Muse

I read poetry and sonnets, and he plays the upright bass. Yama kipiebo, sedere fa kebo, in dog Latin he quotes. Uje, soffice, hooray! Well, he bit all the he-dogs and winked at all the she-dogs. The town never knew such a hullabaloo as that little dog raised till the end of that day. We just have a good rhythm together, you know. He sort of feels me out, I feel him out. And we go for it.

TBTL! You're hungry, you're confused, your face is streaked with dry tears, and you don't even remember when you started crying.

In 1971, Bill Graetz invented Microsoft. Wouldn't it be cool if I could remember my dingus password for my email? I'm the king of the castle, and you're the dirty rascal. Crash into me. Crash into me. Ladies and gentlemen, congratulations. This plan is off to a great start.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

We're a ragtag group of crazy, stupidly crazy talented rock star legendary freaks.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. It's your lucky day. Coming to you from the Ness Broadcast Center, high in the sky above Portland, Oregon, where it is just torrentially raining this morning, and I really... Didn't know you like to get wet, though. Had my first soggy jog of what will probably be many here in the Rose City. Looks like the rain is finally here. You know what else is finally here? Episode 3,519 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. We've got some top stories for you, including this headline. Alabama's leading boudoir photographer is upset that state wildlife agents confiscated his rescue possum named Donovan.

That was the fanciest sentence I've ever heard. And I used to watch Frasier.

It's actually kind of a sad and frustrating story because it sounds kooky and it is. But also, this guy seems like a good dude just trying to take care of this disabled possum or opossum, opossum, as they keep calling it, in the local Alabama newspaper. I know we talk about that on about every six-month basis, if it's possum or opossum, but we're going to have to revisit that as well because I don't remember what's going on with that. And then speaking of animals, it's that time of year when they are accepting auditions, potential people who make paintings of ducks, okay? uh it's considered quite an honor to have your painting selected to be the duck stamp but the rules are that you have to also include hunting because this is a hunting pass

and uh people are to condone that like my artism is bigger than that people are doing these

paintings some of them anyway are mad that they got to put hunting in there and they're doing some things to try to be subversive with that so we'll talk about that uh and of course some emails and v-mails and this guy the longest running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he's just a typical sneakerhead working here for the employee discount he is andrew as jay would say uh he's got flow well shinny's joining me right now from the roosevelt neighborhood of seattle washington good morning my friend good morning luke i'm

excited to talk about all the things you just mentioned right there but can i add one thing to the list yes something coming up later on in the show that you don't know about yet okay We also have a voicemail from someone who claims that you owe them something Oh, great A voicemail from someone who legitimately, this is not a joke, who legitimately claims that you owe them something So stay tuned for that

Is it Columbia House? 12 CDs for a penny?

I'm not telling you

I swear to God, the statute of limitations has expired on that

They have a stack full of Amy Grant CDs and they're trying to figure out where to send them

It's our selection of the month, Luke If you're $20, you're stuck with it.

Yes, exactly.

Hey, so how was your weekend? Particularly, how was this wedding you went to yesterday that you got a special suit for and that you had to do a reading at? How'd that all go?

It went really well. I mean, the wedding itself was just incredibly beautiful and, like, relatively small, but just incredibly beautiful in Ballard. These are my friends, Nick and Rosen. My former friends. Yes, you didn't get the invite. and, you know, just an incredibly stylish couple. I mean, just the style. Everything was just pitch perfect. I mentioned last week on the show that they did ask me to do a reading, which was...

a poem and i'll tell you now what the poem is don't read it on the show i just don't like i don't know why i feel weird about that but i'll tell you what the poem is and people can look it up it's called the true love by david white which is a um like it's a it's i think it's a beautiful love poem with a little bit of darkness to it but like the last line of it would always kind of

catch in my throat when i was practicing yeah you said you were doing your practices and you were like getting emotional just like by yourself with like you and theo yes as i was holding his paw

I will say this too The first day that I opened it up And I read it and I practiced it several times And I was 0 for 3 on getting through it without choking up That was a day that I was Exhausted I don't know if you remember this day Luke But I know I make fun of myself on the show a lot Or I beat myself up over poor performances But do you remember one day last week I believe it was Tuesday That I was beside myself At how many stupid things I said I went back, I honestly did it, I went back into the show And cleaned some of that stuff up So hopefully the listeners didn't notice it as acutely. But later on that day, I just realized, oh, I'm just drained. I can't remember what I did the night before. Maybe that's the problem. But I was like drained. And so maybe that's why I was getting so emotional reading it. So I continued to practice it throughout the week or two before yesterday's before yesterday's wedding. And again, I think it's a lovely poem. But I got up there to read Luke in front of again. And it was a pretty, pretty small wedding. I, well, I'm going to use a crude phrase here. One from the country. I was shaking like a dog shit in peach pits, my friend. I, and I can't explain this kind of nerves because you and I have done some live shows together. There are people at APM who have no idea we've ever done live shows, as I recently learned. But someone was encouraging us to try that out if we ever want to do that. You're not going to do this show forever. I'm a nervous person. But anyway, I, you know, when I do those shows with you, like, yes, there's a sense of anxiety, of course, and, you know, a little bit of a rush. And you can probably hear it when I come out on stage. Like, I'm probably, you can probably hear some nervousness in my voice, no doubt about it. But, like, nothing like this. This, and I don't know why. And by the way, I'm also not complaining. It's not like I regret doing this or that I would say no if given the opportunity to do it again. I almost wish there's the type of thing where I felt like I had the seeds of something really good there. I felt like it was a pretty good read, but I was so nervous and my voice was so hitchy that I think people thought I was going to cry the whole time. Which there were moments where it was the combination of my just nervous kind of somewhat shaky voice exacerbated by maybe an emotional line so my voice would catch a little bit more. But I'm not even embarrassed about that, by the way. I'm seriously at an age now where I'm not embarrassed about getting a little bit choked up reading something that's beautiful. It wasn't like I couldn't read it or couldn't get through it. And I don't think I made anybody in the audience uncomfortable. I purposely put really long pauses in places where I thought there should be long pauses, and it may have come off like I was trying not to cry. But, again, I don't think in an uncomfortable way.

I think, like, Nick, the groom, at one point afterwards said, yeah, I almost put my hand on your shoulder at one point but thought you didn't want me touching you. And I said, yes, talk to our friend Durs about the last time he put his hand on my shoulder after the Browns loss. and i sort of vaguely remember my animal brain telling him to get his hand off me or something like that um but so i do think that people maybe thought i was more emotional but it was just total nerves luke in this way that again i can't explain and it's not like i don't want to do it it's just like i wish i could get reps on something like this because afterwards my stomach hurts so bad I'd only felt this way once before in my life, and it was probably around 15 or more years ago, I was at a going-away party for a close colleague of mine and friend of mine, Shea, and she was leaving New Hampshire Public Radio, and we'd been working together closely for the couple of years leading up to this, and I'd known her for a while at this point. So she was somebody important and close to me, and we were having a going-away party for her, and it was kind of out on a farm somewhere. I'm trying to figure out if that's relevant to the story. Well, it is actually. So it was out. A friend of mine was kind of farm sitting, if you can imagine that. It was New Hampshire days. And so he had this kind of nice little plot of land that we could use for this party. So we have this going away party for Shay, but nobody asked me in advance or I didn't have the forethought to think like I guess I was her boss at that point. I didn't have any words prepared. I'm not a toast giver usually. And my new boss at the time said, okay, Andrew, we're going to ask you to say a few words in about an hour or something. have something ready and so like I was able I had a little bit of a heads up about it but and so I

was practicing something in my head that's basically a stress dream for me is I'm at a thing and someone comes to me and says oh you're supposed to go on stage in five minutes and then of course in my dream I'm looking for a pencil to write some notes and I can't find it but that

was real life for you but this is also just a toast to my colleague in front of my other colleagues as she's you know heading out it's not it's not asking a lot of me especially I guess at that point as her supervisor that would that would fall to me but it just didn't occur to me and so I don't remember what I said in those moments this is the New Hampshire story but I remember kind of being very shaky about it it was probably fine in the long run but then I had to go this is where the farm comes in I had to go up into the I went into this tiny bedroom in the attic of the farmhouse where nobody could find me and I just laid down for about 45 minutes after that because my stomach was i mean when they say your stomach is in knots this is these are the only two times i can say my stomach was in knots and it wasn't leading up to it for both times it was afterwards it was like i was clenched so hard somehow like my abdomen was clenched so hard i mean on the plus side that is a good core work oh i look so good today you should see you wouldn't even recognize me i was just can we switch over to zoom i want to see yeah um and that happened to me yesterday but there was no farmhouse for me to lay down and so i had to like you know we're i was part of the bridal party or i was part of the i was a groomsman i was part of the wedding party so um we're all standing up there so then after the my reading i had to go you know stand again next to the other groomsmen while the the vows were read which were just so incredible um and i'm trying not to lock my knees and my stomach is just starting to hurt so bad and then afterwards we had to you know go down and socialize as we're getting ready for the reception and just you know, it was cocktail hour or whatever. And I just wanted a farmhouse with a child's bed that I could lay down on so bad because my stomach hurt. And I knew it would pass. I knew it would. I drank some bubbly water and, you know, it took about 40 minutes and it was just nerves and the muscles in my stomach reacting in a certain way. And I don't know. I find that somewhat regrettable. Again, I wish I could have a do over. I was weirdly less nervous about the reading than I think you might expect from me because I go into these things with a lot of nerves but i had read this thing so many times and i enjoyed the poem so much that i was looking forward to it and i just wish i could have been more steady but like in this situation i couldn't look at anybody i think i made terrible eye contact i think my i assumed that my body language was pretty rough i i don't know nobody said these things to me later people don't give you those notes but i know people heard the shake in my voice because several people did confirm that

I think it probably just added Sorry about this ambulance I think it probably just added To the emotional resonance Of the moment though

That's what Viv says Viv says that it was Kind of emotional for folks She said she saw some people Kind of maybe misting up a little bit So that's good Because I think it was A really emotional poem

You shouldn't have said That you wrote the poem I think that I know you wanted to really elevate The emotional experience But that was just That's just a straight up lie Weird thing is I said Power out at the end

in an Australian accent.

He just brought a little the TBTL sound box with you. Yeah, by the way. Fired a power out at the end.

I saw some people were like on, pardon me, on Slack and whatnot. People were saying, hey, I'd like to know what this poem is. I think I just mentioned it's The True Love by David White. But one thing that I also realized before I read it was I looked it up online and like the first result you get when you Google that is some poetry page where he's reading it himself now i don't know who this david white fella is uh but he's got a really kind of rich beautiful voice too so um if people are interested look it up but don't play

it here okay yeah i am i'm looking up the poem right now but i need to i'm just hanging by an emotional thread as it is i don't need to add that i'm hanging by a thread andrew because i am off of coffee as i was mentioning to you before the show yeah how is that i was well i was okay So I was hesitant to bring this up on the show because I don't want to send our listeners into hysterics. But, you know, because whatever, this is just basically a life blog of ours. For the last like month or so, I've just been having this kind of funky thing going on where I have will have what feels like a little bit of an irregular heartbeat. Now, I went to the doctor. I actually went to the like walk-in clinic near my house one day because it was just kind of, you know, I had Googled that. and it was like you might want to go check with a doctor and they did an EKG and they did a chest x-ray and everything is fine I just have this sort of extra heartbeat it's like from one of my ventricles and they said it's just the kind of thing that people develop sometimes it comes it goes you know we'll just keep an eye on it so then I had that meeting with the the the the doctor that I guess might be my regular doctor Mr.

I tell my 45-year-old guys this. And he did the same thing. He listened to it, and he knew exactly what it was. And he said, you know, you might want to – he said, how much coffee do you drink? And I said, like a cup a day, maybe a cup and a half. And he said, well, you might want to cut the coffee out and just see what happens with that.

Now, it's one of those 64-hour big gulps, though, right? Or 64-hour, 64-hour big gulps.

Well, it takes me 64 hours to drink it. It's 64 ounces. It's massive. I go to the a.m. p.m. at 6 in the morning before I got on my roofing gig. I just get the biggest thing they sell. I put like 11 packets, 11 of those Irish cream things in it.

I am surprised that you drink so little, by the way. I would have put you at at least three cups a day.

I make six cups of coffee every day, and I consume about one of those cups. And it's like as we're doing the show. And I love the ritual of it. Yeah. That's the big thing for me. Her secret to longevity?

Well, I never drink coffee.

I don't know what that audio is. You sound great in that tape. It just seemed far too relevant to not play it. I love the ritual of coffee. So I like getting it all ready the night before. Tomorrow's coffee, today, as we call it on this show. And then I like the smell of the coffee when I get back from my jog. It's brewing. By the way, another thing with this heart palpitation thing. It feels totally fine when I'm running. In fact, the time when I reliably feel the best is when I'm exercising, which is counterintuitive. But anyway, and so he said, well, the thing – I tell my 45-year-old guys this. Sometimes there's stuff that you've been doing that's been fine, and then it just stops being fine, which is just like, oh, dear God. Here comes – life comes at you slow. Yeah. Yeah. You know. So anyway, I said, fine, I'll I'll give up coffee. So I haven't actually had coffee since. Oh, the other thing that had happened was I had run out of coffee on that day. Well, what had happened is our dear friend Barry at Broadcast Coffee had mailed me a re-up. He's very nice giving us coffee. We appreciate it. But that was downstairs and I didn't realize it had arrived at my mailbox. So I found myself what I thought was coffee lists in Portland, a lesser Tom Hanks film, by the way. Yeah, I think that was a Chet Hayes film. Yes, it was a Chet Hayes reboot of Sleepless in Seattle. Anyway, so whatever that day was that I stepped on a meatball and saw the doctor, that was a day that I didn't have any coffee. And I had noticed that most of that day, the kind of like funky heart flutter was not happening. And so the doctor said, well, did you have coffee today? And I said, actually, I didn't. And he said, well, why don't you just stay off it for like, I forget what he said, like eight to ten days and just see what happens. So that's what I've been doing, and I don't – back to your question about – or back to your observation that I don't drink a lot of coffee. It's true because I like to have a cup of coffee while I'm doing the show with you, but then after that, it's like it's lunchtime. I'm not – I don't drink coffee all day long, and I also don't necessarily think I get a jolt from the caffeine necessarily. Like I'm not one of those people that is like don't talk to me until I've had my coffee or I need my coffee to be clear-headed. In fact, I think, if anything, the coffee probably hypes me up a little bit more than I need to be. I just enjoy the smell of it and the ritual of it. So I could always just do decaf, I guess. In fact, I bought – for watching the game yesterday, I wanted to – I don't drink a lot of diet soda anymore. I used to drink a lot of Diet Coke and Coke Zero. I try to just generally lay off that because it's very, very chemically. But I wanted a treat for watching the game. So I wanted to buy some Diet Coke, and I bought caffeine-free Diet Coke, which I've never done intentionally in my life.

That's interesting. I wouldn't have even thought of that. I don't know why I'm asking you this. Do we know, comparatively speaking, the caffeine content in a Diet Coke versus a cup of coffee? Because you're right to do that, but I'd probably be like, no, I'm off of coffee. Could I have a Coke, please?

Well, that was the thing. I was like you know I was all proud of myself that I've you know haven't had coffee for whatever four or five days and then I was like wait have I had any diet cokes in that time because it's probably a cup of coffee basically and again I'm I'm I'm curious I this this thing that I'm that I've been kind of dealing with is not in any way life-threatening or dangerous it's just annoying and so I'm interested in having it not happen so much you know um and so even though I'm generally the kind of person who like the doctor would say why don't you lay off the coffee and then the first time i wanted to have a cup of coffee i'd just be like screw it i'm having a cup of coffee that's i would what i would do is i would tell myself that the doctor doesn't know what he's talking about there's no way it's coffee related therefore i can have a cup of coffee if i want to um that's generally how my brain works uh but i actually haven't done that this time i've actually been good and i have laid off uh just so so if it continues i know it isn't

related to coffee and then i can put coffee back on the list or if it goes away which it does feel like it's lessened over the last few days um then i guess if i get to the point where it's not happening and then i have a cup of coffee and it comes back we've solved the mystery but it'd be kind of weird to think about going through the rest of my life not being a coffee drinker or having to constantly ask do you have decaf like i didn't understand who those people what those people were all about but now i may become one of those people if it turns out that's what's

causing this kind of irregularity i think you're right though like especially for the ritual stuff If I had to cut back on caffeine, I think I would continue to make decaf coffee, especially at home. I don't – I guess I don't drink a lot of coffee out – well, actually, now that things are opening up again a little bit or have been opening up, I have found myself in a coffee shop down the street to read my book, and that is an experience I like. I guess I could switch to decaf in those situations too were I in your shoes. But the ritual of making coffee for me, like, you know, getting it all set up the night before and then waking up in the morning and hitting hitting go on the coffee machine. I I would hate to give all of that up. I don't know what I would do with my extra time, frankly.

So, yeah, a quarter of your day is just dealing with that and washing the coffee pot and things like that.

My mom would go through various phases of kind of consumption when I was a kid. She went through a big Verner's phase of drinking Verner's ginger ale. Am I saying that right, Werner's? Oh, no, wait. Yeah, probably, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Werner's ginger ale. Suddenly that sounds weird in my head, but it was like a ginger ale that didn't taste like other ginger ales. It was a little bit more bitter to my taste buds as a kid. But when she was done with her Werner's phase, she started drinking Diet Coke, but she also was drinking caffeine-free Diet Coke. And I remember, like, I was not – I don't think I was a kid that drank that much soda, although maybe that's not true. I'm not sure. But either way, all I knew is if I was going to drink a Coke, I wanted a Coke. I didn't want a Diet Coke. I'm still not a big Diet Coke person. And I certainly didn't want a caffeine-free Diet Coke. And I just remember just thinking like – I remember the cans were like copper-colored or something along those lines. They still are.

They're actually very attractive.

To me, they represented just like why bother sort of. It was like the lamest of the sodas you could possibly have were the Goldenrod Caffeine-Free Diet Cokes that my mom had in the basement.

I'm going to go take a picture of them in my fridge, okay? And I'm going to send it to you. Maybe it can be the show pic today. Yeah. Like, I was actually putting these Caffeine-Free Diet Cokes into the fridge, and I thought, it's a handsome can.

I'll bet you it is. And I'll bet you I objectively would like it. Or can you objectively like something? But I'll bet you if I saw it now with fresh eyes, I would maybe have a similar thought as you. But for me as a kid, it just represented the weakest option of soda. Like, do you have any? Do we have any Coke? Yeah. Go grab one of mom's. One of the gold ones that says diet caffeine free Coke. I think I'm good.

It would be like if you go to someone's house and the only soda they would have would be Tab. Oh, yeah. Which was like the original diet soda, I think, or one of them, you know. And I was always just like, oh, tab. Although I'd kind of love to drink a tab now just for nostalgia's sake. I think it was really big in the South. My buddy Kevin Arnovitz, who is a basketball writer but grew up in Atlanta, he would always have tab in his fridge in L.A. I thought it was hilarious. Well, the design on the tab can is so cool, right? Yeah, definitely. Anyway, so I guess I'll let you know how it goes. I don't think – to me, again, I don't – if I had to switch to decaf, it would just be a thing, I guess. I would just do that, and I think I would get the same enjoyment out of it. Because like I said, I'm not somebody who – I don't actually like – I'm not looking to get more stimulated. Like I don't think that drinking a cup of coffee makes my brain sharper. Like I said, if anything, it makes me feel a little – maybe a little hyper or something. So anyway. And please, everyone, just don't worry. I'm fine. And I was, like I said, I was hesitant to even mention this on the show because I don't want to stress everybody out. Everything is cool. I have an extra heartbeat. And I think that makes sense if you know me. That's how emotionally intuitive and intense I am is it's because of the extra heartbeat. Now I got a headache. All right. Let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, we'll get into these top stories, including a possum named Donovan. Stay with us. hey let's thank our donors of the day these are the wonderful generous supportive people who are donating money every month to the show and that's what's making this episode possible folks like ira tarshis in sacramento california can i ask you a quick question luke

You sure can. Well, I'm just going to interrupt you after the first donor of the day. Did you hear me clear my throat? I'm developing a bad habit of forgetting to mute my microphone, and I cleared my throat while the music was playing, but before you started talking, and I'm like, I looked over, and my mic wasn't muted, and I'm very embarrassed about that, and I just want to apologize to Ira and the rest of the donors today for that unprofessional move.

Please do not withdraw your donation, Ira. We really need it. But, yeah, apologies for Andrew's unprofessional behavior. Actually, I didn't hear anything, but you know what I'm holding in my hand, Andrew, is a Rolls Made in the USA MS-111 mic switch. Nice. Portable, baby. It's not the one that I had sent you. It's not the one you sent me. I found actually one that is the exact one they use on Wait, Wait, but it was like almost a couple hundred bucks. No, you don't need that. And so this one was a little bit more affordable. But, yeah, it's just a little blue box that has an XLR in and out. And I can just, I mean, I don't have it hooked up here because I'm at home. But next time I'm on the road doing the show, it's just going to be a clear my throat fest.

Well, also, don't you have a janky, I'm sorry, donors, this is important stuff. Luke, don't you have a janky mute button on your board, too, though? You can still use this in your current setup, not just on the road, right? Well, I had a janky.

what i had done is i'd overused the mute button for for coughing and throat clearing because i have a kind of a a tick with this i actually do it when i'm on wait wait i have this thing where people who have come to watch me do it like friends or addy or carrie or whomever will actually ask me what are you doing up there what is that thing you keep pressing down and it's the mute button because i have this like like i said almost kind of i don't want to throw around ocd you know because there are people that really deal with that but this slightly obsessive thought of i need to make sure that my throat my voice is ready to go for when i'm going to talk so i'm constantly holding this mute button down and clearing my throat and then letting it up but it just becomes like a habit almost like a nervous tick yep i mean i think i mean we this has got to

be some age in here as well right like before the show the other day i was clearing my throat like crazy and um or like bananas sorry um and i uh wild it was wild how much you were clear in your throat and i uh and i just i i think i said to you before the show like i'm turning into everybody's dad or at least my dad like my dad i love my dad one of his leading character traits now though is he can never get his throat clear you know and i just got the sling blades yeah and i think that this uh this podcast really has been an evolution into you and i really yep moving out of uh young adulthood i saw my 45 year old podcast host andrew yeah exactly into these middle-aged issues

well so i i have that same kind of habit here and i mute my microphone constantly sometimes it's for an ambulance a lot of times it is just because i want to clear my throat or something and i did it so much that i burned out well i i thought i'd broken the mute button that i was using so i had to switch to a different channel on this mixer but then i bought some of that compressed air oh okay and blew the button like just blew the air in there and it fixed whatever

was janky about oh nice oh that's fantastic love it okay now surrounded not just by clocks but by

cough buttons and again this is an extremely inside baseball talk this is really only relevant if you hosted if the listeners also host a daily podcast that they sometimes have to do on the road um and they didn't know they could have a cough button and now they do know that so for those listeners um you're welcome for that information for everyone else i apologize let's continue You thanking the people paying for this today. Sarah Golden is in Chicago, Illinois. I'm hoping I get to go back to Chicago soon. Gosh, I bet you that they're getting back on the wait-wait happening IRL at some point. Doesn't it feel a little bit like it's so weird because there's so much. I can't believe I'm going to completely torpedo. you've done a fine job sir of torpedoing the donor so far now i'm gonna pass the baton to me hand me the baton and now i'm gonna do that and go into a sort of like not particularly well thought out meditation on where we are at re colon the virus but while there is terrible news about places where there are still a lot of unvaccinated uh behaviors and then what that impact has on the health care system etc i don't want to elide any of that but i also have this strange feeling like we're kind of turning some kind of corner somewhere like i heard somebody on npr the other day talking about how you know they think that like by christmas a lot of normal like stuff that we just aren't used to is going to come back somebody some experts that they thought it could be more like christmas of 2019 i mean obviously i don't want to i'm not trying to say we're we're we're out of the woods or or you know like things are a-okay for everybody because they're not but i also just have this you know i'm noticing like paul f tomkins is doing live shows again in la and people are going and having a great time of course you have to be vaxxed and everything we're doing live wire again on the um uh the 14th of october we're going to actually do a real live show in the theater you

got to be vaxxed and masked but um i don't know i'm right i'm not trying to make a point with this but am i right that you had um you had shows booked before that right that you had to then

push back again right yes yeah we did uh we we had the the there was supposed to be a show in september that we did virtually instead of in person because that was just a moment where it just felt like not only kind of um like it wasn't very safe which is the primary concern but also just it wasn't a good look for us yeah like we didn't want to be the i think i made this joke to you on the show and i made it on the live wire virtual show that we did i said you know uh typhoid mary gets a lot of attention but uh the person i don't talk about is waited until it was safe to do her live radio show mary like she just blended way into the background and i wanted to be that i didn't want to be like the i didn't want live wire to be known as the show that was trying to push the envelope of getting people inside but we're at this point now where it's like we here in Portland we do have a lot of people who are vaccinated and we are gonna you know I'm gonna personally check everyone's vaccine card no good coming in the theater that'll be fun for everybody and you have to be masked and so um yeah we're gonna do it actually you know Tom Sharpling is coming out from the best show wow oh cool yeah I know it's gonna be a cool show uh I would highly recommend people go to livewireradio.org and uh please come to the show if you feel safe and if you're vaxxed and you're willing to wear a mask but anyway i guess my rambling point there was it feels to me like even though there are still a lot of things that are very dispiriting about what's going on there are these weird little moments where i feel like we are turning some kind of corner with this or or maybe what it really is is some elements of quote-unquote normal life seem like they are sort of coming back you know you can go see a movie now you know you can even And I know that I was hearing this morning that hospitalizations are declining now, COVID-related hospitalizations. They're still way too high. They should be, like, at practically zero. But regardless, they are now going down. Like, there are some data is sort of positive. Anyway, my point is I want to see Sarah Golden in Chicago, Illinois, at a taping of Wait, Wait. That's what the whole point of that was, that digression.

I hope you're right. I have I've been seeing and I haven't been trying to drill down on it too much. I don't know why I started the music if I'm going to continue the covid conversation. I was doing such a good job. But I will just conclude by saying I hope you're right, because I feel like I'm really getting mixed messages. I haven't drilled down on any stories and I'm probably not following it as closely as you. But sometimes I feel like I'll see headlines that are very promising. But then, you know, I know our friend Celine, who performs as prom queen, has been invited to do like various shows and she cannot wait to get out there and perform again. But she has to she's been posting on Instagram like I'm, you know, anytime anybody invites me, I check the local headlines to see how hospitalization rates are going. And she posted something that said hospitalization rates are still going up in Washington. So I don't know. But I so I don't have a good line on it. I hope I hope you're right. You know, I would like I would love to have somewhat normalized holidays.

Yeah. Let's also thank listener Kevin Johnson, who's in Marysville, Washington. Beautiful Marysville, Washington. Thanks, Kevin, for supporting the program. Joseph McIntyre is in Atlanta, Georgia.

Cool.

I wonder. Five point. I wonder what. I don't know.

It's like the one neighborhood I know I would hang out in if I lived in Atlanta.

In Atlanta. Yeah. When you go down there with Veeves.

Yeah, I mean, it's been years and years, but I remember the first time she took me down there. I was like, oh, this seems like a cool neighborhood. Now, I don't know if that's where Joseph lives or not.

I once spent, I can't even remember what holiday it was. Fourth of July, maybe? I once spent a holiday in Atlanta. This is when I worked for NPR. I was down there on some reporting trip, and it just so happened that I just had to, it wasn't like Christmas or Thanksgiving, But it was a biggie, whatever it was. And I remember just going to the Fogo de Chao in, like, who knows where, Buckhead or something. Just going to a Fogo de Chao by myself on a major holiday in Atlanta and just eating pounds and pounds of meat.

Is that a Brazilian steakhouse place, or what is it? Yeah, it's just one of those chains, though.

It's kind of one of the bigger Brazilian steakhouse chains, I think. The best ever Brazilian steakhouse name is in Washington, D.C., and it's called The Grill from Ipanema, which is just a genius name for a Brazilian steakhouse.

And for a podcast episode title.

There you go. Jeff Zapata is in Seattle, Washington. Jeff, thank you so much for the support. And then Kevin Connolly is in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you, Kevin, for supporting the show.

The Cincinnati Bengals? Home of the Cincinnati Bengals? Which are now leading the AFC North That's Cincinnati

Really?

Yeah

Quarterbacked by hot Jim Brewer A.K.A. Joe Burrow

Jim Brewer I can't get it

Jim Brewer is the comedian He was on SNL Oh, by the way

Oh, right Okay, yeah

Your boy Our boy The Trump impersonator What's his name again? James James Austin Johnson, maybe? You got it, yes He just got cast on SNL

Oh! fantastic that'll be good I'm looking forward to seeing yeah kind of what else he does I've been following him on various social media platforms and he yeah I'm excited to see what else he brings to the table

Jim Brewer was on SNL and he did like a I think like a Joe Pesci impression and this thing called Goat Boy and then he was in like a stoner movie I think with Dave Chappelle called like Half Baked or something and he's just kind of like a funny silly guy and i think just generally has been you know he shows up on the stern show a lot well he's also unfortunately like an anti-vaxxer which is uh which is terrible it's always a bummer when there's someone you're like i'm kind of generally positive towards them or neutral and then they you feel that you finally have a bad take on vaccines and he's like dang it anyway joe burrow the quarterback the much heralded quarterback for the uh cincinnati bangles is uh he looks to me like a younger much more attractive jim brewer and i feel like we're not talking about that enough no i would agree in the m in the msm in the sports msm it's getting almost a zero speaking of the sports mainstream media no no point today uh because uh of some scheduling stuff but we're going to record one tomorrow and that will also schedule for a change

i mean you can throw me under the bus there if you want to i mean we we're trying not to we prepared the audience to say that like hey you know you you have a pretty busy schedule these days and we don't know if we'll be able to do a no point every week or at least on Monday every week and then it's me screwing everything up today so my apologies but we'll bring you we'll

bring you a really extra good one tomorrow right yes because you you were not able to watch much of the Seahawks game if I understand it because you were at the wedding yeah I actually did end

up seeing most of the Browns game and again we'll talk about it in the no point but then yeah we were all getting ready uh for the wedding together like we um they they rented like a little hotel room for the groomsmen to all kind of get together and get ready together um and so the game was sort of on but you know and i was even staring at it at times but not really taking in what was happening if that makes sense i was just going over the poem i was going to weep through later

i was crying yesterday too but for totally different reasons the thunder chickens anyway thank you to our donors of the day thanks for making the show possible we really appreciate you hello and welcome to top story uh this is a a story from uh al.com which is the uh an alabama news organization photographer social media star matt matthews possum taken by the state was his quote baby matt matthews one of the most sought after boudoir photographers in the southeast and a multiple world qualifying barrel racer is also a fierce animal advocate who has spent years rehabilitating one of his favorite creatures possums now andrew i'm choosing to just say possums even though every reference to this is opossum here's the deal when

You mentioned this at the top of the show. I wanted to remind us what the rule is. And the last time this came up, I just went with the first search result, which was Merriam-Webster basically saying it is interchangeable, opossum or possum, and that it mostly refers to the Virginia opossum in North America. But I am now at my favorite opossum reference site, bobvilla.com slash articles slash opossum versus opossum. And Danielle Fallon over there says that, no, it is not interchangeable. Even citing the Merriam-Webster saying that is not correct, there are actually differences. There's a list of about 10 here. But it says here's the number one takeaway. Possums are native to Australia, New Zealand, and China. While opossums live in America and southern Canada So I think you're talking about an opossum But you can probably also just say possum in our culture And people will know what you're talking about

Can we start the show over again? Because I've already misidentified this animal now Donovan, like three times

Yeah, do you want me to get the thank you music going again? I've been big on that today No, can you get the open tape, actually? Okay, yes

We've got to go way back to Kim Cattrall Because I've been saying possum Alright, opossum This opossum is named Donovan And this guy who, again, the fact that he's the Southeast leading boudoir photographer slash professional barrel racer, which I don't even know what that is.

Now, I'm picturing people on barrels floating in the water, running and staying balanced. But that is probably not right, right?

I bet you that is what it is. Let's see. I'm going to this guy's website right now just to try to see.

Barrel racing looks like maybe it has something to do with it. It's a rodeo event. This makes way more sense.

You ride a horse around barrels. I've seen this before.

Yes, okay, cool. You're not trying to stay balanced on a barrel.

That's more like log rolling. Yes. But that's exactly what I imagined when I saw barrel racing. I imagine a barrel, or like you're running on a barrel, like you're a cartoon. Exactly.

And it makes that sound, like the little percussive, yeah, high-pitched sound, yeah.

But so anyway, this guy, he he has kind of made a habit of of taking care of and nursing back to health opossums when he's not busy barrel racing and taking boudoir photos. I wonder, is that still a thing? Like, I remember when I was a kid having like a couple of friends whose parents, you know, like their mom would go get some sort of boudoir photos taken. And I I remember seeing some of them. I actually can specifically remember one friend's mom's that were in, like, a folder or something. And he, like, showed them to me. And I was like, I don't know why you want to show me this, but OK. But I'll look. They weren't – I mean, totally. They weren't, like, graphic. They were just more, like, very sort of soft focus and pink boas kind of stuff, you know.

I think there are probably – because every now and then on Instagram, I'll see, like – I don't know if a friend. I can't think of anything in particular, but I think there are probably updated versions of that now, you know, like almost like retro pinup stylish kind of stuff or maybe for weddings. I don't I don't know for sure, but I have not had any taken. I can tell you that.

I'm just wondering because I feel like that was a thing when we didn't all have cameras, you know, on our phones that were with us all the time. And there's a whole other world now of, you know, people taking pictures of themselves and sending them around to whomever, et cetera. I just feel like the nature of like of kind of, you know, sensual photography has really changed. And I wonder if there's anyone that's still going to like, you know, the Yen Louie and then going in the back of the Yen Louie for their for their boudoir photos.

Yeah, I'm actually out there. But my guess is it's the experience has changed because I just get the impression that maybe I'm just thinking about this because I was just at a wedding, you know, with a professional photographer and you took a few boudoir photos yeah and actually i did make a joke to the guys i was like should i just come you know ready to go or like were we taking boudoir photos but i do think that and again i don't i don't know if i'm making this up but i just have this feeling that like you know there is an experience involved in feeling like you know in like teaming up with a photographer who is going to make you look beautiful and like kind of the i do think there's still like a modern boudoir experience it would appear so because this guy

matt matthews is um i'm on his tiktok page and he's definitely got lots of examples of working with clients and it looks actually like it's very cool it's like um some people who uh have some one of them uh has a lot of noticeable um scarring probably from a surgery maybe a cancer surgery and they're taking a really beautiful photo of themselves i would imagine kind of reclaiming their body and and uh their health etc so anyway this guy also though he loves opossums and he had this opossum donovan that got kind of famous on like tick tock and instagram um they the uh alabama wildlife and freshwater fisheries showed up with three like cop cars basically to take this opossum donovan away from this guy because he doesn't have a license to rehabilitate to rehabilitate opossums which he freely admits he's like i know that i this is technically illegal What I'm doing but he goes it's really impossible To get the license I guess okay I was gonna say

Like if you truly care then Dude just get the license why does he say It's impossible

He says he doesn't want to be a full time rehabber Between his photography business and his barrel racing He doesn't have the time But he also says

you'll never turn down an animal in need. I don't consider myself a wildlife rehabber. I rehabbed Donovan. He's my baby. He's part of my family. I wasn't taking in babies every day, but I took in Donovan. I felt like that also, just the name Donovan, I thought, upped the interest level for you. Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Then when the opossum goody man... That was terrible. Let's move on. That was so good. I was being quiet, so that can be isolated

and put up on a marsupial gurgle. So this is the story on Donovan. so somebody called him this this guy matt matthews um for getting advice for taking care of this little baby possum that was found on the side of the road and was having health issues and she called this guy matt matthews up for advice because he's like the possum guy and then she says yeah and the matt matthews is saying yeah it sounds like there's this that and the other going on and she says okay i'm just going to shoot the opossum and matt matthews is like no don't shoot him bring him over here so he ends up adopting donovan donovan uh was physically deformed when matthews took him in he couldn't walk he was missing an ear after his siblings had eaten it from being crammed in their small cage god these are this is what's still going on with donovan

right now you know they call that an opossumable burger i don't know if this is the kind of thing

I was going to say, do we need to treat...

I'm sorry, I'm basically laughing at my own joke over here.

Opossimable burger? Is that what you said?

It is what I said, or tried to say.

Donovan's got a lot going on. Donovan still has metabolic bone disease, which Matthews treats. Donovan can only drink water with a drop of honey. He has a specific diet. He loves low-fat strawberry yogurt for a treat. He can only eat at a certain angle. And he needs help using the bathroom And his eyesight is waning That's interesting, needs help using the bathroom Answers to the name of Lucky That was an old joke from my dad

Do you remember that old joke Or was that just big in our family Like, you know, lost dog, missing eye Three legs, no tail Answers to the name of Lucky

I wonder how it would be that an opossum Would need help using the bathroom You feel like it would just go Wherever, like, you know Elderly humans need help using the bathroom Because we're assuming they're still trying to get to the bathroom Right, right

Like what's he doing, putting little handrails up Around the little tiny toilet

But really, this guy seems like he really loves this thing And he isn't even trying to get Donovan back He just has a place That he wants them to take Donovan Which is just like a licensed opossum Rescue place And he can't get anybody at the state of Alabama To tell him, just to confirm That they're going to take Donovan to like a legit place that's ready to take care of him he was worried they've already euthanized donovan and uh you know uh i i don't know he's now i guess the way this got this attention is because he's taken to his tiktok and instagram page he's trying to get more attention for donovan

wants to find out donovan's whereabouts yeah you know as you're telling me the story i'm kind of swinging back and forth in my opinion on on the whole matter and at first i was like you know if this is important to you get the license friend like it sounds like a solvable problem but i don't know if it is getting a license for something like this the equivalent of like getting you know training for any job like is it a two is it like a one-year program like going going back to school i understand that if you already have uh a couple of careers going you don't have time for that so that makes sense barrel racing and boudoir photography right so uh i mean the barrel racing Is that how he's making his money? I don't know. And maybe it's just not for me to judge from afar, because it sounds like he's coming from the right place. At first, I was starting to think that it was going to be like, I don't know, maybe a hoarder situation where he can't say no to these animals. And, you know, is it an unsafe condition, even though his heart is big and maybe even beats too much like yours? Extra heartbeat. But like bringing all these animals, does he have a house that's overrun by animals? But it doesn't sound like that's the case. No, it seems like he has his stuff very together. Yeah, exactly.

So hashtag justice for Donovan, I think, is the new thing that we're going to start here. And I'm hoping everything is going to be okay for that little critter. Speaking of little critters, let me just say this, Andrew. I think the Audubon Society of America has a really different idea of what hilarious, what the meaning of the word hilarious is. I saw this headline from the Audubon Society. They check out these hilarious entries in the new duck stamp contest. Okay. I remember talking about this in the past. Yeah, we've actually talked about this before. Basically, if you're going to hunt ducks, you have to get a license for that. And it's a stamp, is my understanding. And that stamp, for, I guess, many years, there's been a contest of who gets to have their painting of a duck, who gets their wildlife painting to be the official duck stamp for a year. I guess these duck stamps bring... in like a billion dollars or something in in fees um and and so but but because of the world we live in and i think this i think this came in like yes it was a new rule recently and again i don't have any evidence but it feels like it's i know donald trump didn't do this yeah but it feels like it's yeah yeah whereas like just i don't know like there's like hey there's a nice thing people painting pictures of ducks and then just some like yahoos had to be like yeah but we got to make sure that this honors america's duck hunting tradition it's like we love these beautiful ducks so much that we want to shoot them when they're trying to fly south for the winter i don't know if you can tell my opinion on duck hunting it's low um so yeah the new rule was you have to integrate hunting into the painting which kind of makes no sense because again you're painting a beautiful duck so then you got to show someone pointing a gun at them i remember like when the

story came up when the new when the rule was new which i think was last year or maybe two years ago um some artists were trying to like just keep it as subtle as possible by maybe like painting a beautiful picture of a duck but then like maybe having some shells in the background yes that's

exactly what happened like a shotgun shell floating in the water near the duck uh which people were saying just looked like litter yeah basically but it was a way of of satisfying the requirement of it being hunting related well this is going away actually like a year from now i get i have a sense someone else got in charge like so it's like the trump again i don't think this is like people that necessarily were even appointed by trump but it just feels like is this the time when i talk about how weird our system is our winner take all electoral system is andrew where it's just like one group comes in and just does everything they want to do and then the other group comes in and then it's just a reversal of everything i am personally happy at the reversal that we're seeing in various places but i'm dispirited to think that if heaven forbid uh you know donald trump or his ilk get back into the white house everything just gets reversed again

yeah just like yeah nobody get too comfortable honestly um and freaking vote um but yes please uh i was chuckling because did anybody did anybody even entertain the idea of in the paintings arming the ducks well that's literally oh one of the paintings i did not i haven't well Luke, trust me, I did no prep for today's show I didn't know that

So that's the thing I see this headline from the Audubon Society Check out these hilarious entries in the new duck stamp contest I was like, alright So someone at the Audubon Society has been on the Flickr page Where all the submissions are And, I mean, the only one that gets close to being hilarious Is one where the duck is holding a gun

I just clicked on it now Is it the top image here?

Yeah, it's kind of good, right? Oh my gosh So the duck is holding the gun with its feathers, pointing the gun at a hunter who's shooting some ducks.

Yes, that is. And the duck has this very intense, severe look on its face. That is awesome. Like a duck holding a gun at a hunter. Well, there you go.

Maybe it is hilarious. You're tickled by this. I was expecting there to be just a bunch of them. Basically, there were like three, and one of them was debatable. So you have the duck holding the gun, which is probably the best one. Then you have another one where it's a duck, and then there's just a random gun in the painting.

Yeah, I don't get that one.

Which didn't quite strike me as hilarious. Then you have this other one that's actually a really nice painting. I have no idea what it is, but it's these two guys shaking hands in front of a duck.

What is happening? Okay, so there's two men. There's two white men. They are in the water up to their waist, above their waist in water. one is an older guy wearing a camouflage jacket the other fella is wearing a suit and tie and like a suit jacket and tie and they're both shaking hands and smiling at the camera as if i don't know one of them just won a contest or something behind them is a larger than life duck with its wings spread out almost as if putting its its wings on their shoulders and what is hanging around the duck's neck are those duck calls oh yeah that's exactly what those are and

i don't they're almost like it's almost like something mr t would wear it's like a it's like a kind of a chain or a rope with these duck calls on it uh that looks almost sort of hip-hop-ish

so do we don't and the caption on the audubon site is literally who are these guys you don't know like come on

if the Audubon Society doesn't know who it is yeah this is actually a really good painting like just from like a the actual quality of the art I'm guessing that this is some sort of a burn on maybe the guy in the suit is the is the federal official or something in charge of this and then the the guy in the camo they look like they're real people like my guess is the They're trying to say these two entities, whoever they are, in bed with each other. And then you've got this duck looking over. I mean, again, it's a very striking painting. So, you know, you've really brought me around on this, Andrew. Maybe these are hilarious. You had a good reaction to them.

This one is especially hilarious. I love it. I kind of want to hang this up.

I know, the one with the guys shaking hands, right? Yeah, it's so bizarre. I would seriously buy that painting and put it up in my house.

I'm on the Flickr page where it's officially posted. But even, and that's on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Flickr page, but they don't have a caption on it either explaining, like, who are these guys?

Like, somebody's got to know the person who painted this. And I want to find out who that person is.

Yes. Why are they not giving out the names?

It would be hilarious. It would be such a just beautiful bit of trolling if they picked the duck holding the gun shooting.

Oh, that'd be so wonderful. Yeah.

I would make me – I don't know. Maybe we have duck hunters in our audience and maybe there's some beautiful, I don't know, communing with nature right before you shoot at it thing going on. But, like, it would be so funny to me if in order to go hunt ducks you had to go buy this license, this stamp, and it was a duck hunting. What if somebody just sent in the duck from Duck Hunt? Yeah, that little, like, clutch cargo muttly dog.

Right. And there was a big part of this, too, that, like, I guess a lot of people buy these because they're also used as passes to get I don't have the information in front of me. And again, I'm conjuring this from a couple of years ago and you know how bad my brain is. But I believe a big part of the story, too, was a lot of non hunters buy these as well because they're actually they act as passes to the national parks, I think. And like you alluded to, they apparently raise a boatload of money for conservation.

yeah they do and uh yeah people collect them just because they're kind of beautiful works of art um but i i'm guessing that they're not going to uh pick any of the uh the hilarious ones but if anybody knows who those guys are if any of our listeners do let us know because maybe we can crack the case on this also i want to figure who that artist is because i would legitimately reach out to them and say can i buy a print of this or something i mean this you and me like replace

these guys with you and me like that would be a great tbtl that'd be a great that'd be a fawn

a great fun gift you and i shaking hands in front of a duck yes i'm trying to think do we swap out

the duck with something more tbtl related or no we just keep i think you have to keep the duck in

there yeah otherwise we've just it's just a totally new painting or totally new concept right 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 well you got me all nervous now andrew because you said at the top of the show you have a voicemail from someone saying i yeah i'm unsurprised to to find out that i have some bad debts out there but what's going on i'm not i'm not even joking with you i don't know that

it's 100 appropriate for me to play this for you um but uh i'm going to i don't know that this was sent in to be played on the air uh but this is from a tb channel listener and a wait wait don't Tell me, listener.

Hi, Andrew and Luke. This is just me triangulating completely because, Luke, you owe me a voicemail message. I was a winner on Way, Way, Don't Tell Me back when you guys were away, and it was the TBTL Summer Games. I was on Way, Way, Don't Tell Me, and I won the Bluff the Listener Challenge, a poop-related challenge with lots of TBTL content. and I still haven't gotten my voicemail message from you, Luke. And I'm sorry to bug you. I did send you an email saying you didn't have to do it if you really were waked out by it and didn't want to do it. But if you can tell me that you're not going to do it and then I can, like, ask somebody else from WaiWai, don't tell me, even though what I really want is you. So I guess that's it. Thanks. Bye.

Now, the funny thing there is I don't know this listener's name. I remember when this was going down because I think we got an email from this listener saying, you guys are on tape the week when I need the TBTL top stories more than ever, but it sounds like she won anyway without it, but I don't remember her name and she didn't leave it in that voicemail. Uh-oh.

Okay, first of all, I 100% want to do this voicemail and I am so angry. I am so furious right now with the Wait Wait staff because no I mean no one has ever asked for my voice you know it used to be Carl used to be Carl Castle back in the day and then you know Carl moved on from the show and then eventually passed away RIP and then it became you can you know the prize if you won the game was the voice of any of our you know panelists or or whoever you want and i'm assuming it's mostly bill curtis it's probably like mostly bill curtis or paul poundstone or maybe peter but it's never me i've never heard from the wait wait people that they want me to do that somebody said can i have the luke that that the dulcet tones of luke burbank on there so to know that this listener actually requested me and no one from wait wait reached out to me to say hey we got to you got to do this recording it makes me wonder how many other people have requested my voice oh wow i might be the most requested person and no one's telling me does anybody fulfill these is this just a false promise by wait wait don't tell me i mean i know they used to because there was always a bit at the end of the show like the show's over and there's a q a people would ask a question about the voice on the answering machine and carl would say uh well actually we've got a few here and then they would have some ready to go and they would be really funny because you know people like write something really silly for carl castle to say you mean like this here you're probably

calling to talk to danae she may not be around today it's not really you she's got lots to do so have something witty to say this is carl castle from npr's wait wait don't tell me danae can't get to the phone right now but she knows you probably called just to hear my voice

That was from my friend Denae.

That's a lot of pressure. I know Denae.

I also love can't get to the phone right now because nobody actually calls and usually gets voicemail messages. And so the language remains the same. I can't get to the phone right now. The phone's in your damn pocket.

No, we saw there was an incoming call. We declined it. We got to the phone. We are not having a problem getting to the phone. Yes, exactly. We did not run through the house to the phone that's on the wall in the kitchen and grab it just as the other person – as the line had gone dead from the other person hanging up. Right, right. So to that listener, I really hope that you got this far into today's show and that you will get in touch because I will absolutely do that.

Yeah, so you didn't even know about that. I do remember this listener saying, I'm nervous. I'm going to be on. I don't know if I knew that they ended up winning though. So that's news to me. But also, I mean, here's the deal with this. Like, you want to go through the proper channels, probably, so that the folks at Wait Wait can, you know, check off the proper boxes or whatever, which they're clearly not doing. But, I mean, worst comes to worst, we can facilitate this. I mean, I can. Absolutely.

But I also want to get some points at Wait Wait. I want them to know that there's at least one person on planet Earth who won their game and wanted old Burbs' voice on their machine. Right. They're probably like, we've got to put Luke out to pasture. There's, like, zero traffic on him doing the voicemails.

Yeah, it didn't even register They're like, oh, this must have been a prank

I'm putting Wait Wait into I'm just doing a search now Wait Wait Prize, Listener Maggie Oh, Maggie, hi Maggie So it wasn't Wait Wait's fault Well They didn't reach out to me

Oh, what were you just searching?

This is an email that's just from the listener

Oh, I see, it's from Maggie Okay, gotcha I'm just emailing Maggie back now Sounds good I'm trying to think of, while you do that, I'm trying to think of good, like, Answering Machine song, like, Answering Machine related songs to go out with. I feel like there must be some good ones.

Well, what about Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen?

Oh, yeah. Okay. I was also thinking just Call Me by Blondie had popped up in my head, too. But is that song? Yeah, Call Me Maybe. That's not really about Answering Machines any more than Call Me is, right?

Well, it is. It's like, I just met you and this is crazy, but here's my number. So Call Me Maybe.

Yeah, but that's no more about answering machines. It's just about calling in the same way the song Call Me is about. I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that, like, they're equally about telephones and equally not about answering machines.

Is there a song other than those fake, which doesn't really go out music.

Oh, my God, I have some of those.

Leave a message at the call. I have so many.

We went through a phase.

Nobody home. Nobody home. Nobody home. Nobody home.

Nobody home. I remember those commercials.

Wait for the beep. You got to leave your name. You got to leave your number. Wait for the beep.

Yep, we saw the same commercial.

When's my girlfriend's birthday? No idea. Zero idea. But I can sing those crazy answering machine messages from 30 years ago.

Oh, my God. Yes, people used to send those in to me. I'm having trouble finding them right now for some weird reason. But okay, but I like your idea. We can go out with Call Me Maybe. I haven't heard that song in a long time. As I always say, I like this song legitimately and non-ironically.

Well, Carly Rae Jepsen has had a real – there's been a real long tail on the Carly Rae Jepsen career because Call Me Maybe was such a hit.

Then it was, you know, she could have potentially fallen into that world of, you know, sort of one hit wonders. But she continued to make music that people really liked. And none of I don't think she's done anything else that's been on the level of Call Me Maybe in terms of it's just like cultural popularity. But she's talked about very respectfully and really a lot of people really love Carly Rae Jepsen, you know, for lots of stuff that's that's, you know, well after Call Me Maybe, which is kind of cool to see.

You know what's sad is I'm calling up my Spotify here so that I can play this for you and for us and for everybody. And I realized the last song that was playing on this device that is now paused in the middle was that sheer mag song that we played for music for your weekend on Friday. So that means neither I nor Genevieve listened to any music on Spotify this weekend. Somehow that it feels like we're wasting life. I mean, you should at least listen to one song a weekend, right?

Yeah, I find that surprising. It was a busy weekend. Yeah, it was. So I feel like, yeah, I'll definitely have on a Saturday morning, I'll usually get some music going. Just kind of like, you know what I've been really, remember we played that St. Judy's Comet song by Paul Simon? That St. Judy's Comet radio station that I made on Spotify is really good. Like it's just a bunch of – it's like fruit bats and like just – it's a very eclectic – actually, it might be the opposite of eclectic since it's an algorithm. Would that be – like is what an algorithm does literally the opposite of eclectic?

Oh, that's interesting because it's supposed to all be circling around a similar sound.

Right. There's some sort of through line there whereas like something that's truly eclectic is just a kind of a grab bag of things I think or whatever. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, so if folks out there are looking for something to listen to and you like that Paul Simon song, I would recommend, and you're on Spotify, making a radio station around that. Anyway, okay, we'll go out with this Carly Rae Jepsen. I've got to record a voicemail message for Listener Man. Yeah, let's get on this. And I'll let you know how that goes tomorrow as well. Okay, that's going to do it for today's show. Thank you for listening. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you, so please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Monday. Go Mariners, stay dry, mask up, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Hey, I just met you And this is crazy But here's my number So call me maybe And all the other boys Try to chase me But here's my number So call me maybe

You took your time with the call I took no time with the fall You gave me nothing at all But still you're in my way I beg and borrow and steal At first sight and it's real I didn't know I would feel it

But it's in my way Your stare was holding Red machine was showing Hey, how are you? Sorry that I'm not at home But when I get the message on my telephone

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I am very sorry that I'm not at home to take your call

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Give someone the gift of gab for their answering machine.

What you've actually done is bought a one-way ticket to The Answering Machine song. Nobody's home. Nobody's home.

I'm glad you called, but I'm not home. But I'll be back before too long.

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Wait for the beat.

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