Muse

There is one country that worries me, though. Not Iraq, not Iran, not North Korea. The only country that really worries me is the country of Germany. I don't know if you guys are history buffs or not, but... In the early part of the previous century, Germany decided to go to war. And who did they go to war with? The world! It had never been tried before. And so you figure that would take about five seconds for the world to win, but no, it was actually close. Then about 30 years pass, and Germany decides again to go to war, and again it chooses as its enemy the world. And this time they have that guy, scrankly, scrankly, that guy. I'm not even going to dignify him by saying his name, but I think you know I'm done. But you'd think at that point the world would go, listen, Germany, here's the deal. You don't have to be a country no more on account of you keep attacking the world. what do you think you're on mars or something tbtl

usually i don't think my brother's that much funny but i gotta give him some credit for that that's a pretty good spoof would you say that to tom petty this cat is from upstate new york He's not a downtown fancy cat. He's blue collar. He works at a lumber yard.

You wouldn't say that to Tom Petty, would you?

And that's satire. Right? And that's irony. And that's coincidence.

Is it a metaphor? I don't believe you're seriously considering listening to these men.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

We're getting medium play on three independent radio stations in Central Europe.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You're still doing a podcast? Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center. High in the sky above Portland, Oregon. I may just have to stay in this apartment, maybe for the rest of my life, because there's something going on in this apartment building with the elevators. Like, one of them is maybe out of service. And if I need to go downstairs, it's, like, right the last couple days, it's been, like, a 30-minute wait for an elevator. This poor door dasher who was bringing me some food the other day was, like, downstairs waiting to come upstairs forever and ever. So, I mean, it's a pretty gilded cage, I'll be honest with you. It's pretty nice up here, but still. If you need me, I'll just be standing in this window looking out on the streets of Portland and doing a podcast, which today arrives at episode 3,511 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Really sad news yesterday at the passing of the great Norm MacDonald.

Number one on the college charts this summer was Better Than Ezra. And at number two, Ezra.

We will take a look back at the career and the impact of Norm MacDonald Who was 61 years old when he passed away He'd been privately battling cancer for many years We all learned yesterday So we will remember Norm MacDonald Also, we'll talk about this just excellent piece of journalism By Bobby Allen over there at the National Public Radio concerning a guy who was hanging out in the audience, if you will, at the Elizabeth Holmes trial. She's the one in trouble for Theranos, the blood testing company that was a giant fraud. There was this guy that's just like hanging out in the courtroom and he's talking to reporters. He's eating Rice Krispie treats really loudly. And he says, I'm just, I like to fix up cars. That's what I do for my job. Anyway, interesting story as to who the guy really was. brother who are you what are you doing i'm with the news dude so we'll talk about that and we'll do some emails and emails and we'll talk to this guy longest running cobro on the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he is an activist and a house party enthusiast 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 who's got four finger eight fingers two thumbs and just completed their goals for the

year in the apm thrive system you consider the thumbs to be different than the fingers i well

as you can see from my uh real smooth delivery there well no i really got caught up i really got caught up in that semantic argument in my head as i was talking it's a great question even

And I think if you've stumbled upon something that is good fodder for the show, which is our thumbs fingers, because, well, you know, people will say you got 10 fingers. But really, a thumb seems like it's kind of from a different situation. I mean, it's they are opposable, famously, and they just don't look like our fingers. They just have they're they're noticeably shorter. Is this a part of the show where I describe what a physical thumb looks like? Andrew, the human thumb is noticeably shorter than the other fingers.

Because I said – I want to come up with a joke here, which I'm really famous for doing on the fly successfully. But I do – because at first I said I have four fingers. But, of course, if you're not counting thumbs, I have eight fingers. That was just a misstep on my part as I had to do some math on the fly there, some pretty complicated math. But now I'm trying to figure out, is there a joke along the lines of who has four fingers and just fixed the lawnmower? There's something like...

I'm sure that there is some version of that that's some kind of an old tattered sign that somebody has up in a garage. A garage that permanently smells like gasoline that's leaking out of a lawnmower. Yeah, right. And old grass clippings, you know that smell. By the way, one of the greatest smells on earth, for the record. like a garage that's actually being used for things like working on cars and or yard tools, etc. I love that smell.

Yeah, that somewhat sweet smell of old grass clippings that have clung to the bottom of the lawnmower after you mowed and the grass was still probably a little bit too wet and then you put it away and it's in there for a few weeks or a few months. It's not like the smell of freshly trimmed grass which is another amazing smell. This is a little bit different, what you're talking about, right? The shed smell, the barn smell.

Yes, exactly. That is just a little bit different. But, I mean, we're jumping ahead. We're jumping right into spring smells when you talk about fresh-cut grass. We've still got a whole – we've got a ton of fall smells in front of us. I know you cannot get enough of that pumpkin spice. Everything, the candles.

I need to try a damn pumpkin spice. Like, we went through this whole thing of people loving it and then people loving it And also other people hating it and making too much of a deal of it. And like all this time, I've never I've literally never had one of those lattes. It's a latte, right? Pumpkin spice latte. Is that what it is?

I think so. Although I think you can add it to any number of drinks. It doesn't have to be a latte or as my dad, Walt B, would say a latte, which is one of the many endearing things about my dad is he to this day thinks it's latte. My dad also drinks a latte every single day of his life and has – before people even – before Starbucks was really a thing, my mom and dad had a fancy coffee maker who would make lattes, and somehow they think it's latte, which I find very charming.

And don't they go to Ikea to have their lattes now?

They – for a while – I don't know if they're still doing it, but for a while there was a really good deal on lunch at Ikea, which – I mean if I'm Ikea, let's call it a loss leader. Yes, absolutely, of course. How about free lunch? And then we sell you a couch or something. But, yeah, they would go to the Ikea there in, like, the greater Silverdale area where they live, and they would get lunch. And I think there was some kind of a reasonably priced latte that they could get with some sort of Swedish meatballs or something.

I should try one, though. Have you tried a pumpkin spice? Because I think that we're – I bet I would like it. I think most people are – and I've been this way for a while. Like, so – I don't care if people are drinking pumpkin spice. Like, I care more about the people who are making a big deal of it and making the same tired jokes and, you know, replacing the idea of having a real personality with not liking pumpkin spice. Like, whatever. Everybody can just drink their own stuff. But it is weird that after society has toiled or debated or, you know, litigated this for so long that it never even occurred to me I should just get one. I don't drink a lot of sweet stuff.

I bet they're flipping delicious. What you should really do, Andrew, is you should buy one for the person behind you in line. Did you create a heartwarming situation?

I don't know if we read it on the show, but since we had that conversation on the show about, you know, a listener called in and said that she did not want to, quote unquote, pay it backwards, but felt social pressure to when she was in line at the Starbucks and ended up paying more for the car behind her than she would have just for her own order, which was paid for by the car in front of hers.

Like, there's this thing that's going viral from, I think, a former barista who is just saying that, like, it is a complete pain on the employees. It's hard to deal with. And also, how about you just tip us? I think that was essentially, boy, it's funny. This was sent to me, like, a hundred times, and now I'm blanking on the details of it. But, yeah, there's something going viral that is basically, like, I am ahead. I am in front of all of these backlashes. I'm in front of the backlash to the backlash of the pumpkin spice. You front lash. I'm front-lashing all the time. Yeah. I put that in my goals. Oh, you did? Good. And you filled out your goals, so that's also good. Yeah, exactly. I didn't put a lot of time into it. I figure it's like this.

This is one of the rare times where I actually slightly had the inside information and was able to kind of coach you up on this, which is, I mean, I'm noting it because it's about once every 10 years. It's like Haley's Comet, I think. It's about once every 75 years. i have slightly more intel on what we're supposed to be doing than you do i'm not going to get into

the details of why this process seems like so much bunk to me but all i will say is suffice it to say it's not just merely like sitting down with your supervisor and saying hey these are some things i want to work on personally and this is how it could benefit the company like it is the system that i mean the actual you know kind of physical way you enter it using the computer is just kludgy as heck but you're kind of used to that the fact that when you save it it gives you an

error message and just save it again exactly you know what that's a feature not a flaw andrew but

also just like and then having to align it with these other just made up other goal it's like it's a it's an arduous process that seems just really superfluous to me to say the least having said that i'm glad to have a job i like working for american public media people have to do harder stuff than this i don't want to turn this into a show where i complain about these hr things we've We've done plenty of that on the show. But what I did, my approach for this one, because, again, you have to crawl up into this system and, like, try to, like, translate these other things and align your goals with these other goals.

You have to ladder up the corporate goals with yours, Andrew. What I did was I decided, you know. Why do I have to keep explaining this to you? It's a classic laddering up of your goals with the corporate goals.

In my entire career of having to fill out some sort of goals, you know, I never like doing it. But I think I always try to be a very good boy and, like, try to – I'll start writing in, like, sort of corporate-y kind of speak sort of, like, in order to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This time I'm like, no, I'm not going to – like, let's just do a first draft on this. Let me just give a one sentence – not even a sentence. It's a little fragment of what I'm going to try to do. Let's run that up the ladder. If it gets kicked down and they say you need to do some more, okay, fine. But let's, you know, let's just test the waters here. Let's just do the minimum and hope that we're all on the same page. That's what I did. That's good. You Burbanked it. I Burbanked it. Now let's see if I get Burbanked on the head when it's actually read.

I don't know. I was, you know, I could write, I think, it would be kind of rich coming from me because I am somewhat of a procrastinator at times, and I'm not the most on it person when it comes to stuff that I'm not interested in, like, you know, things about having a regular job that are tedious. I'm bad at doing those things. But I do actually think I may have stumbled upon something, which we could call Burbanking it, which is kind of what you just did. And it's what I do a lot, actually. It's the day after one of the most influential comedians of our generation passed away. The day after I went to an amazing backyard concert featuring one of my favorite singers in the world, which was an amazing way for me to end the day yesterday. And where I want to take this is actually talking about Chrome River expense system and my thoughts on it, Andrew. Because I want to really just try to start At the most scintillating news of the day So I For a long time when I would do these expense reports Because I don't incur A lot of costs related to TBTL That have to be paid back by APM So we talk about concur sometimes On this show if you and I have just done A trip and we have to file some expenses But that's pretty rare particularly right now But I'm constantly needing to do this for CBS Because I'm always traveling on their dime And I'm always trying to get them to pay off the Amex card that has my name on it that's their card and in the beginning times i used to wait because it's a very complicated system and i'd get a lot of error messages and i would just wait for months and sometimes the bill would be like twelve thousand dollars they'd be like we're turning the card off it's like you're not gonna be able to go on your next assignment and it was created a lot of agita for me and then i started doing this thing where so the first thing is you just have to create a you just have to kind of create like a a report right so i would tell myself it's like i'm watching the mariner game and i really don't feel like doing but i like just start the report just name the report what's the name of the story you were on you know fill in the blank okay now you have a report it's like just take the easy things on here the things that are not complicated like if we take a lift it actually automatically populates the receipt as well i told you this was going to get interesting that was good so it's like just get the low-hanging fruit and so then i just start dragging the easy ones into this We'll be right back.

file that I've created you know in the system and then it's like okay so this one's kind of hard this hotel because you got to itemize and you got to account for parking and taxes and whatever it's like just put this one in there but don't itemize right now just put it in there so it's at least in the right place and I just go through and I organize the whole thing and before I know it I've either done all of it or I've hacked it down by about 90 percent so then the next day I'm like all I have to do is this two hotels and that's like that's a manageable thing I mean I'm just describing something poorly here that i'm sure lots of efficiency and organizational experts have already made up better language around but it's like so in other words as it relates to our goals yeah the goals you and i both wrote in and the descriptions we wrote in that system are are probably pretty brief pretty um using some real economical language there but it's a jumping off point for us to talk to our bosses about and i find that when i take that approach to things i

actually get them done yeah you know this there's something about this particular goals process especially this year um that it has been giving me a lot of anxiety and i'm kind of realizing this now like these were originally due at the end of day on monday at least for our supervisor i think there's a lot of like um sorry about the cat who's there's no genevieve here today to wrangle the cats and theo is he was being loud but um i'll take care of that in a second not in a violent way um but anyway i just had a lot of anxiety about this over the weekend that it was supposed to be done by the end of Monday for our supervisor I think there was some buffer built in there but I know that you had been talking to our supervisor and told her that we're gonna be a little bit late and she's cool with that and she was you know so that gave me a little bit of extra wiggle room and then you and I had a conversation because you had talked to her about the ins and outs of how to actually do it you and I had a conversation about it yesterday then I happened to have another meeting with another colleague that had nothing to do with goals but since everybody at the company is doing it we end up kind of talking about goals this is a totally different department by the way this is eric in engineering and the viking of the viking and so and first of all that was helpful because that reminded me that i have colleagues again too there's something about not working in the same building that you can sort of feel alone on an island with these things whereas if you're in the kitchen refilling your coffee and you can just say hey eric you fill out your goals yet and kind of joke about it and then find out what he's putting in his and like these side conversations that we're missing from our work life I do believe is impacting my job and in my life in some ways all of that is to say today when I finally sat down to do it it took me 15 minutes I spent a long time worrying grousing feeling anxious about this task that took me 15 minutes and when I was done I said to myself that took me 15 minutes but the truth is it didn't all of that process got me to that 15 minutes you know what I mean if I hadn't talked to you about it yesterday and you hadn't talked to Beth about it yesterday then it would have taken me more time to figure out the system and that just casual conversation I had with a colleague was also kind of part of the process it reminds me of like my friend Josh who's a reporter when I used to work with him at New Hampshire Public Radio he spent a lot of time he'd he'd go you know recover something but then he'd come back and even though his deadline was maybe in three hours to get the the story on the air he was spending a lot of time just kind of wandering around and talking to people kind of about the story and I realized oh that's kind of part of his process just because he's not sitting there with headphones on actually typing doesn't mean he's not writing the story he's talking about the story he's airing it out he's I don't think he was thinking about it in those terms but that's what was happening and that's what I did with my goals

I this is to this is kind of to the side of that but when I was a producer of a of a local call-in show on KUOW in Seattle and really what that mostly meant was booking the guests I remember when I I left that job, and they were looking to hire my replacement. I was talking to our buddy Ross Reynolds. Oh, yeah. And he said something to me. He goes, I'm trying to figure out how to sort of look for this in the next person that does this job. He goes, I don't know how you did it. It sounds like I'm humble bragging, but it's not. I think it was slightly a backhanded compliment. He said, like, for most of the morning, you're just doing nothing, and I'm stressing. And then you always just somehow, at some point, you know when it's time to, like, call the right person to get them on. Like, I was pretty good at booking, actually, because I kind of thought it was a fun challenge. But he was basically saying, like, I don't know what your process is. And it seems like you're just kind of joking around with Bill Radke for about the first two hours of the day. But you somehow always come through. So how do we figure out what that is and how do we make sure the next person has that? Right, yeah. My takeaway was, oh, he's been sitting there listening to me bullshit between 8 and 10 a.m. every day just with like a pit in his stomach growing because he's the host. Now that I'm a host, or at least when I started hosting Daily Talk stuff, I started to really feel so bad.

about what a kind of unreliable producer I was, but anyway. But it sounds like you weren't unreliable. That was your system. I guess I was reliable, but it was like... And him saying we need to hire somebody who is also like that is a little bit off because it kind of doesn't matter what the process is. It's about the results, right? So maybe you have somebody else who is more studious who comes in and carries a clipboard like me and wants to look like I'm stressed out when I'm stressed out. I realize that's a big part of me being a producer, by the way, is carrying a clipboard and, you know, walking around with a grumpy face so that people know I'm under deadline. Like, that's a very different approach, but you and I probably both got the job done. Did you ever throw your clipboard?

Because I feel like half of the reason to have a clipboard is so then you can throw it angrily. Not like at someone.

I think a big part of it is like banging it, right? My clipboard, which I still have here, the one that I have carried around to various jobs and now just sits in my bottom drawer, is actually missing a, I think that's the one I still have, is missing the bottom corner. It's, like, broken off, and that's kind of a cool look because then people think that you did break it in some sort of producer anger, but it's not true. I inherited it that way, but I do like giving off that vibe. Also, an unrelated tweet just came in front of my eyes from our pal OldFriend99. It says, if Pink Floyd weren't on drugs, the album probably would have been called Regular Side of the Moon.

speaking of jokes we got to talk about norm mcdonald but let's take this break first because i think it's gonna you know otherwise we'll be taking our first break about an hour and a half into the show yeah so let's let's do a break we'll come back we'll talk a little bit about norm mcdonald uh and uh and also what's going on at the elizabeth holmes trial in just a moment here on TBTL. Stay with us. Let's thank some donors of the day. Folks making this episode possible with their monthly support of the program. People like Kelly Hedgecock in Kernersville, North Carolina.

I don't know where Kernersville is. You know, before you said North Carolina, I was putting it in the Midwest. Maybe I'm thinking of a corn connection there.

There's a lot of villes, like in Ohio and stuff. Everything's a vill.

And also, maybe it's like Kernel. It just felt like a rural place in the Midwest where people have corn farms. But no, I'm wrong about that. It's North Carolina. This one's in North Carolina.

I forget who it was. I was talking to somebody. It might have even been a guest that I was interviewing for Livewire or something, like, before we started the interview in earnest. I was talking to somebody about North Carolina because my granddad, Farnam Burbank, ended up retiring to New Bern, North Carolina. And I was talking about New Bern, and then the person said, did he live at Fairfield Harbor? I was like, he did. And they were like, that's where my parents live. What? It was like this person's parents had lived in the same, like, sprawling retirement, you know, kind of, it's like, you know, 55 and over living community type thing called Fairfield Harbor in New Bern, North Carolina.

Nice. I feel like when you say that my grandpa Farnham, most people think that you're making it up. Farnham just sounds. Farnham? Yeah, because is that the grandpa's name on The Simpsons? Am I wrong about that?

We have Abe, right?

Right, Abe, right. Okay, yeah.

So Abe Simpson is Grandpa Simpson. But yeah, Farnham is... I've never heard that name. I think his name was Farnham Moss Burbank. That's a hell of a name. It's like Liv Moss Farnham Moss. That's right. He actually invented that idea of living moss. And living moss for him was carving wood ducks out of solid blocks of wood and turning them into ducks and painting them and smoking pipes. I'm not here to advocate for smoking. This is not what we usually do during the donor message, but I'll tell you what, you want to like just have S-G-E, strong grandpa energy.

Okay, that's the show title.

Smoke like a really kind of just like nice smelling, I don't know, cherry tobacco or whatever, something. I just would, we would go to their house and it would just smell like pipe smoke. And they, you know, it was like a newer home because it was in, you know, one of these kind of recently built communities and just seemed so nice to me. The carpet seemed plush and they probably they had good snacks and and lots of lots of ducks that he had carved. That was that was living Farnam Moss.

Before I start this music again and we get back to the task at hand. Yes. Something that you just said, you said you were interviewing somebody, which reminded me of a question I had for you today while I was waiting for my bagel sandwich to be ready for me. didn't you say that you're interviewing Fran Lebo

is that not like a oh you're in portland anyway you're not interviewing her on stage for an event

you're doing it for live wire is this correct it's for an event actually she's just coming through town um as part of a you know a tour that she's doing and uh it's going to be at the schnitz here in portland which is kind of like the which is sort of like our version of the paramount right

okay you know what that make i forgot that you're not like a seattle guy anymore because i was scrolling through my Instagram and I saw a big ad for the event and it said that David Schmader was going to be joining her on stage to do the interview and I'm like I thought Luke was doing that did Schmader just like bump Luke of course no you're honestly Schmader is

going to do a better job you're the poor man

Schmader I've been saying it since the beginning

we've all been thinking it so yeah no I think I'm supposedly I'm handling the one in Portland actually David Sedaris is going to be here in a couple of days and you know because we actually managed to land him on a tbtl once upon a long time ago i think i might still have his email address and every time he's coming through a town that i'm in it's so hard for me to sort of fight the urge to email him and be like you want to come beyond livewire or tbtl or just hang and it's like his touring schedules are famously punishing you know like he'll do like 50 cities in 50 days and he has a whole ritual it's like you know it's like he doesn't he doesn't have a lot of spare time and he's a couple times I've interacted with him he's been incredibly polite but like I heard an ad on OPB yesterday he's going to be in town in two days and I had that old feeling of like should I try to email David Sedaris which is just dumb because if he even has taken time to respond to me that's just

taking time out of his life but also but live wire is the is perfect for the type of thing he does like a public radio live on stage interview thing it just I mean two days out doesn't give you enough Room but I'm kind of surprised that You know you didn't get him on the show

Well I mean part of it is

That sounded accusatory Sounds like I really just threw your producers under the bus

Well part of it is Is that You know He's going to be here for one night and that night He's doing his show right So that kind of makes it difficult And then also part of it is David Sedaris does not need To be promoted on Livewire Like you know what I mean in order to Let more people know about his writing It's like So he doesn't To the degree that he I think he came on TBTL years ago As a favorite to Ira Glass Literally I think I bank shotted that one Or something I have my last email from Sedaris It's from me Hi David, November 6, 2013 Do I just read this cold on the air? I mean I guess, what's in there? Hi David, I know these tours Are grueling for you and full of annoying requests like this one but my name is luke burbank i work on a number of public radio shows and have had you on my show before thanks for the thank you card with a horse on it it was really thoughtful of you oh that's right anyway if you happen to have any downtime in seattle and want to chat for my radio show or just wander through a mall together while i hold a tiny digital recorder i would be overjoyed um nothing uh and uh okay thanks for reading luke and then uh and then his response dear luke thanks for your kind remarks concerning my story oh i had also mentioned something about a piece that he had written and how it resonated with me over some sort of family stuff of mine anyway that's more like personal he said thanks for your kind remarks for concerning my story and for thinking of me i won't have any extra time in seattle though sincerely david nice very polite very polite like unfailingly polite as you might imagine he would be but didn't really feel like the door was wide open for me to say what up d hey hit me up in portland we'll go to

the doug fir we do not have um a subscription for this foolishness a subscription to the new yorker in our house anymore although this is probably available online for free i'm not sure but i saw that he had a piece in the new yorker very recently i think i got the publication right there talking about the language we use around death and the idea of did i lose a battle with cancer was it a battle or all those types of things that we tend to say it sounds like you've

read it yeah well you know what becca read it to me aloud as we were driving to our labor day camp out i love that and it was you know it was kind of he writes it from you know he just they lost their father uh pretty recently and um and and he sort of writes it from the perspective of being at this kind of like um you know dinner i guess memorial dinner at a greek restaurant where he is fielding these questions and and having people you know say the kind of things that i think people tend to say when you lose someone and it comes from a place of people trying to be make you feel better like well they're in a better place now or they're looking down on you or you know these the terminology that we use around death sometimes i think to make it less scary to us yeah he's sort of piercing the veil of all of that and it's

Thank you.

As you might imagine, very funny, but also very trenchant. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got to read that. Or actually, if Becca wants to read it to me, that would be pretty cool.

Absolutely. That's a service she provides. Weirdly, she's on the Calm app, and I'm not. And I have been lobbying for years to be one of those bedtime story people. Another bank shot. All right. Oh, it's a Burbank shot.

That's what we should have said there.

Burbank shot. Wait, what did we already decide? A Burbank shot. Strong Grandpa Energy? Yeah, no, that's going to take a really good show title to knock that one off the throne. Well, that's nice. So we've got that in our back pocket. And we've got Kelly Hedgecock supporting us, too. So we've got that going for us. And we have Anastasia Todd in the Boogie Down Bronx, New York.

See, now, Bronx, that sounds like a Midwestern kind of rural. Idaho, maybe? Yeah, kind of Idaho farm country.

Definitely, dolphin-tly. Thanks, Anastasia. We really appreciate your support. Trina Bivens over there in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Thanks, Trina. Trina's been supporting this program for a good while now, and we really do appreciate it.

I did guess that Colorado Springs would be in Colorado, just so you know. Yes, you did.

You definitely got 100% on that one. William Hartman is in Oakland, California. There's an Oakland, Michigan, too, where he could be from, but he's not. He's from Oakland, California. Beautiful Oakland, California. Land of the Oaks. Elaine Luck is in beautiful Maple Valley, Washington.

Also landed the elves.

I bet you they've got some good pumpkin patches out there. If you want to get your— Yeah. If you're trying to go hardcore, go ham on some fall-time activities, head out there to Maple Valley. I also feel like that might be where Brandi Carlile is from, the singer of great acclaim. And then Hemi So is in Alameda, California. Hemi, thank you for supporting our little program for all these years. We've been interacting with Hemi for a good while. So, again, thanks, everyone, for making this thing possible. Even if the press releases about the place we work are talking about all of our cool things we're doing and they leave TBTL off of the press release, we still have jobs because of the donors of the day. So thank you so much. We wouldn't be here without you, quite literally.

Because love is like falling dew, gone and forgotten, oh, thanks to you. Thank you, baby.

Hello and welcome to Top Story. Well, Top Story around here is the passing of Norm MacDonald. Very sad news yesterday. I don't really know how many people were aware That he had been battling cancer Although it's funny, I say battling cancer

Yeah, right, that's what we were just talking about

And he literally has this bit that I was watching I mean, the sad part of things yesterday Was that Norm MacDonald died The unexpectedly happy part of it was I spent every break I had I really had a lot of work going yesterday But every time I'd have like 20 minutes of downtime i was like watching another norm mcdonald clip that was either sort of a classic or one that i didn't even know about he had this bit that he did on that exact topic andrew of uh not liking the terminology that we use uh around uh a cancer now or or illnesses like that where it's you know

it's terminal have you have you heard this bit from him i saw it in a tweet yesterday was it Your tweet, did you tweet it out? Because I know exactly what you're talking about. Somebody tweeted out his quote, which was about, I don't think that, basically, well, I'm going to ruin it. You go ahead if you have the audio there or you want to say it. But it's about cancer, like losing the battle, or was it a draw is basically the.

Right. Let's see here. I'm trying to grab this on the fly here. What I find interesting about this is that this bit is, first of all, really funny. But also, it's, you know, it's something that he was also very likely dealing with at the time that he was doing this bit, right? Yeah. Now, okay, what I'm going to play here is, it's not the thing I was watching yesterday, so this might be the wrong thing, but I think this is what we're looking for. It's him talking about an uncle of his who is dealing with a particular kind of cancer.

That's all that'll get you, a heart attack or a cancer. That's the other thing, you know. My Uncle Bert, he's my great uncle, but we call him Uncle Bert. he got bowel cancer now he's uh he's dying of it you know and uh or like uh some people like to say now they see in the old days a man could just get sick and die you know now they have to wage a battle so my uncle burt is waging a a courageous battle battle which i've seen because i go and visit him and this is the battle he's lying in a hospital bed with a thing in his arm watching matlock on the tv instead of that battle i i got him the box set of matlock but it's not his fault what the fuck is he supposed to do it's just a black thing in his battle and the reason I don't like it is because in the old days they go hey that old man died now they go hey he lost his battle that's no way to end your life you know what a loser that guy was last thing he did was lose he was waging a brave battle but at the end i guess he got kind of cowardly was what happened and then the bowel cancer it got brave you got to give it to the bowel cancer you know they were in a battle and then what the fuck and i'm pretty sure i'm not a doctor but i'm pretty sure if the cancer dies i mean if you die The cancer also dies at exactly the same time So that to me is not a loss That's a draw

I had only heard the part about the draw That was the part that I had not heard But I had seen it quoted I know that was long On a day like today I'm really glad to hear it Let's go long with the tape God man I loved him so much Now I gotta be honest I can't say that I kept up with him Like you mentioned before the show that I had forgotten that he had that Netflix show several years ago now, right? He had kind of a talk show.

Right, yeah, it was a talk show. It was like Norm MacDonald has a talk show or something like that.

And I think I remember seeing trailers for it and thinking, this is probably kind of slightly edgelord sort of humor, like how far can we go with the edginess, which isn't something that I'm really attracted to these days. And also, I just loved him so much growing up. And maybe when I did, you know, as a kid, And maybe I did have more of a stomach for that That I also just didn't want I didn't want my image of him to be too tarnished I think Maybe I'm just making up excuses now All of that is to say I did not keep up with his career But I will say that I was a huge fan of his Before he was even on SNL We sometimes It's been a long time It's just kind of dark But he has this bit in a stand-up routine That I know that I saw before he was on SNL Where he's talking about Can you imagine You know Being one of those people who goes and kills your entire family because the devil told you to do it. But then after you do it, it turns out it's just your friend Bob. And boy, aren't you embarrassed. Oh, Bob, you really got me this time. Oh, look at me. Got an egg on my face. Like, I remember quoting that to, like, my parents, to my friends. And I remember when he got the gig on SNL and thinking, like, wow, he's really making it. And I was a kid at the time. And I didn't think of anybody else who I knew before they were on SNL. But I was always just such a big fan of his. and that type of humor and the more I'm reading about him and people sharing memories of him and highlighting different parts of his act like part of it is sometimes he just wanted he just kind of wanted to shock you sometimes for real but there's a lot of heart in what he was doing in the way that he looked at life and then turned life into jokes and like that thing you just played right there, that really moved me it's pretty profound actually it's really dark, it's hard to listen to at times but it's really profound and it's really moving especially knowing now that that was probably him working out some of his own feelings about potentially where he was with his disease. I don't know if the timeline lines up on that. I'm just totally speculating here.

Yeah. Well, that was what struck me about it because it was fairly recent. That wasn't from his days like when he was on SNL. And so if the – if he was dealing with cancer for a decade, the chances are pretty good that he was sick at the time that he was recording that. And, yeah, you know, I will say this about Norm MacDonald. Like, I thought he was funny. He's very, obviously, dry and in a lot of ways really high concept. And sometimes the concept went over my head. Like, one of his really legendary performances is the Roast of Bob Saget, where he came out and just did – he intentionally did jokes that were corny and that were going to bomb in the room as this kind of meta experiment. and everybody who really like knows comedy performs comedy does comedy it was a legendary performance because it spoke to all the comedians in the room again it was this like it was three dimensional chess of comedy but then to to sort of normies like me i was just kind of like he's just saying jokes that are kind of corny right now you know so there were times that that his what he was doing

went a little over my head but i was listening to this another very famous moment for him on television was when he was on he was on conan's show a lot obviously um and he tells this moth joke i don't know if you saw that going around yesterday so the the basic joke is uh this moth goes into a podiatrist's office and i apologize for repeating norm mcdonald's joke although it's what they call a street joke this the actual joke is just like a joke that you know you could hear somebody telling you on a street corner but the story behind it uh as he was he was talking to tom power on q i was just like listening to some archival stuff yesterday and he was explaining this joke which he tells it over the course of like six minutes the basics of the joke are a moth goes into a podiatrist's office and it's moth is describing all of its problems and they're all like kind of psychological and emotional problems to the podiatrist and the podiatrist finally says that sounds really terrible but um you need to see a psychiatrist why did you come in here and the moth says well because the light was on that's the joke but and again uh you know like so but here's what norm mcdonald did and this is where i started to have a new appreciation for what a sort of tactician he really was with this these jokes basically i think it was like the day of he's going to do this conan appearance and they say can you stay you know through the commercial break and come and do like a second six minutes so you're going to come out you're going to do your first six minutes and then you're going to do and you're going to we're going to hold you over and he said this is what he told tom power he was like i just had there was nothing else i could think of to tell conan about so he's like so i had this joke and i just kind of thought well if i if i if i add a lot of detail to this joke can i stretch it out over six minutes so he's telling it like it's like a Russian short story like he's giving the moth this name of like Gregorov and he's like clearly making up the name of the children of this moth and it's sort of one part Kafka one part you know again like Russian short story like he's just doing this weird thing and he goes and I kind of had this feeling that if I got overly elaborate with it everyone would forget where the joke had even started so that when I do that punch line it'll be really funny because we'll have totally lost the thread and then he was like and it really worked out and it's it's like that was i've seen him because that's that that appearance is so legendary that joke is so legendary i've seen it a few times and i i

remember thinking clip or you've seen other people do it i've seen that clip of norm mcdonald i did

not know that story at all yeah i i'd watched the clip a few times and to be honest with you i thought it's it's pretty funny but i didn't understand how much was going on sort of behind the scenes in norm mcdonald's mind i think when he did a lot of these jokes like he would go out and experiment with all different kinds of ways of telling jokes and different like the distance between the punchline and the setup and you know what i mean like all this stuff that was i think he was pretty cerebral about this even though you know the better than the better than ezra joke that we played at the beginning of the show seems very simple but i i i guess the guy i feel like the guy had a lot uh going on cerebrally now you said andrew that you sort of didn't follow him as much kind of in his later career i weirdly did because he started to show up on a lot of podcasts and he was always a very interesting kind of storyteller and raconteur he also had a gambling issue which he was very open about which intrigued me about him i mean you know i wouldn't wish that on him but like he went bankrupt a few times because he was just like inveterate sports better and love to play craps and stuff and so that kind of texture to him was was intriguing to me um so i would like you know if i saw that he was going to be on a podcast like an hour of norm mcdonald just talking about comedy and his life and his gambling addiction and whatever else i always found that to be really interesting content so i was kind of following him a little bit. He also wrote a book that I didn't read all of it, but people were actually tweeting out excerpts of it yesterday. And it was, the parts of it that I was reading were so well-written. Like, very well, like, he was a good writer. Like, you know, it's not one of those kind of, oh, I'm a stand-up comedian and I just got a contract to write a book and it's just a bunch of my jokes kind of woven in. It's like him really kind of thinking about life and his place in life and sort of what it's like to get famous on SNL and then have the rest of your life be kind of defined by that like it seemed like it was a very thoughtfully at least the bits of it

that I read were really thoughtful this was the maybe this is my last thought on the topic but I don't know why I'm shutting down the topic I have one more thought Luke and then we have to move on no I just had several thoughts kind of jangling around in this empty brain of mine yesterday and one of them as I and I think you did a bit of a deeper dive than I did I was just sort of like every time I'd open up Twitter, there would be a

another link to something that I would watch and kind of cry-laugh. I'll say one thing. It's not worth repeating the funny parts here because it's just Norm being Norm on Conan and it's just like a random show where I'm going to try for the name here because I just watched it. Courtney Thorne-Smith, maybe?

She was promoting a movie with Carrot Top.

So you did see that, too. Oh, I might have even sent that to you, although you might have already seen it. And anyway, if you just want to Google that, Norm MacDonald and Courtney Thorne Smith and the Carrot Top movie on Conan, it is so good and not describable here. But I was like literally tears coming down my face, but not really out of sadness, but sort of out of sadness and just dying. I watched it twice. But one thing I was going to say was you're the one who sent me that joke that we played at the beginning of the show about Germany and the World Wars. And I had this distinct thought while I was listening to that. And again, I listened to that a couple of times, too. He uses the way he uses language. He uses like a double negative. And he and he says he says a line that is a very kind of, I don't know, kind of, you know, working class way of talking, you know, and like grammatically incorrect. and I'm like he he knows that he's like part of his part of his character if you will was dumbing himself down I mean not that he's like he wasn't being Larry the cable guy but he knew certain jokes are funnier if you kind of are presenting them like an idiot sort of like that's kind of the whole thing I don't know I don't know you know what scares me Germany now I don't know

if you guys are history buffs right well that's the thing like a lot of stuff that when you like like a lot of art basically that when you when you observe it it looks very effortless it seems like there was actually a lot going on below the surface you know what i mean and you're right like his use of language i think was probably very intentional um or you know and and just like that persona which kind of just seems like oh he's just like a wisecracking guy who just says like the thing that we're maybe thinking but are too afraid to say that would be a really like kind of over like a reductive way of describing what norm mcdonald's thing was yeah you know because because there was so much more going on behind it i i actually think the piece of tape that i really got a kick out of yesterday was this super cut of norm mcdonald so when he had that podcast i again i i think he also had a pot like a video podcast of some kind i don't know if this was the netflix show or something different i don't think it was a netflix show but basically he had some kind of show for a while where they would do ads for something called the man great and the man great our listeners that listen to a lot of podcasts are well familiar in fact we may have i don't think we've ever done man great or did we ever do man great on this show we did man

great down great yes no you turned it down and i did it wait no no man man great no we did man crate which is man great is is man great a spoof on that no man great is a is like a grilling thing

it's some kind of a big cast iron deal you put on your barbecue and then you can be more manly while you're cooking your meat it's like big in the like you know rogan verse and adam carolla and all of that stuff and i don't know i don't think we ever did an ad for them although i do think it came up at one point and i think i said this is on so many other shows i can't remember But anyway, so for a while, Norm MacDonald had some kind of show where they had to do ads for man great. And what this is, is just him doing these live reads for man great. Now, this is a super cut, so it's a little confused. This is like 10 different man man great reads from him with a variety of different people. He's one of them. Larry King is the guest on the show. One of them is Andy Dick is a guest at the end. It's Gilbert Gottfried. but this is just this is like two minutes of norm mcdonald just talking about man great in like a classically norm mcdonald-y way this just made me laugh so hard yesterday i hope people can kind of follow it because again it's a little confusing but take a listen what is the man great

you ask okay huh fine i didn't but you didn't ask it is 100 made in america cast iron grilling

grades iron you don't pronounce it iron that's what everybody tells the word i-r-o-n is iron

no no iron that are reading when you say iron uh you know what don't be like larry king i say iron and he's up my for four days it should be iron that's what makes english the world's

toughest language yeah you know right sure it is the toughest language to me it's the easiest

Have you heard of the man-grace? Yes, I have. You have? Do you have a father? Man-grace is the perfect gift for this Father's Day. Is he alive?

100% made in America If he was dead it would have been a really bad moment In the commercial Your dad's alive No God damn it I'm sorry about your dad That's fine Your father's dead Is your mom still alive My mom No she's dead Jesus Christ is any of your relatives alive Is man great they are revolutionizing the way people grill why that I mean it is true you haven't heard of the revolution you can put chicken on this or steak that's not that unique it weighs a lot of pounds is that heavy again again no more flare ups you know when your barbecue has always been flare ups why are you laughing you're making a mockery out of the man grate chicken steak has never tasted so good again again again this commercial is like a mini-series that was our only sponsor yeah now we found out we lost man great as a sponsor And then earlier today, I think we were told legally we can't say. We lost them as a sponsor, even. Yeah, I think we were still waiting to find out if we were allowed to say that. So there you go.

I already forgot what he said in the middle that put me into hysterics. I've already forgotten. Do you think English is the hardest language? I think it's the easiest. It's the easiest for me. I find it amazing. It's so genius. Oh, God, it's so good.

Yeah. I have to say this, too. Somebody wrote I think it was Anthony Jeselnik wrote that like battling cancer again I'm sorry to keep using that terminology but I don't have a better I don't have a better alternative like having cancer and not telling the wider public and just sort of dealing with it privately Jeselnik wrote doing that for like nine years is like the most Norm Macdonald move of all time which which I think is kind of is kind of interesting. I guess I read one person saying that the reason this is actually was really interesting to me that the reason that he didn't want for it to be public information was because he didn't want it to affect how people perceived his comedy, which totally makes sense because, you know, his comedy, if suddenly there's a sympathy factor that just changes the whole thing. And, you know, he I guess I mean, this is based on what this person said, but he just he wanted people to sort of like experience his comedy, you know, for what it was and not with this thing of, oh, this is a guy who's, you know, dealing with health stuff or whatever, which is kind of because if he was a different kind of comedian, I don't think it would have mattered as much.

Yeah, no, I mean, I really admire that. It really underscores to me how much I cannot do that. I mean, I know we joke or reference on this show how you and I kind of can't not talk about something that's on our minds. How many times have we said something Before the show to make each other laugh And say well we can't talk about that on the show And then on the show we have to Find some way to even just like Just to make each other laugh or if there's Something going on that I don't necessarily Want to be a part of the show I can maybe keep It off of one show before I need to Talk about it and I just couldn't do that I wish I was a person who if I had Something like that big going on in my life that I could Just like kind of quietly handle it on on my own but I think I and I don't think it's just for sympathy it's just that I can't I can't not talk about things so in a lot of ways I am not suited probably for my job right now I did not put that in my goals um but um but I think that that maybe is one of the reasons I am suited for this job is because yeah there's always something to talk about for me because I can't not tell you what's on my mind at any given moment and I really respect people who can I don't know kind of carry that burden alone especially because you feel like it's going to change the way people perceive you and more importantly perceive your craft which is maybe more sacred

as you realize you're kind of running out of time I was sort of composing and then deleting a tweet all day yesterday about this because the you know the news was Norm Macdonald passes away after a you know a private quiet battle with cancer and my tweet was going to be i can assure you that if i get cancer my battle will be public and loud yeah right like i don't i'm with you i don't have the ability to keep any thoughts inside let alone something so um sort of intense and and and kind of extant as as a diagnosis like that or you think of like

like chadwick boseman um oh yeah same thing kind of you know starring in all these films and doing all of this incredible work and also dealing with health stuff um i i i'm not i'm not trying to say how anyone should handle their health situation you know what i mean i don't think that there's a right or wrong way to do it but i i don't i just don't think i would have it i wouldn't have whatever wiring somebody like norm mcdonald or chadwick boseman has here i go once again with

the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female all right

we didn't get to this uh elizabeth holmes uh jury or trial story but uh i really want to tell you about it tomorrow andrew because i find this this reporting by bobby allen is really a delight to me so um don't read the story between now and tomorrow and that's also goes for the listeners don't read the story between now and please i like that my punishment of bobby allen's good journalism is dissuading our listeners from engaging with it here that i can reveal it to

them tomorrow you're embargoing someone else's yes is that can i already published story yes i have a somewhat lengthy story to read to you here okay from a listener who um i know their identity but they want to be anonymous here i'm only saying that so that somebody doesn't think that this is a made-up story this is somebody who's written into the show before um you were talking about and telling the story of this person who was just recently, I believe, charged or maybe sentenced in the printer ink scam. Yeah, sentenced. It was a very complicated scam that I didn't quite understand where they would call. You can jump in and correct me when I'm wrong, but the scammers would call a company and say, oh, wow, the cost of toner is going to go up significantly. So here, why don't you buy it from me before it goes up soon? And it's going to be like four hundred dollars and people would just like buy from these new, quote unquote, vendors who are actually scamming them out of money. Is that close?

Well, they would. Yeah. And part of it. Yeah, that's that's mostly right. Part of the scam was they would call up a company and they would sort of misrepresent themselves as being with the toner provider, the printer ink or printer toner provider that they were already working with.

And I was confused because I said, but wouldn't these companies already have an established relationship with some sort of other vendor? Why are you just suddenly like, what are you saying to your other vendor? Like, how is this not getting flagged? Because the reason this person was sentenced was because this was a scam that had gone on for decades and produced millions of dollars. Am I right?

Yeah. Right. I think it was one of those. I said this when we talked about it. I think my sense of it was kind of a right hand, left hand thing. so you you know you call up you you get a certain person in this office and these were always kind of small to medium-sized companies a lot of times there were non-profits you know there was like a christian preschool in alabama was one of them i think or something and you get somebody who doesn't know what the deal is and you say hey it's rick from toner unlimited and uh we just have to let you know that your your toner cost is going up i'm going to be able though to give you a good rate on this before it goes up even the rate they were offering was still inflated then you mail all the toner to genie who's working in the office of the christian preschool and then somebody tells genie that's not where we get the printer toner from it's this other guy now you got all this toner and then their their move was they would threaten the people uh with like collection agencies or legal action or they would say we'll take the toner back but you owe us a restocking fee and i think it would just be a thing where they'd get somebody in their trap and then that person that individual was kind of screwed at whatever company they were working right and i

still like i mean obviously i believe the story but i just felt like it sounded very complicated and i still couldn't quite just wrap my head around that how does the left hand maybe not know what the right hand is doing type of situation well we got this email from anastasia todd in bronx new york no just it is not it is not anastasia i'm totally making that up i just

i was gonna say i wonder if that's the same anastasia todd that we thanked earlier in the

show it's just because it's the name is in front of me no um this person says so this was a real thing and this is how it happened to me luke this is exactly as described i work for a locally owned restaurant and i'm one of only two back end office people besides the owner we lease our copier slash printer but i have no idea how much the lease is and when i call them for toner replacements I have no idea how that is being billed. The other person pays all the bills. I took a phone call last spring from a man somehow claiming to be our source for toner. I can't remember the specifics. He wanted to make sure I got some before the price went up dramatically. And the lower price he offered me was about $400. This seemed not right to me, to say the least. But when I am in that state of not knowing what exactly is going on, I just sort of go along with it until I can just get somewhere and think about it and do some research. Jemis

slow processing sort of person in these situations. So I give him my email address and he said someone from his supplier would call me to confirm all this. The second person called me shortly after, a woman who identified herself as working at an office supply company and confirmed all my information. After that call, I looked up her company. I looked for a contact email. I even called them to try to get customer service to cancel, but I got nowhere. I then casually asked my co-worker how much we paid for toner and discovered that, yes, replacement toner is part of our lease agreement. So if I understand that correctly, you're not even supposed to be paying for toner. Right. At that point, I was prepared to pay the $400 out of my own pocket. Oh, no. Which, fortunately, I would be able to do without having to forego food or rent. And I kept an eagle eye out for the toner delivery to make sure I could return it unopened. I did that when it arrived and When the invoice arrived I sent it back With the postal confirmation of returning The toner and a note saying that I was Not going to pay I kept all this I kept the mail confirmation And a copy of the invoice saved on my Computer until recently I figure after six Months they are not going to come after me for payment Also he's in jail it was a Close call though I'm sure that I'm sure that this person was not the only person running This scam boy did I feel Stupid I sure I'm glad I didn't have to confess to anyone about letting myself be swept up even if it was just for an hour that morning I'm glad I got off with only embarrassment and not either me nor the employer being out $400 so I have complete sympathy with all the other small businesses and non-profits who weren't as lucky as I was I'm embarrassed again but I was also relieved to hear of the mastermind's arrest in the news this week and so surprised to learn that I've been one of the many scammed this way. That is wild

that we have a listener who got caught up And by the way, listener, anonymous listener, be nice to yourself, because, I mean, anybody could have asked me how much toner costs, you know, or whatever. Like, I don't this doesn't feel to me like a dereliction of duty on the part of this person who sent in the email. I'm picking up from their message that they're really kind of, you know, sort of feel a lot of regret around it. But that could happen to anyone. Like, who knows how much toner costs? And depending on just what's going on on that morning, if someone calls you and they sound legit and they're like, hey, I just want to give you a heads up on this, I could see myself absolutely. And I think because the way my brain works is, oh, no, well, the price is going to go up, but I'm going to get a deal. Most I mean, that's most of these grifts of whatever kind they are. Now, I don't think this applies to our listener because there was no personal greed involved. Our listener was just trying to do their job. But, you know, like, have you ever had those people come up to you in the parking lot with the speakers? Have you ever gotten the speaker scam? No, but I think, I don't know if it was you or somebody else. I think I've heard of this. Oh, yeah. I've had it a couple times. I didn't ever actually go for it, but I think the first time that they hit me up on it, I didn't even know it was, I didn't know this was just like a traveling scam. But usually it's a couple dudes in some kind of like a moving truck or whatever, like a box truck, and they'll like pull up. I think it's usually guys that they target because guys are kind of into car stereo shit or stereo stuff. I don't mean exclusively, but it also happened to a lot of my dude friends. They'll roll up to you in a parking lot, and they'll say, hey, we got these speakers that were like we're delivery guys for this high-end speaker company. And we got these speakers that they didn't run through the system, so they don't know that we have them. They're normally $1,000. You can get them for $200 or whatever. And I remember the first time they tried to do this to me. I remember being intrigued. Why? Because I was like, wow, thousand dollar speakers for only 200. That's a real deal. And it seems like most most scams operate because the person who's getting scammed thinks they're kind of pulling a scam in a small way. oh i'm gonna get a 20 return on my money with bernie madoff even though every other investment like legitimate investment tool is is returning four percent you know like and i'm not bragging

i'm not trying to yeah there's a certain kind of person who i can sort of picture being like like oh do you like these speakers you know it always can tell the story when somebody comes over to their to their man cave where they have their man great cooking up some man meat and opening up their man crate and they can be like hey you like these speakers you know i got them Oh, yeah, it's like you really pulled one over on society by getting these cheap off the back of a truck, right?

Right. And, again, I don't want to blame the victims of getting scammed. But just as a careful student of the television show American Greed, I think about this a lot. And I remember I've one time, probably was the first time, I think I got far enough into the speaker scam that I saw the speakers. Because, I mean, that's the thing is they are actually selling you speakers, but they're just junk. they're just total junk speakers and I remember them being very flashy like looking like something that like a wedding DJ would roll up with which again also plays to that like If you're somebody who doesn't really know anything about speakers, like me, but you're just assuming, oh, these things are shiny and they're big, and that must mean they're good, you can get kind of wrapped up in that pretty quickly. You know what the new scam is? I think we had a listener email in about this. In fact, I know we've talked about it. It's the fake violin players.

Oh, yeah, the buskers. Yeah, we talked about this. I didn't know that that was such a thing. And the listener said, yeah, there's actually a lot of articles about this happening in cities where people go with their amplifiers and they're amplifying their busking violin playing. But it turns out they're just actually – how do you fake playing violin, though? That's the weird thing because a violin is so loud. If you're – the idea is you're just playing a – I was going to say a cassette tape. Yeah, they use cassette tapes, Andrew. You know, they're playing a recording through their amplifier and not actually playing the instrument. But it almost seems like it would be very difficult to fake playing a violin because if you touch the strings at all, it's going to make a loud noise.

Well, what I've seen in the videos that I've seen, the violin is allegedly plugged in.

Yeah.

So it's electric. And my sense is you can do something. Well, first of all, they're blasting the tape really loud.

And you can just put something else on the bow, I guess. It doesn't have to be a working bow.

It doesn't have to be a working bow, and because it's not like a Stradivarius violin or like a real violin that's meant to be played in a symphony or whatever, part of the design of it is to amplify the noise, right? Because you don't have a microphone. These would be like a violin that's plugged in to speakers, and so I think there's more ways that you can make it so that it doesn't really make a sound. Yeah, yeah But that, I guess the only, the upside of that scam Or the only thing about that scam that makes it less bad Is that you can just walk past and not give them money Yeah, yeah Like, you don't have to, it's not like the toner thing Where they got, like, our listener in a bind Also, the fact that our listener was considering Just paying for it out of their own pocket That also makes me feel sad for them I'm glad that that was avoided as well

Yeah, did this, I'm trying to think if this was part of the email I don't want to give away too much. Yeah, okay. They said in the email that it's a restaurant. And I'm just kidding. Restaurants, as I'm learning more and more, and I think the pandemic, you've known this and said this quite a few times, Luke. But the pandemic, I think for a lot of us, has really put a spotlight on just how thin the profit margins are when you're running a restaurant. And so I could see, like, if somebody, if, you know, you're out $400, this person feeling really bad about that and responsible for it and not just, like, saying, well, this is the company's problem.

Right. I respect that kind of that, you know, feeling of like this is a job, but also, you know, this is something that we're kind of all in together, particularly if it's like a small restaurant as opposed to like you work in an Amazon fulfillment warehouse or something. but I'm glad that it all turned out okay. Oh, by the way, just quickly, because I mentioned at the top of the show, I went to a really fun thing last night, and I want to say a big thanks to my friend and also sometimes TBTL listener, Amelia up in Bellingham, who hipped me to the fact that Doug Marsh from Built to Spill was playing a backyard show in Portland last night. Oh, he's a Portland fella? I don't think he is. Well, I know that, I mean, the band's originally from Idaho. Oh, right. I don't know if they still live in Idaho. I actually, maybe he does live in Portland. I'm not sure. But I was so excited about this. And this place that we went, it's called the Bernese Mountain Studio Shows. So the folks that live in this house, they've got a couple of Bernese Mountain Dogs, which are, by the way, the cute, like just the most adorable, gigantic, but adorable dogs you'll ever see. you ever seen a bernese mountain dog i think i've seen them i don't know if i've interacted they are huge but they're like so sweet and friendly so these i don't know if it's if it's just a if a single person lives there or if it's like a you know husband and wife i don't know what the deal is exactly but what i know is it was 25 bucks a ticket becca and i went all the money went to doug marsh we show up they've got like beer and white claw and wine just like hey have some Here's the bathroom in our house Like you just go in and you take a right I don't know if there's maybe like 50 people there, 100 people Couldn't have been 100, like probably 50 people there Just sitting in their backyard There's the dude from Built to Spill And he was just playing covers So he played A pavement song He played a song by Quasi He played True Love Will Find You in the End The Daniel Johnson song And then he also played, he closed out with Mazzy Star Oh wow Fade into you I gotta tell you I was I was

a little dusty back there i got a little dusty watching a like a 90s performance of them playing that song at some festival like several months ago i don't know why youtube you're talking about mazzy star not built not not not the um not the the cover but actually mazzy star for some reason youtube's like hey andrew um you're in between posting the show and moving on to your next task do you want to just take four minutes and watch mazzy star perform uh fade into you um at some festival in 1994 and i was like yeah internet i guess and yeah man it was something first of all they were children up there luke they were how do they let these young people make music on stage sorry to interrupt your story but yeah that song man it can hit you i got a

little dusty eye too well yeah just because and i think for me it was just this experience of being somewhere with people, because, I mean, we're back to that being, I mean, we had to, you know, postpone our live version of LiveWire this week. You know, we're doing it virtually tomorrow night. By the way, it's pay what you will if you want to, like, you can go to LiveWireRadio.org and probably see how you get a ticket to it. But, you know, we're doing a virtual show tomorrow. But sitting, you know, it was outside. It was all safe. Everybody was super masked up it felt like it was a pretty safe deal but just to be sitting kind of near people i didn't know and listening to this very beautiful haunting voice of doug marsh i'm just i'm also just a really big built a spill fan and then yeah like you know just kind of they had those little like the sun was setting and so there was just kind of like the sky was really beautiful between the trees and they had those like some strings of like edison bulbs up and just was kind of like this moment of like i don't know it just got it felt it felt really emotional for me then i felt kind of embarrassed because i'm crying and i just didn't want becca to see because i was like this is not a super great look for me but um anyway it was a wonderful night and it made me hope that we can get back to stuff like that sooner rather than later yeah that sounds really that sounds really amazing i'm glad you do we want to go out with a mazzy star song do we should just can you find

that version that you were talking about oh you know i don't know about that version i could just play the studio version which i love i was gonna play and i'm totally fine going out with that or built to spill but also there's the song um the comedians by elvis costello that roy orbison did too do you know that okay i don't know if i know that song but in honor of norm yes sort of thought in honor of norm let's do yeah you cool with all right i like it would also be good but it's that's

a very i mean that's well also us playing fade into you yeah does not really do the listeners much good because they all know the song they can all imagine the song you know you're not laying much new information on people. So this, I think, is a better plan.

And I could also sing a little bit. Maybe I'll just let the tape roll after the power out and I could just sing some massive stars. That'll be the Easter egg today.

Yeah, exactly. Love it. All right, well, thanks for listening, everybody. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you, so please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. You know, hug your dry-witted Canadian comedians comedians who won't let O.J. off the hook because you just don't know how long you're going to have them. That's a pretty good spoof. All right. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

The social circle has these cardiac complaints Their hearts are empty and their hands are full All these newfound fond acquaintances Turn out to be the red racks in my blood And I'm up while the dawn is spring Even the bodies in the eye Should you be bringing a toast Just asking friends Is it better than please to be there? I've looked into those eyes upon reflection I've seen the face of love, I've seen a few What kind of love is this upon inspection? You'll be the last to know who's for it to And I'm on fire with Dawn and Spring Even though my heart is a eye She's been dreaming close to the last of friends She said, please, need you And I'm up while the dawn is praying Even though my heart is aching I should be doing a choice

To actually pray

I was reading a thing in a paper. Baddest guy I ever read about in a paper the other day. Guy killed his whole family. Get this, folks. Killed his whole family because the devil told him. him, too. Man, that'd be a imagine that, killing your whole family just because the devil told you. And then afterwards you go back to the devil and go, yes, devil! I did as you instructed. I killed my family, slaughtered them as they lay sleeping, and then I chopped them up and put them in a duffel bag. Here they are in a duffel bag. I'll be burying them tonight at the shallow grave by the side of the railroad track as you have commanded. Oh, Lord Host of the Whorey Netherworld. Then the devil pulls off a mask. It's me, Bob! And you go, oh, Bob! She got me there, Bob. You got me a... Got my family a duffel bag here. Now that's one for you there, Bob. Power out.