Muse

Cut. Kyle, I don't feel like we're capturing the essence of the show right now. You don't call cut. You're not the director, man. Okay, no, I'm sorry, and I respect you as a director, but quite frankly, I think you're losing control a little bit, and I have a better idea than what you're giving me right now. So let's cut and start again, starting now. Cut and action, go. All right, let's roll sound. And also roll sound.

T-T-B-T-L

Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is.

It's Friday. Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

We are not ramping down. We're just getting started. Nothing stops this train. Nothing.

Nice software. Boy, you sure don't talk like a machine.

Um, maybe try one cooler and faster. and louder and better and less insecure and more just cool this is stuff so funny by the way did

the comic come up with this because some of this stuff like i feel like i could see somebody doing

their act all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live social engineering what is it exactly and how does it work. 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, where I'm often complaining about having to step over waste matter. It's been left behind, sometimes by dogs, sometimes by humans. But I had a whole different incident yesterday here on the streets of Portland, stepping on something in its own way, somehow even slightly more disturbing.

I was transported here against my will in a meatball.

I stepped on a meatball. Just like, as I wrote on Twitter, it's really hard to convey how upsetting that is until it happens to you. So the good news is I survived it, and I'm here, and I am ready for episode 3,518 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

An EU commission is trying to standardize the inputs on cell phones. Isn't that for techno geek? So that, you know, we don't have to constantly keep changing the plug that we're using. And Apple, of course, is not happy about this because they like to do their own annoying thing. And they want to keep doing that. Speaking of technology, a guy wrote a bot, something they're calling a resume bot. and it got him 30,000 job interviews in one week.

Does this sound like a musical robot?

There's one surprising element of the story to me that I'll share with you coming up in a few. Also, yesterday when I was stepping on that meatball, it was because I was going to visit a doctor. Everything's all right? Everybody calm down? I just, you know, it's probably a good idea to have a doctor that you work with on the regular. And that's where I was going When I had the meatball incident But once I started talking to the doctor Things got slightly

Weird

So I'll violate my own HIPAA rights And tell you about that coming up as well Plus it's a Friday A.K.A. a Fri-yay Shout out to our friend Bean Of the Cup of Tea and a Chat podcast So we're going to do music for your weekend as well We'll do all that with the help of this guy Longest running Cobra of the show Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships oh he's hilarious dog who is andrew walsh who's joining us right now from the roosevelt neighborhood of seattle washington good morning my friend good morning luke what

kind of footwear were you wearing at the time were you barefoot were you wearing those toe shoes

yeah you know me always out there in my distinct toe shoes actually i wear one foot i have a distinct toe shoe on the other one just nothing yes just to see it's kind of i'm running a bit of an experiment to see uh you know how that does yeah i did once um i i ran a marathon uh the green river marathon this was a big topic on the show because of course i only did that because i had been slightly i guess shamed into it by a very senior man named john di loretto who i had um i ran a three mile like uh i don't know what st patrick's day dash at the radio station and they signed me up for it because like cairo was promoting it and anyway i they they put me into the wrong age i ended up getting first place this guy should have been first place in like over 70 or something so we did that marathon together because he invited me to do it and um there

was a guy running barefoot. And A, he beat me, which hurt. And B, he was about to step in dog poop before Jen Flash Andrews. She either, I can't remember if she grabbed a piece of paper and got the dog poop off of the path that this barefoot guy was about to step on, or if she just flagged him down and said, don't step on that. But I mean, that's pretty much, well, it's not worst case scenario if you're running a marathon barefoot. I guess something like glass would be worst case, But right behind it would be dog poop.

That is, yeah, that is, I almost feel like I would take glass, but also I'm not the type of person who would be, you know, running around in my bare feet. So take everything I say with a grain of meatball. But so how bad are your shoes right now?

They're fine, but what was upsetting about it, well, there was a few things that were upsetting. One, I was like lost in my thoughts. I was going to the doctor and I was, my mind was wherever it was. and then I stepped on something, and then it was squishy under my tennis shoe, and I thought, well, that's poop. Because the whole time that I've been living in Portland, I have been assiduously avoiding stepping on poop that's on the streets, which, again, I love this city, and I think there's too many people in the exurbs that like to badmouth Portland. In fact, in other places, I think badmouthing Portland is not a personality, I guess I'll say. that being said there is more number two on on the sidewalks that i've ever seen in my life anywhere and i it means that i'm when i'm running and when i'm walking i'm kind of always looking down at the ground because i just don't want to step in it and um so i was like well dang you got me portland and then i pulled my foot up and i looked back and i was like either that's a very oddly shaped turd or that's a meatball and then what was extra weird was it did not disintegrate from me stepping on it. It had fallen out of a hot pocket, Andrew.

Oh, okay. How do you know?

There was a hot pocket near it.

Oh, okay.

Oh, you're elementary, my dear Watson. Yes, I cracked the case of the meatball. But I also just found it kind of upsetting that the meatball did not, like it was in the exact same shape after I stepped on it. Like it just boing, just sprung right back, which just tells you it's a low-quality meatball, Which I guess is lucky because if it were like the one that mama made us so nice and it was all smashed.

Your Irish accent is awful.

That was my Bill Clinton. He'll know what I'm doing my Irish accent. I guess it would have been worse if it was a high quality meatball because then it would have been smashed into the treads of my sneakers. As it was, it was just there. It was completely unchanged from when I stepped on it. And I guess that was better for me, but also just somehow it seemed grosser. Like, the idea that someone was going to eat that in that hot pocket. I'll send you a picture.

Yeah, so this must be a pretty small meatball, then, if it was inside of a hot pocket. I was picturing, like, a big—I was picturing, like, something that was, like, maybe—

It's not, like, from Bucca de Beppo.

Right. I was picturing, like, a meatball, like, from a meatball sub or something like that, maybe the size of three golf balls, if they could—

No, it was small. But the problem is, it is—and I'm not trying to be gross, and I know that we need to try to, like, tone down the sort of fecal talk on this show. Sure, yeah. It's been at a fecal pitch of late, but it's the exact color of the thing I'm always trying to avoid on this trip. So that was also – that was why when I first looked at it, I was like, did someone poop an absolute perfect, like, circle? And no, they didn't. It was just a meatball that had escaped from a hot pocket. Can I tell you about this doctor, though?

Yeah. Actually, can I ask you one quick thing really quickly, though? Because we've danced around this a little bit, but I don't know if we've addressed it straight on. But, you know, you've been having your ongoing issues. I know I'm taking this right back to dog poop town. But just really quickly, in all seriousness, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. You know, you you've been talking about people throwing away their dog poop in areas that you really shouldn't be throwing away dog poop, even if it is bagged up. But aside from that, in these stories, you've also just mentioned that there are places around your apartment building there in the city where people just let their little dogs poo on, like, I don't know, if not the sidewalk, maybe those little grates that are around trees and just, like, leaving it there. And I have a feeling I'm falling for, like, a sharpshooter kind of conspiracy here where I'm just taking a few examples and kind of extrapolating maybe too broadly from there. But I feel like from my own experience and from some chatter I've seen online, are we suddenly living in an era like in the past year or so where people are just letting their dogs poop in public more? I have been seeing so much more. I'm not talking about you've bagged it up and you've set it on the sidewalk and you say you're going to come back later and pick it up, but you don't. I see those, too. But I've just been seeing more unadulterated middle of the sidewalk or middle of a tree lawn dog poops in my neighborhood. like a lot more I don't think I ever used to see it at all and now suddenly I'm seeing it all over and I saw somebody else online saying that they noticed the same thing I don't know if they're also Seattleite or not is this just am I just in my head on this I wonder if if we aren't seeing a

sort of a cultural uh shift in this like I feel like okay so people are age people are 40s by that's one of the things the doctor kept telling me was I tell my 45 year old guys this I was like Do you have to keep reminding me I'm 45 at all times, sir? But if you're one of my 45-year-old guys or gals or whatever, we grew up in an era also where I think dog poop was more rampant. Just being a kid in the 80s was a lot of stepping in dog poop. And then we had a huge cultural shift where we just sort of – we started – we just decided as a society that's not cool anymore. We're going to make dog poop bags available everywhere. We're going to put out little signs. We're going to really like just make it so that people know that that's not cool. And I'm wondering if maybe then you had a generation of people that grew up with without dog poop being a problem in their life. And so they don't have the same like I would just never, ever allow like Rudy or whatever to to to go to the bathroom on the sidewalk and then leave it there. Because I think I just have so many memories of being a kid and trying to get dog poop out of the tread of my sneakers with a stick. It's just like the worst feeling. And so I would not – I just wouldn't ever perpetrate that on someone else, but maybe we have some folks – and I'm not trying to like be generational here, but I'm just wondering if somehow the long, good, golden period of less dog poop in public has now led to some people that have kind of like just – they don't take it so seriously, the cleaning up after the dogs.

It's like all the revolutions we fought for in the 80s and 90s, like picking up your dog poop and recycling, are all just going to seed, right? Like there's more and more stories about people are just – municipalities just taking their recycling and throwing it in with the rest of the garbage because there's nowhere to put it anymore. And then the dog poop revolution, man, it's just –

The dog poop revolution will not be televised.

I hope not.

But it will be podcasted about extensively on this program.

Anyway, sorry to – I just had been wanting to talk to you about that and get your thoughts on it. But tell me more about this doctor then.

I'll be curious to see. I think you might be on to something and whoever was on the Internet saying it, they may be on to something. Certainly it's been my experience in Portland, but I didn't know if that was just sort of specific to where I live. And then the other possibility is just the pandemic broke something inside of people. That's what I was circling around. They're just kind of like, look, it's all we can do to just get through the day. I'm not picking this up. That's where my brain immediately went, for sure. So I decided I should probably have a kind of a regular doctor person that I go to because I'm living down here now. And so I went through our extremely helpful insurance web portal, Andrew. The portal to get to the portal? I was able to find a doctor who I believe our insurance will pay 0% of anything I do with this doctor. Oh, perfect. So that was convenient. But anyway, I found this doctor, got on the waiting list because it was like a month ago that I made – maybe longer that I made this appointment. And so I go down and I'm not overly freaked out by doctors, but I'm also not somebody who goes to the doctor for any old thing. And so I'm a little unfamiliar with some of the stuff that goes on in doctors' offices. This had a very robust front desk situation going. There's like three people back there and like they all had headsets on and they were all kind of bouncing between helping people who were like checking in and then also talking to people on the phone about their medical bills they were having some problems with. But this place was outfitted with more signs than I've ever seen. So when you walk in, one of the signs says, please check in as soon as you're here. So I go get in the line. But then there was this pillar and on the pillar, there's a sign that says, please don't stand behind this pillar when you're checking in because we can't see you. It was like everywhere you look, there was a sign telling you to do or not do something.

So then was there a sign saying, please stop staring at that other sign? I am the sign. Yes, staring at.

Yes. And then there was a picture of Splooch of the turtle going number two. Don't go in that door. Came out of the blue for me. So. So then I'm like looking ahead. I had we overuse this reference. We've got to get a new reference for this, but it just felt like Brazil to me. So you've got these three receptionists, and like I said, they've got headphones on. They're all on the phone, and then one is off of the phone. She says, okay, we'll see you later. She hangs up. And so actually that's not what happened. What happened was she was helping a person. There was a human being who was talking to her. And so she finished talking to that human being. That human being then walked away. And then I went to step up because I was the next person in line. And in that period of time, she decided to take a call. And so then I was. standing there and I could see she was on the call so I was just waiting and you know they're behind glass and everything I mask their mass it's all fine and then another receptionist that's over to the side of her says is she on the phone and I said yeah it appears to be she goes yeah when you're standing there we don't know if you're being helped or not so you can come over here and I'll help you okay so like I was already off to kind of a bad start I'd already somehow done something wrong in this office actually that's not as bad as I thought I thought they were going to

be a little strict about just like the even if there is glass they're just like I don't know whether it's like don't stand don't close to me in the words of sting right i mean because of you know maybe that phone call is somebody talking about their own medical stuff or whatever like i'm always like i've been going to the doctor once a week um for it's actually i go in for physical therapy but it's in a doctor's office um and you know every time i go in there like i stop you know whatever it is six feet away wherever the blue dot is i do not approach anybody until I am waved over. But I'm also, like, really scared of getting hollered at. But, yeah, no, that's not too bad. They're just saying, oh, okay, come over here. I was hoping that they weren't going to reprimand you, which it sounds like they didn't.

I didn't really – well, I have to say this receptionist had that kind of sort of passive-aggressive kind of – it was a mild reprimand. It was her basically saying to me – in a way, she was saying, don't walk up to this thing until we tell you, Which I thought I was doing the right thing But I guess I was slightly doing the wrong thing And then I don't have specific examples But she ended up being the one who helped me And it kept being a thing where She would hand me some paperwork And then I would ask her a question And then her response And again I don't have specifics So this is not the most interesting part of the story It was this thing where I kind of was always Somehow slightly doing the wrong thing for her She was like have you been to our Have you done the website Have you put in your info on the website And I was like oh no I didn't know that was a thing She was like I'll send you a link And I was like, should I put it in on my phone? No, you can do it on the paper this time. But just so you know, you should use the website to da-da-da-da. You know what I mean? It was just like I was just somehow kind of doing everything wrong. And she was not being overtly like hollering at me. But she was sort of letting me know in her subtle ways that like there was a better way for me to be a patient of this place. So anyway, the medical assistant comes to get me to weigh me and check my height. By the way, I'm 6'1". I didn't I've never known that I was I thought I was six foot tall and I'm I guess apparently

I'm six foot one you don't have to go the opposite direction I used to be six two and now I'm like six six four right yeah right no I used to be really two now I'm like way um I think I'm like six one or something I don't know I assumed I was gonna be below

six feet because the same thing I said what is it I go give me the news am I five eleven now like have I begun that part of my life where like the tallest I will ever have been was six foot she goes no you're actually six one i was like wow you're a growing boy yet there's

that photo of you and i in our tennis whites that black and white photo where you're towering over

me so i guess it does make sense yeah no that all checks out so um and then also they weighed me and i don't like their scale i'm just gonna tell you i got my own scale at home that's telling me what i want to see i've been on this health grind and i've been kind of happy with the progress and then i go in there and i get like the real one i'm like dang it so i have to just like mentally do this shift that's like look it's all relative so apparently i had let things get more out of hand than i realized uh is what it is and so i i you know came home and i weighed myself on my scale and i liked i liked those results better than what they gave me did you keep taking off clothes on

the scale you're like well what if i take off one of my shoes well i should probably i didn't but i

took my phone out of my pocket i took my apple watch off i like i was like i mean truly if i if i could have it wouldn't have been weird i would have been you know in my skivvies or something Like, I don't weigh myself with, like, all of my clothes on and, like, my shoes on and all that stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. But anyway, so the medical assistant's very nice and very professional. And we finish up. And then I go into the, like, exam room. And then I'm answering more questions for her. And then she leaves. And then the doctor comes around. And he enters the room. He goes, I just asked that 21-year-old medical assistant if she knows who she was just helping.

Oh, no.

What? And then, you know, I have a hunch of what he's talking about, but I don't want to be like, I don't want to assume anything, and I don't know. It's like, I just, anytime I think someone's recognizing me from, like, the radio or something, I'm wrong. So it's like, I didn't want to get out over my skis. So I was like, oh, what do you mean? He goes, you're the radio guy. And I was just like, yeah, I am. Like, places where I don't want to be known as the radio guy include places where I will also be taking my pants off. uh for a um you know a check as to uh my uh you know nether regions and the like like i was like are you really gonna gonna fire in hot with the like i know who you are and i'm also checking with the uh medical assistants to let them know who you are and far as

as your other job stuff like yeah i think that should be just off limits i really think that doctors even if they happen to know i just don't think that they should say anything i know that's

kind of what i felt like i was like i want to be as anonymous as possible in here and because this is not the you know this is not not embarrassing certain things that you have to do when you're getting a physical and everything um and so he was kind of one of those doctors that sort of like their vibe is um straight talking doctor i tell all of my uh it's like i tell all my four to five year old guys this and like so you know on the intake it's like how much do you drink and i just honestly answered it i mean for years of my life i would probably lie on that form or i would greatly underestimate but i was just like i'm going here so that this person can help me not die in essence i should let them know what i'm working with as far as the amount of alcohol i consume in a given week and he was like yeah that looks like probably too much and i was like yeah you're

probably right you have one glass of wine a week yeah exactly yeah i told him the honest answer

one glass of a half a glass of wine a week strict doctor he was like i tell all my 45 year old guys you know you gotta watch it the wine he's like he's the problem is you know you if you if you drink uh you know if you drink more than they say you should then that's increase your rate of cancer your potential for cancer because but if you don't drink anything increases your heart problems so we can't figure out the what the deal is there and i was like well i'm erring on the

side of no heart problems right so he's actually going with the argument that like a little bit of wine or a little bit of alcohol is good for you because that's what he said okay uh i mean not that i'm not saying that i've never heard that before but i've never heard that in a doctor's office before and obviously it's an interesting thing to say because a lot of people obviously struggle it's not like just saying hey try to eat more greens or whatever like i would think that There would be more sensitivity around throwing out some sort of, I don't know, unproven advice about alcohol intake and its medical benefits. I mean, maybe I shouldn't say unproven there. It just seems weird.

Yeah, the guy, he seemed very smart. Like, he knew his stuff. So I actually believe, you know, his advice and his feedback and his read on, like, how my physical body is doing, that all, he seemed like he knew what he was talking about. But just his sort of, I guess you would say, bedside manner was kind of odd to me. Because then he'd be like, so do you exercise? I'm like, yeah, I run. He goes, I tell all my 45-year-old guys, running's great, but everybody gets hurt. And eventually that's going to break down. So you really should think about something else you can do that's like lower impact on your body, but that'll be cardio. I was like, okay, note to self. So then he leaves for a while. And then the medical assistant comes back in and, like, takes some blood from me. And I got a flu shot, which, by the way, kicked my butt really yesterday.

So you got the shot yesterday and you felt it last night.

I got the shot yesterday. And I first of all, I felt like my arm was going to fall off last night, which I've never had from a flu shot. And and yeah, I was very tired from I didn't really feel like I had the flu other than I just felt really exhausted all of a sudden. But anyway, medical assistant comes in, does all that stuff. And then leaves and then he comes back in And he's asking me more questions about Livewire He's like so do you guys You know you guys back to doing those live shows And where do you get the guests and all the stuff And I'm like answering the questions but I'm feeling Embarrassed the whole time because I just feel like this Is a side of my life that I just don't really want Happening in this room But I just finally go with it and I'm like He goes you know I just live he goes I live like Like five blocks from the Alberta Rose Theater where you guys do the show and I said well He said hey maybe you should come down maybe I'll see you At the theater sometime He goes Nah my wife is really Not an NPR fan

I was like It would have been better If he had said that like His wife is more of a I don't know Mo Rocca fan Or just somebody else Who plays in that space Who isn't you

Right exactly Nah my wife is really Into Tom Bodette Yeah right It's just I was like Talk about mixed messages Talk about like So you're saying I live right by the theater Where you do this show That I keep bringing up That you are very happy To not be talking about in this context and then like i live right by the theater and then it's like we should come to the show now my wife's not into it yeah like i don't understand that i don't understand that like a person who those are the kinds of conversations because all you have to do is say yeah maybe right like yeah oh yeah that'd be fun or if going to the theater was literally never on the possibility radar for you why are you bringing it up well that's kind of you know

i've been thinking about a somewhat awkward moment i had the other day so when i go if you can believe it so when i go into physical therapy i go in this area where there's several um it's just kind of an open area where various patients are being worked on but it's there's not like a lot of privacy issues because it's all you know it's just like i'm getting my hand my fingers all over the

sweater. What's that? It's all over the sweater.

What does that mean?

That's a thing that we used to talk about in high school as far as when you were becoming amorous with someone. Oh, over the sweater.

Oh, yes, yes, yes. Right. Yeah, it's all. Yes, exactly. We'll cut all this out. There are some people, you know, who are maybe laying back on some sort of a bed type of device and somebody might be working on their knee or something, you know, just like repetitive motion. while my physical therapist is kind of trying to get my fingers to bend more, et cetera. And so usually I'm just speaking with the woman who's working on my hand, but it's kind of an open atmosphere where every now and then she'll jump into somebody else's conversation, whether it's about whether it's small talk or whether it's, you know, about the work she's doing or her next patient. But I usually kind of stay out of that. I just talk to her directly, but knowing that our conversation is pretty public. um and man it's been a while and we talk about all kinds of stuff i mean from politics to i know a lot of stuff that's going on with like kind of her family and her kids school i really stuff really interesting yeah i actually really like my physical therapist um but it is interesting to think about sometimes i forget that every just like tbtl sometimes i forget that everybody in that room can hear our hear our conversations but um all of that is to say there was another physical therapist and they're working with another patient just getting set up i believe And he said, oh, yeah, there's a new Italian restaurant up in the Roosevelt neighborhood. And I kind of got excited for a second. I still don't know exactly why. It's the there's a bar, I don't know, two blocks from my house used to be called Toronado. Maybe it's three blocks away. And it just, you know, Toronado closed during the pandemic. And it just reopened as a as I think some sort of a, you know, kind of a casual Italian restaurant, if I understand it correctly. That is a small chain here in Seattle. I don't remember the name of it. But that's that's the point. I don't remember the name of it. I hear this guy just mentioned the new restaurant in the Roosevelt neighborhood. And I got super excited without even thinking about it. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's in my neighborhood. I live right by there. He's like, oh, is it good? I'm like, I don't know. I haven't been. It's like, what's it called again? I'm like, I can't remember. It's an Italian name. He's like, OK, thank you for your input, sir. Like I mean he was really polite But all of a sudden I was like Sometimes I'm like that I'm like a kid Like I just got excited because somebody mentioned something in my neighborhood That I know about but I had nothing Nothing to contribute to the conversation Other than yes that is a thing That happens near my house and I'm excited Maybe I just like my neighborhood too much

Well you could have done something worse Which I would have done which is after finding myself In that predicament Of being excited and then joining a conversation That I didn't have really very much to contribute to than just lying just making stuff up it's called fat tony's it's called fat tony's i've thought about buying it myself but uh yeah i almost bought it uh and uh the veal parmesan is really incredible um you know like i just like digging the hole deeper with my knowledge of this

mythical italian restaurant yeah so i guess the point is conversations can be difficult because you're right like he didn't have to bring up that he's right he lives right there if there's no chance of him ever darkening the door during a live wire i guess it was also see how you know but that i don't think is the mistake him saying oh i live right there you say oh you should swing by sometime all you have to say is yeah that'd be nice like it's not like you're going to be checking attendance to see if your md ever showed up yeah he he he had oh i don't well anyway i don't

need to get even more there's a moment where uh i did you know i didn't have clothes on uh although i didn't have a robe it was like take your shirt off so i took my shirt off that was you know mildly embarrassing but then there's another part like pull your pants down and then just like doing this thing just goes you don't have cancer yeah and i was like uh thanks and like i think his shtick was kind of like just being the doctor who's like calls it like he sees it doctor which you know for some people that might really be i think i want someone who's more part part therapist part doctor somebody who's very soothing and very like just you know gentle with me and my medical needs etc is he older than you he is older than me by about 10 years and um not in in in noticeably bad shape but not in better shape than me yeah that's that's in a little bit worse

don't trade that i mean that's perfect you have a doctor that's 10 years older than you um who's a straight shooter don't don't throw that fish back in the water i just can't dial in because i'm i'm wait so you're being serious you're saying this is my guy this is your guy i'm really uncomfortable in the doctor's office and everything I'm about to say is not like responsible and it's not rational and I know all these things so if anybody is getting tempted to write in to tell me that I have an unhealthy relationship with my health care providers I realize that and I'm just I don't know what it is I'm so self-conscious about my body I'm self-conscious about everything obviously going to the doctor is something I really don't like doing and I've had I've had maybe for various reasons like my last doctor I think ended up retiring and he was a really bad communicator I really didn't like him but I also didn't know how to break up with him and now I have this doctor now who when I when I'm looking for doctors you're scrolling through looking for somebody and again I know that this isn't logical but I like it to be somebody older than me but guess what I'm getting kind of old you know like that's not That's not a given.

You're going to have to move out into, like, the country to find a country doctor who's older than you. He just came from, like, birthing a baby. Right, exactly. And now you need Doc Baker from Little House on the Prairie.

You know, like Dwight Schrute says, you know, just a regular doctor who shoots your horse if he breaks his leg. So, yeah, and I think one time I had a doctor who was fine, but he was just, like, a very fit young man.

You want your doctor to be more portly than you

Well yeah and I don't think My current doctor is not more portly than me But he does have maybe 5 years on me Maybe 10 years on me And somehow I just find comfort in that And again I know that it doesn't make sense And it's not rational I'm honestly not trying to be ageist one way or the other Or sexist I'm also more comfortable with a male doctor And it's not because I think men are better doctors of course It's just about my personal experience in this room Just feeling as comfortable as I can in a place that feels very, very, very uncomfortable for me. When I say a place that feels very uncomfortable for me, I mean in my own skin, obviously.

The call was coming from inside the Andrew.

That's right.

You know what's funny is I would actually probably prefer a female doctor. This was just the doctor that was available. Just like I have never really had many sessions with a male therapist, like psychotherapist, or in my life. I prefer having a female therapist. And generally speaking, if I got my choice, I would go with a female doctor. And I don't know why that is because I don't think male doctors are bad. I feel like male doctors may be even almost as smart as female doctors. I'm not sure. Or a doctor who is a woman. But that's more my default setting, which I don't know what's going on with that for me.

No, that is interesting. So like this is getting really personal. And I'm honestly we're at a point in this conversation where I want to be earnest about this and not make fun because I don't I don't want to come off as being sexative or insensitive. sexative. Did I just say sexative? Yeah, that's when you're insexative.

When you're insexative, that's when you're being insensitive about sexism.

For some reason, none of my romantic partners respond well when I say, do they want to get insexative with me? I don't know what's going on there. No, I don't want to come off as sounding insensitive or sexist, but for real, in those moments where you might feel insecure, like you even just said, taking off your shirt in the doctor's office or dropping trow, like you would feel more comfortable with it not being a male doctor well you know what i had

forgotten was that any of that stuff was part of it you know what i mean it's been so long since i just got like a physical um that i can remember or maybe the deal was they didn't offer me a robe you know sometimes like or the gown or whatever it's like okay you're gonna get down to your underwear but you're gonna be in this gown so you're still kind of wearing clothing but it gives them access to stuff this was just like literally i'm standing there talking to him and he goes all right shirt off i was like oh okay yeah i guess i'm doing it i mean no believe you me uh i wouldn't feel great about any of those things happening with a female doctor also the i this it felt like i was getting a physical like i was playing high school football again like it was there were some old school elements to it like the things that were being checked on me i feel like have not been checked on me necessarily um you know in the last 20 years And, again, I don't remember having to be that disrobed for a physical, like, if I got one in Bellingham or something. Maybe I just blocked it out or something. But, no, I wouldn't feel great in either scenario, I guess. But what I'm saying I would generally probably default to a doctor who's a woman, I guess I'm thinking about all just the other stuff. I'm not thinking about the part where I have to, like, have my shirt off because, no, that would be –

Communication style.

Yeah, probably bedside manner, like I said, just, like, the way that I relate. I don't know. I was raised with four sisters. I think I just like generally speaking, like more comfortable around like female energy, if you will, just because I kind of grew up in that or something. But but no, I don't want I don't want any doctor of any gender to ever see me with my shirt off, if it's possible, particularly or my pants down, particularly if it's a person who has heard me on the radio.

Yeah, that that's the connection that I wasn't loving. Like, this is not – it's so not worth me mentioning another more famous radio host's experience with this. But I know you're familiar with at least the shortened version of the Levitard story, right? He was going in for – I believe he was literally going in for some sort of testicle-related surgery, I believe. He tells this story on the radio. He used to kind of play clips of it all the time as like kind of a return when they would come back from a break. And the doctor, like all during the lead up to surgery, never mentions that he knows who he is. But then right, I believe, as he's putting him under or maybe maybe it's a local. I don't know what it is, but he's laying there completely vulnerable and about to do the procedure. And the doctor says, by the way, I'm a big fan. Can you imagine? Can you even imagine? Honestly, just don't. Like whether or not you reckon even and it doesn't have to be a job in broadcasting where maybe a lot of people recognize you, even if if I am working at the Whole Foods, because sometimes, you know, sometimes I will see somebody in my neighborhood who I recognize as somebody who works at the Whole Foods. If I were a doctor and I recognize somebody that I see in my neighborhood all the time, I wouldn't say, oh, I recognize you from the Whole Foods. You work in the bakery. Right. I just wouldn't like let's just maintain anonymity or at least the perception of anonymity.

Right. Yeah, that's I think probably a good policy for most for doctors and medical people is let's just it's the same as if you work in an adult video store, which, by the way, there is somehow one that is still operating down the street from my house, which every time I walk by, I marvel at it. I know. I marvel at taboo video on MLK. What? Who? What is who is the client? Now that Fred Willard has left this planet, who is the clientele?

I'd pass a couple on the way up to Tubbs. You go up to Lake City, you're going to pass a couple of those places.

Well, that's the adult bookstore district.

It really is. Yeah, I don't know how many of them are still open. It's hard to tell. I don't know. In that neck of the woods and in that industry, it's really hard to tell whether a business is opened or closed. There are no windows. The doors never just swing and open, you know?

I mean, you know, I don't know. Somehow this turned into, like, the most overshare show we've done in a long time. But let's just say I haven't had any personal interest in visiting this place other than almost just as an anthropologist. I almost want to just like poke my head and just go, who's in here? Are you selling enough DVDs to keep the lights on in this place?

I had a similar thought the other day and mine was slightly different. And this is like a kind of a go to joke for us. But, you know, I don't think I've I don't I'm quite sure I've never been in any anything that would be described as a sex shop at all. It's not my comfort zone, right?

It's like doctor's office times 20. Right.

Well, I'm trying to think because, I mean, there are, like, you know, on Capitol Hill, there are very kind of like sex positive kind of places. Yeah, sure. But no, I don't think I've ever been in one. But I'm talking more about the slightly more old school ones. Like, I'm definitely, I've never had, you know, reason to set foot. But I always think about that store Lovers, which is right by the airport, right? Like, right off the highway as you're heading towards the.

With a font that they clearly ripped off from prints.

Just the weirdest font, which is so strange. It's somewhere between – the font is somewhere between Prince and, like, Care Bears. No, no, because it's got, like, a wizard-y thing going on with it, too. And it's right there, right off the highway, no windows. And, you know, that's probably got – it's probably not just, like, media in there, right? There's all kinds of stuff.

No, I think it's all kinds of –

You might say it's for lovers. Yeah, sure. But even but in this day and age when, you know, everything can be ordered online and there are just more modern experiences again, like the more maybe like the Capitol Hill sex positive, you know, feminist sex shops or whatever, like this place is so old school and it just is always there. And I had – as I was dropping Genevieve off at the airport or maybe picking her up the other day – oh, I guess I didn't pick her up, so I was dropping her off. It doesn't matter. I was just – I sort of went on this brief flight of fancy, like, should I just go in there? Like, they don't care. They're not judging me. Like, that's what – they work there, right? But I was just like, what? Right. What is it like to go into Lovers? Maybe – you know what, Luke? That's the next TBTL-a-thon. You and I – Absolutely. We spend a week doing shows on Lovers by the SeaTac Airport.

I feel like those places are always By an airport too Which I'm wondering what's that What's the utility there is it like I gotta get My and again I hope this For our younger listeners I hope you Stop listening for people who are very young For our older listeners or listeners who are of age I hope it doesn't sound like we're in any way trying to Shame anyone everybody do your thing But it's like is it People being like I've got to pick up that That I've just got to pick up That last minute feather boa and whatever else before I get on the plane. It's just the proximity to airports is always interesting to me for those kinds of places.

I have a vague theory. I think it has to do with this. It actually ties back into the conversation we were just having. I think it has to do with the sense of anonymity. There's something, especially like going, just kind of like even just going back years now, before you could get anything you wanted online. and delivered to your home, like, I think that maybe people, if you're in an airport, there's just sort of a sense of anonymity anyway, right? Like, it's just like a lot of people, and then especially if it's not your hometown airport, and maybe, like, it is, like, the business traveler or whoever it is just feels like, well, when in Rome, and Rome means I'm in some city for a layover overnight that, you know, like, I need to close the, I need to close the account. What did you, you and your, I need to close the Henderson account tomorrow. But while I'm here, let's just dip into Lovers and get maybe a magazine and something to bring back home. I don't know if there's any truth in that at all. It's just something that I think about.

Clearly, I think about this too much, I think. You know what's going to happen, though? I'm finally going to, like, just for research purposes, I'm going to go into taboo video, and then my doctor's going to be there. He's going to be like, Luke Burbank from Livewire.

He turned to the person behind the counter. Do you know who you're working with here?

These people have no idea that you're Luke Burbank from Livewire. All right, let's take a quick break, and then we come back. Top stories, donors of the day, and all of that coming up here on TBTL. Let's thank some donors of the day. Folks making today's episode possible Possibly the most overly personal episode we've done in a long time Involving our healthcare and our visits to various Or dream, you know, would-be visits to various adult superstores You know who's paying for it? Sherry Steele Smith Duffin, whether she likes it or not In Bonnie Lake, Washington

You deserve a different show, Sherry Different episode, sorry

Brent Hopkins is down there in Los Angeles, California And is donating Keeping the show going Thank you, Brent Amanda Marvell in Durham, North Carolina Also supporting the program Josh Thompson in Amherst, Massachusetts Is that one of those ones?

I think Amherst is right And I want to say

Amherst or something?

I don't think so Oh, isn't that – that's kind of on the western side of the state. Is that right? I feel like there's a – Is there where the college is? I feel like there – is it UMass? Yeah, UMass Amherst, I thought. Oh, okay. Or no, maybe not.

Isn't there actually a college called Amherst?

Oh, maybe. There's definitely University of Massachusetts Amherst. I know that for sure.

Amherst College.

Oh, yeah, there is an Amherst College it looks like, too. I didn't know that.

I probably only know that because, as I've talked about on the show before, when I was taking the PSAT, which is the thing before the SAT, you take it when you're like a junior, I think. Part of it was, what kind of college do you want to go to? And at that time, I thought it was probably none, probably not a college. I don't know. But I just clicked liberal arts for some reason, so I just got mailing from every liberal arts college in America. Amherst may have been one of them.

Yeah it looks like it would It's a small private school Known for it's liberal arts programs

And open curriculum You know who knows that probably Is Josh Thompson who's over there in Amherst Also Aaron Matheny Is in Oak Park Illinois Beautiful Oak Park Illinois Just outside of Chicago there

We had another Oak Park recently I think They should get together

I know a Sort of a celebrity person that lives in oak park but then i thought i don't i've put enough of my personal information out there on the wire today i don't need to put someone else's personal information out on the wire they didn't ask me to say but anyway oak park is lovely then jennifer stockall is in stockton california i'm sorry jennifer stockton is in stockall california i always mix those up um jennifer thank you for supporting the program as well thanks to all of our donors for making this show possible um we don't need our bosses to mention us in the pr press releases because we've got these donors of the day dang it and we're here to stay and we plan on doing this forever yeah you don't plan on doing this forever and welcome to top story uh this uh okay this is not a top story but i have to tell you something very quickly andrew and by very quickly i mean it'll probably end up meaning we don't get to any of the top stories last night in an odd i don't know a flight of fancy i decided right before i went to bed that i should watch a little bit more television and what i decided to watch was jeopardy and what i decided to watch was one of the mike richards shows just so i could kind of like i don't know bask in a little um schadenfreude or whatever and i have to tell you something and i feel very ashamed to say this he wasn't 10. terrible he was really not bad like it took me like two minutes to just kind of like settle into okay this is what the guy sounds like who does the thing now i don't think it's good it would have been good for him to get the show because of the all of the conniving and backroom stuff and and really more than that the stuff he said that was um disparaging of women and other people like that so he didn't seem like a good guy off the air but i swear to god if he hadn't done all that stuff and we didn't know about it uh and i just like tuned in and he was just hosting the show i would have been like this is a totally competently hosted episode of jeopardy i was like i was shocked i was just expecting it to be a complete train wreck and like it wasn't a train wreck or just lame were you expecting maybe more lame than anything and i mean it wasn't like it wasn't like he was crushing it on the like you know the little halftime interview they do but those are hard and I think you know Alex Trebek who I love to give grief over what I thought was his awkward manner in those I think it's actually harder than I would have realized we should actually ask Ken Jen since he also is now one of the hosts of Jeopardy he would know but like watching other people do that you realize oh you know Alex Trebek picked this kind of lane of I'm going to slightly roast these people I'm going to act like I don't know what they're talking about and like I'm basically when in doubt I'm going to kind to act like um uh well to each their own that was like just kind of his general vibe when you watch other people do it like this mike richards guy you realize that it's it's a bit of a talent uh to sort of manage those that being said his overall like the reading of the questions and the whole

thing i very quickly just forgot that i was watching some new host do it and i was very

into the game and trying to get the questions right you know genevieve had um jeopardy on yesterday, I was in my office, just, you know, slaving away over the newsletter. And, and I heard Jeopardy in the other room, and it was Mayim Bialik hosting. And this is the weirdest thing for me to say, I wouldn't have brought this up as a topic of my own, because I, you're about to hear like the lamest non-exposure to a new Jeopardy host, and then I'm gonna make an opinion on it. But it was just sort of, I thought it was just kind of cool from the other room, hearing the Jeopardy sounds and then hearing my ambialics voice I was like oh it's kind of a new era and it just sort of felt cool to me and I asked Genevieve how she was doing and Veve said um and I think Veve's can probably overhear me now so I hope I get this right but um she said that it was interesting that she was doing her own thing as a host she wasn't like trying to really capture the Trebekiness of everything because she can't and so she maybe as opposed to some of the other um people who were trying out for it just like brought her own energy to it and it wasn't an over-the-top energy it doesn't sound like it wasn't it wasn't an inappropriate energy but it was also just her own energy and Genevieve seemed to appreciate that and I kind of was like oh like I was again I was kind of doing some work so I didn't uh watch it but I I totally will and it actually I'm kind of more excited I am excited to watch some of her episodes now in a way that I totally would not have cared if I ever saw Mike Richards episode

there's a now that you've turned me on to Gawker dot com again there's actually a piece by somebody named Olivia Craighead in Gawker that I saw yesterday that just says Mayim Bialik is destroying Jeopardy I'll take Awful Hosts for 800 oh really and yeah she's she is of the opinion that Mayim Bialik is doing a terrible job she says the problem with Bialik and the other people who've been in the running for the Jeopardy host job is that they are all people dweebs can get behind bialik is mostly known for people to people for wearing a floppy hat being a self-described liberal zionist and for being on the big bang theory for a million years apparently now she's on a show starring as a woman who runs a cat cafe there's nothing sexy or charming there forgive me for what i'm about to say but i think what jeopardy needs is a comedian instead of a pro-israel wet

blanket like bialik i mean listen i'm not saying that they're all sides to this wrong about any of that but what that sounds like is all of the baggage and that's nothing that is written right

there talks about her hosting abilities right no let me read you the next graph uh which i think kind of zeros in on what this writer has a problem with hear me out there are two ways this could go a nicole buyer or a mark marin you either need someone who has professional tv hosting experience and a personality or you need someone who's dry and funny and whose main job is talking to people he might not always be that interested in. Bayer or Marin could turn Jeopardy back into what Trebek made it, a rousing game that felt more like a sporting event than a bar trivia night where three sad, lonely people showed up. So I haven't watched any of the Mayim Bialik episodes yet, but I'll be curious to see if this writer has any kind of point or if this is just, like you said, a person who was turned off by Mayim Bialik's outside-of-entertainment life and is just bringing that to the table.

Yeah, yeah. And again, I don't have a big stake in this, so I don't want any of my opinions to seem, you know. outsized. But yeah, I, you know, I basically I just wish for the best. You know what I mean? Like, I hope it is good. And I hope that she is successful. And, you know, and I as the job goes on, as you and I know, Luke, I mean, anything where you're talking into microphones, like it does take a while to find grooves. And, you know, I hope this is a successful. I hope this

is a successful project. I overheard a conversation between Mayim Bialik and one of the bosses of jeopardy then he said you're not going to host jeopardy forever are you yeah i don't know why you would say that to someone all right it seems weird the european commission uh the executive arm of the european union has announced plans to force smartphone and other electronics manufacturers to find a common usbc charging port on their devices to fit rather the proposal is likely to have the biggest impact on apple which continues to use its proprietary lightning connector rather than USB-C connector adopted by most of its competitor. The rules are intended to cut down on electronic waste by allowing people to reuse existing chargers and cables when they buy new electronics. This seems like big government doing exactly what you would hope big government would do, right? Yeah.

That's what I was going to say. Remember when the U.S. government also used to have kind of consumer protection in watchdogs like this?

Or when the U.S. government was really allowed to actually do anything that anybody actually obeyed yeah i mean this is good this is like you know like i think this is

the type of thing that is just like good for people and as they say good for the environment it's just good all around but you wouldn't you wouldn't get that in the united states because it'd be like freedom i have freedom right and and i mean i guess into a certain degree i do understand like well the marketplace can sort these things out like the weird thing is it's like i'm not anti i'm actually not anti-capitalist i'm not anti-marketplace in some ways the problem is I now I'm getting yeah I'm getting out and out over my skis as you like to say I I shouldn't bite off this big of an uh a bite here but yeah I shouldn't bite off this big of a meatball but like I just don't think that where we are in our culture and economy right now we can't just say the marketplace will decide anymore because the marketplace is so fundamentally warped and you

know not a a level playing field at all right and the other thing is apple has this i mean they're not the iphones are not the most commonly sold phones in the world which is crazy because if you live in like portland or seattle uh i mean i know you have a do you have a samsung or a google phone or something like so maybe you notice other people that have non-iphones but like you might be my only friend that has a non iPhone like it feels mean this feels like it but it just feels like it's they have such a hold on things that they can get away with so much crap that we the people that use Apple are just kind of low-key resenting but there's just they just have me in their web because I you know I've just been using their stuff now for a long time and it does you know sort of all kind of work together it's not like it's particularly kludgy or whatever it's just about the connectors it's just about them constantly changing the kind of cord i need and me having just so many of these different and i also by the way can never throw them out it is very much like that fred armison sketch where he's like going back through all his old media you know storage devices that's me with power things like i you know it's like well maybe this will come back maybe they'll need this again in fact you know i have this ipad here andrew that it needs some whatever the kind of earliest version of what they you know of how they power these things and i don't even know where that is so i'm gonna have to go to the apple store and buy like a thing for this that's already antiquated and will cost me 25 bucks and you know like just to power this thing up because they change you know what i mean like if i want to turn this ipad on i need to go buy an old ass cord so that i can do that which just seems like a bad system but Apple is so popular that they've been able to get away with just bucking the trend. If you were some, I don't know, if you were a less popular brand, you probably do have to get on the USB-C sort of train because you just don't want people being annoyed at your product. You want them to buy your product. But Apple's already got a bunch of idiots like me trapped, and now they get to do whatever they want.

Well, it's interesting. You know, I've been using the Samsung, which I actually think the Samsung are, I think these are the most popular phones in the world, globally speaking. I'm pretty sure. I think they are. Yeah. And I've been buying them for a while now. I'm trying to think which one I'm on here. Like, I think this is an S10 or whatever. But before I bought the S10, I think I had the S7 or S8 before then. And I was very seriously considering getting a Google phone instead, like an actual Google brand phone. I think it's the Google Pixel maybe. I could be wrong about that because there were just some things about it that seemed neat and a little outside the box. And I like to experiment with technology sometimes. And I did the reason I did not get it was specifically. because they would not have had a traditional headphone jack. And I know we're talking about charging jacks here, but the headphone jack really bugs me too that, you know, Apple decided, okay, no, you need these special things. You can only buy our type of earphones. Now, I know that this stance I'm taking is aging as I speak. Like, I mean, everybody is using Bluetooth technology mostly for their earbud needs and what have you. But, like, I, especially in the industry that I'm in, And I always like the idea of this sounds like I'm making it up for the show, but I swear this is the example that I always have in the back of my head. You and I are on some weird TBTL adventure where maybe we're doing shows in somebody's front yard or something like that. That would never happen. And a computer output doesn't work. And so I can, at the very least, Luke, email me that music file. I can put it on my phone. I can plug my phone into the board and we can play it. You know, like it wouldn't be ideal, but you always have that as an option. And, like, I just did not like the idea of these different brands making different things. Like, well, if you want audio output, you've got to buy our specific thing. Like, that really bugs me.

I think this is very smart of what Apple did many years ago, which was at the University of Washington bookstore, if you were a student, you could get an Apple computer that was subsidized probably by Apple. And so that's, like, the first laptop that I, like, owned was an Apple whatever. It was a long, long time ago now. but that had that that decision by apple to like under you know some like basically sell me that computer at a relatively cheap cost uh to me has now netted them thousands and thousands of dollars because it got me on that train early and then after that i was just like well the next thing i'm gonna get is gonna be that like i've just never even owned a pc laptop i've used pcs sometimes at my desk job but i'm like i know nothing about whatever the operating systems are of pcs like they are very confusing to me now like it's like a language that i sort of used to speak that now i don't anymore and uh but that was smart of apple because it got me trapped with them and the various ridiculous cords and cables and things um so i don't know i mean i don't think this will have a huge impact on us because unless we move to europe which i've been advocating for years i mean there doesn't seem like there's any um indication this is going to happen in the u.s But then maybe what will happen, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how big the European market is versus the U.S., but maybe if Apple actually does have to comply with this, maybe. But the other thing, too, to mention is this doesn't apply to wireless charging, which is like when you put your phone down on one of those charging pads. So I guess if the phone can do wireless charging or something, then there's also talk that Apple is soon going to have an iPhone that has absolutely no ports on it at all anywhere. which again it's that sounds like ridiculous but in 10 years i think it will just feel like can you believe we used to actually plug things into things well yeah that's actually one thing

that i've been um wanting to share with you luke just a little little geekiness so um you know the mariners now play at a park called t mobile park right what was it i keep on getting confused it

was safeco before that yeah and then the football team plays in lumen field now i keep forgetting

feels weird to me but when um when uh t-mobile took over they did change a little bit of the design of the park like they added their fuchsia all over the place which i wasn't a huge fan of but i also didn't get super uh you know i didn't care too much i thought i thought i was fine but it definitely feels like it's not like just oh this park is named this new thing now like like lumen field i don't know what is lumen again is there an electricity company is that what they're

called lumen no they do something that i don't understand when i hear the ads for them it's like that kind of underwriters on npr where they like solve previously unsolvable problems at enterprise scale and right and lumen i don't know what these these like businesses do and it's the same actually

the reason they changed to lumen wasn't because the ownership uh of the naming rights changed hands it's because the company changed hands right it used to be um oh century link century yeah i think that's i think that's the case there anyway i'm getting really off track but when you go to a field that is named something or other I don't know if in most cases their kind of products are represented as much but like t-mobile as a service is very much represented in this particular way first of all I am a t-mobile customer so I don't usually take advantage of this but I just realized the last game I went to that there's a special uh entry for t-mobile customers um that you know I guess conceivably has a shorter line you just have to show them your phone and when you put it on the like i don't know the the blank screen it'll show you that you're a t-mobile customer and then once you're in there there are all kinds of uh phone charging options that were not around before luke like these t-mobile phone charts so there's just like a regular phone charging station that's kind of built around a pillow by the bullpens and some of the concessions where there's a whole bunch of different kinds of chargers coming out of this pole. And I don't know, maybe you can maybe five people can stand around there charging their phones. That's pretty straightforward. But then they also have these little lockers. You know how when you go to a like you go to a hotel room and you have your fancy watch, you must know this, Luke, you carry around that fancy watch all the time, right? Yes. And

they have that little out to check the time kind of theatrically. Yes. And then when you go to bed,

You're so concerned about thieves getting your fancy watch, so you put it on that little satin pillow that you carry around, right? And then you go to the little safe in the hotel room where you lock it in there and you choose the four-number code to unlock it again. They have those things only with chargers inside of them, so you can just, like, lock your phone up in this little area and, like, have it charge inside of this tiny little locker for itself.

That's genius. That's genius work.

I know, and I used it for a little bit. The only problem is I was so nervous. I checked it a million times because I was meeting up with people later. And I was like, if something happens where I can't get my phone.

Andrew, as Benjamin Franklin said, a watched watch never charges. A watched phone never charges.

Yeah. No, I know. The problem is I was so scared to lock it up finally. I kept testing the door because I was like, if I end up locking my phone in there and then something malfunctions or somebody bonks me on the head with a frying pan or a baseball hits me in the head. And suddenly I can't remember which almost happened this season. So that's not an irrational. If you would have stayed in your seat, it could have happened. Right. And then I can't remember the code and I can't get it out. But eventually I trusted myself and the technology enough. And here is the coolest part. And this is why I bring this up is I didn't realize this. There's this really cool area in the park where you can watch the pitchers warm up in the bullpen and you can get very close to the bullpen. And there's sort of a bar area where you can, if you have food or a beer, you can set it on this little, you know, kind of bar area and you can just watch them up close and personal. They've turned part of that area into a wireless charging area. And I didn't realize at first. They were just these little, it's like this pink, there's the metal, there's kind of the metal bar part and then a pink part on top. And on the pink part, there are just little circles. That's it. It's only indicated with little circles and maybe a T-Mobile symbol. and anybody can just drop their phone in one of those circles and it just wirelessly charges. And I love it so much. I sound like such an old man. I really get a kick out of it, Luke. But I do.

I get a kick out of it, Luke. It really sends you? It really sends me. Yeah. No, I get that. I mean, I have this thing that Addy got me for Christmas, actually. It's made by some company called A Home. And it's this little charging pad that you can charge your phone on But also it came with a coffee cup that when you put it on there, it keeps the coffee warm. And every day I sit here with that coffee cup on there warming and it like it delights me anew each and every day when I use it. Like it's not even probably that futuristic of technology, but I'm just like, I can't believe you just put this cup on here and then the coffee's warm. Or I can put my phone on there. Yeah. I'm dazzled by things that are that are, you know, pretty standard at this point.

Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is I remember my dad had like the very old school version of that. Right. Like because my dad had, you know, he ran a steel fab shop for lack of a better word. And so like he had his own office, which sort of seemed fancy, but he had his own office and a, you know, pretty working class building in the Rust Belt in Cleveland, Ohio, you know. And it's just like I have such fond, fond memories of my dad's office and workplace from being there as a little kid visiting to then being like an older kid, like working for him. Um, and he, I just, he probably had the same coffee warmer for like 20 years. I can still see the coffee stains on it. You know, it's a tiny little hot pot, basically, only it's like the size of a coffee cup or a coffee mug and you just set it on there. But I just remember that thing so well. He had that and an electronic thesaurus, um, that he was constantly using. In fact, he found the receipt for it the other day and he sent it to me. He bought it in like 1991. It's like this thing about the size of, I don't know, it's like this little electronic device that sits on your desktop. This is before everybody had computers. I don't think he had a computer at this time. But if he was writing a quote out for some company and wanted to come up with a different word, he would always check his electronic thesaurus.

That's fascinating. I would think the steel fabrication business would be one of the lines of work that needs the least diversity in word choice. He's an artist, man. I love it. That's so cute. Yeah, I remember my dad, you know, he had a sign shop, and he had an office as well. I mean, it was just this kind of—the one room that didn't have sawdust in it, basically, which had, you know, like, drafting tables and things like that and just, like, paperwork and stuff. But it always had this very specific smell, you know, that I just was, like—I would associate with, like, work. And then, yeah, as I got— older i would work on like taco time stuff in there or whatever i would you know get hired to clean the place and vacuum it or what have you but um oh taco time was a big client so you're working on stuff related to the client yeah so that would be the thing we called weeding so like all of those signs used to be vinyl letters that were put on these like formica these like from like a piece of formica and then you'd put like uh soft taco or burrito on there but you put the letters would be made out of sticky vinyl and so you had to go through and like this computer like would cut all of those letters out of a sheet a solid sheet of of sticky vinyl but then you'd me and my sisters would go through and we'd pull out all of the middles of the b's you would have loved this andrew you would have done this work for free man well this also speaks

to like you still love peeling plastic off of things it's become a whole thing that's where

it started universe yeah that's amazing yeah because so what you would do is you would pull we had these my dad had these like extremely sharp tweezers they were like almost like i don't know if he sharpened them or something but they were just like you could just grab any little piece of this vinyl that you needed so you'd first you'd go through and you'd pull out all of the things that were in the interior of the letters then when you got older if you were to be trusted you would actually then make cut these long cuts so that you could pull all of the vinyl off that wasn't the letters and there'd be like lots and lots of words you know because you wanted to uh you wanted to be as uh efficient as possible so like a sheet would have all kinds of things on it right so that you weren't wasting the vinyl so you'd be trying to pull off the the everything that's not the letters but without bringing any of the letters up yeah and then when that's all done you get a big sheet of masking tape uh like industrial masking tape and you put that down with a squeegee and then you got to cut that and then you pull that off and then that's what you put on the sign And then you got to pull the masking tape off.

But then are you actually making cuts yourself at that point? So are you also nervous that like you could ruin everything with just like a just like a flick of a blade?

I think my dad was smart enough based on how inattentive to detail I was generally. I think I don't think I would ever do any of the like final stuff. Like I don't think I would ever actually do the masking tape part or because then you had to put it on the sign correctly. You know, like if you put it on the sign crooked, then you got to start over again. And so I think I was doing support stuff, but never anything where I had a real chance of super messing it up.

Yeah, that's good. I wouldn't want I had too much pressure to do the other stuff.

I wouldn't want to do that. All right. Let's do a little music for your weekend. What song would you like to present to the ears of the listeners on this Friday, Andrew?

So, Luke, this is a weird story. The other day, Genevieve was out of town, and I don't know why that's relevant in any way. I was just having kind of Andy puttering time, right? And I finished this book I'd been reading for the past month or so. It shouldn't have taken me this long to read it. And it was just like a Walter Mosley book, just like kind of a – it doesn't matter. It's kind of a mystery novel. And at the very end of it, in the very last scene, you realize that JFK had just been shot, like in the timeline. Whoa, JFK blown away? What else do I have to say? Thank you, Billy. And so it's not a huge part of the plot. It's just this weird thing that adds context to the time, and it just adds to the tone of the book as it closes. And I was sitting there listening to my Kixi radio or something like that, some sort of old-timey radio as I finished reading this book. And I thought to myself, I wonder what the number one song in America was when JFK died. Wow. And so – and I didn't know the exact date, but I think it's November 23rd now. And so I'm like November 23rd, 1963. What was the number one song in America that week? And it was this song by Dale and Grace. It's called I'm Leaving It All Up To You. I'm going to play it for you. I like it. I think it's a good song. I also think like if anybody wants to know like what is Kixi Radio, I don't know if I've ever heard this song on Kixi Radio, but when I describe the kind of oldies one might hear on Kixi Radio, my favorite radio station, music is cool now as it was then, Or you can go with the catchphrase music That makes you feel cool again Which makes me sad When did I stop being cool

I tell all my 45 year olds I tell all my 45 year old guys You were cool Then you're not But this radio station Is going to make you feel cool again So I'm going to play

A little bit of this for you And then I have a little bit Of an epilogue too So this is Dale and Grace With the song I'm leaving it all up to you

I'm leaving it all up to you You decide What you gonna do Now do you want my love Or are we through That's why I'm leaving it up to you You decide what you're gonna do Now do you want my love Or are we through

obviously this is the era before they discovered bass um i i mean i love this song i understand it's not for everybody but i definitely love it but then so i just did that by kind of being curious and like kind of doing the math okay what was the number one chart that year in that week but then last night as i was thinking about playing this song for you i thought i should just double check that what if i just type in dale and grace and kennedy and see like has anybody else acknowledged that this was the song in america or did i do my math wrong or something and i have confirmed it it was the number one song in america that particular day but also little dazzling detail dale and grace and their band happened to be touring with dick clark's american bandstand all-star parade or whatever it was and they were down in dallas to perform that day in fact the band was on the street corner waving at kennedy as he drove by um and then they went back to their hotel rooms before anything happened and they found out hours later that he

was shot moments later that is very weird right also that that song sounds so kind of old-timey to me for some reason it's like i think of kennedy being shot as have been having been not as long ago as that song sounds does that make any sense yeah yeah like hearing that song very much just tells you okay this is what was on the radio at this time this is sort of a snapshot of where america's kind of brain was or at least the music that that we were vibing with as a nation and that just that feels like so old like if you would have been if you would have played like um you know fortunate son or yeah you were thinking i would have been like yeah that lines up in my mind it's probably more like you know buffalo springfield or whatever but no that's that just like tells you dang it was really the 1960s yeah 1963 that's amazing 60s yeah anyway i do love that song sorry for the i am really glad that you had a really cool story and dazzling deet around your song because i had none of that i just have this song that i just like it's on some playlist on spotify actually addy played it for me and i i said madonna much because this is a band called sheer mag that she really likes they're like a i think they're sort of a punk band from philly Although this song does not sound like that. This song sounds like it could have been an unreleased track from Madonna to me. But anyway, it's called Silver Line by the band Shear Mag out of Philadelphia. Take a listen to this.

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Oh, there's a picket line in West Virginia.

So there you go. Sheer Mag, Silver Line.

I like it. Do you know that Sheer Mag was there when Hinkley shot Reagan?

I did know that, but I didn't want to one-up you.

Everybody knows that, Andrew. Yeah, I like it. It's definitely got a throwback sound, but it does sound like a modern throwback, though, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, I think that I was poking around on Thrasher Magazine.

Oh, nice.

Thrasher, I found an interview with the lead singer of this band And it was in Thrasher And then I was listening to some other stuff they did And yeah, it seems like their songs tend to sound throwback-y But of different genres

genres because they have this other song that's very almost like it could have been written by um oh i don't know like sort of uh a really rocking band from the 70s i forget the name that they said they always get compared to but almost like something that sounds wildly different than this so anyway check them out sheer mag philadelphia uh our listener suggestion comes from listener gary in stanwood he says my music for your weekend selection is the song come back down by bear hair bear hair is the new band by tim perry the driving force behind portland's ages and ages and my former brother-in-law i know ages and ages they've played live wire um and uh and i like them very much um uh gary says he is a great singer songwriter and i'm really proud of how he's grown his talent i miss playing scrabble with him after thanksgiving dinners so uh tim if you're hearing this i don't know if that door is totally closed but try to do what you can to get back into gary's family he misses you he needs you for scrabble told you andrew i'm not above trying to mend broken hearts on this show uh this song is so good by the way uh i previewed it as i often do and uh and i really like it too and i was an ages and ages fan so this is cool to know that bear hair is where um tim perry anyway has landed so that's how we're going to wrap things up And wrap up our broadcast week Thanks for listening everybody Thanks for being part of the show Have a great weekend We'll see you on Monday Go Mariners Go Browns Go Seahawks Go either Red Sox or Yankees Just one of them Go hard on the other one Please Oh are they playing each other at this point? Yes

Then I think we need to be I think we need to be Red Sox fans right? Oh god

I know Gotta make some pretty gross deals In this sports game my friend Anyway Thanks for listening we'll see you on Monday until then have a great weekend and please remember no mountain too tall

good luck to all and also sorry to our Boston fans that I'm so rude

Bye. So come back down From your head This on the ground The air is finally clear The fire's out And we can see The light in all directions Where all the lost Are welcome to be found

yes my job is stressful very stressful but in the end I get paid to make people laugh we have a saying that laughter is the best medicine so I'm kind of like a doctor here power out