Muse

Um, Gil, so I looked over your chart and you have mercury poisoning. Oh, thank you. No, it's actually, it's terrible. You have high levels of mercury in your blood, which is a very toxic poison. Can I ask you about some of your symptoms? Are you feeling fatigue? Yeah. Muscle weakness? Yeah. Okay, any peeling skin?

Yeah, it peels right off. Like wallpaper.

Uh, well, these are all the symptoms of mercury poisoning. So I'm going to prescribe a supplement for you of selenium, and then I would recommend that you stop eating all fish.

I mean, I eat a little bit of tuna fish. Occasionally tuna fish. Occasionally.

Okay, occasionally. What does that mean?

I don't know. I don't have more than three dollops of tuna, you know, per meal. Two, three ice cream scoopers worth? Yeah, I mean, about a handful is one dollop.

You have three meals of tuna fish per day.

You gotta eat breakfast lunch today, don't you? Three squares, or rounds, if you're talking about tuna dollops. TBTL.

it's time now for a full look at your forecast with astrid maybe we can canoodle before you get into it about um we're not gonna be canoodling what oh i thought canoodle meant chat he's he's the handsome he's the handsome devil that came down from heaven to make some great songs and And danced forever.

I don't know a lot about business, but he did an internet, and now the computers like him, and Wall Street is Google.

Shh. I get it. I know who you are. It's been explained to me. I'm into it. Let's talk.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's like my heart is trying to hug my brain. My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host. I won't trash talk. I won't be out there blowhard. I may have literally forgotten my last name there for a minute. I usually say my first and last name, I guess maybe for new listeners. And then I just said my first name and then I had to take a second and go, you know, what is that last name? It's Burbank, everyone. And I'm coming to you today per use from the Nest Broadcast Center high in the sky above Portland, Oregon, where we've settled into kind of a nice weather trend here. The heat dome, the heat cloche seems to have dissipated. Now it's a little bit on the overcast side in the morning and then reveals itself to be beautiful blue skies and warm weather by afternoon. It's lovely. Speaking of things that are lovely, we've got a lovely episode of the show for you today. It's episode three thousand four hundred and sixty two in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I'll tell you the story of this group of teenagers from Boston that were on a flight going down to the Bahamas and the airline had to switch planes. There was a mechanical issue. And these teens were so angered by this that they became very disrespectful to the flight crew. They wouldn't put their masks on Kids and fantasy There would be some real teenage dirtbags, my friends And The flight actually couldn't take off They had to stay for an extra day in North Carolina But karmically There was at least a small punishment For these misbehaved teens We'll tell you about that And also

An online publication

That I was really enjoying One of the few online publications sponsored by a razor company that I read on the regular. Mel Magazine is coming back, which is exciting news. Although, they're coming back because they've been refunded by a venture capital outfit, which usually is the end of creativity as we know it when it comes to, well, creative projects. So we will investigate what is going on with that. And then my...

People of TikTok.

There is some research out on how much time people who are tiktok fans people who look at tiktok right how much time the average sort of tiktok enthusiast spends per month looking at tiktok there's a waste of time to do that and it is truly jaw-dropping and accurate if my anecdotal experience is uh factored into all of this uh so we'll get into that plus we'll get into the blurs days because it's a thursday aka a blurs day and we'll talk to this guy the longest running cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships sort of lucky that he's able to join us today because he is about to make medical history and i know he's very busy with i'm having a baby and everybody's freaking out he is andrew walsh and he's joining me right now from the roosevelt neighborhood of seattle washington

good morning my friend good morning luke we are um really doing a high wire act today is that what

it's called a high wire act yeah tight rope act tight rope high wire i just realized as the show

began that in my flurry of activity this morning as i was running into a zoom meeting late i forgot to plug my computer in with the Ethernet, which is something that you and I do to keep the quality of this broadcast top-notch. Now, I'm recording on my end, so I don't know if the listeners would even hear it, or I know they wouldn't if there were any glitches. Welcome to the Internet. That was a huge sneeze that y'all just missed. That was not Wi-Fi-related, but I was going to say, you've got to let me know if you hear any weird breakers on my voice or any distortion or anything, Luke, and then I can... I just heard two. You did hear two distortions?

Yeah, when you made the sound of the distortion, it sounded like the distortion to me. It's called the internet, and it's a fresh new way to check out sites,

buy clothing, and surf music. How smooth was me muting that sneeze, by the way? What did you hear? It was... Did you hear the intake of breath? Nothing?

I heard nothing?

It's just a long pause.

That's a very current comedy reference from the hit show Hogan's Heroes.

A show that was so confusing when I was trying to watch it in the 80s. I can't imagine. Let's see. How old was I? Let's say I was like 11 years old or whatever. Summer vacation. You turn on WOIO, Channel 19. They have a bunch of reruns, pre-Nick at Night, but Nick at Night style reruns. And that show would be on, and it gave me, I know we've talked about it, it gave me the bad feeling. It was a very dark show. Didn't get it. Didn't like it. Can you imagine sitting an 11-year-old in front of that here in 2021? What would they even make of it?

I mean, this is the riff that I always break out around the topic of Hogan's Heroes, but I think it's worth repeating. How did you pitch the Nazi prison camp comedy concept to a network and get it made? That's just not where humor seems to thrive. And what I knew as a kid was Nazis are scary and bad. And so I don't think I fully understood for a long time If Hogan's Heroes was in fact a comedy Even though there's a laugh track There are these cues that are telling you this is a joke But I just knew there were scary Nazi guys And these guys were in prison They were not able to leave It was very confusing for me as a kid as well

Yeah, but contrarily There's a young Roberto Benigni Who is watching that and saying I think this will be the groundwork For an even better comedy that I will make 20 years later Yes life is beautiful

That was all like That whole kind of What would you call it That channel which I think most of our listeners of our age grew up with Whatever that local channel was That just got cheap Programming that was you know Just a bunch of old black and white stuff McHale's Navy Was on that list A lot of Leave it to Beaver they're just running you know a bunch of old television that was like the lowest form for me that was like plan g of my television watching on a summer day so first of all i was never watching tv at my house because we often didn't have a tv or if we did it was not the kind of thing where i was allowed to just put on the prices right and veg out uh so i i wonder now think looking back and it was this sort of a strategy by my mom and a very effective one at that to get me to leave the house in the summer she was like well if there's no tv here he's gonna go find a place

where there is television how about peter williams's house i wonder if it was that um if it was that thought out my guess is probably not your mom had how many children running around at any given moment seven that we knew of um the other day i well this is actually going back um maybe even as long as a year ago which means this might be hard for me to dig up but I follow a an account on Instagram called 80s news screens I believe it's a pretty good account it's always a screenshot of somebody being interviewed it's almost always a screenshot of somebody being interviewed in some 1980s TV broadcast and they have like somehow out of context everybody's names are just sort of funny and it's got that like old chyron at the bottom that might say you know rich richardson and then underneath it'll say hates roller coasters or whatever and it's kind of got that grainy quality it's a really fun you know light-hearted follow and about a year ago they they stopped my heart in its tracks as i was scrolling through and my heart has tracks um they stopped me in my tracks and my heart went a pitter-patter we know you're a medical marvel i'm having a baby and everybody's freaking out that's right um that's actually a pretty good that's a pretty good pull congrats to the unpaid producer on identifying that as a good standalone um but uh what i was gonna say was i i came across they they posted like the the um what would you call it just like the the logo branding screen for woio 19 that was that was constantly in play around the time that i was glued to the tv watching these style tv shows and they must have had it felt like a lifetime but they must have had that thing running for a couple of years and when i saw that thing i'm going to look for it i'll try to make it today's show pick um the just seeing the still screen of my childhood tv station like which is very specific and very late 90s i'm almost or i'm sorry late 80s it might have even been an early 90s screen i'll uh i'll try to dig it up and share it with y'all now you've got me

wishing that i could find because i'm looking for it it's not showing up the logo for our channel in seattle which was ktzz channel 22 and you had to go get that you know little kind of um round uhf antenna which you could buy at a 7-eleven and then you had to screw that thing down on the back of the tv with those little tiny screws um and then you could get ktzz and man i mean even though i said that was the lowest form of television for me it really was like price is right was top of list so on a on a you know summer morning when the price is right came on i was filled with joy and then as the day went on and switched over into soaps and things like that things that were not interesting to me then eventually maybe we'd go watch ktt ktzz that would where we catch the hogan's heroes the mikhail's navy the bewitched all of that um and uh it looks like ktzz has the reason i i did like that channel was because it felt like cable because peter also didn't have cable his parents were also not about that in fact his dad once did something similar to what my dad did his dad randall who is an amazing uh uh art what do they call those people artists he's an incredible artist he can like just make these incredibly realistic sculptures he is just a very talented painter and drawer and so at one point he i think thought that peter and i were watching too much tv so he took like a solid block of wood cut it in half and then hollowed out the interior of it so that it was large enough to hold the end of the power cord for the television. And then he put a door, a little like hinge on it and a padlock on one side. So he could literally padlock the part of the TV cord that you needed to plug it in.

But didn't you find a way around that? Or am I making that part of it?

That was my dad bought this other thing, this like remote control that could turn off all of the power to the TV, and then I went and dug around and found it in, like, his dresser or something. Oh, right, right. Like, it was a real cat-and-mouse game going on between our respective parents. But anyway, it still felt like, because all of us, there was no Channel 22 for a lot of my childhood, and then suddenly we could get a new channel. It felt like we were getting cable. Yeah. And I really liked that. It looks like KTZZ, though, has been through many an iteration. It was, for a period of time, Joe TV.

Oh, right. Joe TV was kind of the when you when this this was like kind of what mid 2000s, a lot of channels started going to Joe TV around the country. And it really seemed like the last gasp of the UHF stations.

Yeah, well, exactly. And I guess they were trying to read. So gracious, you did an amazing mute of your microphone for your sneeze. And I did the exact opposite.

That was an Internet issue. I thought I was like, I got to get the Ethernet.

No, what I was trying to do was I was trying to mute my computer. Instead, I muted my voice and left the computer very much hot. The reason I was setting something on my computer, because when you Google KTZZ, Andrew, one of the things that comes up is, this looks like it's from 1993. It's Seattle's Cairo Radio on KTZZ. They clearly, at some point, thought what we'll do is we'll simulcast Cairo Radio, where you and I both used to work, on KTZZ. I see you're looking it up as well By the way, it auto-fires, Andrew

No, that's something else that I'll play for you in a second Sorry, that was also not good

So can I play you a little bit of this? I think this might be Bill Yen I'm not sure I mean, they were playing the radio station on TV This feels like worlds colliding for me Because again, we worked at this radio station And also, I used to watch this channel when I was a kid I was unaware that this was ever a thing they had So let's just hear what KTZZ was playing from Cairo News Radio By the way, this guy is in the studio where we used to do TBTL

Oh wow, like the original studio before they

Yeah, the original one, the old, old, old one that was there when we started out

let's hear what they were doing in those days. Wrap up the glasses and clear out the closets and stuff, Greg. Yeah, you know, we talk about the boating season beginning tomorrow. You know what begins tomorrow? The moving season.

That would be Greg Herschel, by the way, right there.

The people in the moving and storage industry say that almost half of the people who move every year move between May 1st and Labor Day weekend. I guess summertime is an easier time to move. Kids are out of school and so forth. And the Mayflower Company has some interesting statistics about it.

Oh, my gosh, Andrew, this is not interesting for the listeners, but I am loving this. Well, I love hearing this era. So what are you hearing there? Well, I'm hearing Greg Herschel talk to Bill Yend. Okay, that's one thing. But sitting next to Greg Herschel in his little white Jeff cap is one Wayne Cody. Ah, Wayne Cody. Wayne Cody, local sportscaster legend in Seattle, who I grew up watching. He was a man of ample carriage, Andrew, who also loved gambling. So I'm just – I'm only about 20 pounds of carriage away, Andrew, from being Wayne Cody. Somebody needs to – this would be a hit in Seattle for people of my age. Somebody needs to do some sort of documentary about the existence of this guy, Wayne Cody. Okay, imagine, very portly fellow, bearded, sportscaster, owned a restaurant called Cody's in Linwood, which was very popular, and the sign was just a big picture of Wayne Cody, local sportscaster. I didn't know that part of the Cody-verse. I mean, the famous story about him that I've probably told on the show many times is the Seahawks were playing Indianapolis. It might have been a preseason game. It might have been a regular game when the Seahawks were lousy. Wayne Cody was the, at this time, he was, one of his many jobs, I think, was to be the locker room, to do the locker room interviews with the players afterwards. Like, he was probably already the sports director of the TV station, so it wasn't like this was, he was coming up in the game. I mean, he could pretty much pick whatever job he wanted. He probably wanted this job for reasons that will become clear when I tell this story. He got very bored with the football game He went to the racetrack He was betting on the ponies He came back when the game was over And famously walked in and asked Like Jim Zorn, our quarterback Who won? And I don't think he was even trying to pretend That he had been at the game Like that You gotta respect it Is that some real Bill Braski qualities going? Yeah, he really does He really does And so he was I mean, Wayne Cody loomed so large in my mind because I loved sports as a kid. I watched a ton of local news, which made me, you know, popular and relatable to the other 12-year-olds. Hey, did you guys hear what Wayne Cody said to Gary Justice last night during the toss? No, Luke, we're 12. What's wrong with you? And they said, did you see what happened on Hogan's Heroes yesterday? Yeah, exactly. So I was – the other reason I was obsessed with Wayne Cody was because, of course, he hosted a show called Sportsline from 7 to 10 Monday through Friday on Cairo Radio. And as a kid, that was my main listening.

Every night I'd turn on the old AM radio and I would listen to Wayne Cody talk Seattle sports for three hours, which, you know, there probably wasn't enough content for that, but I found the whole thing riveting. And so it, to me, felt like some sort of destiny when I finally moved back to Seattle and got a job hosting the show that ran from 7 to 10 p.m. on Cairo, 7, 10 a.m. I was stepping into Wayne Cody's ample shoes and ample beard. And so to see Wayne Cody just slouched in this studio right now, just getting his sports report ready or whatever. Let's just see. Okay, I'm not going to belabor this. I paused there because I don't think I've ever not belabored anything on the show. No, but I love archive audio, so. I want to see if maybe we get lucky and maybe Codes is in there because he's about to do a report and maybe they'll toss it to him because you've probably never really heard Wayne Cody's voice, right? I don't think so, no. Okay, let's see what happens.

Including some that involve us in the Northwest. First of all, 20% of all Americans move every year. Really? Yeah, and more people are moving out of California now than are moving into California.

that's weird because we are once again in that place by the way and it's been however long since 1993 california has had a net migration to it into it and now there is a net migration out of it um uh once again so i mean this this newscast is as relevant today as it was in 1993 i'm gonna jump ahead and see the camera is now zoomed in on wayne cody um but it doesn't

You

here to be doing anything maybe he just lived in the studio let's let's see here what where we're at now a few more minutes into the file with pat valenzuela yes codes we've got a codes appearance all right this is going to be awesome i'm so excited about this we'll return with wayne cody

and sports time 5 41 i'll look at sports here you want you want some mood music dream music i need

some we're doing a little shtick here a little piece of business we're taking the clock let me get the stem here okay we're moving it forward to 2 39 p.m tomorrow afternoon 2 39 okay so we're

in a little dream sequence here you ready this is wayne cody by the way talking like i was i forget his voice is higher than i remember i was gonna say higher than i expected right uh hey everybody codes here that's my wayne cody impression hey everybody codes here i'm ready

and down the stretch they come out in front is Union City with Pat Valenzuela Personal Hope moves up on the inside Silver of Silver

and down the stretch it is Bull in the Heather winning the Kentucky Derby

this is a dream isn't it well what can I say Bull in the Heather remember that tomorrow good horses they drew them by the way he's just giving out racing tips and also I didn't know that

that's the origin of Bull in the Heather I only know it as a Sonic Youth song

Sonic Youth album, right? Morning. I was there a year ago. First derby. Boy, I had a great time. I've got to go back someday. I really do. But they draw the little peas. It's a cup like, you know, you play pool, and you put the little peas in there, and you shake them up, and you draw them out one at a time. Storm Tower got the rail. Not a good place to be in a 19-horse field. They could all crunch in on you. Nine to two odds. Kiss and Chris. Truth of it all. Union City. You can pick one of these, Bill, if you see anybody you like. Prairie Bayou, one of the favorites at five to two, will be in the number five hole. Sea Hero, Personal Hope, Rockamundo

And they cancelled TBTL This is appreciably worse Than anything that we did Just reading the odds For the Kentucky Derby

That horse that paid two, three

I was just curious, can we look up Do we know if Bowling the Heather won? I think that's a knowable thing I'm going to keep playing codes Will you look up The 1993 Kentucky Derby winner I think Or just, yeah, and if you see Bull in the Heather on there anywhere, then we're talking about the correct year.

$400 when it won the Derby at Arkansas. He's in the number 8 spot, 20-1, by the way. Silver of Silver, then my boy, Bull in the Heather, number 10. Then we've got Toss of the Coin, Micello, Wild Gale, Ragtime Rebel could win it. Dixieland Heat is 15-1. That horse could win. Walenda, Corby Diazo, El Bakan on the outside in the number 19 position. Does Bill Shoemaker have a horse in there? Is he training a horse? Oh, now you caught me. Yeah, he is training a horse, and I forget who it is. And Gary Stevens is riding back there. Gary Stevens is on Personal Hope, one of the favorites at 7 to 2. Well, that's what I'm going to say. Now, if you want to take the field, you...

Have you found anything about Bull and the Heather? No, 1993, it was Sea Hero, and whenever I tried to search, actually, for Bull and the Heather, I end up with a lot of references to Sonic Youth, which is also interesting. Oh, I do see that Bull in the Heather did run in the 93 Kentucky Derby. I wasn't sure. Are we 100% sure this is 93?

Yeah, well, that's what it's listed as on YouTube. And I want to give a shout-out to the unfortunately titled Shocker. Whoever Shocker is, they're putting up a bunch of clips of Cairo Radio on KTZZ, and it all appears to be Wayne Cody related. I love it. I shan't bore the listeners anymore with this, But I will honestly, probably after I've had a couple of glasses of wine, be dialing this up. Let's just one more quick one. Let's check in. Hopefully this is not horse racing related. This is a different file of Wayne Cody on Cairo by way of KTZZ.

I like the Phoenix Suns probably to win it all over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Now, a fella called up a while ago and he talked to Joel and he said, tell that Cody. He says he's there picking them horses in the derby, that bull in the heather. Jeez Louise, let it go.

No, it sounds like this person's going to correct him, right? Because I'm now looking. Bone to Heather came in 11th, Luke. Oh, man.

Says he's the same guy that told us that Jay Hebert was going to be our starting quarterback a few weeks ago. Or what's his name? Hebert, yeah. They never forget, do they? Well, so I missed that one. So I missed the last 308 predictions in a row. I like this guy. Anyway, they never forget the ones you do pick. I'm trying to think of one that I have picked. But anyway, it'll be the Sonics in five. We'll see.

I love it. Hey, everybody. Goat Sears. This is great.

I'm so stoked about this. I want you, Andrew, at some point, I'll send you the link. You've got to go watch this because, again, what's extra weird to me is that I believe they are in – it might be slightly reconfigured, but, I mean, they're definitely using the same board that we used to use. Mm-hmm.

same setup uh you know that was the early days of old tbtl so can i play a little nostalgic tape for you now the weird thing is this isn't even my nostalgia i'm now just huffing other people's nostalgia um but the other something about you saying that this this youtuber's name the person who's posting these is like shocker or shockers and i came across a commercial the other day from the 1990s for a place called zappers which i believe was only in new york state but it was a video game like a used video game store and this commercial is the 90s the 90s is thing I've ever seen like every camera angle is like at an angle if you can sort of picture that and there's this guy going through the store who looks like I tried describing this to Genevieve looks like a how am I blanking on his name now why would I bring this up Wayne Cody blank and he looks exactly like Wayne Cody uh SNL from the 1970s um geez louise he plays he's in that weird movie with a digital underground good lord what's happening oh Dan Aykroyd Dan Aykroyd okay so this character I'm sorry looks like looks like Dan Aykroyd in his 40s playing a teenager oh my Like, kind of overweight. Oh, are you on the Zappos commercial now?

I've got it muted, but I'm watching it. It looks like a heavy set Dan Aykroyd.

Yes, yes, exactly. With a little bit of say anything in there. Yeah, Cusack. John Cusack.

If you mated John Cusack, Dan Aykroyd, and, like, you know, one of the Murray brothers. Like, you know how Bill Murray has these brothers that are also in showbiz, but they're not as famous as Bill Murray? And now Brian Doyle Murray is his older brother. Not that one. But there's a different Murray whose name escapes me. Anyway, it's a combination of those three people.

And this has all the elements of not just like the bright neon colors and the weird angles and this guy's spiky hair and sunglasses as he goes through the store. But it even begins with like an announcer talking on like a on like a black and white TV screen, kind of a la Max Headroom. But as it kind of shifted to the 90s, you know, that thing where that there's always a distorted voice. representing the norms, sort of, like the normies. Okay, here, take a listen to this.

Zappers, the world of electronic games. Did you know that Zappers carries not only new but used games? Why buy one new game when you can probably buy a couple of used games for the same amount? We're talking bargains here! Zappers, serious game. Okay, so you're saying, where can I get the money for these used games? Well, Zappers is ready to buy your old games so that you may have ready cash to buy new old games. It's called stimulating the economy through video games. Is it just me or does this make sense? Zappers, stop.

I would love to hear from any listeners in New York who went to Zappers in their youth.

That is a – that's a pretty involved commercial for what I assume is a local video game place or regional video game place. I got the impression it was regional, yeah. And if I were that actor, and I mean, first of all, I'm sure that actor was stoked to get the job, the Cusack meets Dan Aykroyd guy. But I would also look at the call sheet and I'd be like, oh, my God, there are so many different shots of me in this 30 seconds. Yeah, a lot of angles. He's in like 35 different environments. He's with a dog. Yeah. He's in the store. Yeah. He's all over the place. I was like, oh, God, this is 40 different setup and breakdowns for me to do this 30-second Zappers commercial.

At one point, a blonde teen with gelled back hair is lip syncing his voiceover. Like, how am I going to get all the money for these video games? It's a lot going on. They did not waste, like, it was not an era of minimalism. It was just like, the more we can jam in here, the better. At one point, there's dynamic text just, like, coming at the screen, like a Van Halen video. I feel like it's like the Wild Mike's Pizza logo filmed the commercial.

And I say that with pizza and love. Yes, absolutely. To that wonderful company that's actually owned by a family. One of the family members is a big listener to this show, Ali. So, you know, shout out to them. But it's that sort of aesthetic, I guess. Yes. Okay, let's take a quick break because we do have a bunch of top stories to talk about today and, of course, Blur's Days. So stick around for that. More TBTL coming up in just a moment. hello and welcome to top story i think the way that this story is framed andrew that we're going to start the top stories with is very funny to me i saw it in the new york post okay and it says boston teens forced to sleep in airport after mask rebellion gets flight canceled now i don't it's not super relevant that they're from boston because the actual incident happened north carolina it sounds like it was like maybe a school trip or some sort of group of teenagers about 30 of them were on an american airlines flight they were going to the bahamas they were changing planes in charlotte and then uh there was a mechanical issue with the plane they were on and so they had to then get off the plane and then uh switch planes but the teens were so angry about this that they started being disrespectful to the crew they refused to put their masks on they basically got the second flight the replacement flight also grounded and then by the time they got all them off the flight the plane couldn't take off so all these adults that were on the plane who were doing nothing had to spend the night in charlotte north carolina instead of going on their vacation to the bahamas because of these unruly teenagers uh that being said Them being from Boston isn't relevant Except for it just sort of seems to track It seems to make sense And I wonder if the New York Post Because, you know, New York-Boston rivalry I wonder if the New York Post isn't just They just don't want to miss the chance to rub it into Boston a little bit

And, yeah, that they're a bunch of Boston Rowdies And I want to be, you know, I like the city of Boston In fact, I really

By the way, the Boston Rowdies does sound like an arena league football team Partially owned by Jon Bon Jovi

Or Mark Wahlberg exactly but um um i like boston and so i i don't want to offend our boston listeners but also the fact that like i i saw the story in the show sheet yesterday and i don't know if you had boston in there but today when i actually opened up the story the the dazzling detail that these were boston teens did sort of you know add some detail like maybe maybe inaccurate detail in my imagination of what went down but something about them being boston rowdies really did sort of

complete the scene i saw somebody wrote on twitter the other day i'm boston sober meaning i'm an alcoholic because you know about cali sober do you know all this stuff no oh cali sober means you're just smoking weed you just smoke weed there are all these versions of sober that are just kind of like variations on the theme or i i only do this maybe napa sober is like well i only have a glass of wine or whatever so somebody was like i'm boston sober which means i'm just still a raging alcoholic yeah right right um go ahead go ahead the karma for these teenagers though a little bit was the airline gave out hotel vouchers because i guess this all started with a mechanical issue oh this is a good time for me to mention to the many many people who reached out to me about my flight that was canceled from Napa flying into Portland when it got real hot up here that they thought it might have to do with the particular kind of jet that I was on or plane. It wasn't a jet. It was a prop plane. And the temperatures at which that plane is allowed to fly. I mean, that's certainly possible. But also, I'm not even kidding. As I was driving up I-5, I saw planes like that taking off from other parts of Oregon when it was really hot. Driving through Medford, I saw a plane that was a prop plane that was either landing or taking off. It was flying over the freeway. So I literally saw those kinds of planes operating. So I don't know if it was attributable just to the style of airplane I was on. But anyway, I just wanted – like probably 20 people reached out to me via Twitter and other means to tell me it might have been the plane. So I just wanted to tell them I saw that information. You might be right. I don't know. But the airline, in this case, gave out vouchers to everybody to get hotel rooms. But apparently you have to be over 18 for them to give you a hotel room voucher. So they didn't give any of the teens hotel rooms. The teens had to sleep in the airport. The Boston teens. So all the adults, the Boston teens, the rowdy, the Boston sober teens, had to sleep in the airport. And the adults at least They got to go stay in a hotel But I would have been I mean they interviewed a number of adults Like this one woman She's a nurse And she's like She said It's really hard for me to get time off

Yeah

You know And so now I just lost an entire day of my vacation A nurse I mean we don't know what kind of nursing she's in If she was working in a COVID ward Or if she was working at a podiatrist's office But let's just Let's go with the most dramatic version of this She's a frontline responder who's been, you know, battling COVID at the very tip of the spear. She finally gets some time off to go to the Bahamas with her family. And these teenagers, because they're in mass revolt, ruin one day of your trip to the Bahamas?

I mean, I would be livid. Do we know if this is the same person who referred to their smart mouths? Because that was something that, like, that was bandied about a lot in my house. Like, oh, no, here's the quote. it wasn't all

All of them, Banks recounted, I would say 75% to 80% of them were being terrible kids, saying smart stuff. Yeah, that was Malik Banks. Okay.

The nurse was named, it's on the other side of this sheet, the nurse was named Christina Randolph. She said all they had to do was follow the rules, put the mask on, sit there, no smart mouth comments. And they couldn't do it.

No smart mouth comments. So and what they were doing was just like yelling and just basically being obnoxious, not staying in their seats, swearing. Am I right about this?

Yeah, they were swearing at the flight crew. I mean, look, I've not been in a scenario this extreme, but I've been a teen in a group of rowdy teens when all of a sudden you realize you outnumber the adults in a situation. And it's not unlike inmates in a prison at some point realizing there's more of us than there are of them. And so I've seen that dynamic, and it just appears to have gotten really out of control here. The other thing is there are all these still photos in this New York Post article that I was looking at of basically the teens being taken off the flight, and the adults are, like, taking pictures of themselves but doing it in such a way that they're also trying to capture the teens. Yeah, right. And the teens are doing all kinds of mugging for the camera. So what I don't understand is I don't even if I was 16 years old, I would want to get to the Bahamas more than I would want to do battle with the airplane staff. That's like there. I would be so psyched about getting to go to the Bahamas where there was probably going to be girls my age, probably wearing bathing suits. I mean, I would have got out and pushed the plane if they needed me to. Like I would have done everything in my power to make sure this trip is happening without any kind of interruption.

Being a teenager is a powerful drug. You know, I don't know how much, you know, like when you're a frustrated teen and then there's, you know, the influence of those around you. Now, I'll bet you there were people in this crew that were more like you and me who were probably like, oh, gosh, please stop. Like, just stop. Like, this is terrible. You're making everything worse. But I think that those who were causing the ruckus probably didn't have that forethought. They were just where they were. They were full of testosterone. The brains are not fully developed. And empowered. Yeah, exactly. And so this is what they did.

One of the adults said it was about 75% of the Boston rowdy teams. So imagine being in the other 25% of the teams.

I would definitely be. I almost guarantee you that I would be like sweating this out. But then somehow I would get pulled into it in a way, and then I would get caught. I don't know. Somehow I would get in trouble.

I would have been leading it, unfortunately. I mean, I told you, I went to public school for all of two weeks in sixth grade, and I got kicked off the bus.

Yeah, you got banned from the bus. You'd be banned from American Airlines.

Yeah. I'm very excited that Mel Magazine is coming back, Andrew.

Oh, I want to know, was I the 4,000th person to send that to you?

No, you were the only person. You were my one and only, Andrew. Really? That surprises me.

I thought everybody would have been hitting you with that.

No, they wanted to tell me that Embraer B-12 planes can't fly when it's over 100 degrees. No, you were the only person who hipped me to this, but it is an interesting story to me. I talked about Mel magazine kind of a lot for a while because they just had a lot of articles that I found very interesting. The oral history of the steamed hams episode of The Simpsons and also articles about sexual behavior and sexuality that seemed to be written from a pretty pro-woman and inclusive standpoint. In fact, I believe maybe their writers on that topic happen to be women or maybe gender non-binary folks. Like for something called Mel Magazine that was basically paid for by a shaving club, Dollar Shave Club, it was way less – what was that men's magazine that was so hot for a while? Like Maxim or something? Maxim. It was way less Maxim than I think you would have expected. Sure, yeah. Kind of what it sounded like on paper Anyway, Dollar Shave Club decided at some point that it was no longer worth the money And so they basically shut the thing down A bunch of people got laid off I didn't realize there was 24 people or about two dozen staffers working on Mel Magazine

And that was editorial staff, right? That's pretty good

Yeah That's decent And so now the news has come out that a venture capital company has acquired Mel Magazine and that they're going – it's called Recurrent Ventures. A venture equity-backed digital media company is acquiring Mel Magazine. They're going to rehire about 18 of those staffers, and they're going to try to monetize this thing, which I'm excited about because I hope that they're able to recapture whatever it was they were doing. back when it was run by Dollar Shave Club, I'm a little, I'll be honest with you, I'm slightly leery, though. And the reason... is because this is kind well this is a different maybe the maybe the comparison is not apt and maybe this gives me hope i was going to say this is kind of like what happened to deadspin which was the sports blog that i loved which then at some point was acquired by a venture capital company which then ran it into the ground and also told all of the writers to stick to sports even though some of the best writing they did was about culture and politics and so eventually the Deadspin staff essentially walked away and they formed this new thing called Defector and I was very excited about Defector in fact I donate to Defector I shouldn't say I donate I'm a subscriber to Defector me too now but I gotta be honest with you I don't know what it is but Defector is not the Deadspin of six years ago and I don't understand why some of it may have to do with the staffing like maybe there are fewer people working there because in order for it to be the living of the people who do work there maybe you can't have 20 people because that's not a living wage for 20 people or something. I don't understand exactly what is going on. I look at Defector once a day probably but I used to look at Deadspin. I used to refresh Deadspin 20 times a day easily and I cannot figure out why it is that this new version of it, which should be better on paper because it's run by the people who I like and the great writers that I like but it's just there's just something about it that is not quite as sticky in my brain do you think that and I you know I didn't live on Deadspin the way

you used to it used to be in my various feeds um and of course we would talk about a lot of the stuff that that came out of Deadspin on our various radio projects so I was pretty well acquainted with it but I didn't live on it the way you did or the way Genevieve lived on Gawker And in the same respect, you know, I started paying for a defector because, you know, it just got to the point where I was like, I want to read this. I was following him on Twitter, right? And I was like, want to read this article? I was like, yes, I do. So, you know, it's like not much. It's like eight bucks a month or something. But I only read the stuff that flashes in front of my eyes. You know, if I happen to see something on Twitter, I'm glad to have access to it. But I'm not like refreshing the page. So anyway, all of that is to say, do you think part of it is, I mean, it's a different era for media for starters but also just like kind of the format like was deadspin like con it was more of a blog right whereas now it's like a a site and that's a weird it's a weird incredibly boring place to take this but could it just be the the way we're consuming media these days there was something like very um of the moment with gawker right like somebody could fire something out and post it quickly and it could be ridiculous and then they could somebody else could comment on it a moment later in their own blog post it was very bloggy whereas defector seems a little bit

more like thought out i think that's part of it and also it's interesting because you just mentioned gawker and i think what i hadn't realized until this moment was a lot of dead spin stuff was really just they were reprinting stuff from gawker or signal lamping yeah it was a pretty like um a porous membrane between gawker and dead spin and that was actually kind of perfect and and and now they don't have gawker so really if the deadspin staff was let's say 20 people they also had the gawker staff which was however many people that was and you know the ashley feinbergs of the world and like people who's writing we really admired over at gawker there was i think this kind of um you know cross-pollination that was really good and i think i wasn't factoring that in and defector has a lot of the same writers and they're still really great writers but i think a lot of the stuff that i and also had to do with what i was doing in my life at the time like my radio job and and the fact that i think it may have even i don't know if deadspin was around when i was still a producer but i just knew that i could reliably find a story or two on there that would be interesting content um so that was part of it but i do think the overlap of those two things was making it a much stronger uh website for me and i also think you're right by the way the layout is also part of it i don't know how to explain it but there's just this is a different layout and i've never quite taken to it the way

that i took to the og deadspin layout and there were other there like the strangers slog website was like that too for the locals like to me you know i think feel like everybody thinks there's a different heyday for the stranger which was you know is seattle's alternative weekly except now i think it's bi-weekly and it's really struggling like like a lot of those publications but when i came to seattle about 12 years ago i i was ramping up for my move here by reading the slog every day back in new hampshire and i was so excited to be in the home of the stranger is very um you know again like it was very bloggy where lindy west might post something but then somebody else might post a quick reaction to it almost like almost like battling blog posts but not but over ridiculously silly stuff. at times and sometimes some serious stuff and it just seemed like it just seemed like you were you were kind of hanging out or eavesdropping on a bunch of cool kids that you respect with you know really sharp barbs and having a great time and you sort of felt like you were part of the gang you could kind of watch them interact with each other whereas now and again I haven't spent a lot of time on Defector and so maybe maybe there is a little bit of that and I'm just not seeing it but I kind of doubt it and I feel like I don't know I don't know if anybody's really kind of like capturing that sort of energy anymore on in print and well you're right too that the how

we consume media is just evolving so rapidly boy that was a real it was a really important statement for me just to make andrew the way they were consuming media is evolving rapid i know well this and i'm just saying the obvious this and more uh will be revealed that my ted xxx my ted x gresham talk that i will the ted triple x you want to stay away from i'll be streaming it on quibi um but it is true like i think of like the writer david roth who i'm a really big fan of i know you are as well i think he writes the most trenchant stuff about donald trump or at least he was when that was something that we really needed as a society and you know the only place i used to be able to find david stuff was on deadspin or at least i wasn't following him on twitter i guess now i follow him on twitter when he writes something i see it on twitter i probably click there i guess maybe it takes me to defector uh but basically it's like i have no david roth is now a spin-off character for me uh who i just get his stuff directly from him it feels like and the same thing uh with drew mcgary who i'm also a fan of andrew mcgary now writes for the san francisco chronicle he writes for sf gate he's like a columnist there so sometimes i'll see his stuff pop up there i'm on tiktok all the time andrew which brings me to this next story like honestly a lot of the time that i think i was spending on things like deadspin i'm now spending on things like tiktok and i'm getting content there sometimes uh most of the time though i'm just i think numbing out as evidenced by this research that came out from an analytics firm called app annie they put out their state of mobile report and what they found is that people who use android phones now spend an average of 24 and a half hours on tick tock per month which is more than people are spending uh people with the same kind of phone are spending on facebook or youtube 24 hours a month that is it's easy to do this math even for me that's 12 full days a year that is almost two weeks of my life a year spent looking at tick tock and andrew this estimate might be low

for me this article it sounds like and I haven't read this Luke I'm only hearing it from you but it sounds like they're comparing it to other sites and other social networks do they compare it to television watching at all how much how many hours a month are we watching TV is that

also about 24 more this is they only tracked like YouTube and streaming services they said a streaming service like netflix hulu disney plus amazon prime video uh not only do users spend more time per month on youtube than they do on those other streaming services they spend four more time per year or excuse me time per month on youtube so according to their data people are spending more time on youtube than they are on the streaming services so i don't know how that applies to like broadcast television um but i would also assume it's sort of different groups of people so the people who are watching broadcast television are probably less likely to be on any of this stuff i mean they're studying the people who are doing tiktok or are looking at tiktok on their phone and then looking at their other behaviors so that's a that's a group i mean that's a selected specific group of people who are as we might say extremely online yeah so i don't know how their habits compare to the habits of like my parents who are not extremely exactly

and and i don't know that this well it's clearly not the point of the article but when you say You know, the you know, when you mentioned that that's that's a that's a day a month, that's 12 full days a year. I'm just wondering, though, like, are the people who are on TikTok that much? They're probably not watching TV as much. So, like, I'm just trying to figure out, is this really shocking or is it just a small shift in what our screens look like, you know, and and and how the content fits that screen? Again, I'm just being so boring and somewhat pedantic today. But, you know, I understand that there's a big difference between sitting down to watch an hour long episode of Better Call Saul versus, you know, sitting down to watch an hour of TikTok videos, which are approximately, you know, a minute. How long is the average TikTok video, Luke? A minute less? Not even.

I mean, probably 20 seconds. It's that.

So I understand there's a huge difference there. But I just looked it up. It looks like the average American watches 124 hours of television a month, which is significantly more than TikTok.

yes uh i i i guess i can see that i mean god that sounds like so much although i think if i think about it most nights i'm watching tv whether it's a mariners game or netflix we're going to call

netflix television obviously right yeah four hours of tv a day is and then i did the math from there

so yeah so i guess that's i guess that i guess that sort of checks out i think the tiktok thing was so shocking to me because every time i start looking at tiktok i tell myself oh i'm going to do this for two minutes like it feels if i'm watching the baseball game and i'm texting with you and the criminals about it or if i'm watching a prestige series on netflix or i think you should leave season two it feels i don't know maybe it's just because i'm more used to it looking at that kind of screen i don't know it feels like what you do at night you relax you watch some television you unwind that all feels normal to me me starting looking at tiktok if i get in bed And it's like 10 p.m. and I'm like I'll just kind of unwind with some tick tock and then it's like 1 a.m. I feel dirty like I feel like something has gone very wrong for me because also so much of it is just not interesting with tick tock. So in other words, even though I, you know, sort of to a degree, I guess, have unintentionally curated what I'm looking at just by virtue of things I let run and things I swipe up on very quickly. even with that being the case a lot of it is just not really aimed at me or at least not interesting to me so it's like you got to swipe through about 50 frogs to get one prince you know one pd usa funny thing and there's like but that's a lot of stuff that i just like next next next next next i mean it like if i wanted to really get depressed and i'm doing a fine job of that anyway so i don't think i need to like you know gild the lily i would set up a camera and i would film myself looking at tiktok do that i mean you want to just see a slack jaw dead eyed just like the fred armison playing the monkey that jonah hill has taught to speak he like gambler in casino no dead eyes like me looking at tiktok just next like unconsciously next thing and just like i'm sure whatever my face looks like while i'm doing that waiting for the next thing that's going to entertain me i mean that must just be a very very very depressing thing to look at and the idea that i'm doing that for 24 complete a total hours per month is uh is kind of shocking to me and again totally tracks with my experience because the thing is there's no last page of tiktok you know there's no bottom there's no you don't even like defector you get to the bottom of defector at some point there are no more articles i mean they have a lot of articles so it'd take you a while there's no bottom to tiktok and you know what else is kind of interesting people who you know there's a lot of ads on tiktok right and clearly i don't even know what these things are ads for But people out there who look at TikTok know exactly what I'm talking about There are basically two ads that come up a lot Where the person in the ad is telling you that you've been scrolling for too long One, there's like a stop sign and this guy goes

Hold up, you've been scrolling way too long And I hate that guy so much, Andrew I hate him, if I saw him on the street I would fight him I'm like, you don't know my life, how dare you remind me of what I'm doing here And then there's another one where the guy is a little bit more like He almost seems like a therapist And he's like you've been scrolling for a long time But he's a young guy He's probably like in his early 20s And again I'm like I swear to God dude If you don't get off my screen right now What are they trying to sell do you remember I never let it go Literally the second I see it I just next I don't even know what they're selling I don't know what it is I honestly don't know what they're selling Because I feel like if I next it quickly enough God can't see me looking at TikTok And so maybe next time I'll let it run And I'll actually find out But I mean, it does. Let me know if they're water bottles legitimately generates a bad feeling inside, because I know in my heart of hearts that I am wasting my life when I'm doing this. And yet I can't stop myself because not unlike a slot machine or not unlike a lot of other numbing out behaviors, it is you just feel in this kind of trance like state when you're looking at it. And you're just like it's like the next thing could always be that funny, interesting thing. It requires sort of nothing of you It just turns your brain off in this way Like it's a very very seductive thing If you are a person like me I'll tell you that

Yeah I know that they're incredibly different As far as the content on them So this is maybe a somewhat strange comparison Although it also gets at what the study was looking at Which is comparing usage to Facebook usage But like that's one of the reasons I have not really gotten way into TikTok or even really into TikTok. at all like I have my TikTok login so I can watch certain things every now and then I will usually what will happen is you know I'll I'll think to myself hey I should see what PD USA is doing or just like now I follow like more people I know or listeners or whatever so I'll go to the um not the for you but the the people you're following kind of see what people are up to and then I'll sort of get you know I'll go down a very small hole where maybe a half hour will go by and I've been scrolling through things but like I don't like that feeling either and what I was going to start to say is that was similar it's similar to the feeling I used to get on Facebook again I think it's so much different because the idea of TikTok is people are creating entertainment for you where Facebook is also people just complaining about neighbors and staying in touch and posting family pictures and all kinds of stuff whereas TikTok is specifically supposed to be entertainment whether it's coming from a comedy centrals channel or somebody you've never heard of just broadcasting from their basement um so it's it's very very different but it gives me sort of the same feeling when i've scrolled for a while and i'm kind of glad i'm glad i have it i'm glad it exists but i'm also glad that i'm not really pulled in that direction because i kind of know that empty feeling

you're talking about when you finally put the phone down yeah and i am not like i'm not a gamer i'm not trying to you know uh disparage people who like to you know zone out and play video games or whatever but like i i'm actually i'm not a video game player and i'm not a i don't know this is the first time like i'm not even on facebook and i'll look at twitter but i don't i wouldn't look at twitter for 24 hours a month or whatever this is the first thing like this that i can think of again that's not drinking or gambling that has sort of grabbed my brain stem in the way that it has to where now i'm like oh i get excited so i'm like oh i can look at tiktok for a while

you know oh you actually look forward to it like you don't just fall into it well it depends sometimes

i fall into it but sometimes i'm like oh you know it'll be fun i'll watch the mariners i'll put the mariners on and i'll go two screens on it so i'll be watching the baseball game and i'll also be scrolling tiktok and it's like i it's it's like a fun and well here's a tiktok meme it's like a reward which is a clip of christoph uh how do we say his last name waltz waltz yeah when he is talking to django in django unchained and he is drinking a beer and he's explaining something about a bounty and he says it's like a reward and that is like a meme on tiktok well for me it's like a reward like i'm like okay i'm done with work for the day everything's kind of calmed down no one's no one's in charge of me no one's demanding anything of me right now in terms of like emails to be replied to or you know events to be hosted etc now i'm just going to reward myself with some just real zone out time and that's just not usually how i do um and so it's this is a new experience for me like people who are addicted to you hear about people who are addicted to video games maybe or addicted to their screen for whatever reason i've not ever really felt that way and i don't feel like i'm addicted to tiktok i mean a week will go by and i don't look at it but i do i i could probably look at it for 10 hours a day if i had if i was you know if i had nothing going on there's just something very weird and like i said very seductive about

how it works at least on my brain that's interesting i don't think i've ever looked forward to social media before and i think we're grouping this into social media right any kind of media that you consume on your phone really i mean it seems very social people are passing it around and and and you know and working off of other people's videos and remixing things i mean

the only reason i wouldn't call it social media for me is because i've never posted anything so when i tell people i love tiktok the first thing they always say is oh are you like do you put yourself are you what do you post on there and i'm like no no no i there's one post on my account and it was my nephew jack made it he was he had commandeered my phone at some point And then made a video of him It's not even, you don't even see him It's just like, you know, something from his bedroom Where he's just like pointing the camera at something random That's the only video that my account has ever posted And so I guess I don't know I don't think of it as social because I'm not socializing But I think you're right, it is social In that people are very much responding to each other Passing things around Improving or ruining jokes You know, all that stuff

Although, you know, I may have to take the L on this You know, I just decided to do a really quick Google like what are the top social media sites and i'm not seeing tiktok listed on any of these and obviously this is again to the article we're talking about tiktok is hugely popular right now oh there it is it is listed um it is listed on this is just much further down than i thought it's listed as number 10 but i mean who knows what the source is that i'm looking at here but um anyway yeah i do wonder if maybe maybe i'm wrong on that i i felt like it was a no-brainer that it's social media but maybe i'm wrong about that but anyway for the sake of this Let me just say that I've never been, I've never. I've never had anything that's kind of on my phone, let's put it that way, where I'm like I'm looking forward to this moment of the day. Like I do that with podcasts big time. Like I always look forward to a moment of the day if I don't have any plans in the evening, you know, where I pop on my either my lebitard or my comedy bang bang. And then what is involved with that is puttering around or playing like a video game, like a baseball video game or something. And I do look forward to that moment of the evening along with other things. Or maybe if I'm really into a TV show, I can't wait until this is over. I'm going to finally catch up on WandaVision or what have you. I've never had a feeling like that with TikTok or Facebook or Instagram. Like, I can't wait to get to this moment where I can open one of those apps up. To me, it's always like, well, I guess I'm on the toilet. Let's see what's going on.

Or more likely.

God, why did I laugh over that?

Why did I laugh over that? Dang it.

Or more likely. When worked your magic. I wake up in the morning, and you grab the phone off the nightstand, and you see you have a bunch of notifications, and then you open up Instagram, and that's usually Instagram and Twitter. I'll look at those kind of first thing in the morning, kind of scroll through them a little bit. But it's never like kind of a destination for me.

I would never look at TikTok in the morning. It's like drinking. Because it's entertainment. Like I would never – yeah, it's like I will look at Twitter, although that is often because I'm thinking, oh, maybe there's a good story for us on there. Twitter is a pretty decent place to figure out what's trending. Or I'm seeing if my latest fire tweet, like last night I said I was injured in an on-the-job accident in Washington, D.C. Luckily, I can get Rudy Giuliani to represent me. Nothing can ruin this plan.

Oh, you know what, Luke? I'll save it for after the show. I have some bad news for you, I think.

Okay.

I'm sure it'll work out. There's a lot of lawyers out there. He fights for you. That's what the ad said. No, I've seen him on the benches.

um but uh like sometimes i'll look at twitter in the morning because i'm like hey how did my tweet perform overnight which is i mean as sad listen i get how sad that sounds because it is sad but um with tiktok tiktok is exclusively like relaxation time for me like i would never look at tiktok as i'm puttering around in the morning getting ready for the show oh yeah right again just like i would never like make myself a like an irish coffee or mimosa um getting ready for the show so what i'm trying to say andrew is everything's fine i don't have a problem with any of this stuff i only do it alone i only do it by myself alone at exactly 5 30 p.m well tell me

what's more shameful you say that sometimes you'll post something and you'll wake up in the morning and you'll think oh i want to see how that did is that more or less shameful than posting something to instagram maybe after several beers and forgetting that you posted it and then you wake up and you see you have a bunch of interaction you're like ah shit what did i post last night

what's no you're sadder because you're no you're being you're you're being chill about it you're just tossing it out there you're not like you know waking up at three in the morning to go use the bathroom and then checking you know your stats on twitter seeing how many impressions you got you're just like oh i took a picture of this thing i can by the way i can always tell when you guys are going to the eagles because of the photos that i see of your walk and i know spots on your walk yeah i'm like oh man they went to the eagles that's awesome but the idea that you just take a picture of something interesting and post it and then don't think about it again i think is a

much more chill way to be about this well yeah except i think often some of those photos are on the way back from the eagles and i'm posting things that i have to then uh realize in the

morning oh yeah i did post a photo that video you posted of the of the plastic bag that was

just floating around oh right deep right like super deep yes it's like mind blowing plastic

bag whatever that's just ugly but there's actually beauty in that yeah i think so too i'm glad you

recognize it there's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll you can't just listen to your soul just remember that life is number one you can be having so much fun just remember that All right, Luke, are you ready to blurs?

Oh, I have been ready all week. I've been waiting all week for Blurs Day night.

Andrew in Columbia, Maryland says, Happy Blurs Day to Rachel in Pittsburgh, TBTL's celebrity therapist Who regularly calls in From her best friend Andrew In Columbia, Maryland Thanks for your love and consistency Did you know we had a celebrity therapist?

Now the question is Is Rachel a Therapist to celebrities Or is Rachel herself a celebrity Who is also a therapist? Oh that's a really good point I think that she is the celeb In this case Rachel what kind of Thank you.

insurance do you take i need a therapist yes i would it be i i think it would probably be an issue this has come up before in the hypothetical i think it'd be an issue if my therapist also listened to tbtl there have would have to be some sort of reason why that's not allowed because this is some kind of weird therapy session in and of itself i don't maybe it would be useful maybe it would be sort of like extra information i feel like

you'd have to pay the therapist more. There's just like a lot to dig through, right? Right. Like that's like a lot to ask.

Could I get a, do we have a therapist who's a dazzling donor and we just tell them you don't have to donate anymore but you do have to start giving Luke therapeutic feedback based on the show?

Based on the show. So not special sit-down sessions but you've listened to the show for a week and then you...

No, your donation is analyzing me. I don't think you're ready for that, Luke. I think you're right. Maggie in Swarthmore Which is outside of Philly Says I'm sending a happy birthday to Myself Seems weird to send a message to myself But getting to hear greetings In your voices sounds like a treat So here it is Happy Blur's Day Maggie Yeah happy Blur's Day

Maggie you know what Maggie's got Maggie's got A Henry doll Just like my big Henry and my little Henry She sent me photos Yeah. Wow. Pretty cool. And I think hers is an in-between Henry doll, by the way. It's not as big as Big Henry and not as small as Small Henry. It's not big enough to play Risk? No, it's big enough. Yeah, no. All the stuffed animals played Risk with me, even Pluto.

Now, is that dog, is Big Henry still somewhere, like at one of your parents' house?

Yeah, every time this comes up, I think my sister sends me a photo. So I think Big Henry and Little Henry are sitting on a rocking chair.

Of Big Henry blindfolded, holding a newspaper to prove what day it is, saying, send the money.

It's in the Teriyaki Madness font. No, I send her money every month just to keep storing it for me. Because I think I'd probably be a little bit sad to know that they don't exist anywhere. But I also know that there's no way in God's green earth that we're bringing, especially Big Henry, into this household. Genevieve would leave me before the delivery person even got here. She's not into unitaskers. No. But it can play Risk and Monopoly and Spoon with me and be the Big Spoon. Yeah, that's the thing. Big Henry, Little Henry, you get the Big Spoon and the Little Spoon. Rachel in Maine says, I'm writing to wish myself a happy 36th Blur's Day. It's a big year because I just finished my family medicine residency and 11 years of medical training. Congratulations, Rachel. Wow, Rachel, that's incredible. Rachel says, I started listening when I started this whole wild career change, and I can't wait for TBTL to calm my nerves as I start my new job as a rural family medicine doctor in northern Maine in the fall. All right. Congratulations. You're putting school behind you. You got a job already. If you end up, you know, on jury duty, you could be a rural juror. It's all coming up, Rachel.

I want to know what kind of saucy license plate Rachel's going to have. Oh, yeah. Before Maine clamps down on it. Yeah. Good point This is amazing I'm sorry Rachel

I was just trying to think of what would be a body license plate Related to your new career

Rachel was 25 years old If I'm doing the math right And decided hey I want to be a physician And launched on the journey Of becoming a doctor And now Rachel is turning 36 You did it Rachel 11 years of your life And now you're going to be out there Helping people in rural Maine This already feels like a real all creatures, great and small, some kind of a, you know, call the midwife. There's a PBS series in this for Rachel. Rural, Maine, doctor. I love it. I love it. So happy Blurzay, Dr. Sex. Brett in the U District says, listener Brett here wishing my delightful self. It's a real theme this week, Andrew. I like it. A happy belated Blurzay. I keep listening through the Thursday messages and then slapping my forehead when I realize I forgot to email again.

You're forgetting your own birthday. Who's in trouble in that scenario?

Yeah, exactly. Well, Brett, congratulations on riding this big blue marble around the sun one more time. By the way, that makes an appearance in our favorite Netflix show, Andrew. It literally says big blue marble, too. Oh, really?

I thought you were going to say it makes an appearance because I couldn't remember if we said that in a future episode that's going to be a summer game or if we talked about it on Netflix.

Oh, maybe we did. I don't know. My mind is such shit. We've been recording all these summer games episodes. After we do the regular show, and yeah, I'm in that mode where I can't remember what we said on what day. I just know, I only know one, there's one truth, Andrew, that is eternal and unshakable for me in this world. And that is, there are too many fucking ambulances in my neighborhood.

I can't hear it, we got Blur's Day music.

Oh, my God. I swear to God, people stop having medical emergencies in East Portland. During recording times, right? Like, that's all you're asking. That's all. Between the hours of, let's just play it safe, between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., okay? Banker's hours. How about 9 to 5? I'll give you 9 to 5. No medical emergencies, please. It's from 9 to 5. That seems fair. what about us i mean more than fair i am i'm hosting this event from here tonight andrew for the jefferson county land trust which is an amazing organization out there in jeff the jefferson county is where port townsend is the small maritime village of and we were doing a rehearsal the other day and like i swear to god 30 ambulances drove through in the hour that i was doing i had to keep muting my microphone i felt it was very unprofessional of me like i could see the looks on the faces of these nice people from the land trust going why would you a professional radio person rent an apartment in sonically one of the worst places you could i don't think

anybody was thinking that for what it's worth their eyes said it all really i think they thought boy can't wait to not have to do this via zoom anymore like everybody i actually said do you

think this is bad so they have a script for me but then you know me andrew the king of the ad lib you gotta punch it i said something like uh and this was just the rehearsal i'm just reading it and also kind of just you know freestyling and i said something like uh welcome to what we hope is the last one of these things we you ever have to go to virtually yeah i mean because i mean that's true right that's not insulting to them that they're doing i think we all agree we don't want

to be doing things on zoom anymore right i think so yeah or certainly i think events like this and And this is a fundraising event, I assume. It is. Yeah, I mean, the whole point of the fundraising events is, well, and again, it's not usually for me. But, you know, having a, you know, Genevieve is on a board of a nonprofit. And so there's a big fundraising gala every year or gala. I never know how to say that. I think I say gala now. Does anybody say gala? I thought I just misspoke and I was trying to.

I was saying gala for a while. I'm not kidding. Oh, that makes me feel a little bit better. I think I've heard people say that, but I think it's gala. But considering how many of those things I've now hosted in my life, you'd think I would know. Gala makes me holla.

Anyway, I was going to say that a big part of the fundraising thing is everybody gets to dress up and go and eat fancy hors d'oeuvres. Gala makes me holla, honey boo boo. I haven't heard that in so long. And so it must be a million times harder to raise money when you're not inviting them to some fancy place for a fancy night

Yeah, because the usual move is we're going to have some hopefully pretty good food, some drinks Everyone gets to get dressed up, which is fun for a lot of people, maybe not Andrews, but for some people We're going to get you in this room, we're going to get you a little bit lubricated And then we're going to remind you why this organization is worth supporting And that is a case that you can make a lot easier when you're all kind of inside the ballroom at the Sheraton in Seattle versus Luke broadcasting from the Ambulance District of Portland.

Luke B. Luke B. I think this one's mine. Susan in Shrub Oak, New York. I have Shub Oak, New York here, but I think that's a typo on my part. I think Shub Oak is actually a license plate that's illegal in Maine currently. That was Rachel's license plate. This is, of course, our dear friend, Susan, saying, wishing the happiest of Blur's days to Super 10, Jesse. Jesse is the living embodiment of curing global loneliness. Coincidentally, Jesse and I graduated from the same high school in Cincinnati, but the first time I met him, IRL, was when he came to my stepmom's memorial service two years ago. It was such a kind gesture, and it meant a lot to me and my family. He's truly a caring and empathetic person And is deserving of the very best Blur's Day ever That's from Susan to Jesse And Susan's not the only one who wants to wish Jesse a happy Blur's Day Do you have this next one there too, Luke? I sure do I can't find my awe sound effect

But just know that I'm awing It's a tuna, bro Right, that's almost the same sentiment Just know that I'm awing in my heart At that very nice message from Susan

about jesse and then you're right maggie in delaware who i don't think is maggie in swarthmore it's a two maggie thursday it is maggie in delaware wants to wish uh jesse a happy blurs day as well she says jesse was the first den to actually friend request me and it made me so happy i doubt he knows how happy it made me almost as happy as the morning of my last blurs day when he sent me a voice recording of him singing to me first thing in the morning that's so sweet Jesse, can I hire Jesse to maintain contact with all the people that I should be maintaining contact with and sending them nice messages and reminding them that I care about them? If that's a service you provide, Jesse, let me know. I'll give you a list.

Yeah, happy Blurzy, Jesse. Jesse has been a big part of the Stens community for a long time. Really, some glue helping hold everything together. Aww.

That's a tuner, bro.

And finally, Caitlin in Eagle, Idaho. Oh, we're out of music Caitlin in Eagle, Idaho says I'd love to send a special Blur's Day wish To Nicole of Worcester, Ohio Home of the Ohio Light Opera I'm just adding that part She's a kind, smart mom and scientist And I miss her dearly Happy Blur's Day, Nikki

Aw, happy Blur's Day, Nikki Did you ever attend the Ohio Light Opera in Worcester? Or did you have to record something there?

Yeah, I used to record things there And that was one of the recordings that we did there took a lot more setup than some of the smaller recordings we did. So I remember when we did gigs in Worcester with like, you know, because I was working for a public radio station that would record classical concerts and then play them back on the radio. WKSU, they got a wall of fame. Just look into it. Anyway, that would be a full day gig. And there was some restaurant that our boss, Joe Gunderman, would take us to. And so that meant we got literally a free lunch On the Ohio Light Opera Days So that was great I think it was a Greek restaurant I'll bet you Nicky knows what I'm talking about

I feel like light opera is probably the right amount of opera for me We did a whole thing with TBTL years ago Where we tried to save the opera And it was heavy opera It was Bluebeard's Castle And it was not light And it was a lot And I think I like light opera I like dark opera You would I like goth opera I bet you do Yeah you like sonic youth opera What are the chances we're going out with Bull and the Heather

Oh hey you want to Yeah we could do that I used to listen to something Luke called Glenn Branca Which I think I've mentioned the show before Because some of the Glenn Branca heads came out But like Some of the members of sonic youth Were also part of these projects By this guy Glenn Branca who would have, like, he would do, like, I don't know, like, he'd set up, like, 100 electric guitars and people, like, yeah, and they would be these big, like, I guess, electric concertos that were always just, like, big crescendos of noise, really up your alley.

Yeah.

Do you want to go with some Glenn Branca?

Absolutely. Can you, yeah, and then can you send me some links because I want to really do a deep dive on that. I'm actually not going to look at TikTok today. I'm going to just, I'm going to listen to as much Glenn Branca as I can.

Here's Symphony No. 1, Movement No. 1. Let's see if we can get this going here. It's just going to be, I'm sure it'll just be, it'll start from almost nothing. And then over 11 minutes, it will just continue to. Is this an Ohio guy? No, just like kind of a, you know, avant-garde noise music guy. I'm not actually going to play this as outro music. That would be bonkers. Also, wouldn't it be funny if we got in trouble for playing Len Branca? Wouldn't that be the thing? Oh, hey, that's, you know, there is, I will say that there is this droning sound that's

at the end of an M83 record. I think it's at the end of, oh, Fui, Saturday equals youth, if I remember right, and it's 11 minutes of just a tone. Oh, really? And I love it. I listen to it all the time. So maybe I'm not as anti-Glen Branca as you think.

Is this soothing right now? So we're only 45 seconds into an 11-minute song, though.

I really actually don't. This is not something that is at this moment. Now, if it just ends up with a massive cacophony of different kind of, you know, dissonant sounds, that would not be for me. But as far as just something that's like this, I could mess with this. I also feel like I could play it. Yeah, right? What's the line between art and Luke could do this?

Isn't that what people always say, that, like, people go into museums and they say, oh, my kid could do that Basquiat. All right. We're not going out with this for real. I'm sorry. I got distracted. What would you actually like to go out with, Luke? I wanted to go out with Hook by Blues Traveler yesterday. Okay, sure. You want to do that? Very rudely outvoted me. What did you play yesterday? I forget. I can't remember. Oh, you wanted to play that Carly. Was it a... Carly Simon? Wasn't Carly Simon, though? Who was it from the soundtrack of Working Girl? It wasn't Carly Simon? Maybe it was. Anyway, this is what my ears have been itching for. a little blues traveler coming at you on a Thursday. Hey, thanks everyone for listening. We're going to be back here tomorrow with a special Friday edition of the show. How is it going to be special? I'm not sure. I'll figure that out in the next 24 hours. You put a lot of pressure on yourself there. I just did. Why did I say that? We'll see you then. Until then, have a great Thursday. Stay safe, take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

That makes you feel welcome So in a truth of that's reflection But I've said nothing so far And I can keep it up for as long as it takes And it don't matter who you are If I'm doing my job It's your resolve, I praise Because the heart brings you back I ain't telling you no lie The heart brings you back Oh, man, she can rely There is something we miss I am being insincere Power out