Anthony Weiner would be cheating on her or trying to cheat on her was quite notable to people.

Anyway, so that's gross. Anyway, I just happened to see that, and so I thought I would just read the headline.

By the way, can I just mention one other thing from the Ben Smith piece? Like he mentioned, I mean, obviously, one should not be sexting with anybody underage. That's by itself enough of a crime for me to not be a fan of Anthony Weiner. But of course, that whole incident, I think, had something to do with Donald J. Trump becoming president, because what happened was he was doing this on a computer that also belonged to his wife and because she worked with hillary clinton james comey decided to reopen some sort of investigation into her to see what was on this laptop and that happened like two weeks before the election it could not have helped and the best part of the the piece is like he reaches out ben smith reaches out to a spokesperson for clinton and maybe

be a person who was a spokesperson at the time of the campaign and they just said like on the subject of did anthony weiner did that investigation because anthony weiner's behaviors that investigation to the laptop did that cost you the election and he said well it wasn't a net positive

understatement of the year yeah wasn't a net positive god i had forgotten about that aspect i'm actually embarrassed that i'd forgotten about that that's why i feel like that i didn't forget about the final blow being related to Comey and the seizure of laptops, but I forgot that it tied back to this son of a gun. Right, I mean, it's like, I know, it's

like, what a, what a weasel on every possible level, and of course, if the one thing he does care about, because the thing with him was always, okay, he's kind of a scumbag, but he's a skilled politician, and he really knows politics, and he's a real force for, you know, progressive issues, etc. But it's like, bro, you did like, you literally, because you were Had this problem I guess you could say You may have literally made Us have Donald J. Trump as president which is If you're a democrat kind of the

Worst thing you yeah yeah absolutely Um all right let me read A couple of other emails here and then we Can get out of here just really quick this Came in from an anonymous listener who Just said check ebay for Recently listed fog light Covers for the Delica van those the little Wow covers that go on the on the cute little fog lights on the front of this van that went missing this is an email that came in through the system so kiki lolo saw this too and sent me like an all caps email did someone steal the

fog light covers this van will never stop being a plot line on our show never but anyway i assume

there's no updates there i like the suggestion if i knew how to use an ebay i would look to for recently listed fog light covers for a 93 delica um maybe the tens can get sleuthing on that and we can what do we do if we catch the person set up a sting I guess right I feel like I would recognize them yeah I mean but you know they saw the covers yeah so if we find them and then then what do we do though I don't know I go back to

Arizona yeah I by the way quick search of eBay and I'm not seeing anything nothing I am seeing the the light itself Mitsubishi Delica L300 fog driving light see that makes more that would be that's $44.99 yeah I could see that

I don't see the covers. Anyway, good advice, though. Also, here's an email that I have had for, I think, months now. But it's evergreen because I'm always complaining. We were talking about people who are just kind of, I want to talk to the manager vibes. Let's face it. Some of these petty grievances I have with my fellow Americans often kind of fit into that category as well, Whether I'm grousing about somebody being, you know, cutting in line at the grocery store or just parking their car terribly and taking up a bunch of spots. This came up, I think, just last week when somebody who was driving a very non-compact car jammed their car into a compact spot and ended up taking up two spots because they couldn't fit it in the spot. And I was upset by that, even though I was parked somewhere else. Anyway, point is, I got this email from Gregory a while back who says that your stories remind me of a time I had to squeeze into the only space available. This was at a parking garage in Pasadena before Christmas of 2019. Cars were prowling the garage looking for anyone leaving. The only space open was a compact space with cars over the line on both sides. My car is pretty small, so I went for it. I had to line up perfectly for my approach because there were mere inches to spare. Once I squeezed my car in, I graciously exited out of the tailgate of my hatchback. Oh, my God. I'm attaching a photo. This is from listener Gregory in Pomona, California. I'm going to use this as today's show pic so you can see what it looks like. But, yeah, he's just, like, squeezed in there and then had to exit his vehicle via the hatchback. I wonder if he had to get back into the vehicle that way or if the cars were gone by the time he returned to his vehicle or maybe the vehicle is still there. That was Christmas of 2019. Maybe he's just like, you belong to the garage now.

I guess also it's a nice way. It's sort of the perfect. It's not a crime, but it's like the perfect move because then when those people come back, I believe they're also trapped in a way like because they can't get their doors open.

Right. Of course, it would only affect the driver's side of one of them. If the other one, it would be a passenger situation. That passenger, if there is one, could just wait. But anyway, I will make that the show pick. And also, that reminds me, I meant to go out with some special music this week. Right. Because we got an email. Because we're not on YouTube. Right, exactly. Under the thumb of YouTube. And I got an email from listener Paul in Orange County, who is a dazzling donor, but didn't send in a dazzling donor message and didn't feel like Paul had anything specifically to say, but.

did want to suggest going out with the song When They Fight, They Fight by The Generationals. Paul says, bring back a piece of the Lurk Burbank show. No, that was me, of the Luke Burbank show. This, of course, is the song that you went. Did you go out with it? No, no, you bumped in with this on your show, right?

Yeah, this was, I don't even, I was trying to explain my career, my radio career to someone the other day. And like, I completely, I've been blacking out a lot of things, Andrew, I promise, not due to excessive drinking, But I just have been, like, large sections of my life that are just kind of, oh, yeah, that happened. Like, when Dave Ross then went to mornings at Cairo, and then suddenly it was, like, I think, like, Tom Tangney was a co-host with me. And then there was, like, the Luke Burbank show for a minute, and we came in with this generational song. I don't know if that was, like, I don't even know how long I did that, if it was, like, a couple of months or longer. I don't know if the ratings were terrible or okay. I know the ratings got better when John Curley took over the show.

when yeah it was weird though because and i'm not surprised that you kind of forget about that moment because like it was just a weird scheduling thing where they were trying to like have their cake and eat it too as programmers over there they're just they didn't know what to do when they moved dave they didn't know how to kind of fill in the gap so i think like you still did one hour with dave like he would stick around after his show and do one hour with you right and then

yes i think it was like yeah not like ross because ross and burbank was shockingly like it was actually kind of popular yeah i say that because very few of the things i've ever worked on have been popular with like a broad audience but i remember it's like getting surprisingly good ratings so i think they wanted to try to keep that going so it was like ross and burbank for like nine to ten and then poor dave got to go go back home uh after having been there at like three in the morning and then it was like me and tom tangney sometimes me and you i think for a couple of hours

maybe yeah I did not produce that show with you though because I think by that point that's when they put me on the night shift I don't know why we're even doing this this is just you and me trying to remember our careers but I think during this point they put me on the night shift and they had Brian Bucklew was producing for you but remember I came in and did a once a week quiz with you guys because that was something that I had done on the Ross and Burbank show when I was producing you I think I did a I don't know if it was a news quiz or a random quiz but that was like my thang quiz boy so um we had me coming in once a week and it was kind of a way of maybe promoting the night show too by doing my quiz on your show but um yeah weird times and it's just like it was like shifting ground underneath us you know what i mean it's not totally surprising we don't remember the details because it kept changing month by month it seems like right um and i did not like

being the primary host it's funny people would think oh you want to be the host like i would just love to be a professional co-host like that Ross and Burbank gig was so great because Dave did all that you did all the hard producing and David all the heavy lifting and I just roll I just came in made my little joke and then ran to Grand Central Bakery during the news and got my breakfast

but the funny thing is and I'm not saying this I because I think that we used to joke about this at the time and you said the same thing Dave yeah he was the first voice and he kind of steered the ship but it didn't mean that you were just like popping in you still were majority you still probably did the majority of the kind of talking but you didn't have the burden of having to think about like not that you're not good at it you actually you're very good at it but you just didn't have to have that mental burden of like how am I going to set this story up and then how am I going to get out of it and then go to the break right like having just somebody tee it up for you a little bit just goes a long way and then and that's why I used to love my the sweet spot for me was when i left cairo but then came back and was a fill-in on the the um ron and don show how quickly i forget i mean that was perfect because i was never in the lead chair and also i was not responsible for the future of the show it didn't have my name on i wasn't trying to sink them but i could just totally be myself set it up ron and i'll say something and if i don't have anything to say i'll say sorry ron i don't have anything to say and then you can make fun of me for four minutes you know like that that was the job yeah well on that note we're gonna go out with the

generational this is a great album by the way yeah yeah um would recommend and also um actor casters a subsequent album i don't know why this band didn't get bigger because i love them anyway thanks for listening everybody oh we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you until then have a great tuesday go mariners go eat a bagel it's not the water i don't want to get into this again. Be good to yourselves and each other and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all.

I love you baby Oh

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

And then the ones that come to you Drive them away You just can't let it go And when they fight, they fight And when they come home at night, they say

I love you, baby

Power out.