Muse

Ah, enough. I just can't anymore. It's just, it's too much, isn't it? I just can't anymore. I can't with the everything. Not anymore. I mean, why? Why, right? I mean, you with the thing and then you you have your thing and you yes you right us all of us us all right you you you you and even you and if i have to do whatever it is that i have to do to do it then so be it so be it

I hadn't planned to lay it all out like that, but sometimes the right words come perfect. TBTN!

I put my heart and soul into this, but now it's either roll over for that sheriff like a dog or fight like a different, better dog.

Do you have any skill at all other than magically failing your way to the top? You guys remember the A-team, right? A-team? I'm the A-team. Mr. T, they were supposed to be on the run, but, you know, they were in a really distinctive van. Yeah, what was up with that?

And this, this is your master plan. Huh? Oh, no, no. Now, this is a whole other awesome thing. This is just a goof. Later, Taylor.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. To that end, we'd like a moment of your time to talk to you about video interpolation. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. We are living in the midst of a podcast boom. Coming to you from the shores of El Pacifico. California, got sunshine. And Ventura, California, the city of good fortune. where I was out this morning, getting those steps in, getting that jug on, and there was this moment, my friends, where to my left, the sun was coming up over Ventura. To my right was the Pacific Ocean with a bunch of surfers who were all just getting up on the same wave as a flock of pelicans. I don't know what in a, what do you call it, a Mitch McConnell of pelicans? What do you call it when you get a bunch of pelicans together? But the pelicans were just, they were flying really low in formation, just like a foot above the water as the surfers were all just kind of on the same wave and the sun was coming up.

You just drop in, just ride the barrel and get pitted, so pitted like that.

It was perfection. Oh, speaking of perfection, when I'm done here today with this here pod cart, I'm going to be heading out to Santa Barbara to the actual location of the Hidden Valley Ranch.

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

As part of the story that I'm working on for CBS about the origins of ranch dressing. So I'm excited for that. But I'm really excited for this episode 3496 in a collector's series. And let the fun begin. I had an amazing experience yesterday out in Santa Paula, California, where I met a bunch of rescue dogs, the kind of rescue dogs that are at a shelter, and they get adopted out, and then they get brought back to the shelter because they are just too hyper and wild. I'll say, what's up, dog? But it turns out that's the exact personality type you want for search and rescue dogs, as I learned yesterday, from my new favorite 88-year-old person on Earth. You're like the coolest person I've ever met. Her name is Wilma. She lives in an airplane hangar. She just stopped flying airplanes two years ago. And she's a real person. I know that all sounds like some Bill Braski stuff, but tell everybody about what I got up to yesterday. Oh, and also, I've got a couple of retail complaints, which I know the listeners just love. So I'll bring those to the table and also bring this guy to the table, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depiction of the tall ships. His fun differential is off the friggin' charts right now.

How funny is that? That's pretty funny.

He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle. out of Washington. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. Does the elderly couple that you became best friends with last week at the Hollywood Bowl know about Wilma? How are you navigating these treacherous waters? I am really kind of just, you know, what would

you say? I mean, I'm just sort of Tomcat in my way up and down the state of California meeting people in their 80s who are my new favorite people. Man, you start putting out

some garden gnomes and white landscaping rocks. And I think I'm getting a clear picture about the Luke Burbank I'm dealing with day in and day out.

You know, I'd always been worried about growing older, but now that I've made my new friends in the community, I can see just how much fun and how active one can be in their 80s. And I mean that in every sense of the word.

Let's have a serious conversation about elderly fun times here for a moment. shall we because we know that um as the baby boomer generation started entering various kinds of you know care facilities and um you know like assisted living facilities and also just

retirement communities yeah where it's like over 55 or something and i remember the story

kind of emerging 15 years ago or something as those as those facilities were were bringing more and more people in there's more sexual activity going on and um the the there is a rise in sexually transmitted diseases i don't know if you remember these stories luke yes it seems like you know we as a society have like kind of you know finally accepted the fact that you know just because you hit a certain age doesn't mean that you're leaving that part of your life behind right so all of that leads me to ask you a question about the local retirement facility um shags here in seattle shags right it's just shag no it's just shag okay are they leaning into that or is it a complete coincidence because we've talked about the commercials before right who's in them not lupinella sweet it is lupinella yeah yeah lupinella's advertising for shag you have a retirement community called shag the commercials are like you know you don't the fun doesn't stop just because you're old type of commercials are is shag referring to what i

think it is it's not it's like seattle housing alliance group or something more paper but but i i have always been struck by that name just because you know the britishism of it of course it means something very different than it means in the states and in fact i even launched off a fire tweet about that at one point probably watching a mariners game probably having a couple of drinks, probably seeing Lou Piniella, getting up to all kinds of shenanigans with these older but still very active folks, and then the fact that it's all called shag struck me as funny, and I remember putting that fire tweet out and getting very limited engagement on it. You know who I'm getting engagement from right now is Larry Stone, Seattle Times baseball writer, which I'm feeling excited about.

Did you guys have been interacting on Twitter?

Well, no, I just tweeted out something that he wrote in his piece this morning about how how the Mariners just somehow continue to stave off elimination. And only the really real heads will get these references because it's kind of a little bit old school Mariner. But he says, how are they doing it? Maybe it's smoke and mirrors, but it works better than smoke, S-M-O-A-K, and Miranda ever did. I don't know Miranda. I remember smoke. Just a couple of Mariners who were part of previous iterations of the team. Anyway, I thought that was funny. I tweeted out, I said, this is why I like Larry Stone, and then he liked it. Also, I was out in the wilderness yesterday hanging out with these rescue dogs, which I want to tell you about coming up. But when I got back to cell phone reception town, all of a sudden I had all of these notifications on my phone. I had a bunch of text messages that had just been waiting, and then there was a lot of Twitter activity, and it looked like somebody was, I think it might have been our friend Lynn, was sort of interacting with sam sanders of it's been a minute been a minute regarding tbtl yeah i saw that too and then i started following sam sanders which felt kind of thirsty but i was like you know you know i mean i've met sam not that i think he would remember me but i just saw that he was asking i forget what he said but like is there just a podcast where people are just reading a text thread and i think lynn said yeah that's tbtl then sam said i haven't heard of that And then I was hoping the follow-up from Sam would be, well, what is it, and how do I listen to it, and how do I become a huge fan of it? Yeah, right, and how do I donate? Yeah, exactly. Things trailed off a little bit early there. But something about the beginning of this show felt to me like we were really living up to that promise of just two friends just kind of looking at their phones and commenting quietly on what they're seeing. You know, going back just one second, I would like to... to um mention that i'm still a little bit hurt that the mariners never took me up on my marketing idea of having a smoking section um in the in the stands for people you know how the big maple had his uh what did you call what did you call the um the section that he had was it like the canada section hackton's it was it called the maple grove i think maybe right and you had king's court of course so i just thought you know having the smoking section for justin smoke maybe that's why he wasn't as successful as we had hoped can i ask you something about that about smoking

sections i was at an outdoor restaurant in portland the other night and somebody was like three or four tables away from us and they were smoking and i looked over at becca and i didn't at first i couldn't having dinner and i looked over i said is someone actually smoking right Now, this was a kind of a, not upscale restaurant, but like a, not a bar, right? Like, it was like a restaurant that had decent food. And although I guess because they have a liquor license and people do get drinks there, maybe that was why this was considered okay. But I was so put off by this person smoking like three tables away. But then I also remember, I kind of like the smell of cigarette smoke. Like, I don't mind it, actually. Like I don't want to be in a car with someone who's got the windows up and is smoking, which was a big part of our childhood if you're our age. But it like made me kind of – it made me – my knee jerk was to be annoyed at these people that were smoking, but it wasn't really doing anything to me. And I actually kind of don't mind the smell of cigarette smoke a little bit. It just somehow felt like an affront to me. Like you're making my nose do something. You didn't ask me if I gave you permission to make my nose have to experience this thing that you're doing over there.

was it such a rare occurrence that it took your brain a while to even realize what you were smelling yes because i mean it's something that like we you know i had a version of this conversation last night luke because i was at my local watering hole teddy's reading my book sitting at the bar um right near the door like you know the the bar stool closest to the entrance and they had the the door open to let air in and somebody was smoking outside and it was kind of blowing in and I actually had this thought as I was reading I'm like oh wow that the smell of that smoke in this instance is actually hitting me right I'm not one of those ex-smokers I I know some people who are ex-smokers and they kind of make a big to-do about smoking around them in a in like a positive way they'll be like no I'm an ex-smoker please though blow that in my direction if you want I love it have you ever like yes you didn't smoke so I don't know if you ever had that kind of conversation but sometimes when I was smoking a cigarette around an ex-smoker I'd be You're like, oh, I'm so sorry. This must be terrible for you. And they're like, no, I love it. I'm not like that. I don't kind of fetishize it, and I don't try to be around people smoking or anything. In fact, sometimes it'll hit me in a really bad way, and I won't like the smell of it. But every now and then, cigarette smoke wafting in, if there's enough airflow, actually kind of smells nice to me. But it is so rare these days. Like, okay, maybe not outside of teddies because you have, you know, regulars there who are going outside smoking. But just generally speaking, like, you and I grew up in the 90s. People were smoking all the time. I was smoking all the time. Like, you almost didn't notice it as much. I mean, and then think about the 70s where you'd get on an airplane and people were smoking. I mean, smoke must have just been in everybody's clothes back then. And in the 90s, like, I didn't know I was a smoker and everybody smoked. Now I could be walking down the street and somebody lights a cigarette like four blocks away and you can smell it because the air isn't filled with cigarette smoke the way it used to be, at least here in Seattle.

Right. It's like the parts per million of it. It's very noticeable. It's like, yeah, just because of how unusual it is. And, you know, I think that's part of like my knee jerk reaction was, oh, this is like this is violating a social norm. I'm smelling cigarette smoke while I'm eating. And then I was just I was just annoyed. And then I thought I actually don't I don't hate the smell of cigarette smoke.

While you're eating, though, that is a layer, too, that we should maybe add on here, too. And again, I think a lot of people actually have really bad reactions to the smell of smoke, especially while they're eating. I could see that. Like, I don't even know. Like, if I smelled that cigarette smoke smell that I whiffed last night, but if I had a salad or some lamb chops in front of me. That's all I eat now, salads and lamb chops. What did you say this weekend? We were just being silly. I don't even know if this will translate. But she said, I'm on a seahorse diet When I seahorse, I eat it Anyway I don't know if I would like the smell Of that exact same smoke if I were trying to eat

I think I also just like To get mad about things Yeah, sure I mean, I don't know what's been going on I actually feel like emotionally I'm in an okay place

right now but i feel like i've been getting also getting ticked off a lot about like today and this i just said this on the show the other week a lot of times either i'm just dealing with other anxiety that i'm just kind of now focusing on someone kind of for no reason or i'm running late and it's my own fault and now anything that anyone does that delays me makes me extra mad uh i actually got up pretty early this morning and tried to really like um make sure i was on top of things because i have a bit of a hectic schedule today and uh i was but when i was coming back to the hotel so first of all i had to run to cvs to get headphones because even though i have even though i'm literally surrounded by headphones right now andrew none of them are the right kind because of the way that we do this show i have to be plugged into a certain kind of i can't use bluetooth and i can't use one of the new fangled headphones that apple has now released uh so that they can make everything else obsolete so i had because their

plan is working it's so infuriating i know it's been like five years but it is so infuriating that those phones don't just take a standard jack anymore it is so rude to the customer it is and i

mean the problem is they ended up kicking 20 to sony because when you buy an apple product now you get a new phone or whatever it is anything they give you headphones with they give you the newfangled fancy headphones well i need the old fangled headphones because the the device that you and i use to record our voices has a an old fangled headphone you know out that you plug into like you know your sony disc man sport would have had or something yeah so i have to go to this cvs and like the the i i ran into this in portland too and this is obviously a a kind of nationwide thing but cvs has gotten rid of cashiers hmm they're they and like i went when i went into the portland cvs to get something there was just a line of people that were having trouble with the auto checkout and then a very nice but frustrated cvs employee who was standing there going yeah they're getting rid of a human cashiers please go on the website and tell them you don't like this because we hate this and now we just spend all our time trying to help people with the self-checkout instead of just being the cashiers which we used to be that's what and

that's that's what the employee was telling people please go online and complain about this because

it's bunk yeah wow well good on them because it is bunk yeah it was totally bunk and so i you know forgot about it and then today when i'm running into this cvs not really running late but just feeling a little anxious i guess about things and i go in and i literally can't find a human being in the cvs yeah yeah there you know and this is not to diss the people working at this particular location they're just in it's a huge store this particular one and they're somewhere in the back and there's no one at the front there's and then it's like i don't understand the business model of like the the how rampant the theft could it would seem could be must make it more expensive than just having cashiers like i could have robbed that place stupid i had to go find someone to point me towards the headphones to get the headphones and then they disappeared again and then it's on me to just like go up and self-report to this checkout machine that i'm you know but then here's the thing and this is where i'm this kind of relates to the cigarette smoke i was like this is such bs they don't have humans here and then you know what i just walked up scanned it paid really fast and left yeah and i was kind of like you know what i've also been mad about waiting an interminable amount while someone who is behind the counter of a cvs seems to be going slow to me yeah right so it's like what is it burbs like it actually i was like so annoyed and i was like practicing my speech to cvs corporate and i was like i'm gonna tell andrew about this and then i like get up there it scans the barcode i put my stuff in it was much fast they didn't ask me do you have a are you part of our wellness program i don't know why i don't want to be part of any wellness program at any of the major pharmacies because it just it's a reminder of my impending death or something dude i wouldn't belong to any wellness program that would have

me as a member like let's face it croucho mark said that look at me if you're accepting me of your wellness program man you need a better wellness ma'am i'm smoking in this cvs you really

Get me in your wellness program. So, again, it was like I was annoyed about the whole thing up until I realized it may be a better system.

It may be. I mean, we could just be right on the precipice here of just launching into, like, the most old man yells at cloud segment in the history of a podcast that has a lot of old man yells at cloud segments.

Yeah, that's something. That's a space that we've been playing in for years now.

But it is interesting to see this, you know, this continued evolution.

towards kind of removing, you know, like cashiers and other human being other human employees from stores, right? And like, it's not something I think about a lot. I've always liked having the option, whether it's a grocery store, or especially I think drug stores, you know, you're usually just grabbing a few things. So it's not like you often have a huge cart full of groceries so i think self-checkout is a great option it does unsettle me somewhat to know that this is probably a transition where eventually they'd like it to be there are no humans except for the security guards who will bonk you on your head if you try to steal something right i think that's what the what the guidebook says you got a bonk on the head i think um they go through training for uh non-lethal bonking um but anyway because if you bonk someone on the head wrong

They're going to wake up a genius And then you've got an episode of Gilligan's Island

Also I believe there's a Graduated care facility called Bonk Here in Seattle Yes

Give me a non Lou Piniella manager Chuck Cartier Jim Lefevre Dick Williams

Oh there that's perfect But anyway, Williams is over at Shag if you need it. I believe, you know, I have friends who are big fans of the Amazon stores here in Seattle where you go in. I don't even know the process because I haven't done it myself. I believe you go in, you scan your phone on their device, and then you just fill your bag full of stuff and you leave and you never have to check out at all. Have you done this? It seems like something that you would have tried.

No, I haven't been to those Amazon stores yet, but I'm I'm I'm fairly familiar with them. I think the issue for me, which is so weird, and it's my own internalized BS, is I think that they think I'm stealing something. In other words, like if I went into that Amazon store, it would be so hard for my brain to fully comprehend that I can just put everything in the bag and walk out. I'm almost having – I'm shadowboxing with this conversation. Same thing at CVS. It's like I'm not trying to steal anything, but I'm kind of like – I feel like – I would be suspicious. I guess this is my point. If I worked at the CVS and people were just coming in and grabbing stuff and leaving, and it's just like, yeah, hey, if you could, could you scan yourself out and pay? That'd be great. I would be thinking, yeah, no one's paying. Everyone's just stealing shit right now. And so I am having this weird imaginary conversation with whoever it is, Amazon, CVS, who's ever automated these things, that it's like I'm not taking anything, okay? Everybody relax. I'm following the rules. And it's probably because secretly I do want to be stealing.

I think it would be almost, I mean, I don't think you can get in without scanning, and then once you scan, it's impossible to steal because you've scanned in. I mean, the whole thing is you load up your bag and you walk out. You don't check out at all.

Right, I know, but I mean, our listeners, I'm sure, know how this thing works, but obviously you pick something up, and because you've scanned in, and now it's tracking you, and it sees what you picked up. I mean, how does it know what you put in your bag?

I don't know how the technology works, but that's essentially it. Like I think that like, yeah, so you put something in your bag and it knows I don't know if it scans you like kind of magically when you go out. I literally don't know how the technology works, but I don't think in other words, I understand if you were if you were in a self checkout kind of store that kind of like you were just describing at CVS. Then you could maybe throw a pack of gum on the scale and hope it doesn't trigger it and steal it. But I think you can't do that in these Amazon stores because that's the whole point. like you never check out you just load your bag up and walk out and somehow it knows um we we

should probably start getting towards break time but remember when i texted you and uh our friend broadcast barry on uh on monday and i was yeah furious i had screen capped what was going on with the avis rental car shuttle at lax or what was not going on with it i had an experience there andrew that i think it made me mad but i honestly think it may have you may have gone falling down on it if you would have been through this just because of of kind of the things that i sense really don't sit well with you rule following and the like or rule not following so at a really pretty long day on monday we recorded a couple episodes of the show i had to do uh you know other job stuff and then kind of hustle to a flight fly down to LA LAX was really busy it was one of those things where you the plane lands but then you're kind of like waiting for a ground crew to let you off the plane for a long time and then I still had to drive up here to Ventura which is another like hour and a half in LA traffic so it was I was a little frazzled and I I come out to the uh area where it's marked this is where the Avis shuttle will pick you up and there's a few other.

rental car companies that are going to all pull their bus in there and i'm standing there and uh the avis bus i can see it and actually the timing was kind of cool i got out there and only a minute or two later comes this avis bus i was like oh perfect and before the bus can get there this very conventionally attractive woman in a very conventionally expensive mercedes-benz pulls into the area where the rental cars shuttles are supposed to go so that she can pick up her very conventionally attractive boyfriend and he jumps in this fancy car with his fancy lady and they kiss and they're kind of just having a great old time and because of that the avis bus has to stay they can't pull in so the guy is kind of now the guy driving the bus is kind of just sort of slowing down in what is just the moving lane of traffic and i usually my instinct on things like this is to overdo it it's to run out to the bus it's to start waving frantically and usually that's overkill so i look at the bus and i give him a wave like oh hey i'm standing where the avis pickup is how are you yeah there's this mercedes here but you know i'll see you in a minute because i figured like he might get annoyed if i go out into traffic and try to get in the bus

sometimes bus drivers I mean I think there's a difference between a shuttle driver and a bus driver probably with some of this stuff because I think that city bus drivers probably have to follow more specific rules I don't know about that claim but anyway yeah sometimes they don't want you to to like if they're if you're waiting for a bus but it's behind two other buses they won't let you on the you have to wait where you are and they will pull up to you to follow all the rules

sometimes right so i was trying to be kind of chill for once in my life and i don't know what happened but next thing i know the mercedes-benz speeds off and the avis bus just keeps going and it is one hour before there is another shuttle bus those people in that mercedes-benz cost me one hour of my life and i could not stop thinking about and practicing speeches i wanted to give them and yet andrew i would have 100 if i was driving the mercedes also pulled into that lane this is why there is an irony this is why there is an irony to my anger that's why i said it would make you mad because you would follow the rules and so your outrage would be justified mine is hypocritical because i don't follow the rules generally and i just got stung by that that murder hornet of rule not following just stung me but it was i couldn't get over it because then there were no more buses i'm on the app i'm calling them i think avis at lax is going through some staffing issues because the last few times i've used in the shuttle bus situation is kind of a mess like it just takes forever sometimes there's like people training on the bus like there's people sitting there taking notes which tells me they're trying to hire new people really fast they

probably don't have enough folks oh you know also yeah because obviously i guess because of um the pandemic that would have hit all of the kind of services around travel including rental cars so they're probably always i do listen i'm not an apologist for these giant rental car companies that in my experience have offered pretty subpar customer service across the board i don't deal with them i barely deal with them at all compared to your travel schedule luke you're not a wizard I'll let you speak. I certainly don't know wizard. Yeah, no. But I don't want to apologize for them. But I do understand that, man, it must be really hard to figure out staffing on any kind of a level, big or small, especially in any kind of industry regarding travel, when the ground is constantly moving underneath us as far as like travel restrictions and what's going on with the pandemic.

Yes, but some places seem to be handling it better And again, this is a small sample size And I bet you it was just the particular hour I was standing there But I shit you not There must have been 15, like, Hertz Whatever their other, like, Hertz, I think, has teamed up with Hertz National I'm just sitting there watching Hertz National, Hertz National, Hertz National And I'm like, and we have no, and yet we have no Avis buses Like, someone has found a way to really staff up their shuttle buses, and it's not you, Avis. But, yeah, I was. Hurts Donut. I know. I almost said Hurts Donut. It's so hard not to think Hurts Donut when you hear Hurts. I know. So, anyway, the good news is, obviously, the bus did come, and they were playing that song. Step back, you're dancing kind of close. I feel a little poke coming through from you. Which is a song about someone getting a Yeah I know what it's about Getting a boner on the dance floor But it for some reason really improved my mood Who does that song? Lou Piniella. Do you think that you'll be invited to this couple's wedding? No. Answer me this question before we go to break. What does, aside from practicing your rage speech to them and what you're going to say to the corporate HQ of CVS, I guess that's going to be in the future. What are you doing to spend this rage hour? What are you doing? Are you just standing at the curb, scrolling through your phone? I'm texting you and Barry.

I'm tweeting at Avis and then deleting it, which I actually try to – I try to not do that a ton because I don't – certainly I have very little clout online on Twitter. But I have seen people that have much more clout than me hit a point where they're trying to use Twitter to just get to a company that's treating them wrong or – which, again, I understand the impulse. And I've I've given into the impulse many times, but I do have a little part of the back of my brain that's like, don't like don't use this these 15,000 egg followers to try to like don't misuse this very small amount of clout you have. You know what I mean?

Yes. I mean, I guess you're looking at it from the kind of a I mean, you have you definitely do just have a bigger profile than I do. So maybe that's not something that I need to consider as far as like people knowing who you are. I'm still relatively an anonymous person, except for the people who are hearing my voice right now who know I do a podcast. But the thing for me is, and this has been said a million times on a million podcasts, I'm sure. But the problem is you don't want to muddy up your Twitter account with this. It's an ugly look like tweet. I don't care who you are, whether you're J-Law or Andrew Walsh. Having a tweet that is kind of complaining about public service is not a look that is good on anyone, right? Like you just don't – I mean just you don't want that. But these companies put you in the position where it's the only way to get their attention sometimes. And then if you actually do have clout, even more so. But like if you're just like standing in line and saying like, no, I reserved a car. No, I reserved a car. Where's my car? Where's my car? and they can just continually just not be helpful the second you tweet that out because i've done this this is one of the rare times i tweeted out it was when we were in atlanta and we had a car reserved and it wasn't there for us and it was the holidays finally when i tweeted something out then we were able to you know that's right because we're trying to call we're trying to call the number and not getting through but then you tweet it out and suddenly um you have their attention and they're how can we help you dm us privately and it's like why are you making me throw a public

tantrum about this i don't want this on my timeline right what i do if i do break down and really my my tweet to avis was more intended i guess to be funny than scathing because i knew there's nothing they can do about it like the problem is they don't have enough shuttle buses also the traffic is crazy at lax uh and so i think i tweeted out a picture the thing same thing i sent to you and barry and i said something like avis we're called customers we exist or something because the little screen cap shows they're like, there are no buses in your area, and it's literally like a map of the United States with no Avis shuttle buses existing. But then for me, the key is this goes for the Mariners, this goes for corporations, any of the places that I turn my heat laser of rage at sometimes, I just delete it later when I'm not mad. So, you know, that's the perfect crime. Yeah, you got it out. You didn't go falling down. Right. Okay, let's take a quick break, And then when we come back, I want to tell you about what I've been up to the last couple of days down here. And also we'll do some emails and V-mails. So don't go anywhere. This right here, this is TBTL. All right, let's thank some donors of the day. These are the generous folks Making today's episode possible With their donations And we really do appreciate it Folks like Owen Therrett Of Sarnia, Ontario Ooh, the Chronicles of Sarnia I think there's something Isn't there some kind of Well, there's Dr. David Sarno Who is He was, I believe I guess I could say back expert His whole thing was You should never Agree to get back surgery Because back pain is all in your head Which seems crazy But Howard Stern swears by him And I even once bought my neighbor Rich My former neighbor Rich A copy of Dr. David Sarnow's book

About back pain Where is the book really? When you buy gifts for an imaginary person What do you end up doing with them? I just leave them on.

the front porch of the people that actually live at the house so they were very confused yes um also luke waters is in seattle washington luke waters run deep right that this ha ha pretty good

hey how about this hey luke i am your father oh wow from luke to luke you think i would have a

little more respect i know because luke's get you know luke's getting it coming and going he's got Because Waters, you can do a lot with Waters. Exactly. Both of his names are cool, but they both lend themselves to very sad little jokes like I just made. I'm sorry I did the Star Wars thing. What about Keith Brewster in Chardon, Ohio? I've been to Chardon, Ohio. It's Eastside, right? Eastside of Cleveland, I believe. Isn't there... I could be wrong about that. It's Geauga County. I think I was out in... There was Geauga Park where I did a TV story once. I think that's in the greater Chardon, Ohio area. That's about weddings, right? Yes, that was. Surprise weddings, which was a lot of stress because we didn't want to. We were trying to film it without also blowing the surprise. They come up with a very ridiculous reason to explain to people why there was a film crew at what they thought was an engagement party. Right. That's right. Oh, there was some awkwardness around that. There was. There often is when I'm working. Yeah. Jamie Carpenter's in Murfreesboro, Tennessee I'm digging this Geographical distribution Sarnia, Seattle, Chardon Murfreesboro That's a great name, Murfreesboro How about Melissa Carr there in Painesville, Ohio

Painesville South of Cleveland, I want to say

Oh, where the Cleveland Guardians play

That's where the Cleveland Guardians will be playing not in painesville although if they lose i guess you'll be oh no that is not south that is

that is um that is northeast ohio they're up we haven't talked about that on this show much that i can remember but um you know the cleveland uh the team was called the cleveland indians they've announced their new name it's cleveland guardians because of those big statues which are the guardians of cleveland but it does definitely feel like that was news to even clevelanders it was news to those things are called the guardians i guess yeah

It was news to me. That's one of those things where a lot of people wanted me to weigh in. Like, what do you think of the name Guardians? And maybe it's because I do know, you know, big fans of that team that weirdly I was like, not my business, sort of. I can't explain it. Like, I have opinions on the names of teams all the time. We talked about the Washington football team just going by the Washington football team now for a second season, which I'm surprised about. But the Guardian thing, like, at first blush, no, I don't love the name. Like, it doesn't strike me as a baseball-sounding name. It sounds like XFL or soccer or something. But then they say, well, it's named after this specific thing that locals know about. And, you know, the locals I talked to, they didn't seem confused by it. They seemed to know. I don't know if they were just faking it. But, you know, they seem to know about these things on the bridge that they're the Guardians of Cleveland. And it's like, oh, well, if it means something to you, like, good, I'm glad. I mean, it's one of those things where I just hope that the people who root for that team like it, because other than that, I don't really have I don't really have a dug on that flight.

As I wrote on Twitter again, to little acclaim, was the Drew Carey theme song Cleveland Rocks baseball team even considered? Wow. That would be the full name of it. Yes. If you're not into the whole brevity thing Right, right, right Hey, we also have to thank Brian Dast in Portland, Oregon Our good friend, talented musician, recording agent All around cool guy, Brian is also supporting the show And we really do appreciate it Brian, who's made some of my favorite Christmas music Because he's got that pedal steel going Do-do-do-do-do Merry Christmas

Wow Because Brian also did all the El Ropo remixes for us Oh, got it Oh, I love what that Yeah, yeah, yeah Sorry

Hello and welcome to Top Story Andrew, I think I found my calling It's clearly not podcasting And I think the listeners will agree But I was out in Santa Paula, California yesterday at this thing called the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, and this is like the coolest place. We're doing a TV story about it because what they do is if it turns out that the dogs that make the best like search dogs for searching for people that might be like in, you know, if there's an earthquake or a building collapses and they're kind of looking for people in the rubble, we're really. smelling for people are the dogs that are the most hyper dogs at the shelter and so this place has this system where if you're like you're running a shelter somewhere in america and you've got a dog that just like keeps getting sent back because it's like really really hyper and really obsessed with toys like they will though you can reach out to this place and then they will send you this instruction thing of like basically some tests are run on the dog like with and you videotape it and you send it to them and if they think the dog has what it takes they then will transport the dog to this cool ranch not cool ranch like i'm gonna go find out a ranch that's uh pretty amazing and uh and then they audition for the program and if they make it in they are trained for like three years to be teamed with firefighters and so there are all these firefighters you know these fire departments in california and around the country that now have these these amazing dogs it also helps that a lot of them are labs so you know i was like seeing a lot of i mean they're not like rudy like rudy is a english lab and she's she's a fun dog but she's not cut out for this these are more like american labs that are kind of super athletic i didn't know about this distinction in labs english and american do they i only know them by color right like yellow lab chocolate lab or um well like english labs call it the loo or they say put that in the boot and but it's different for american labs can a yellow lab be either american or english so for instance rudy is british and therefore she is less athletic she's less lithe her body is just a little her note her face is a little more smushed and kind of kind of got a blockhead and if you know if she eats like one quarter of a cup more food for a week she's put on like 12 pounds somehow whereas the american um labs tend to be a little bit more trim they're a little longer a little leaner and um but anyway just hanging out yesterday oh so this is a thing that they have built

this woman wilma melville uh who got into this in like the 90s she was like in her 60s and in the 1990s she's she was telling me that she used to like to ride horses she lived out here in this part of california she used to like to ride horses but then the horses needed a break two days a week because it was like the horses just needed to like chill so she was trying to find something else to do in those two days i was like i do not relate to this approach to life wilma um but she was like well i want to learn how to train a dog really well but for something useful and so she found out about this like search and rescue thing where you you train these dogs to be able to like go into a rubble pile and find someone just based on smell so she started doing it she got really into it she went to oklahoma city after that bombing with her dog and she was there working and trying to help and what she noticed was there was a lot of civilians there who were good who had good intentions but like their dogs didn't really know what they were doing like it was just kind of a free-for-all like people just wanted to help obviously and so she was like there should be a better system for this and so she came back to california and she basically convinced the fire departments of california that they needed to start having dogs kind of like the way police have canines and she developed this whole program and raised all this money so they have this facility that has like all of these different scenarios that they run these dogs through so So, like, these rubble piles of different kinds of rubble, depending on what the building might be that collapsed, they have basically a kind of mini version of, like, you remember when the Bay Bridge quake happened and the Bay Bridge collapsed? They have that, that the dogs run through. So, you have these, like, so what happens is one of the trainers, who's also a firefighter, will go hide in the rubble, like, in this special tube where you can't see them. and then they turn the dog loose and the speed at which these dogs will find the one human in this like massive pile of crap and then they get this toy and they are so excited to have this little chew toy that was in some hole with a person it is like the coolest thing to watch, it's my new calling, I'm retiring from podcasting to go train these dogs Three years is a big chunk of a dog's life too It is. And that was the other thing. Like a lot of these, you know, fire, you know, fire folks and first responders that have these dogs, it's like these dogs live with them. So if you do this program, this dog is with you 247 and your family. And then you and then the dog like the whole website of this National Disaster Search Dog Foundation. half the website is just in loving memory of gracie in loving memory of bowser like because you get these dogs and then you outlive these dogs and it's a bad system that is the that's the bad part that's the point is that Your commentary part of the CBS story, it's a bad deal for the – it's a bad deal.

From Santa Paula, California, reporting, this is a bad system.

This is a bad system. And also these dogs, it sounds like they're not – in some cases, like when you're talking about dogs that were maybe sent back by their owners because they were too rambunctious.

Oh, they're freaking nuts.

But I was going to say, though, it's not like, hey, from birth we're going to train this puppy. So the first three years of this of this dog's life is the training like you might be getting a dog that is maybe several years into its life, then three years of of training there. It's like they're spending their retirement years doing this work.

One of the folks said that these dogs, the way you describe it is it's like a Ferrari that has one set of tires. So in other words, this is a very high performance animal once they get them trained. but you kind of get a limited run with them you don't get to just like so you have to be also this rubble that they're running on is like you know in a real scenario like these dogs go to like haiti they've been to every hurricane that's happened in the u.s they get you know they get deployed with their handler to go like wherever in fact the one guy was telling me once a year they get all of the dogs onto a plane and just fly somewhere take them all off and then they put them back on just so they're used to being on planes oh wow yeah they can put them on helicopters it's called a hot load easy with the shag jokes um and uh like it's just i was i was so fascinated but i also really wanted to play with the dogs but they're all wearing those things that say yeah i'm in training and i was like please can't i get down in the dirt and and play with this very good boy i mean everyone was pretty cool but it wasn't like when you're at the tsa and they're, like, very much not okay with it. Like, I might have snuck in, like, one or two little pets. But it was, like, a situation where I wasn't there to play with the dogs, even though that's really desperately what I wanted to do.

Yeah. Do you think CBS is interested in a story where I just lay down and puppies run all over me? Because I'll give you that exclusive if you want, if CBS provides the puppies.

We talked about the story last week but didn't actually get to it. one of the largest hotel chains in the U.S. is going to start charging $25 to use the swimming pool. Oh, yeah.

What's up with this? Are they trying to lower the cost of spending the night, though,

or is it just an added expense? Apparently, I mean, the way they're pitching it, it's MCR Hotels, which are listed as the fourth largest hotel owner-operator in America. Thanks to Supercrackers. Right. i'm not familiar with their hotels um they're not it's not a bonvoy situation is what i'm trying to say but the way they're pitching it is they're going to actually lower the price on their rooms by only charging the people who want to use the pool for the pool in fact this was an argument that i once had to explain to a u-dub basketball player who was not interested and they tried to jump through the window actually they were a football player of dick's drive-in and um grab me and they missed and they caught their shoulder on the glass and it broke it cracked the glass of the dicks driving in lake city you're familiar with this i forgot you were practically assaulted

because you told them that you can't switch up the ingredients on a burger you couldn't give

them extra ketchup or something right i was just trying to explain essentially adam smith and the invisible hand i was just trying to give them some simple economics maybe you could even say aynrandian economics uh which was they what this person was mad about was that it was five cents for ketchup like a side of ketchup and they said you don't have to pay for ketchup in mcdonald's and i tried to explain much like this hotel company is uh sir we only charge the people who want the ketchup for the ketchup which means everyone else doesn't have to pay for ketchup side note i think that's slightly bullshit now that i think about it i mean like it's just a cost of doing business what it is is dicks you know that company is very smart and very savvy with what they do i love that place still to this day but they just figured out at some point oh we're giving out a bunch of free ketchup and this is costing us money we can probably charge five cents and so they did but i mean if you're trying to if you're trying to make an economic argument i guess you could say uh like i'm never we talked about this recently on the show as far as indoor hotel pools I think I'm done in my life ever using an indoor hotel pool maybe an outdoor pool if it seemed especially pristine but I may be done with hotel pools now if I ever have young children again I'll have to sit by the pool watching them splash around but I guess my point is this is slightly a good deal for me because I probably wouldn't need to use the pool particularly if

on like a work trip like this yeah you know that for me i i only know this story to the degree that you've

explain it to me here so i don't know all the ins and outs but at first blush it seems sort of shitty because i i feel like this idea that they're going to lower their prices is disingenuous like i just don't think that there's going to be savings elsewhere but in a certain way i look at this i'm like well i never use the pool anyway i guess it doesn't really affect me but generally speaking i don't think that's a good development because let's see did this article also say

possibly charge for gym access as well i was early check-in i think they're now they're gonna charge 20 bucks officially if you want to uh check in early or check out late yeah and i think we can call it the a la cartization yeah of american life and it's happened on the um which was ira's second name for his show the a la cartization of american life i think this american life was probably better looking back but i don't know you know what i mean it's like in a weird way it almost seems like this connects back to the initial conversation about going into stores and just picking things up and scanning them on your way out like life is just changing in this country in these small kind of ways that end up when you add them all together being very large which is most of the time now if you want something that used to be a perk you just got to pay extra for it um which if they actually lower the overall price of the thing i guess you can make the argument for it but i'm kind of with you i think what usually happens is they take away something they charge you now for something that used to be free and they don't really reduce the overall price so it's just a new profit stream for the airline or the hotel or the whomever yeah i mean

for me like kind of the obvious comparison here is the you know airline saying hey we're gonna um try to you know save save uh costs by charging only for people who want to check a bag or check an extra bag or the you know they tried to a la carte eyes that as well and it's like as a traveler i'm not like reveling in the savings when i'm not checking a bag i mean they're so screwing you at every at every uh every chance they get not unlike at shags so um anyway i uh sorry that's that's the extra s is for sexy oh by the way is shag something that you grew up with is that why to To me, I thought it was like a new kind of facility, and they were maybe just winking and nodding towards the idea of sexual relations, for lack of a better word.

With former Mariners managers. Exactly. Because that's the thing. There is – what I feel like is going on there is – and the subtle joke is – or not even joke, but the subtle kind of plot of it is Lou Piniella, who obviously has a lot of social capital, a lot of cachet. He was the manager of the Seattle Mariners. He was a star player for the Yankees. It's like Lou Piniella is rolling up to Shag, and all of the women are Twitterpating. They're pretty excited that Lou Piniella is there. And again, a lot of people have lost a spouse, so they're single and they're ready to mingle, or maybe they're in an open relationship, or whatever the deal is. It just feels like Lou Piniella is definitely making some special friends there. That being said, Shag has been around since my childhood. And so I think the name precedes these commercials that I do think that the subtext is that Lupinel is having sex with everyone at the home.

Okay.

The fact that it's been around.

Including possibly the men. The fact that it's been around for that long. Now I understand why you have that different perspective on it. Yeah, I thought it was really kind of like.

hosted sorry to go ahead on you there by um a guy named um steward anderson who was the um he was the founder of the steward anderson's black angus steakhouse restaurants oh and so for when i was growing up it was steward anderson was the which is again also like an odd like let's hire the guy who has um some semi-successful steakhouses in the neighborhood or in the the area yeah to tell you about retirement but it just used to be i'm stuart anderson for shag yeah why dude what stuart

like advertise your own company why what's that seems so weird to me it's like it's like having jack-in-the-box advertise a hotel like well we got the guy with the big head to advertise uh motel six like well no i mean he's got hamburgers to sell here i go once again with the email every

week. I hope that it's from a female. No, man. It's not from a female. I mean, nothing

stops a train, Andrew. I think you've heard that. Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. Why you would just say that there, but okay. Apropos of nothing. Apropos of nothing, coming back from a break. But I do have some emails for you here. Sweet. Oh, did you see this? Now, I haven't triple-checked this, but listener Jeff forwarded me. Oh, did you hear me? I can't. Listener Jeff. That's a hard word. Forwarded. Forwarded it from the rural juror.

I have been noticing a lot of the people on Levitard's show, and now I'm hearing it elsewhere, too, say forward.

Forward. Yeah, that's a New York thing. Oh, is it? Well, I noticed it when I lived in New York. A lot of the people that I knew that were native New Yorkers would say forward.

I see. Yeah, I hear that. It's easier to say forward, but it's actually forward, and that's what I was going to say. Jeff forwarded us an email that he got from the Wall Street Journal, one of those kind of like rundowns of, Here's what's going on in the news today. And I'll give you, like, the headline and a one-line description. And it quotes an article about the Jeopardy situation. Do you remember that Mike Richards, the guy who was announced as the new host of Jeopardy and then stepped down in disgrace, he had taped one day's worth of shows, which is a week's worth of shows. Like, you know, a production day is five shows. And they apparently did go through and record a week's worth of shows in one day right before everything came crumbling down. And apparently those will air, according to this Wall Street Journal blurb. Jeopardy! audiences will still get a brief glimpse of Mr. Richards helming the show. The five episodes he taped on Thursday, his first and last day in the role of full-time host, will air as scheduled in September. That is bizarre to me. I find that incredibly hard to believe, except I guess I'm forgetting about the fact that these are real human beings who are contestants and they have a lot riding on it. You can't just scrap it, can you? Right, exactly.

That's the complication. You have these – you feel bad for somebody who, like, won an episode of Jeopardy and then what are they going to do? Come back to them and say, you've got to do it over again because that person is not the host anymore? Now, what if you don't win the second time? Like these things have occurred and you kind of have to respect the outcome. But it's I mean, it seems really it seems really unfortunate. I also just think it's so funny that they actually that morning got up and taped all of these shows. You had to you have to imagine that Mike Richards felt like a person who's committed a crime in a country that doesn't have extradition with the U.S. And, you know, when they're on the airplane, there's that scene in movies where someone's trying to get out of a country. And then when the plane just goes wheels up And you just know I'm safe I made it I wonder if when they started like rolling on the first episode He was like I made it I'm doing it Like this plane has taken off There's no way they're going to fire me tonight at 6 I'm doing the show This is happening They're stuck with me Like he must have thought he was wheels up

Like in a football game When you realize that the referees made some sort of mistake in your favor and they could still overturn it but you got to snap that ball as fast as as possible because once you snap it they can't go back

and reverse it again i always think of that or or like when a judge in idaho has decided to dismiss your speeding ticket but you want to just kind of like take a minute to check back in on his thoughts on the person you share a name with that's called the opposite of snapping the ball yeah bad idea

there here here's a fun story for you this is from listener scotty our buddy scotty um you were talking about oh did you get your um how'd you come up with that um do you and j-dog just sit around and come up with uh nicknames for people um did you ever get your sport coat back from the

dry cleaner like now you're on the road no but i talked to someone there who went she was very nice she's the daughter of the owners at the new location or the other location and she walked back while on the phone with me and got eyes on my jacket which is it's there it's accounted for now rei is a whole other story and we don't really have time to get into it maybe tomorrow but i'm in a thing with rei about this tent oh no and it's the opposite of what i went through with this dry cleaner whereas they actually were being helpful i feel rei is not being as helpful as i would like and maybe we can talk about that on tomorrow's show okay cool um well scotty had a

situation uh with the dry cleaner sort of disappearing on him as well this happened 10 years ago or so i took my beloved peacoat to the dry cleaners a few weeks went by and my friends noticed that i hadn't been wearing my coat i told them i dropped it off at the dry cleaner but never heard back they were like it doesn't take that long to dry clean a coat i called them no answer decided to walk by on my way home the building was gutted by a fire oh no the gym upstairs fared better so I asked them if they had any contact info. They gave me a number so I called it and left a message. Turns out someone called me back. They had remembered me and my peacoat. They had taken it home to sew on some buttons so it survived the fire. We met up to get it back and I still have that coat to this day. That is a crazy story. I love it. I love this story and I love just the care. I mean I didn't know that the dry cleaners were taking their

Thank you.

work home with them and also it doesn't sound like maybe he just left this part out but it doesn't sound like scotty even really took it in to have the buttons repaired it sounds like they just noticed it and wanted to like kind of do a good deed man if i were a dry cleaner i'll tell

you what i'm not taking home with me my work yeah right like and and we may have listeners who work in that industry i have to tell you i'm not cut out for that when i go into the dry cleaner and i see that there's somebody who's just pressing and i actually kind of like ironing like as a civilian i even once did a hey dummies video i was trying to show off my iron ironing skills like i don't mind ironing my own stuff but like to just have an an never-ending river of other people's things that you've got to clean and wash and hang back up and put in those plastic things it gives me agita and i would just not be i would i would want to get out of there asap and then i would not want to bring it with me so it's amazing that that person was actually doing that for scotty's coat i know i love that that's really that's a that's a good

story now i have one more email here but let's save it for tomorrow because uh listener bill in toronto do you know that listener bill in toronto isn't bill in toronto anymore i don't it's wait what hard to change it's bill in kingston ontario now oh yeah bill did you even

consider running that by us well we're just let's say bill in kingston you didn't even i mean we've kind of gotten pretty locked into bill in toronto and torontan like that was the whole thing for years and then you're just gonna up and move anyway bill would do that says the guy who moves

Every six months now Anyway Bill has a Email here with a question about Tipping etiquette thought it might be Something that we can kind of chew on

Tomorrow I was trying to google Bands from Ventura County Because I thought oh maybe we can go out with that Kind of song I couldn't find anything is it possible I mean this seems like a Creative place I'm shocked like blink 182 isn't From here Yeah, me too

It's funny, like I didn't have a name At the tip of my tongue But that is actually the type of thing Yeah, that's interesting

I just would think every manner of Wait, when I type in Van Cher

I get Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Oof

How about Free Fallin? At least he mentions Ventura Boulevard Yeah, I was wondering about that When you drive up the 101 From LAX To this place you just basically drive through the song free i know you just see receipt of boulevard uh you probably see ventura boulevard mulholland you're just like well this is where tom petty was when

he wrote that one yep yep i loved that that was one of the those cultural things about la that i really loved i wasn't somebody i'm bad at like kind of spotting celebrities so that wasn't like a big part of it for me um but like yeah just seeing the street names and thinking that i'm In a Tom Petty video It was a very Very big part Of my LA experience But yeah I like that Let's go Oh no

Hold on Don't say anything That was one note Of a song Okay You gotta guess Was that Sophie B. Hawkins As I Lay Me Down to Sleep

It was not It was It was an album I was listening to yesterday Our friend Maybe I'll play it For Music for Your Weekend Or Tomorrow or something Our friend David Of The Smitten Suggested a band Called LA Exes First of all How good is that as a band name? Yeah. LA X is like your ex-partners in LA LA X is anyway. I was listening to that album yesterday. You heard one note of a song called cocaine girl. Oh, sure. I used to work with her. Yeah. But anyway, no, but we're not going to go out with that today. We'll go out with free falling.

All right. Thanks for listening. Everyone. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that until then. Have a great Wednesday. Stay safe. Take care of yourselves. And please remember no mountain too tall. and good luck to all.

She's a good girl Loves her mama Loves Jesus In America too She's a good girl What's crazy about Elvis Loves horses And her boyfriend too And it's a long day Living in receded There's a free way Running through the yard And I'm a bad boy Cause I don't even miss her I'm a bad boy For breaking her heart And I'm free, free falling down.

we're just a bunch of savages right we're not like your fancy california friends here george clooney and your california raisins power out