Muse

My 11 has turned into a casual 10, and now he won't stop singing, playing, and just referencing that gabagool thing. So, thanks! TBTL! Hey, where's the freaking gabagool?

I will not tolerate monkeys living on campus. If I wanted to run a monkey hotel, I'd install a banana buffet. I'd use vines as elevators, and I'd put tail holes in the bathrobes, and I'd lower all the shower knobs. What have you really thought this through?

I thought, well, this is a great, bright group of people. They're really into what they're doing. They're exciting. They're excited. They're doing cool things. They're wacky, and I fit right in. There you have it. A practical example of modern communication.

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live i was made to understand there were grilled cheese sandwiches here my name is luke burbank i'm your host you want to do a make-believe radio show in a room somewhere coming to you from the nest broadcast center high in the sky above portland oregon where It is currently just absolutely beautiful out. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. But we are under an advisory. It's going to get pretty warm this afternoon. And then Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are going to be positively scorching. Some reports it could be at 111 degrees in Portland on Saturday, which feels warm for June. I don't know, I've only lived here for eight or nine months, but that seems warm for a Saturday in June. Anyway, we will, I don't know what we'll do, we'll get some cold rags and put them on the back of our neck and try to survive this thing. Known as episode 3452 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I've come up with a novel new strategy for promoting the show, and that is to just absolutely butcher. Butcher, the very uncomplicated name of a New York Times reporter. And then they will isolate the clip and put it on the Internet.

I was cyberbullied within an inch of my life last night.

And therefore get us those coveted, those coveted likes and retweets and engagement. So that's the new strategy for winning here at TBTL. I'll tell you what happened with that coming up. Also, scientists are absolutely baffled. Those scientists better check their hypotenuses, dude. As to what is going on with a herd of wild elephant in China.

You have to have the heart of an angel and the hide of an elephant.

For the last year, this community of wild elephants has just been tramping across China. And nobody knows why it's happening. and downside they are destroying some small villages or at least breaking into people's homes and stealing food which is not great on the upside the photos of them sleeping as a family as a group are giving me life right now there are some of the cutest photos I've ever seen they're now following these elephants with drones to try to warn people you know who are in the path and also just figure out what's going on with them anyway we will look into that also it turns out we are as a collective group of Price is Right contestants we are much worse now at playing that game than we were 20 years ago there's some kind of interesting research behind it coming out of Harvard University why are we worse at playing Price is Right and then time permitting which I'll be shocked if we actually get to this story but honestly i'm shocked this is a story a guy in england was bored during the pandemic so he decided to try to set the record for stacking m&ms on top of each other you gotta be kidding me he did it the number of m&ms he stacked will absolutely shock you uh so we'll get into that too again if we have the time oh also it's a thursday aka a blurs day so we'll do those as well we'll do all that with the help of this guy the longest running cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ship speaking of animals we've got an animal related story today PETA has sworn out an arrest warrant

for him and now whenever I see a dog in a car I flick him off I give him the old big middle finger

he's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle Washington good morning my friend when will I learn to say flip off instead of flick off I grew

up saying flick off me too but it oh you did i thought we've had this conversation and i thought i was in the wrong that nobody says flick no you we were just both in the wrong oh Oh, it was an episode of TBTL. Sounds like we're on track.

Yeah, that's one of the sort of rare things where your experience growing up in Ohio and my experience growing up in Seattle mirrored each other. Like kids would say flick off when I was going to go flick him off. And I think it must just it must involve little kids being more familiar with the word flick than with the word flip. so that when you heard some adult or some older kid say flip them off flip them the bird as it were it just went into our brain as flick and then we went around saying flick them off because

i'm still tempted to say flick them off to this day i have a um but i am flipping off dogs and flicking off dogs i have this weird random memory that's almost it's almost like a drop that like an audio drop that plays in my head and this is the first time i've ever actually tried to like bring this memory from my subconscious to my conscious and certainly try to explain it to anybody but when I was growing up again in a rural part of Ohio outside of Cleveland a small school I don't know how this ended up happening but we ended up having a student who I think he might have come over from Russia that doesn't seem right though because it would have in the USSR at that point he definitely I remember we had some student who came from I believe an eastern European country and new English I think also though I think kids enjoyed teaching him new English words naughty English words but I just remember he was also kind of a little bit of a tough guy I think like I remember you know maybe even having some sense of jealousy that this new kid can kind of come in and kind of rule the roost a little bit But he was a tough guy. And I just remember him saying to somebody in a threatening way, I think somebody flicked him off or flipped him off. And I think I remember him saying in an accent that I won't even try to do here because I don't remember it well. I must break you. He said, get in the chopper. No, he said, you know, that Eastern European accent.

Famous locusts in Eastern Europe. At least mine was Ivan Drago. At least mine was Ivan Drago.

Hey, where's the freaking gabagoo? It's Carmel. Okay. Anyway, all I remember him saying in some sort of a thick accent was, keep that finger low, man. And that was his way of saying, like, don't, you know, you better not be. Yeah, right. And I'm talking, this was grade school. This wasn't like junior high. I know that it was before we got to the center.

Was it Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises? Was Viggo Mortensen attending your Valley Center Ohio?

Valley City, if I'm right that it was Eastern European, it was some sort of a thick accent, and this tough kid comes in, and he says to people, keep that finger low, man. I was like, wow, that's tough.

Wow, that's cinematic. Right? I think that just applies. First of all, that's my new favorite thing to say to people, if I'm menacing them.

But they have to give you the finger first.

It only works in a very specific situation, right? No, I think it applies to anything. when somebody is about to when somebody i think it has broad application when somebody is just doing something disrespectful to you you're just saying you better keep that finger low man like just globally speaking just like what you're about to do that's an outward sign of disrespect to me or what you're doing that is an outward sign of disrespect to me you are embarrassing me in front of these other people you better cut that out bro i'd be interested in seeing people's reaction to

that in the moment hearing it for the first time not having a middle finger involved and seeing if that actually is is kind of menacing and tough or if it's just like you know like when i get angry and i just say ridiculous things that make no sense and it just confuses everybody and thus

no it's a de-escalation tactic i learned about a workplace training that's the whole thing people are like finger low what i was just telling you you need to turn your report in on time right what and see then you've diffused the situation andrew oh my god have you turned your report in on time

by the way are you getting all kinds of messages should we not talk about this here are you getting all kinds of messages from the bosses about we can't move forward with the system because you haven't uploaded your goals to the new system. It's so confusing, Ron. I hacked

into the mainframe. I posted some goals. I'm going to just keep my finger high here for a minute if I can and tell the listeners that we have a very odd relationship with the place that we work. We're very lucky to have jobs there. We're very lucky to get to work with a number of very talented hardworking people and I would say our life is so much better being part of a larger like radio operation than when it was me and whatever person I was dating slash married to at the time trying to mail out t-shirts

in a bunch of tubes so i want to put that all out there but we have a weird relationship with the place we work because we don't we've literally never worked you know consistently out of the office space that everybody worked in like we never worked out of the norm the headquarters this show existed for a number of years before we were part it's more of a partnership it's more of a professional partnership than it is we were a couple of fresh-faced aspiring podcasters who were hired by a company, and then on their dime, we sat around Imagineering, and we came up with this show. It's a bizarre thing where we do work for people. We do have supervisors. They could fire us, but it's more of a kind of a business partnership. But what's weird is because we are full-time employees of APM, we are subject to all of the, as we've complained about on the show many times, all of the cyber training, all of the other HR related things, and also all of the personal goal development, which becomes increasingly absurd as the years go on. And you and I have to continue to come up with personal growth goals around this show because it's just that's just not really how any of this works. I mean, of course, we'd like the show to be better. We'd like to be better at our jobs. We'd like to have more listeners. And literally, I put down a version of that every year. I just changed the verbiage slightly And so we're still doing that dance And this year I got into the system And I put basically a version of that down Let's try to get more listeners Let's try to find ways to collaborate with other shows And so as to get more listeners And let's try to figure out how to have More people donating to the show So that we have a broad, broad base of support So that this thing can go on for another 10 years Because Lord knows that's what America needs I put all of that in I didn't put in the Lord knows that's what America needs But I put all that in And then the person that I'm working with on this project Who's actually been very chill and helpful about it I said I think I put these goals And I hit submit And then they just sent me some word doc of my goals From one or two years ago and said well you made these goals So just put these in and then that will satisfy the system

See I think I'm going to end up First of all You actually this is a rare If not unique moment where you wrote more and wrote more eloquently on an HR form than I did because I'm getting a clear picture of what's going on and really I'm sort of telling this to the audience but mostly I just wanted to have this conversation with you and I forgot to have it before the show but what I thought was these are new goals that we're inputting here and it wasn't until That's what I thought it was too. It turns out about a year ago when we got a new boss and she was working with us on developing goals um she we were doing it in some old system and then i don't know how long after that there was a new system created because the company loves systems they don't like streamlined systems necessarily but they love systems systems upon systems and um we're getting into that podcast we're now just the podcast for a apm employees who are frustrated with the systems but

But that's basically where we started with this, by the way. I remember we were the shiny – we were like the kid from Russia saying, keep your finger low when you hold in the APM. So many people would reach out to us and go, how can you just talk about internal APM systems this much? Like who would listen to that? I mean I'm interested because I work at APM. I mean we were a big hit within the building for the first probably six months.

I know. So but anyway, so they developed a new system like this new HR system that has, you know, deals with time cards and all of our employees stuff. And so I think at that time we were supposed to move those goals that we had already created over into this new system. And now, Luke, we are at the end of the year. This is what I was so confused about. I thought we were creating new goals for this upcoming year. It turns out, no, we're basically a week. We're now a week away from having our end of year reviews done. I'm now getting emails about self-evaluation using. Yes. So those goals that we created a year ago when we finally like put it all to bed, they just want us to move those over so we can put them in the system and then evaluate whether or not we've done those goals. I did not realize this until last night after I. Wait, we're putting old goals in new goal skins. That's exactly what we're doing. And then evaluating whether or not we hit those goals. And here's what happened to me. And I'm just going to be really honest about this. So I always have similar goals as you. Like basically, I'm not an at-large producer for the company. I'd be happy to help produce other things at the company. But like you, I have a similar – yeah, you don't want me to. Praise the machine. What are you doing saying that on the recording?

I like being a producer. Anyway. I, on the other hand, am not open to any other projects. Anyone listening.

But as it stands now, I have one...

responsibility and it is to produce tbtl and it is to you know produce things around tbtl and work with the tbtl community and hopefully grow the tbtl community and that my goals are like yours always the same let's grow the audience like i know we're a niche show but we can we can get more people we can get things we'll get to d-mails in a little bit um but uh you know like it's always the same goal and i think it's a laudable goal and i think that we can get more people we can get more people on this ship um and i think that's respectable and fine but the last time i went to create these goals i was getting all this pushback saying well it doesn't these goals have to align with the broader goals of the organization and we've created all these documents and it's like it's so complicated they have like these strategic documents now and our goals have to match with the overall company goals and it just like you said is so confusing ron and i didn't feel like going through all of that again so last like yesterday afternoon i wrote like literally the shortest goals i've ever written because i was like i went through this whole machination process a year ago where my goals kept getting kicked back to me and so i didn't want to go through it again so i'm like if this is really just an hr thing just to check off the box thing then i'm just going to write one sentence grow tbtl audience goal number two grow tbtl newsletter audience that's it that's what i wrote like that that's it and i don't know i assume it's going to get kicked back to me but i need to find a sweet spot between being honest about what my goals are and what my role is at apm and also not just spending tons and tons of time on something that doesn't really apply to our job or in any way makes apm or tbtl better for the listeners

was it disrespectful last year when i put when they said are there any professional development classes that you'd like to take and i said i'd like to learn karate i love it i mean i am really like again i want to i want to be very clear that we work with generally awesome people and they are just it's it's and this is i just want to say a testament to you the tens of listeners the folks hearing our voices right now and particularly the folks who have been in a position to donate to the show you're responsible for this and i want to thank you for this because our bosses take a generally kind of laissez-faire approach to managing us because we just kind of have this weird thing we're doing and we have this group of people who like it and want to keep it going and so it's just kind of this you know as our friend chris hayes might say it's sort of a self-licking ice cream cone is what we're working with here and that's incredible privilege for us and we're so fortunate to do that because i don't thrive andrew in a heavily managed environment thrive but like which was literally the name is it still called thrive i don't know i haven't seen that thrown around but this process used to be called thrive yeah but i'm i'm probably going to have a conversation and i'm going to try to do it with as much respect in my voice as i can because there's no reason to be rude but i will probably have a conversation with our supervisors when this whenever this goal meeting happens where i say look basically that scene in the princess bride where uh christopher guest uh playing uh is it christopher guest who says it or is it mandy patenkin one of them says to the other we are men of honor lies do not become us i feel like i'm going to have that moment with the manager and i'm going to say look we are people of honor lies do not become us this is the basic deal i'm going to write in the minimum i have to so that this hoop has been jumped through so that this box has been checked i'd love to talk to you about the show if you want to sit down and have a conversation and we can kind of check in on how things are um but i'm not go i'm probably not interested in spending a huge amount of time in the the deep deep kind of you know um minutiae of apm professional development uh and i'm just i guess i'm gonna see what they do with that information i would say it in a nicer way than i just said it there but i because i just don't i can't keep pretending that i that that's a thing

that i'm going to spend a lot of time on yeah and for me i mean you know me luke i'm a company man i'm not a i'm not the bad boy of public radio like you and elvis mitchell you know like i'm i'm a people pleaser for starters i also am not totally against the idea of of professional development i mean not nor am i yeah i guess that's kind of painting you in a bad light nor

Well, no. Can I just say one quick thing? I'm sorry I keep interrupting you today. I apologize. But I'm not against professional development either. This is where later, by the way, the lawyers would say things became somewhat professionally problematic. Remember yesterday we were talking about the cheerleader flipping off the cheer squad because she didn't make varsity? And we were saying, you can't just say that about the cheer squad and get to be on the cheer squad. This is that version. This is me keeping the finger high towards our bosses. I think if I felt like this professional development stuff actually would help me professionally develop, I think.

think i'd be more inclined to engage with it i think it's because we work at a huge company and it's very hard at a huge company to have systems like this that actually achieve the goal and so i think there's something about the sort of brazil not the country but the film the kind of kafka-esque nature of some of these systems that we have to deal with uh that makes me even less inspired but i'm sorry andrew you were saying that you are generally speaking the

kind of person who is interested in professional development yeah or professional development and also just like you know getting excited for the um for the bigger team and working with my colleagues like i really enjoy that stuff and i'm happy um to put myself out there more with american public media and the other shows on the network i just feel like i just don't feel like if if we're all agreeing that we're only doing this because the system keeps on like the person who keeps coming back to me on this keeps saying i keep getting emails from the system and the higher up saying that there are people on your staff which i understand they're stuck in the middle Right. Like it's that's the way the systems work. Like the machines keep saying Targis, Targis. Andrew Walsh still hasn't filled this out. And if the only reason I'm filling it out is to get the machine to stop saying Targis, Targis, I don't mind checking boxes. But I don't want to spend a lot of time and energy checking boxes if they're mostly just pro forma.

You know, a sort of professional development that I need to make, Andrew, is learning how to pronounce the last name of the New York Times writer Julia Carmel. because I had a real problem with it yesterday. I don't know why. It's not a complicated name. C-A-R-M-E-L, Julia Carmel. She wrote that really great piece about tuna fish in Subway sub sandwiches and whether or not it was real. And, again, can't recommend the piece highly enough. But I guess somehow it got back to the writer, Julia, that we were talking about the piece, and so either somebody sent her this clip or she checked in on it. but you sent me this you forwarded me this tweet this morning andrew it was uh julia saying please enjoy this 20 second video of the tbtl host trying to figure out my last name and then it sounded like that's why uh julia caramel um i'm trying to say her name right her name is spelled exactly like the candy so i guess you would just say karma well that was uh strike one i don't know like i think what happened was when i saw julia's last name obviously my brain misfiled it as caramel and then i went back and like reverse engineered it so i actually in my mind changed literally changed the spelling of her name in my memory because i had misread it in the first place or mispronounced it in my brain so that was pretty embarrassing andrew but you know the hits keep rolling mel julia carmel actually the candy is caramel yeah her it's more her name is spelled like the place where clint eastwood lives yeah yeah because i think caramel is spelled with an extra a in there right okay so julia carmel is the name of the writer so there you go that was a real high point for us we finally get the attention that we so crave from the new york times if only we knew some people that worked there andrew if only we knew between one and

70 people who work um so yeah and then and then julia is now um you know some of her flower some of her flowers some of her followers are tweeting things that are like julia the place where clint eastwood lives and she's responding julia down at the place where clint eastwood lives business conference um i i love it too but the funny thing is and i'm going to turn this into like a a weird compliment to you just to you know um thank you yeah i know just maybe put that on your goals right more weird compliments to luke but somehow even in your mistake there's still a bit of intellectualism there because like why do you know off the top of your head where Clint Eastwood lives like even in you fumbling around you're kind of throwing out a dazzling detail or at least a little detail of retained knowledge that I certainly didn't have well I think it's kind of

at least in the sort of in the like 90s and maybe earlier 2000s I feel like I feel like Clint Eastwood was very associated with the city of Carmel, California because I don't know if he ran for mayor of that place or I just know that it used to see it often associated with him to the point where I once visited Carmel, California, which is, by the way, beautiful, and I left, I had a digital camera. I didn't leave the digital camera there, but I left the case. And I would sometimes make the joke to people, hey, if you run into Clint Eastwood, ask him if he's seen the case for my digital camera. So for some reason I've just always associated him with that place But I don't know if that's a particularly obscure piece of info I think he also plays in Pebble Beach At Pebble Beach a lot Which is in that area of the country Which is where the Pebble Beach Pro-Am is The golf tournament So anyway, thank you for that compliment i appreciate it of course it is like you know there are the things that make you feel embarrassed about on the show which funnily enough are not the things that make me feel embarrassed about myself i have a whole different set of things one of them is if i play the audio like wildly too loud or too quiet another is when i mispronounce names so uh the fact that my fumbling around on this very not complicated name uh is is now uh out there and has been And it's not even like buried somewhere within two hours of our inane content. It's been selected and highlighted and presented in a very easily hearable form. I'm going to have to just – I'm going to have to live with that and just be okay with it. You know, the other thing that makes me feel embarrassed is goddamn ambulances, which I know you're not – you don't seem to care about. That's my Fred Willard doing an impression of Jimmy Cagney, I think, from Waiting for Guffman.

Yeah. Anyway, I did want to say one more thing on this piece, though. Julia, I like I'm interested in how Julia ended up, you know, finding out we talked about this on the show. I would imagine, like, you know, that story that she wrote was very buzzy. You know, it got a lot of attention. So, you know, she might have a Google News alert out on her name. But the fact that she actually checked it out and, you know, we talked about this story probably, what, 40 minutes into the show. Like she found it. She isolated the audio. So I'm like, again, maybe weirdly, but deeply flattered that she did, that she took the time to listen, that she thought this moment was funny, but also like she just seems delightful and cool. She wrote, this episode is delightful. Speaking of delightful, she tweeted underneath her original tweet about the mispronunciation. She tweeted, this episode is delightful. And they did get my name right. Eventually, she linked out to the full show and she just seems really cool. And I'm just like, oh, wow, now I want to be friends with Julia. But maybe I'm moving a little bit too quickly.

It's funny because the show pick is that pick of the adjacent roof in your neighborhood. I know, it's so janky. It's relevant to what we talked about if you had listened to the whole show yesterday. But just as a quick visual representation of what TBTL's aesthetic is.

Yeah.

So if you were a person who's never heard of our show, which would be put you in, I think, you know, about 99.99 percent of the American population, you might have found out about us yesterday and you might have just heard me misspelling the word caramel. And then you looked at the picture and it's just a deeply depressing roof.

I know. It's just that's so. Yeah. Yeah. Hello, world. So janky. I do think – I am glad of this, though, because I feel like the – we are just doing a self-evaluation of yesterday's show. But the thing is, I do –

Is there a program that will transcribe this and we can forward it to our bosses? Can this be our goals?

Even though it started with a mistake that I do find deeply embarrassing, the fact that I could not pronounce a word yesterday morning at the beginning of the show, but it led to us trying it over and over and over again. I think ended up being a pretty funny intro to the show. So I'm glad that we at least got off to a to a funny start, I think, as opposed to like that day last week where I literally had nothing to say, which is rare.

But like we open the show back to that. But what I have to say is in your having nothing to say, you still said something. And then we still did like, you know, hour and a half show or whatever. So I would like you to be nice to my friend Andy about that one.

But you know what it's like at the top of the show, right? Like it just, it just, we got a sizzle.

We got a, it's the first line of the film. It's got to be on the money.

I was going to say that. Exactly. Like it, it gets in your head if you stumble right out of the gate. And I know, you know, that feeling because you're literally the first voice on the show when you're doing, when you're doing your intro and it's, we rarely stop and redo it. In fact, I guess on my other shows, it's very rare that I do that now too. But there was a time when if I stumbled on after these messages are spotless kind of early on in the like little intro, my intro isn't as elaborate as yours. I get into it pretty quickly, maybe because I don't want that pressure. But it would just live in my head until I would have to just stop and say, we got to start over. Like this thing, the stumble I did five minutes ago is making or not five minutes, but, you know, what feels like forever ago, but it's probably 30 seconds ago is living so large in my head that I cannot concentrate on what I'm saying now. And I just keep making more mistakes. Like we need to start over. Like I haven't done that in a long time. I'm kind of surprised that you don't ever want to do that. Not that that's a backhanded compliment. I don't hear a lot of mistakes. But knowing that you and I have those same feelings on things.

Yeah, it's a combo of things with that probably. One is it just I try to I'm trying to remind myself more that like so I, you know. i'm a big howard stern show listener and the part of the howard stern show believe it or not that i never miss is the first 20 minutes which is the part of the show that is the least scripted there's the least quote-unquote happening sometimes like they play this truly awful rob zombie song as their intro music it's just some of the worst music i've ever heard in my life but it's also the intro to the show that i've been listening to you know steadily for 10 years so it is what it is sometimes it'll run for like four minutes because howard's dealing with something sometimes it'll run for 30 seconds sometimes he'll come in and he'll just say hey now and like in the style of hank from uh the larry sanders show and then fred norris their sound effects guy will just play the actual tape hey now and then he'll say hey now and then the tape will say hey now that could go on for a minute and a half like it's i could be anything and like so much of it is stuff That if I were to do it on this show If we were doing this show I would be cringing I would be saying Oh I messed up that name I messed up I stumbled over those words Whatever But I love that part of the show And in fact it's the main And then he'll just talk about How he didn't sleep well the night before And that they've got a cat that's throwing up And whatever And so I would say that I try to remember that now With our show Because that doesn't turn me off to that show And certainly I guess our stumbles and my mistakes hasn't fully turned off the tbtl listeners yet the other thing is i just have heavily heavily routinized the top of the show for myself so i almost always say well hello good morning and welcome to a fill in the blank edition of tbtl ding the show that just might be too beautiful to live sound effect my name is luke burbank i'm your host sound effect Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center High in the sky above Portland, Oregon Possible sound effect or possible musing On whatever I'm seeing or the weather Then get to We have now arrived at Show number Then let the fun begin, Tom Shane Then into It's basically like a Mad Lib Or something, like I've created this thing That's kind of impossible to screw up now And that's totally intentional so that I don't just Try to reinvent it every day and then spend the rest of the show hating myself about how bad it went.

I want to ask you about that Rob Zombie song. You know, on the occasion that I hear The Stern Show, which is very rare, but as you and some listeners know, every now and then I find myself lucking into a free trial of Sirius Radio, so I'll have it for six months or whatever. I actually didn't, the last time I had the free trial, I think I got so much into the oldies station and the old-time radio drama station that I don't think I really played around in that Stern space. But the time before I had, so I was listening for, you know, a period of a few months. I was listening to Stern somewhat regularly a couple of years ago. And that Rob Zombie song, like, I don't like it either. Like, I'm not, you know, it's not something that I would put on. But in the context of Stern, like, it pumps you up. Like, I would have, even with my very limited exposure to that show, I don't know if I'd be disappointed if it wasn't there. As somebody who doesn't follow the show that closely, I might not even realize it at first. But I know I've had the conscious thought, Luke, like, this song isn't good, but it's good right now, right? It provides an energy.

I just think it – well, I have so many thoughts on this song and that show. But one of them is that it goes back to that thing we've been talking about on the show a lot lately, which is the idea of ubiquity or regularity maybe is a better way to put it. And like we could pick for TBTL, we could pick any song. And if we just did it for a year as the I mean, ever we've been playing this Ben Lee song that we play since day one, which is kind of insane. But if we played any song for a year, at first, people would freak out because it wasn't the Ben Lee Catch My Disease song. And then eventually we get used to it. And then it would just feel like the song for our show. I mean, almost no matter how. I mean, no offense, but, like, Disposable, whatever that's called, that jazz song that they used to use for On the Media, or they still use?

I think they still use it. Why am I forgetting it? Disposable something, yeah.

Because we were going to start a company called Disposable Media, so now that's all I can think of when I start thinking of Disposable. But it's, like, a very, I think, kind of tonally challenging jazz song. But now, if I hear that song, I think, oh, On the Media is about to start, and I really love that show. By the way, they play that on Saturday afternoons here in Portland, and I have really, really gotten in the habit of catching it. It's like prime driving around or puttering time for me, and boy, do I ever love that show. Disposable genius, Ben Allison. Disposable genius. So, yeah, like – so for the Howard Stern thing, it's like – you're right. It's just – it is the thing that tells me the Howard Stern show is about to start, and for that reason, I guess I enjoy it. But it's also funny to me. me because it is a throwback to the older parts of that show that it that that show no longer really possesses that show used to be about and it's not that there isn't still a ton of sexual content it's not that there isn't still a lot of uh you know casual misogyny and casual a lot of things but that show is way different than it was 20 years ago as far as like what they set out to do each day they are so so so much more inclusive than they used to be and uh you know are they're in fact a constant conversation these days is listeners calling in being mad that howard stern is so pro vaccine so pro joe biden so anti what donald trump did to this country um so i feel like that they picked that rob zombie song probably whenever they went to sirius 15 years ago because that was still the show they were doing they were still gonna like it's like the lyrics are terrible too it's like burn down the bridges and kill all the bitches or whatever really like horrible maybe not that part i was just reaching for a rhyme oh man i was like i didn't realize that maybe it's burn down the bridges and dig all the ditches uh but like that feels like a song that they developed when they thought they were still badass rock and roll and now like many of them are in their 60s And that's just not even their vibe anymore.

I remember one time I was, you know, again, during one of these periods that I was listening and it might have been the first time I kind of noticed that song to in an episode I was listening to Stern was going back and playing music that he had written and recorded with like another or with a famous musician. Have you heard this stuff?

Probably with. Well, he's done that a few times. One was with Mark Ronson and one was with Rob Zombie. Howard Stern is on that track. I think the song is called The Great American Nightmare, and Howard is singing in the background somewhere, but it's very, very, very covered by production.

Yeah, I think I was somewhat – I think the reason I thought of that – I think I knew that in the back of my head because this conversation was reminding me of that. But I think he was playing some of the Mark Ronson stuff. It was so bad. And I don't know if he knows how bad it is.

i think he's kind of in on the joke but i'm just looking at the lyrics of this of the song we actually should see if and i i sure hope it doesn't come to an end anytime soon because again i do enjoy the program but man if the howard stern show goes out of business i wonder if we get a deal on this as our intro song dig deep down from planet x yeah 13 ghosts in the devil's head step right up and feel the fire hardcore love of the never dead call me the american nightmare call me the american dream call me your soul corrupted call me everything you need yeah motherfucker yeah who do you love yeah mfer yeah now he goes with mfer yeah you clean it up the second time black boots stomp and penetrate yeah lust and death gone in your head it's the subtlety of the song andrew that i think i've grown to appreciate it's just it's it's just right when you think they're going to kind of hit you over the head with the message it just pull right back yeah just love that I mean why are we gonna go here with this I don't know but you know Rob Zombie is a very very interesting to me because not unlike Trent Reznor he makes music that I find personally unlistenable but as a person and as an interview subject seems deeply thoughtful and interesting like rob zombie being interviewed sounds nothing like rob zombie singing call me the american nightmare and trent resner who's now you know like winning uh oscars for helping write the soundtrack to the movie soul and of course you know did the soundtrack to the social network which was amazing and haunting like he's had this whole amazing second act as this incredible like you know composer for films and stuff but like i just am not a person who's particularly interested in nine inch nails like I don't want to feel anyone from the inside I don't want to bleep anyone like an animal I mean nine inch nails itself that's like I think they supposedly use nine inch nails in the crucifixion right is that what the name comes from oh I don't know I

was just thinking it would be wonderful if we had somebody who isolated audio of us saying things

because you've been saying some interesting things I'll never know about it because I do not visit marsupialgergle.com all of you can go over there support Lynn's project but I choose to leave my out of context recordings for the others to hear but Trent Reznor is also a deeply thoughtful interesting person and extremely musically intelligent so it's just weird to me that you've got these folks that are like I would probably love to hang out with Rob Zombie and Trent Reznor and just chat with them about life and about their music or about music as a topic but then what they create as far as nine inch nails and um uh white

zombie goes it's just not for me but i mean i think that's the key and i i could be wrong here and i don't want to get into the you know the conversation that we got into in the in the truck in australia about whether or not music is subjective and i mean or the enjoyment of music being subjective because i mean i just think it's inarguably it is i think that i i do think and you tell me if i'm wrong um and i won't you know i won't i'll easily back down from this but i feel like you do have trouble sometimes understanding that some people like aggressive music that you don't like i feel like you think it's almost like loud motorcycles for you i think you think that nobody really likes it but people just pretend to like it as either an affectation or no maybe a um as part of their personality to like it i think they're just broken and that's

why they like it no i think people i think people genuinely like all kinds of music including a lot of music that is not for me like i don't think people are pretending to like uh white zombie or pretending to like you know uh any kind like swedish death metal or pretending like whatever that particular whatever that song was that kicked off maybe the most hurtful argument

in our friendship in the middle of the australian outback that's true really i think that we have over i mean i don't know how well you remember it i don't really even think it i think it was like literally a quick moment i don't even think i think it was too but i think i think the reason

that we've brought it up so much is because in all of these adventures we've had somehow magically like we've had so little friction um that even a tiny two minutes of us slightly disagreeing about if there's music that is objectively painful to the ears um stands out as like a major fight for us which is good that's i think a good problem yeah but no i totally like i understand that people like music that i don't like and i understand that they genuinely like it not for irony or not to prove a point they genuinely like it but i will also admit that it's hard for me to understand it's hard for me to put myself in those shoes because there are there are certain sounds that are just unpleasant to me and you're right the sound of a revving motorcycle like somebody going by on a loud harley or the other day i was walking down like burnside here in portland and a guy just floored it past me in a lifted truck that was like i don't know if he just had like a terrible muffler but it was a newer truck so i think the muff it was almost as if this truck had been outfitted to make extra noise when you you know hit the gas on it or hit the diesel and i just thought what is wrong with you dude why do you want to make why do you want to pollute everyone's life with noise from this thing so i'm i i bet you there's a um probably a like a diagnosis for this or a way of describing not unlike misophonia or things where people have a really strong reaction to certain sounds i i bet you there is a term for people like me who when you hear a sound that is loud and unexpected or a sound that feels quote unquote aggressive to you you have a really strong emotional reaction to it um so i a hundred percent admit that that plays into my interpretation of music and so and i'm not the arbiter of what is good or bad music or who gets to like what i i am not trying to say that is what is going on i don't this is something

that you and i have never brought up on tbtl only because maybe you don't think about it i think about it a lot and i don't bring it up because it is so impossible to describe the noise that i'm about to try to describe you recall luke right before we left on our um most recent adventure

in the van how's the van by the way i haven't heard uh back from the owner of the van so i assume the van is doing fine the van is safely back in portland visited the um auto repair shop and i i'm guessing is back out on the road i would i would recommend against taking it to sentinel arizona for all the people who are renting in the future but i think anywhere in

the pnw would be pretty safe um but you and i were getting ready for for our van adventure i think if i'm recalling correctly we had just picked up the van and then we were parking your car in the garage of your apartment building and there was a woman there who was having some trouble changing well she was just changing a tire and so we helped out right and then that travel nurse from texas yeah exactly right and she was like she was already the car was already mostly jacked up we just kind of helped jack jack it up a little bit more and then um and change the tire just friendly neighborliness and but during this conversation right outside this garage was the most ear splitting sound of an engine that would scream by and luke i'm not as sensitive to that noise as you are. I'm not saying I love it.

I mean, in my very first apartment in Concord, New Hampshire, there was somebody with a motorcycle and every Saturday morning would just start it up and then like kind of rev it. I think that they were probably trying to tweak it like and just tune it up every Saturday morning. And like it drove me nuts, you know, just, you know, I'm trying to sleep, sleep in. And it's just like constantly like and then just like idling for like a half hour. But I also don't I don't think I have quite as visceral a reaction to it as you do. we were in this garage that's i don't know how many stories but you know it's just a covered garage we're on like the third floor of it or whatever we're on um and uh and this lot we couldn't see the thing that was making the noise but it was actually scary it was literally scary it did something to my heart at one point i think you were changing the tire at this point or like tightening the lug nuts or whatever and i'm just like i'm gonna go over and see we didn't know if was coming from inside the garage it was just yes all encompassing and it was terrifying it would the only time in my life I've had whatever that feeling is and it made me feel like like actually weirdly dark we mentioned on the show the other day that you and I have not ever found ourselves in some sort of like exceptionally violent situation um but I understand like I thought of I thought of people on the ground during a bombing or something and what that sound must be like where you don't see it you don't know where the sound is coming from all you know is it is absolutely terrifying eventually we saw that it was some guy on a motorcycle that was somehow tricked out to be exceptionally loud again not my first time hearing a motorcycle I owned a motorcycle at one point I was a kid but you know this thing was louder than anything I'd ever heard in my life and for about a half hour this guy was just screaming down this little tiny stretch of road behind your garage creating this noise that was it was just terrifying yeah it was

we were initially interpreting the sound or trying to figure what's going on i thought somebody in on the level of the garage we were on was like around the corner from us that we couldn't see was like working on something and then i thought is it a actual motorcycle gang is it are hell's angels or banditos in the parking garage or is it the cast of fury road with all the vehicles from the movie is the guy hanging from the chain with the electric guitar here like imagine like it felt like somebody very violent was going to come around the corner of the parking garage on whatever that thing was that was making the noise i mean that was kind of where my brain went like i don't understand what this sound is but it's it's the it's really one of the most ear shattering sounds i've ever heard i don't know where it's coming from and i'm a little uncomfortable with not knowing what's going on and then yeah to realize it was just it was actually these two idiots uh i they were both on motorcycles but i don't know if the other guy's motorcycle was as loud because it was just one dude but his buddy was hanging on his motorcycle that looked kind of similar and they were just the one guy was just tearing up and down this very small street that is where the skate park is the burnside skate park which again i my initial when i moved here i was like oh my god there's a skate park and then our listeners emailed and said this is a cool story this was built by skateboard enthusiasts and they've maintained it and like certainly there are lots of uh people who love skateboarding who go to that that skate park but boy oh boy there are a lot of other people who seem very very very unsavory to me who just i don't know if they skateboard or they just want to hang out somewhere where other people are drinking beer watching skateboarding but man, that's a complicated scene down there as evidenced by, what were those motorcyclists doing there? I know. What was their

part of the whole game? I don't know. It really did seem like, as you often quote, a rogues

gallery. Yeah, it was some real Mos Eisley's space court sitch. So, anyway. Okay. We're 50 minutes into the show. Feels like it's time for our first break. So let's do that. Oh, before we do that really quickly though, I want to remind everyone The TBTL Song of the Summer is back, baby. David from the basement is going to be collecting up your submissions, and then we're going to be doing the huge where we play them, we talk about them, you vote on them, and eventually we figure out what the Song of the Summer is. So please, I hope you have the email address in front of you, Andrew, because it does not necessarily tattoo itself on your brain, right? But it's what is the email address to send your song to?

The email address, of course, is DTFB, which stands for David from the Basement, dot S.O.T.S. Song of the Summer. DTFB.S.O.T.S. at gmail.com. The Gmail part you got. Everybody knows that you already have that locked in, right, listener? Gmail.com. Easy. You've heard of that. What you've got to remember is D. See, I was messing it up, Luke. I just said it wrong. It's DFTB. David from the basement.

Just say to yourself, David from.

I gave it out wrong twice.

David from the basement. Okay, just take the letters from that. David from the basement. DFTB. Then a dot. And then song of the summer. S-O-T-S Sots D-F-T-B Dot

The town that Flint Eastwood lives in Don't Cloud the machine D-F-T-B It'll be in the newsletter

S-O-T-S At gmail.com Just also It's going to be in the newsletter this week So if you're not subscribed to the newsletter This is the week to do it So you can learn the email address Where you can send your song And please For the sake of my brother Who is One of the hardest working people I know And just an absolute gem of a human being, please include a link to the song so that DFTB.SOTS isn't spending his night Googling around for your song. Please include a link to the song so that he can actually listen to it quickly and easily there and make his assessment.

Yes, and then we're going to gather all of the submissions. I say we. David's going to do all the work. We're going to gather all the submissions, and then David's going to narrow it down to, I think, 32 contenders, and then they will go head-to-head in a bracket-style competition this summer. It'll be a lot of fun.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right. We, as I suspected, really blew through nap time. So what I'm going to do, Andrew, is make the executive decision to I'm going to shelve our first two top stories because we can get into them tomorrow. They're fairly evergreen and they probably involve a little more conversation than we have the time for today. But I would like to skip right to the third story, which absolutely shocked me today when I read it, Andrew. A British man has broken the Guinness World Record for most M&Ms stacked. Have you had a chance to look at this story yet?

No, but I was going to ask you, is it two? It's more than two. Because who's stacking M&Ms? Like, how far do you have to go? I mean, they're round. It never even occurred to me to stack M&Ms I feel like if you stack two M&Ms Well, they're flat Wait, M&Ms? I mean, they're not

An M&M, I think of an M&M As being a circle that's more or less Flat, so if you place it on its Flat side, which is what this guy did

But it's still like, it's still rounded It's still convex As we would say, right? So like, I just don't under, it would be like Stacking two footballs sort of on top Of each other, I guess there's more flat There's more flat surface than I'm giving it credit for Okay

Well I have to say Andrew your instincts are better than mine Because when I saw this headline British man sets the world record for stacking M&M's I was like okay I don't know what is it a thousand M&M's or something Like I watch so much TikTok And there are so many insanely unlikely things that people do on TikTok There's a whole genre of TikTok That's basically It's usually dudes Who are obsessed with just like sitting in a room with like a thousand ping pong balls and trying to bounce a ping pong ball along the back or the bottom of like 15 pots that are all you know like on the carpet upside down and then it drops into a shot glass or the really amazing one is people trying to throw DVDs into like an Xbox oh yeah that sounds fun there is this guy who like is hitting a DVD he's blindfolded he's hitting a dvd with a ping pong paddle it has to bounce over the net and then into an xbox and he does it nice so like i mean this is some real angels on the head of a pin shit going on on tiktok these days and so when i read this story and realized that he broke the existing world record of four m&m's and got to the number of five m&m's i was underwhelmed i feel like you and i could break that record today so i so it was a very low number i i did not i swear

to god i did not read it but i saw this headline you didn't even put a link to it like i mean i

can google things i didn't want you to read it i literally didn't want to spoil the surprise for

you and i and i didn't but no that's what i thought it's like maybe he just did two i mean And I was kind of joking about it, but I just couldn't imagine, like, who's stacking M&Ms? They don't seem essentially stackable. Of course, I guess that's the point. So he stacked five? Five. Congratulations.

current record will cut bill is his name he's 23 years old he's from solihull england he said he had long dream of long dreamed of getting his name into the guinness book of world records but it wasn't until the covet 19 lockdown they decided to make his dream a reality quote it was during the third lockdown in january i was in the living room eating a bag of m&ms and i was incredibly bored and i just decided to see how many of them i could stack on top of each other He told Birmingham Live, I started thinking, I wonder if there's a world record for this. So I looked it up online and found out the most anyone had ever stacked was four. He said he filmed his attempts for two or three hours before he managed to stack five M&Ms. It's not something I would normally have taken the time to do, especially now that the sun is shining and the pubs are back open. But at the time, there wasn't much else to do, so it seemed like time well spent. And then lastly, he says, when I managed to stack the five M&Ms, I was obviously ecstatic, especially now that the – oh, excuse me. I was obviously ecstatic. I thought, oh, my goodness, I've done it. Five M&Ms doesn't sound like a lot, but it was near impossible to do. So I was chuffed when I achieved it. I thought about attempting six, but there's no chance. Five was hard enough.

But there's no chance. Like what's the risk-reward situation there? Like if you fail at stacking six, I don't think any life is lost.

I mean I'm sure that if we try to do it, I would realize very quickly that there is in fact something super – there's something that I'm not grasping about the shape of M&Ms or like – I guess basically the shape of M&Ms. But I think of M&Ms as being – I mean, you're right. There's probably more – what it is is there's probably more convexity to an M&M than I think – than I imagine. Like I think of M&Ms as being round and flat, but they're round and then also kind of, like you said, convexed out.

Yeah, they don't have – I'm now looking. I've Googled it, and I'm now looking. I mean you can see the photos and video, right? Like there's never a flat part of it. Like they – you know what I mean? It's not like it's just rounded around the edges. is the M&M's never, like, plateau fully.

Doesn't it just... I'm trying to look at the video now, but Will Cutbill's account is private on Instagram. Wow, Will. Oh, what? Learn how to promote yourself. Okay, I've now got the Instagram video of this. I don't know. It probably doesn't sound like anything. I think it's just him stacking M&M's. Well, let's just look.

All right, this is going to be harder than I first thought. That's quite good. I'm watching along. This is kind of fascinating to see. Oh. Oh, no.

No.

Oh. Father of names.

Father of names.

I think I can do six, Andrew. Well, do it to it, my dude. I mean, I just. it's harder than I thought it was. I hadn't watched the video yet. It looks harder than I thought it was, but it doesn't look again. This is all coming from what I've now watched on Tik TOK, which are so many things that just seem from a physics standpoint and from a, you name it standpoint, impossible. And then people, if they spend enough time, which is also not my strong suit, by the way, spending enough time on things, if they spend enough time doing it, you just, I don't know. I, I think probably the worst thing that happened to will cut bills record is that this is getting as much attention as it is i don't think this record's going to stand for long

yeah probably not now that you have thousands of people going i could do that yeah somebody's laid down the gauntlet yeah that's a good point i'm not this is the type of thing that i'm not even interested in in attempting like you sort of feel like hey i could do six like it just seems so frustrating to me like i've never been somebody who made like um are they called oh well house well house of cards card houses what do you call it before the tv show came along what did we call those things right um but you know the houses of cards that you could build like that just it was somewhat fascinating but also just seems so frustrating and unfun to me see that's funny

to me because you like kind of not i don't want to say mindless but i think you like zoning out while puttering and doing things like that so i could see you know you're playing hex empire or whatever i could see you um really getting into like did you ever do dominoes like like dominoes that you're going to then tip over and have it do a thing. I loved that when I was a kid.

I feel like as a kid, I would dabble around with that a little bit. I love the idea of it, and I feel like maybe in some classrooms we might have had some sets of those. I'm not even actually now that I think of it. I do think I had a colorful set of, you know, stacking dominoes or whatever you would call those things. Yes, that was a little bit easier. I'm not into dexterity.

Well, you have.

It's on my profile, by the way. I'm not into dexterity. Things I'm into, things I'm not into. Dexterity. Likes. Right. Likes.

Mariners games and sausages. Dislikes. Dexterity.

Or I should say anything that involves dexterity or requires it for me. Yeah, like looking at somebody trying to make a house of cards, even just watching it just kind of sets me on edge. Like it just gives me anxiety.

Because of the very real possibility it will get knocked down?

Yes, and it's just so not substantial. Like I just don't like the fact that it's so not substantial. I don't like the fact that it's always on the precipice.

I was into making houses. I never got like super elaborate with it, but I could make a kind of rudimentary house of cards when I was a kid. I think I was fascinated with all of that stuff. This is my age-old kind of whinge about the Guinness Book of World Records these days, which is just, it has, in my mind, it has fallen very far from where it was when I was a kid. And it was required reading for kids my age in Seattle. And the book was newsprint. It was super thick. It was newsprint. About half of it wasn't even photos. but the ones that were photos were just so fascinating to me world's longest fingernails world's largest pumpkin world's tallest man tallest woman um heaviest twins on motorcycles like just i felt like i i would have loved to have gotten into the guinness book of world record uh book when i was a kid i understand that impulse but and you know what maybe five m&ms is really hard to stack so maybe that deserves to be in there but there are so many others now like the guinness book of world records is it's very glossy it's very photo heavy it's very i mean it's just like anything in the world it's evolving for a different generation so i understand i'm old manning at a cloud right now like i totally get that how about what is like loudest old man has yelled at clouds is that a guinness record and am i setting it right now i think so but like i just feel like what has happened now more than it used to be the case and i'm not saying the m&ms are even an example but there are lots of records that are now in the Guinness book that are things that nobody thought to try to do as a record to me it's like you know most plates spun at one time that seems like a thing because one it takes some real skill and two that's an old like circus trick or whatever like or again just a sort of physical thing tallest man that's interesting to me I think why I loved it as a kid is because you kind of want to know what the boundaries of things are You're curious about what the most of something can be, the biggest of something can be, the smallest. But now it just seems like a lot of the records are things that nobody was really out there trying to set, but then somebody just thought of it. Oh, this is the most I can like – this is the most mouse clicks I can do in 35 seconds while also watching a video like of a Pokemon Charmander doing something. And it's like, well, yeah, that would be the most time someone's clicked a mouse while that video's been playing, you know, on a screen. Like, but is that really a record that anyone was trying to get?

Right. You're just jealous because we came so close to breaking the record for a podcast that mentions Mama's family the most times. And we came so close. So close.

I'm sure we said it.

No, in the dark.

There's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll. You can't just listen to your song. Just remember that life is number one. You can't be having so much fun. Just remember that life is much fun. You can't be nothing but one.

All right, time for some Blursdays.

Luke, will you kick us off today? I just sent you the list. One of my favorite tens of all time is checking in first, Sheila in Ithaca. Happy Blur's Day to Cindy. Cindy has the best laugh of anyone I know, and I miss so much hearing it in real life. I hope Jim and Jason make your every wish come true. And I hope we can meet for a birthday cocktail somewhere between here and Lodi. We drove through Lodi, Andrew.

Did we? There was a Lodi, Ohio, very near Valley City. I remember that. I don't remember a Lodi in New York. It was as we were leaving Sacramento. Oh, I, between, oh, so she, Ithaca, she's saying between here and Lodi. They need to meet in the middle of the country. I see. Right. I'm guessing that the other folks live in Lodi.

Because when we were at Listener Megan's house in Sacramento, and then we left, and we drove through Lodi, and I wouldn't stop just saying.

Oh, Lord, stuck in Lodi again, or whatever it is that John Fogarty sings in the song Lodi. Anyway, Sheila continues, love you. Love you, my dear friend. Call me. It's an interesting way for people. We are really turning into the muck luck telegram. I love it. I mean, it's just, it's very Prairie Home Companion. It's just people reminding their friends to call them, please. That's right. So please, pick up the phone.

Megan says, Luke is right. VBS is a day camp and not an overnight camp. That is all.

Yes. We love to hear it. Cindy says, Happy Blur's Day to our five. Jason, who is turning 10. Jason, you are smart, kind, helpful, and reliably silly and funny. We appreciate your love of all things baseball, watching games, following stats, collecting cards, and your flair for playing. We don't even mind your endless tennis ball pitching against the living room wall. dad and i love you more than anything can i just say jason you're my dude yeah that is you're describing my childhood obsession with baseball obsession with pitching a tennis ball off a brick wall in the alley behind my house in fact i was gonna say childhood don't you have a strike zone

and a pink bouncy ball in your apartment right now yep um jason let me know if you're in portland

and we can toss the pink ball off the strike zone in my apartment sometimes.

Oh, that's actually adorable. Jordan from Chicago says, As an evangelical pastor's kid in Wisconsin, my experience is 100% what Luke was saying. VBS is a daytime church program, often at the church, and in my experience, often with a heavy emphasis on bringing non-church-going friends along while school is out. It was a drag. Church camp is also definitely a thing, and a lot more fun.

Now, this is the thing. I know that the folks running the VBSs, this is coming up because we had an extended conversation about the Lucy Dacus song, VBS, which is a great song, I want to say. But in it, she's describing VBS, but she's also talking about being on a bunk, which for some reason I decided I really needed to make a point about not being my definition of vacation Bible school. it's a weird thing because you know the people teaching VBS I think were probably pretty fun and they did everything they could to gamify it there was this one that I think Green Lake Presbyterian Church I could be getting part of that wrong I know it was right by Green Lake when I was a kid they had the most elaborate one every year the theme would change one year it would be the Olympics so you'd be on a team and you're trying to get a gold medal and they've got all these amazing like tote boards And like big things that are built that are like, you know, sort of giant boards where you can see your team, which is defined or represented as like a runner, like moving along in this race and getting close to the end. And you're collecting all these stickers and points like it's all designed to be really fun. So I don't know why it was so unfun when I was a kid. And yet, that exact same set of things If you're staying on a bunk If you get to go somewhere If you get to go away from home and sleep overnight That is so fun I don't know why the not sleeping in your own bed Makes it the most fun thing But that's the key differentiator

It sounds like the day school thing I mean, I picture classrooms Is that part of it? Is it more like a school setting?

It would be in the church And so, I think they would Again, the most vivid I have two vivid memories of VBS. One was that place that I'm going to call Green Lake Presbyterian. That place, you'd meet in the sanctuary. That's where they'd have all the big, like, keeping track of how every team's doing and stuff, you know, if it was, like, say, the year they did the Olympics. And then you'd go to smaller rooms, I think, with your team, and you'd have some Sunday school and whatever. The other vivid memory was my mom's – I told you, my mom was just VBS shopping when I was a kid. I went to one that was like it might have been like Greek Orthodox or it was some something that was much closer to Catholicism. It wasn't Catholic because my mom was not into sending me to Catholic stuff because she grew up Catholic and she had kind of a bit of a, you know, troubled history with with that branch of Christianity. But it was something close because we were outside playing. Then we ran in for communion and they passed the wine around, which where I grew up and went to church was just grape juice. And I was very thirsty And I slugged it back And it was real ass wine

And was it that Like the wine in our Catholic church Was pretty bad I think it was like They bought a bunch of bottles at one point in the 70s And they were still using them in the 80s So it was not like a good tasting wine I know because I still snuck sips of it Illicitly But it was not a good taste And you had not probably had much alcohol At this point

I mean, I'm literally eight years old at this point. I don't think I'd ever had any.

alcohol and it's funny that you talk about sneaking communion wine because at our church gospel outreach christian fellowship we would have we had this kind of bizarre serving thing that was basically like i don't know a hundred little plastic shot glass size things or maybe a little smaller than a shot glass that you could sit in this kind of carrier that was a circle and it had little slots so you could fill like a hundred little shots of grape juice and then you could bring it out and then everyone could take their own little shot of grape juice for communion and the thing was our church most of the people in our church were in my family so there was a hundred shots of grape juice but there was only 12 Burbanks so that would leave you know 88 leftover shots and I would go in the kitchen and just shoot all the shots of grape juice after communion was over all the unused shots of grape juice Which I thought was, you know, seemed really fun to me I wasn't doing it because I was mimicking alcohol behavior I was doing it because I was thirsty and I wanted grape juice And you love juice I love juice But it's funny because you were sneaking real wine And I was sneaking fake wine Well anyway, it really threw me when that guy In like the, you know, what do you call it? The vestments Like very, again, it was a much more formal branch of Christianity Than I was used to And I can even remember this kind of jug they had it in as being, because that was also the kind of thing where it's the same jug, and then he's wiping it off as you go around. So, okay. So back to the VBS stuff. Yeah, so happy Blur's Day. Let's see here. We are at Kevin, who says happy Blur's Day to my 11, my wife, Adassa. I think it's Adassa. Do I read? Okay, Adassa. Do I read the other parenthetical part? Was that you or Kevin?

That was Kevin who gave us the pronouncer, and I just put it in there for us, but it's Adassa. Adassa.

Excuse me. Well, maybe this will get in the New York Times, Andrew. Happy Blursday to my 11. My wife, Adassa, looking forward to our sunset cruise on a tall ship. I love you. Dibbick shbibbick. I said more ham.

Craig says, as a child raised in an evangelical home, Luke is 100% correct. VBS is a during-the-day thing held at a church. If there are bunk beds involved, it is camp, which is both better and completely different. I will die on this hill with Luke.

Have I ever forged a stronger connection with our listeners than this conversation about VBS?

No, that's why, because you were so, because I didn't know, and I wasn't really pushing back on you. Right, you weren't. I didn't know, but it seemed like DACA has had a different interpretation of it and that's and it was also her song is based on her real life experience so I was just trying to suss out like was she wrong as a kid like just what was going on but you were very steadfast on this and I don't think ever in my life have I gotten I'm not saying that I've not gotten more emails on a single subject but I've never gotten so many emails that is just like Luke is right Luke is 100% right Luke is right Luke is right like all these people just wanted you to know that you are right and I wanted to celebrate that. Is this going to get back to Lucy Dacus? It's the real question.

Maybe. I'd love to have Lucy Dacus on the show. Well, again, we're on a hot streak with you know, although in this case, I guess it's sort of the opposite of us messing up Julia Carmel's name, which is, in this case, it would be Lucy Dacus having to come on the show and account for her counter-interpretation of VBS.

Although I did pronounce her name incorrectly the first time I played her for Music for Your Weekend, so, hey, there's that.

We can apologize for that. Sarah in Ballard says, I would like to wish a happy Blur's Day to my boyfriend, Alex, the MVP of my life. Thank you for letting me fill our apartment with plants and for being the one who takes out the trash and for tutoring me through the hell that was calculus to these last several months. And honestly, for even putting up with me during that time. I also want to wish myself a happy Blur's Day. I'm turning 30 and I'm, well, I've already said the F word once on the show today. I'm fucking stoked to say bye to my 20s. Jalapena.

I love it. Sarah left a note in her original email that said she'd been listening since she was 17 years old, too. Wow. We got her through her 20s. That's amazing. Happy Blurze, Sarah. Happy Blurze, Alex. I hope this next one is about me being right. Jesse says I completely agree with Luke regarding the vacation Bible school discussion I grew up Catholic and don't remember having VBS but I still see the ads for it at local churches we did have Catholic youth overnight camps and I did go to that once under protest see, I thought CYO was the cool shit did you do any CYO stuff? The CYO, Jesse used that in their email, that they went to CYO. I had not heard that term before. Oh. So, yeah. Man, you grew up really Catholic.

I'm surprised. I would have thought CYO would have been a big part of your life.

No, I did something called CCD, which was, you know, like, I don't remember what it stands for. You might actually know. I think you've told me before.

Is CCD legal now in most states?

I think it is now, and it's just for pain management mostly, yeah. Right.

I get it. The place I get my Kratom at.

What is Kratom? Do you know? What does it do to you? Does it get you real high or what?

I really don't know. What I know is that there was a period of time where the mummy was really pushing Kratom on everyone. He was like, he always had this shitty bag, like a sandwich bag. Not even a Ziploc, but like a sandwich bag that doesn't fully seal up at the top. Like twist it up in his pocket and they would have some dust in it that was Kratom. He was always putting it in tea. I think it was because he didn't have money for drinks at the Mandarin Gate. So he was like, I'm going to get high on this other thing. But my sense of it is that it is something that creates a certain amount of altered state in people. But because it's not really regulated, they can sell it at smoke shops and stuff. And so it kind of falls into that netherworld or whatever, that unregulated world of, like, things that they can sell at a tobacco shop but that will get you kind of wacky.

Yeah. I'm looking at a description of it on the National Institute on Drug Abuse. website right now, like the official drugabuse.gov. What is Kratom? Kratom is a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia with leaves that contain compounds that can have psychotropic, mind-altering effects. It is not currently illegal and has been easy to order on the internet. It is sometimes sold as a green powder in packs labeled not for human consumption. It is also sometimes sold as an extract or a gum. Mostly it's taken as a pill, capsule, or extract. Some people chew the leaves. Some people make tea out of it. It seems like the mummy would have probably made tea out of it.

Yeah, he was into that for a while. Who knows? He might still be into it. Never tried it. Let's see here. Jeremy says, if it's not too late, I was hoping to wish fellow 10 Levi a very happy Blur's Day. His Blur's Day is this Saturday. He's an incredibly nice human, an amazing father, and a super talented musician. Oh, right. We know Levi.

Levi's a friend.

Yeah. All of those things that Jeremy said about Levi are absolutely true.

That's right. And you played one of Levi's songs on the show one time and it led to a mystery of he could not find it in the archives. And somehow like this one show happened to be missing. He ended up solving that mystery somehow. I think it was a you guys were off air for this is back in the radio days. You guys were off air for like a Sounders game or something. And he had really remembered it as being a Friday show. But that Friday show was missing. I think, whatever, I think it ended up just being like the Thursday prior to that or whatever, but you were heading out into the weekend with his music. All of that is to say, happy damn Blur's Day, Levi. Sorry, I just rambled. I don't even know what I just said. Jamie says, Luke is totally right. VBS is such a thing. It is an industry with annual themes that are across denominations. I looked up the 2021 themes and found Destination Dig based on archaeology. You can buy director's kits, worship rally packs, crafts, kids' activity books, snack recipes, and even fake archaeological dig tools. Did I say archaeological before? I said archaeological. It's meteorological. Did I say architectural before? No. I said archaeological? Okay. Because I actually cut that part out of the email, and then I was freelancing, putting it back in from my memory. Anyway, Jamie says it's kind of a disturbing intersection of co-opting science and commercialism, but unequivocally a week-long day camp. That's the important part, right, Luke? Yeah.

And then finally, Maria Alicia says, as an actively practicing evangelical and one who grew up in the church, you're absolutely right about VBS. It isn't a sleepover camp. i love jesus a lot and even i didn't always enjoy being inside all day during the summer i would not i wouldn't have liked camping either but that is another story interessante um maybe that maybe that was sort of part of it was summertime is so much fun as a kid i mean i guess if you're lucky enough to live in a neighborhood like i did where there were lots of other kids or you could ride your bike down to green lake i think it probably was partially my displeasure with it was just that i wanted to you know i wanted to be out free doing my thing and suddenly which i don't understand how that was a better deal for my mom i wonder i should actually just have my mom on the show and ask her i wonder i keep i've said this now that the topic has been coming up on the show i keep kind of casually saying she was just trying to get us out of her hair but Thank you.

But I was pretty out of her hair during the summer because I'd just be off doing my adventures. So maybe that wasn't it. Maybe it was actually something about trying to make sure that my faith was sort of solidified. Be curious to get her take on why it was that she wanted to send us to those things so much. Because, again, I mean, it seems like that same week that I was at VBS, I would have just been at Green Lake smoking cigarettes on top of the Bathhouse Theater.

Right. And basically, that's a secular VBS.

My parents just must have thought I was just going to grow up to be, you know, end up, you know, in prison for life. Like I was just such a bad kid, like stealing from everyone and anything, smoking cigarettes, breakdancing, breakdancing. I mean, there's all I think breakdancing is OK. Not in my dad's eyes. I've told that story on the show a bunch of times. Like I was obsessed with breakdancing. As like a Seven, eight year old And I would go down and hang out with these break dancers Who eventually would like let me be part of their thing As like a mascot And like but it was just you know a bunch of Probably like 15 year old kids who seemed so Old to me but they would smoke cigarettes and swear And play like loud you know Like I'm sure it was Like it was the most innocent hip hop Music now by compared to You know modern stuff but I just Remember the time when Clearly I'd blown through dinner time and my dad had ridden his bike down and he was just sitting there watching me in my element with my break dancing friends just being i'm just sure doing every single non-christiany kind of thing that you can and then eventually he just came over and was like we're going home and i remember being especially embarrassed because he had a kid's car seat like a kid's yellow kid's seat on his bike you know so like he could put one of my sisters on it kind of thing and i don't know why that element of my dad just standing there with his like Schwinn with a kid's car seat on the back of it uh-huh not car seat but a kid's bike seat on the back of it yeah yeah it just there something about we're talking about weird like vivid memories that that come back something about that element and there was no kid in it by the way didn't like have Liz in the back but just it just seems so daddish and so Ned Flanderish and nerdy and I was around all these people who I desperately wanted them to think I was cool and then I was like not allowed to ever go back there And then I remember a couple of weeks later, we had this neighbor named Mark Farnham and he was part of the church and he used to jog every day. And he's like, I was like, can I go jogging around Green Lake with you? And he was like, sure. And we jogged around Green Lake and we were going to stop at this one area to get a drink of water. And I was like, I'm not allowed to stop here because I'm banned from this place by my dad because it's where the break dancing would happen.

Oh, I thought you were going to say that you were kind of embarrassed to see this gang of kids again for the first time after your embarrassing encounter with your dad.

No, I was just like my dad told me, you are never to set foot at like Evan's pool at this place where the cardboard is set up for the breakdancing. You are never to come back here again. And I guess I took it pretty seriously because as we were jogging past it, Mark was like, let's get some water. And I was like, I'm not allowed to go there because of breakdancing.

So we just kept on jogging. The problem is some people take Luke's dad literally, but not seriously, where others take him seriously, but not literally.

If you want to just if you want your head to become detached from your body, I don't anger. I don't. Well, then, OK, don't read the Washington Post article about the the days around Trump's being ill with COVID-19. Do not read that. Oh, my God. Do not read the article, Andrew. Now you know what article not to read so as to keep your head attached to your body.

Thank you for that on this beautiful sunny day. It's a PSA. Speaking of a beautiful sunny day, would you be cool if I went out with the song That Summer Feeling by Jonathan Richman? Oh, yeah, I do.

I like this song. I only learned about this song from you, but I really like it. It's good. All right, everybody. Thanks for hanging out with us today. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. Friday show. Yeehaw. So please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Thursday Try not to get over het As my one time Step, no, grandfather-in-law Would have said, Rudy, Rudy Verana Anyway, we'll see you tomorrow Until then, have a great Thursday, and please remember No mountain too tall, and good luck to all

When you trust your friends With no reason Not a The joy I've made Shall not be tamed And that summer feeling Is gonna haunt you one day in your life When the cold of the pond Makes you drop down on it When the smell of the lawn Makes you drop down on it When the teenage car gets the cup down on it That time is here for one more year And that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life Summer feeling, summer feeling, summer feeling If you've forgotten what I'm naming You're gonna long to reclaim it one day Because that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life Summer feeling, summer feeling And if you wait until you're older A sad resentment will smolder you Power out!