Muse

I always get weaseled into getting donuts with my sister. She says, oh, I'll get donuts for us. I say, that sounds fantastic. I get myself all hungry. I forget that she's really overeducated. So she's not looking for the donuts. She's looking for a strong donut lead. She's looking for artisanal donuts, subtle flavors. So Katie shows up with a box. I'm frothing. I'm so hungry. And she opens it. And I see these unrecognizable knickknacks. Oh, Chris, okay. You're going to want to first try the orange basil. Then we have, this is lamb water. This was made with water they were going to give lambs. This one's the old butter donut. This is mezcal panko. You won't like it and neither will I. We need to split the Montana chocolate. This is sourdough spider plant right here. This is lilac kiwi. This flavor is so insane. It almost killed Fran Leibovitz. She tried it in 91 and had to get airlifted out of Port Authority. T-B-T-L

Guess what day it is Guess what day it is

It's Friday, Friday Gonna get down on Friday Everybody's looking forward to the weekend Do you even like this podcast? I have never had less faith in a creative team than I do right now You don't think his idea of starting with the catchphrases and working backwards is panning out?

Nuts to you, McGillicuddy who ordered the wieners beep beep ribby ribby that's not how it works that's not how any of this works all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live we're getting medium play on three independent radio stations in central europe my name is luke burbank i am your host you gotta to eat that microphone coming to you once again from the beautiful new york city perched at the southern tip of central park it's just a it's a gorgeous friday here as i uh i'm trying to look at the sky but this being new york i'm really surrounded by taller buildings than my hotel room my hotel's building but i can just see a little teeny bit of sunlight and i know that it is in fact a gorgeous day here it's a gorgeous day for episode 3538 in a collector series let the fun begin although i will tell you my day got off to a rough start it was literally a major disaster something happened to me this morning that has never happened to me in my uh years of doing television stories uh so we'll probably talk about that uh we'll also talk about the case of these These dogs that were stranded in Spain, they were surrounded by a lava flow that was from a volcanic eruption. And they were trying to figure out how to save these dogs. They were on, like, the roof of a building. And they were going to try to get them with drones. And then they sent the drone in to get the dogs, and the dogs were missing. But now there was a banner hanging there saying something. So we'll tell you what happened with that. I'll say, what's up, dog? And then, time permitting, we'll talk about the store owner in Seattle, the owner of a thrift store, a secondhand place, who is now accused of orchestrating a massive Lego theft ring. Shame on everybody involved. We'll do all that, plus some music for your weekend. With the help of this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Mr. Unlimited. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. What happened, buddy? What's going on over there in the apple that sometimes sleeps? Dude. This might be the city that never sleeps, but I was the TV correspondent who slept too much this morning, Andrew. Oh, no. Did you show up late? i was supposed to be out front of the met the uh metropolitan museum of art indeed at a little

before 9 a.m to uh interview cal penn who i've been uh interviewing throughout the week doing the story he has a memoir that's come out which by the way is really good and i plugged my you know i use my cell phone as my alarm and i plug my cell phone in to the there's a little there's actually an alarm clock in the room and it has two charging ports and i plugged my phone into one of them and i set my alarm for 6 30 a.m so i could go run central park and i closed my eyes and when i opened them it was 9 50

am the phone in the hotel by the way i did not drink a bunch of alcohol last night this was not alcohol induced i think it's just i've been traveling a bunch and maybe i don't know jet lag something i just did you have the blackout curtains pulled yes which i don't usually do

i really think that i mean i love blackout curtains for that reason but if i have to get up yeah you need i think that those blackout curtains really keep you blacked out

They kept me quite blacked out this morning Because the phone in the hotel room starts ringing

Shit, this is stressing me out So at this point, at 9.50, you're like kind of an hour late You said you needed to be there a little bit I'm an hour late So you're almost exactly an hour late And you haven't even put on a sock yet I have not showered

I have not done my makeup I have not, I don't really wear that much makeup But I am, basically the hotel phone is ringing I wake up, I run to it, it now stops ringing. But I look around the room and I think, something is very off. And I look down and my phone is just completely dead. So also, by the way, I can't even call the producer of the piece to say I am alive and I am on my way. Because that port doesn't work. Your phone died overnight. My phone died in the middle of the night. And so I plug it into the other port, which is working great. and I run to take my shower and I am just like in a full-blown I don't want to say panic attack because I didn't like you know actually have a panic attack but I was I mean I was the most stressful shower slash getting ready slash I call the lift right as I'm like furiously drying my hair and throwing my clothes on now my phone has enough power for me to call the producer and say I am so so sorry My alarm didn't go off And then I call the lift And so I go wait for the elevator For whatever reason The elevator takes like 10 minutes When it gets to me it has like So many people in it I can tell they don't even want me to get in the elevator They want me to be like I'll take the next one But I was like that is not an option I get down to the street The lift has left Even though I texted the guy and said I'm waiting for the elevator it's taking a long time So I had to call a new lift then uh we uh you know we jump in traffic it's just like even though I'm only going like a mile and a half it's like taking 20 minutes because it's bumper to bumper I was a mess Andrew I was like rehearsing what I was gonna say when I got there because it's not just the producer it's the producer the camera guy the sound guy international celebrity Cal Penn Cal Penn's

team like so many people were waiting for me it was terrible i know this feeling even though i'm never i've never been in a situation where i have a team of you know tv producers and a team of you know a famous as you say international celebrities uh team waiting for me but i think almost everybody knows this feeling this shower that you that you took we've all taken that shower Where your brain is spinning so fast But not latching onto anything And you're in pure, pure panic mode So what is the scene when you show up?

Everybody was incredibly cool about it I guess because we were shooting We had to get permission from the Met And so the Met people were there By the way, it wasn't just all the people I've mentioned It was also people from the Met who were waiting on me But they decided to just take Cal and his crew for a VIP tour of the Met before it actually opened to the public.

That's smart.

So they just spent an hour wandering the Met and having a lovely time and our crew was kind of chilling out. Everybody was incredibly nice about it, but I couldn't stop apologizing to the point where people were like, you have to stop apologizing because now this is annoying. Yes. It's annoying that you were an hour, and it ended up being an hour and a half. I got there at 10.30. It's like, it's annoying that you're an hour and a half late, But it's more annoying that you keep apologizing and making us say it's not a big deal. Like I was in a like a compulsive loop of apologizing.

Yeah, no, Genevieve talks about that sometimes. I don't remember the details of the story. It was before I met her. But she was in some sort of situation when she was in her, I believe, early 20s where she did something and she was so mortified. She just kept apologizing and kept apologizing until the people that she was apologizing to finally had to say, listen, you need to stop that now. like we forgive you for whatever the transgression was but you need to stop apologizing because

that's what's going to make us kill you yeah it was um it was mortifying i mean it was just again everyone was as as gracious as they could possibly be uh but i was i mean it's like when i was taking that shower and getting getting ready and waiting for the lift and in the lift, it just, it felt like, well, I guess this just means I'm fired. Like, I've just never done that. I've never, like, left so many people in such a high stakes and also not cheap production, left so many people just like, and Amal, my friend, the producer, was like, yeah, I went through, I mean, he was super cool about it, but he was like, I went from being a little annoyed to being very worried. Yeah, yeah, right. Because my phone was dead. Yeah. He also must have had to call like Larry Alardo, the travel person. I don't even know how he knows what hotel I was staying. Yeah. He had to call somebody at CBS and go, where is Burbank staying? They had to look it up in a file somewhere like by way of the travel service and then call the hotel. That phone didn't ring. I might still be asleep. I don't know. I was out.

It is weird, too, because on the occasions and this hasn't happened to me in a while. I'm trying to we've had this conversation before about this unique feeling of oversleeping and people are waiting on you and you're trying to get there. I mean, there's so much I want to ask you about the physicality of this, too. Like, there's also a weird phenomenon of you're also really well rested. Right. When this happens, I got like nine hours of sleep. You got number one, you got more sleep than you expected. So now you you feel terrible, but it's not like you feel terrible. Well, I guess that one time you and I, I guess the last time this happened to us was when we were out with our friend Amy in Minnesota. And we all were, we all went hard the night before together, but she was able to get her shit together and showed up to work on time. And you and I had that panic mode where we had to run in. Now, that's different because we were on very little sleep. But this version that you're talking about, which I think, again, people know this feeling, for some reason you just sleep late. And so you wake up and you're actually well rested, but you're freaking out. And then you're talking about this, you know, you're you're rushing out of your room now, even me, who has much less going on as far as like kind of, you know, even like you say, you're going to be on TV. You've got your whole hair routine, the powder you put in your hair, the makeup that you put on your face. I don't even deal with that stuff. But I still know that feeling of like I need to take a shower because it has to happen here. But you're, like, leaving the room and, like, your socks feel like they're not pulled up all the way and there's still water in your ears and you just feel so disheveled. Like, how long did it take you from waking up at 9.50 to being out your hotel door, pre-elevator ride? Probably 15 minutes. Okay, yeah.

And usually that would be at least 45, right? It would take longer. I'm not a long showerer, but I definitely sped that part up. But then there's also this weird almost like amidst all of the anxiety is also this odd kind of liberation of like it just is what it is. Like I'm not – there's no fixing this. Like if you're five minutes late, it's really stressful because you're like, I'm keeping everyone waiting. But if you're an hour and a half late, it's like, okay, well, we've just entered a totally different category of like – And then when everyone was cool about it and when I got there and particularly Cal was just like, dude, it's so fine. I like got this cool tour of the Met and everything is totally fine. Then it was very like, I guess, kind of liberating or something. I don't know. It's like the worst thing that I could imagine happened and it didn't actually kill me or cause me to be fired yet. And so I guess, you know, I guess that's a good thing to remember as well, because it felt it felt existential to me. It felt like it was actually a threat to my livelihood, which would be a threat to my happiness. Like the stakes felt so much. I don't understand people, by the way. I mean, sometimes this has to do with mental health issues or drug and alcohol. But like you hear about people just like, you know, famous Hollywood actors just like not showing up for like an entire day shooting or whatever. Like, I don't understand how people do that and like live with it because this almost killed me the anxiety over this one thing. This will never happen again. I'm setting nine alarms for the rest of my life. I don't get people that are just that that are able to actually do this kind of stuff and not just have it be completely and totally mortifying.

Well, that's something I want to explore here. That's going to be difficult because I don't I think I'm going to maybe like kind of struggle through it a little bit because I don't know exactly what my point is. But again, to reiterate that, you know, I don't think I had this experience while working at KCRW. KCRW. I think that was a job where I never because I only had that job for a couple of years. And I just do think that an oversleeping is going to happen in our lives from time to time. Right. Like it just is. But when I was like, let's say let's say it did happen to me when I was at KCRW. Then I'm waking up and this is a job that I find, you know, like I I kind of struggled in that job. I felt a little bit over my head, but I'm also the senior producer, which means if I if I wake up an hour late like that and then have to drive like, you know, the half hour.

into Santa Monica or whatever I know that my team had to assign somebody to lead the meeting they are already done whiteboarding the show out and now they're smiling and dialing and I don't even know what the show sheet is yet and I would feel like well this is obviously like you said almost existential like the feeling that I would have I can picture it like you know driving west and just thinking like do I even keep my job can I look at it right can I look do I just drive into the ocean exactly I just which is actually a thought I had quite a bit when I worked at KCOW um but uh I like how can I look any of these people in the eye again you know what I mean those who respected me have lost respect for me those who already disliked me just this proved them more right you know like that feeling is terrible and then we always get over it right like unless it becomes a habit like you you go another five ten years and hopefully it doesn't happen again but here's what I want to explore that I was going to say it seems um interesting although i don't know what my point is is you just think about think about all the different people involved and people who might be i'm going to say on the lower rungs without being without being dismissive of everybody's role but you know i was once before i was a producer i was an associate producer right like i was an assistant producer or whatever and like if this happens to an assistant producer on a shoot they feel like their career is just tanked right because they're young they're they're 23 years old and they're just getting a start and these people don't know you that well you don't have a 20-year track record of being successful you everything that you do when you're a young professional in a new field seems like it's make or break for you so

It's like your GPA in college after one semester. Like if you like I almost flunked out of the UW because I took a speech comm class and I did poorly in it and it meant my GPA was was like super terrible because there hadn't been that many classes. Like you just don't have enough body of work yet that you can, you know, compare to this incident of being late.

And so I'm trying to think of it like kind of the person, again, without being dismissive, the kind of what you would consider the kind of lowest, lowest rung of the production. Right. And then that person might think and that person who I once was in a way might think it would be nice if I could get to the level where if something like this happened, it wouldn't feel this bad. Right. And you might think if I was ever senior producer of this, I could probably get away with this. But then you jump and you look at who the producer of this segment is or whatever. I don't know how it works over there. But if this happens to them, they're just as mortified as the associate producer would have been if it had happened to them. And maybe that person thinks, boy, if I was Luke, if I was the host of this thing, I could get away with this. But I'm just a producer and I can't. Now we have Luke and obviously you have the same feeling. And you're like, no, all these people are relying on me. We can get away with the assistant producer maybe not being here. We can have somebody else maybe hold a boom mic. Like, but they can't go on without me. So then you think, well, then who is it? Can anybody get away with this without this feeling? Is it Cal Penn or is Cal Penn thinking now I had people all over the country trying to track me down because my phone was that, you know what I mean? Like, turns out nobody can get away with this shit. And we always think it's the end.

Yes, it very much felt like the end. And again, adding to it was the fact that like this, he's this is a guy who's like, you know, pretty well known. He's a busy person. And if I were doing – if this were the story I did in California recently about beaver dams and I was – and this – by the way, people are not going to like this because I'm making it sound like being a Hollywood actor is somehow more important than being a professor who studies wildlife. And that's not the case. But I will be honest when I say if I were running an hour late to the conversation with a with a beaver biologist, I would have felt less stressed than a person who has an entourage and has like nine places to be, etc. you know so that added to it like me making the much more famous person wait for me i mean it was a real flex i mean he was really putty in my hands after this because actually that was that was also kind of funny being there um uh like at the met because we're standing out in front and they're filming and people are like coming up to him constantly and asking for autographs and taking pictures and then this group from ukraine um i know because the guy said in in fairly limited english he was like we're from ukraine can we take a picture and they all wanted to take a picture with me i think they did not understand who the celebrity was in the situation they just they saw cameras and they saw cameras they saw you know people pointing big cameras at us they saw me and cal penn but they maybe weren't familiar with his work i know they weren't familiar with my work they weren't like sunday morning huge sunday morning heads but this is sort of like just i'm not trying to call these people out but it's like this is probably like kind of low-key racism like two guys are standing together they're being filmed the people from the ukraine

want to get a picture with the famous people they asked me to be in the photo but not cal yeah yeah assuming that the white guy was the famous one when in fact i am not the famous one it's cal pen

yeah that could be it it could also i don't know i don't it could have been who the cameras were pointed at at the time too but that certainly could be playing on this it was just weird and

then it was kind of embarrassing so i was like this is the guy you want yeah right photo yeah like this is the celebrity like if you you know um would you guys do take a photo together with them maybe yeah we just all posed with yeah that's good um again i'm not trying to you know i don't i can't i can't analyze what was going on in these people's mind but it was embarrassing to me that they initially wanted a photo with just me yeah yeah that's like because i was like yeah i'm not i'm not i'm not the one that uh you're gonna you know want to frame the picture of later take it back to ukraine um but it is also just interesting being in a public space i mean not that like you You know, Cal is he even said this. He was like, I'm not George Clooney or anything, but even someone who's moderately well known being out in public with them. It's really something to observe because it was a stream of people who did know who he was, who wanted to come up and like take pictures and have him sign things and stuff.

So anyway, how do you think he was very gracious about feels like because it wasn't I'm trying to think of the musicians. I'm like rock and rollers. They're always late. Right. Or they can be right. Like, wasn't Cat Power. What's her name? Chan. Chan Marshall. Sean Marshall Like wasn't she always notorious For just like showing up Like super late to shows Like making the audience wait like an hour and a half And then being kind of belligerent when she showed up Am I painting her with an unflattering brush Is this not true Well I do think that was something that she did

I think it's been pretty public That she dealt with an alcohol problem And I think During the real kind of worst of that I think she had a ton of anxiety and she would sort of self-medicate with drinking and so she would show up late for shows and also sometimes do the show with her back to the audience. I saw her at the show box. She did like almost the whole show not facing the audience. So there was kind of, there was stuff going on with her with that. And also I remember once seeing Digital Underground at a club in Seattle called iSpy. And I think they were supposed to go on at like 9 and we heard from somebody who knew someone that they were literally taking off from LAX at like 9. Oh, wow. Like, they had, like, not even left Los Angeles. I think they got on stage at, like, midnight or something. Right, right, right.

Which is... Of course, he struggled, too, now famously. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I don't know if that was just being fashionably late. Who knows? But, yeah, I don't have... Here's what it really comes down to. I don't have the self-confidence to be an hour and a half late to things that are important. Yeah, right. Like, because that's the other way you can get away with it is if you just are someone who doesn't feel like at any moment your whole life could be snatched away from you, which is what I feel like.

Yeah, now I'm looking up Chan Marshall, and I realize, oh, yeah, that was kind of a bad example because this was not somebody who was being aloof. This was somebody who was struggling horribly, and that's why. So I was trying to think of, like, somebody who was, like, the opposite of us, who was just kind of like, yeah, I'm just going to walk out on stage 90 minutes late, and it doesn't matter. But that is – I pulled a pretty bad example there. My apologies.

Well, the good news, Andrew, is that not only was everyone incredibly gracious to me, But because my phone was still dead I couldn't call a Lyft So Cal Penn and his entourage Gave me a ride back here to the hotel In their very fancy SUV Which came complete with karaoke So this is just a little bit of the audio Of us cruising down 6th Avenue At about 11.30 New York time While Cal Penn and his publicist Are singing All of Me by John Legend what hit me but i'll be all right my hair's underwater but i'm breathing fine you're crazy and you also need to say i don't know i only know the chorus we have microphones in the suv andrew you're doing this before noon yeah i didn't think you're allowed to do karaoke

before noon in new york state welcome to de blasio's new york de blasio is an unpopular figure

here but the one thing he did was he he he normalized the he canceled the very restrictive karaoke laws of new york city so you can now sing john legend in an suv uh at about 11 50 By the way, it's a very moving song. I've never really sat with and considered the lyrics of All of Me by John Legend.

Yeah, I don't think I know it. I think I thought it was a John Mayer song.

John Mayer, I would have, man.

I would have like gone crazy if it was that run through the high school, run through the halls of high school song, sing at the top of my lung. I don't know.

I don't know. Somehow. I don't know anything by either one of these musicians.

And I thought you were mixed up with John Mayer back in the day. Was it John Legend?

Yes. Yes. I didn't. Oh, I discovered on this show not all that long ago that they are different people. And boy, are they different people? Like they're different people.

Yeah. John Legend, famously punctual John Mayer.

Hours late. still in the shower still in the shower that sucks though that feeling you have i mean again like not to try to steal your story by over empathizing but like i just know that feeling even when you're coming down from it like you'll feel with every passing hour today you will feel more and more like normal luke and then you'll remember it almost like a bad dream yes i hate that i don't

have as much of that as you do but this one is gonna haunt me you'll be fine no no my point is

though it will your day you've definitely suffered the worst of it you know what i mean this this wound will heal that was more the point i made and you'll think it'd be you'll think of it you'll be like oh god damn but then you'll just move on and you'll eat your salad or whatever eat your

salad you know i have to say like again everybody was very cool about it i it's very uh i'm very privileged to get to have a job where you know i get to be on tv and do this podcast with you And I'm even more appreciative of it today As I watch these guys across 6th Avenue from me, Andrew Constructing scaffolding For the outside of this big, tall, old building So what these guys are doing is There's so much scaffolding in New York just generally Like at the street level, it's everywhere And it has to do with building laws And the fact that if the owner of the building Doesn't want to spend the money to do some kind of a fix on the building or have it you know get it up to some certain code they can get away with not doing that if they just build scaffolding so that when if stuff were to fall off the building it won't hit people so scaffolding becomes this weird like thing that you can do to save money instead of actually like updating the building in the way you're supposed to so everything in Manhattan is scaffolding but anyway what these guys are building is something that's actually going up the entire building so they're at probably they're probably eight stories up right now oh there may be more than that so they're very high in the air and i had no idea that this is how they do this one guy is just walking on two wooden like is there probably it's probably two by eight so like imagine a two by eight piece of wood and then so there's two of those they're side by side and what they do is they build one level of the scaffolding and then they put a bunch of these like two by eight boards on the next level and then they get up on those boards and they just walk and they start constructing the next level of scaffolding they have no safety harness on they're carrying metal like heavy like piping that's going to become the scaffolding and they're just standing like a hundred feet in the air on two boards it is the most terrifying thing i have ever seen and it cannot be legal no i do not like it and they're

probably doing karaoke too because you can do that in the moment now so yeah that's it's just all culminating into a pretty dangerous situation no that is a picture of this i don't want to i

don't want this to trigger you because you're not a heights guy but it is it is shocking to me that this is how this occurs like they do have safety harnesses on okay like as in a vest or whatever you want to call it with a thing but the problem is to build the next level of the scaffolding There's nothing to attach your safety harness, like your cable to. You know what I mean? Because you're at the top level, and the way the top level gets built is you walk on these freaking boards, and then you build the next level, and then you move the boards up, and you – so it is – I mean, I am – I'm going to take a picture of it right now. I am shocked by this, absolutely shocked by it, and grateful that I have an indoor job. Yeah, right.

I know, too. I thought you were going to start talking about them showing up late for work as well. I realized in my example before I was giving all of the examples of people who were, like, in media because that's, you know, your current situation. But, like, you know, this feeling, I mean, I had this feeling showing, well, of course, working for my dad, right? Like, that was my first job in high school. And, like, showing up late for work then was just, like, again, same feeling. I'm what, like 19 years old and making minimum wage? Thanks, Dad. No, you know what I mean? And it just always feels like your world is falling apart, no matter what your world is. You know what I mean? I think about your brother, who I think of your brother as probably a very punctual guy, right, David? Or is he not? Yes. Okay. No, very punctual. Very punctual. I remember him making a joke the last time he was on the show about, like, being raised in your household. You're all late all the time. But I had a feeling he was being self-deprecating. He seems like a punctual guy. But, like, even. him i could see him like running into the pizza shop or the coffee shop you know what i mean like and just because the alarm didn't go off and then you're thinking well what if what if this ends this job that maybe i don't even love right now but i need it to survive you know like you just

this is the human condition right here yes it is all right well i feel better thank you for uh talking me through that again i'm just happy to not be 150 feet in the air on its scaffolding So let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back. We'll do the top stories. We'll do some music-free weekend and all of that here on TBTL. Hey, let's thank some donors of the day. These are the people making it so I get to work at this indoor job. And even if I get fired by CBS for being late to the shoot, these people will always stand behind me, Andrew, and behind us, and support us with their donations. People like Aaron Schultz, who's in Shoreline, Washington. Thanks, Aaron. Roxanne Westfall Howard is in Chicago, Illinois. Thank you, Roxanne. Brenda Willis is in Coburg, Oregon. Do you know Coburg? Well, as a co-bro, I think you probably know more about Coburg than I do.

That's where they put all the co-bros. You're right. It's like Copland, only for sidekicks.

Copland was about the place in New Jersey, right? Yeah, where all the city.

In New Jersey where all the cops live. Exactly, yeah. And basically it was overseen by a sheriff. I love that movie so much. It's, what's his name? Al Stallone. Stallone. Frank Stallone. No. Yes. Sylvester Stallone. I just went L to Frank to eventually getting to Sylvester. I think he's the third most famous Stallone. He plays the sheriff that, you know, the kind of the toothless sheriff that oversees this kind of lawless town of bad cops. What a great movie. What a very 90s movie.

Carla Beck is in Seattle, Washington. Thank you, Carla. We've got Chris Dunning checking in from, oh, Ridgefield, Washington. I know where that is now. Yeah, do you? Do you? I do, Andrew. It's just north of Portland and just south of where I'll be doing my little home remodeling project on that house I bought. A listener, I was complaining about how challenging it is to get a loan to remodel a house. And a listener who used to work in that industry sent me a message. But she put music for your weekend in the subject line. And I clicked on it. And she said, I just put that in the subject line so you would click on that. here's how you can here's here's actually a a good uh you know home remodeling loan product that i used to she doesn't work there anymore but she's like just so you know you could call these people but she was so clever because she put music for your weekend in the subject line

just so i would actually open it i wonder if you're if you're going to regret um admitting that though because now will everybody start doing that and now you're just going to have now you're basically going to have no subject line because they're all going to be music for weekend which means nothing anymore it's lost all meaning there's gonna just be paternity suits in

there something like you know summonses jury summons anything that you know people really want to uh get into my hands i'll have to use that email subject line anyway a chris in ridgefield

thank you and then uh malia mayor is in wenatchee washington famously john mayor's sister and He's a collaborator and cousin.

Yep, but very punctual. Malia Mayer in Wenatchee. Thank you, Malia. Thank you. Thank you to all of our donors of the day. Thanks for making the show possible. We would absolutely not be here without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. You and I were debating if we should even talk about this today because it's pretty serious stuff, but it's also kind of everywhere, which is this very sad situation involving a film. that Alec Baldwin and a number of people were working on where the director of cinematography died because Alec Baldwin's character fires a gun and it was supposed to be a blank and it wasn't or something happened. And I mean, it's just an unbelievably tragic story for the family of the person who passed away. But also for Alec Baldwin, somebody took like a paparazzi picture of him in the parking lot of the sheriff's department in new mexico and he's so distraught and i just you know alec baldwin's had a very complicated relationship with the paparazzi and he's obviously a you know a polarizing figure but i really wanted to say who to whoever took that picture can you leave the guy alone please can you please just

give him give him a little room on this like I mean it's just I I mean you just I don't know I don't know how a person is able to get past something like that again not the main tragedy is the person who lost their life but then the secondary tragedy is unintentionally taking

someone's life like that yeah it is amazing now I I had heard tell of some photos of him being very upset and I but I had not seen it are you referring to the one where he's kind of on the the side of a dusty road like kind of bent in half like yeah um yeah it's really it's really emotional it's actually a good photo i i i was just seeing it for the first time as you were describing it and in a certain way in a certain way i don't hate that photo i didn't know that this is necessarily where we were going to take it i know what you mean like there's i don't i don't love the paparazzi and obviously there's so much just terrible exploitation but in a certain way i almost wonder if alec baldwin hates this photo because he is in pain like alec for this to happen to anybody on this set is a tragedy obviously the loss of life and the injury but then also whom i should say whoever pulled the trigger even if it was somebody who is not a household name but now we have it uh being a household name but also a household name that is i don't know i don't we overuse the word problematic and i don't know if that's the right word here because alec baldwin is he's i can't think of anybody at least in our circles who's both like so beloved but also we know that he's kind of an asshole but not like he's just like pugnacious you know and and that's part of his character and the fact that he he he fights about playing his scrabble game on airplanes or you know the famous voicemail of him you know yelling at his daughter on a voicemail 20 years ago or or whatever which were all none of them were like cancelable offenses but they were all none of them painted him in a good light and he's such a he's not just incredibly famous but he's also like I say just really complicated as far as our relationship with him as fans and his relationship with the world and the press and the paparazzi and everything it is such a weird story for me to wrap my head around and i guess maybe just again to come back to this photo like it's a photo of a man who's in a lot of pain it doesn't it doesn't strike me you know as i maybe learn more about the story and hear more and as the coverage progresses i might i might change my mind and regret saying this but right now i think it's a very powerful powerful image that captures what happened and it demonstrates

that that this obviously impacted him in an extremely serious way like it's it's a little different than he and his wife are trying to like go have dinner in manhattan and there's a bunch of people surrounding him this is this this is i mean also what i i don't know how the media should cover this story but i kept seeing you know lots of stories that are like focusing on the fact i mean we're talking about alec baldwin so i guess we're contributing to this but it was interesting the headlines about the way that the different media organizations described what happened like one was like alec baldwin pulled the trigger of the thing you know of the gun that went off and it's almost like i don't know that just i feel like there's there should be a better way to put it because he did do that physically but of course in a million years that wasn't his intent and to the degree that it's like that i saw headlines that felt to me and i don't have a good example off the top of my head but i had i saw headlines that almost made it sound like he did something wrong like just the way they were constructed or alec baldwin is fully cooperating with the sheriffs after you know after the shooting it's like i just don't think those words accurately describe what happened i don't know what words do but that just seems that sounds like he got drunk and was waving a gun around or something i mean this is a very different situation

i debated and i told myself i was going to say no that i was not going to tell this story on the show because this is one of my deepest darkest secrets that as of yesterday nobody but me knew but i did admit it to genevieve yesterday by the way i'm not trying to be overly um dramatic here I'm being completely honest and sincere This story does not end with anybody getting hurt In any way But I have this story that haunts me And I guess it's okay for me to tell it I don't think that anybody's going to be Mad at me I guess I'm just such an idiot You remember I mean I didn't know you at the time But when I first moved to Seattle I was friends with this guy June And his whole cadre of friends And we were making films

Who I am famously a better swing dancer

Right When I mentioned my swing dancing friends He was one of the swing dancing friends who went in competitions. He was just like this incredibly talented guy who worked at Microsoft. So he had some means and he was like incredible at his job at Microsoft, I believe, on the coding side of things. But then.

You know, as a young man is also I'm assuming, you know, he was able to fund these many movies that he was making is incredibly ambitious. And like he was getting he'd just become more and more ambitious with each movie. We started with like a 20 one of those 24 hour movie making contest. And we did literally a 48 and a 72, I believe. But then also some other projects that he had just, you know, he had people who were script writers and whatever there. It was it was interesting to watch him grow as a filmmaker and be a part of it. And it's also when I realized, like, holy shit, this is so much work. I don't want to be in movies. Like, it just, like, it also became, like, anyway, I love these guys. But it was maybe the second or third film I was working on, and I knew these folks pretty well at this point. And this was the first day of shooting of whatever project we were about to begin. And so I remember we're in this, you know, in June's house, kind of open layout house. house and I'm kind of in the dining room area where a bunch of props are laid out on the table and there's tons of people milling around I feel like there's like at least 25 30 people kind of in this house right now and there's a prop gun sitting on the table and I pick it up I'm like damn this is a real prop gun man I mean where did June get this thing it was like heavy and I'm like man and I remember I pulled the trigger on it and it clicked and I was like man that is a heck of a prop and then i find out not probably 20 minutes later it wasn't a prop gun it was june's gun now june is a responsible person obviously there were no bullets in this gun there were no blanks there were no there was nothing in this gun but i picked up a gun and fired it now i also remember pointing it down i don't even point you know i wouldn't point a fake gun at somebody either like you know I didn't know what I was doing but like June doesn't know I did this nobody knows I mean now I'm telling it on TV TL which again I hope I don't regret telling this story it does not paint me in a very good light but I'm being honest it was just like and I think about that Luke I this pops into my brain every now and then I just think about that moment I think what if what if they what if he had just put a blank in there what if that was sitting there and he was ready he had it all ready to use for a scene and he was going to use blanks which I don't even think he had by the way but i didn't know that i didn't know i was holding a real gun it was it for the film it was for the film yes it was like he was using it for the film and it was a real gun that was of course like june is not the type of person who's going to leave a loaded gun sitting on his table he's not a gun guy i don't even know where he got this thing or if it was his or if he acquired it for the film or what it was but all i know is i picked up this thing and fired it again at the ground but can you imagine if i just fired a bullet into june's living room while 30 people were milling about getting ready to do a shoot i i can understand though why you

did that because the mental space you were in was we're making a film everything out here is a prop like if you walked into my house and there was a gun sitting on the table well first of all i would hope you would say are you okay is everything going all right i'd assume that it was a trap i would say how has my performance been lately luke i need you to sit down no but like if you walked into my house and there were for some bizarre reason a gun sitting on a table you would not go near it because you were not walking onto what you thought of as a film set sure or if

i was at like if i was in ohio visiting a cousin who i know is a hunter or a i don't think i really have any like big pro gun people in my life but if i was you know visiting somebody who maybe is just into pistols and i know that i certainly wouldn't pick up their gun right that's not

normal behavior for you but because your your brain was in a totally different place because you were like we are in i'm in hollywood right now uh and all of this stuff is is make-believe for this pretend thing we're doing i think you were just in a totally different uh state of mind

yeah and again as much as i remember the details i i don't think that even even if something had to happen here that anybody would have gotten hurt except a gunshot could have gone off in June's house with tons of people around you know what I mean you talk about you walking you walking under your set today like can you imagine me walking away from that set that that morning because I don't think I'd be able to do my uh do my job the rest of the day can you imagine how

much I'd be apologizing rest of the day I don't think you'd be able to do this podcast I know anyway if you fired a live weapon in a crowded area even if it was into the ground And I don't I mean, again, I don't say this to pile on or to make you feel worse. But I mean, you agonize over things that are so much less than that. Oh, yeah. And they really they really trouble you. I can't imagine if that had happened. You know, if again, if a bullet would have somehow been in there, that would really have weighed very heavily on you. Like, I don't know if you'd be OK for the rest of your life.

It's definitely you know, I definitely don't take certain things for granted anymore when I see something. Not, again, that I'm in a position where there's a lot of, like, fake or real guns laying around. But anyway, back to the Baldwin story. I guess it doesn't do us any good to focus on the grim details. But I was kind of keeping up with this a little bit as the story was unfolding last night. But do we have any idea? Was it, like, kind of a rehearsal thing? Because maybe this is just a grim place to take it. But, like, it clearly wasn't a scene, you know? It wasn't another actor who was killed and or injured here. um it was a it was a director of photography so maybe they were just going through the motions of you know maybe well i mean the director of photography is i mean if if there's i don't know

the details on on the scene they were in or what they were rehearsing but it's conceivable to me that you know the director of photography is behind a camera and if the character is pointing a gun into the camera yeah right and and pulling the trigger um that i mean that could have been

the circumstances again how did this happen man it is just anyway it is just it is devastating to think about all around it just like all around yeah i mean uh i was kind of grimly reading up on

some of this stuff of course uh you know brandon lee star of the crow film bruce lee's son he he died from something similar i think in that case it was a blank but for some reason something still came out of the gun because blanks are themselves they're not a bullet but they're still you know a capsule of gunpowder to make the sound they're just not supposed to go anywhere um and uh and they were one of these articles i was reading was saying there's a few different things that can happen sometimes there can just be a bullet in the chamber that nobody realizes and so you have a blank that's you know you're trying to fire a blank but you end up really firing a bullet sometimes part of the blank can actually come out and be sort of a projectile um there's a few different ways it can happen but it's just an just an absolutely tragic situation and really

sad for everybody yeah i'm reading now um as as you're kind of talking i'm sort of scanning through the new york times and seeing the the name of the woman who died is helena hutchins who is a up-and-coming director out of ukraine man so yeah yeah it's really um it's just a really awful thing

this is a slightly less awful thing maybe we'll try to you know focus on the positive uh there In the Canary Islands, there's an island called La Palma, and there has been this volcanic eruption that was going on out there that meant that they had to evacuate this part of this island. I don't know if it was the whole island or just the section, but there was basically, like, you know, there was lava and there was possibility for more volcanic activity. And somebody realized that there were these dogs that were still on this island. And they were like worried about them Because they didn't have any food or water And there was you know lava and stuff around So the first plan was To Pick them up with drones So they started flying these drones Over to where the dogs are to drop off food Because they needed the dogs To become comfortable with the drones Which is I mean which is kind of crazy To think about that process Like a drone coming down Now, I had actually seen, before they had the drone idea, I had seen this headline, Dogs Stranded on this Volcanic Island. And I looked at one picture of it, and it made me so sad I had to not read the article.

Oh, yeah.

Which is, like, clearly something's going on with me that I'm, like, so triggered by animals being sad. So I had seen the headline, but then later I guess they got this idea to do the drones. So they were flying the drones over, and the drones are dropping off food, and they're trying to cozy up to the dogs. And then they go to fly the drones over there recently, I guess, to maybe begin the process of trying to actually grab a dog. By the way, how terrifying is that if you're a dog? Like, you have no idea that this is – they're trying to save your life. All that you know is a robot from the sky that's very loud is grabbing you and flying you off of this island.

I like the way that they tried to, like, you know, comfort them with food first. Like, you will love your robot bird overlords. I was having a conversation with somebody the other day, a couple of friends of ours who have a cat and they have like a whiz bang system. It sounds actually is it the same one you have? Maybe I can't remember if yours also gave treats, but it's a whole setup where, you know, you can set up a camera and then your cat can come over and the cat can somehow activate it and get a treat from it. Or no, maybe you activate it remotely via Wi-Fi using the app and you also can control a little laser pointer and like kind of play with the cat remotely. And I was like, that all sounds cool and I'm tempted to get it, except if I'm giving my cat a treat, I want it to come from me. A big part of giving a cat a treat is so that the cat knows I am the treat giver. You know what I mean? Like I don't want my cat loving some robot more than me.

That's like Spoiler alert or whatever you want to call this I'm going to talk about Santa Claus now So if you have young kids in the car and this is a sensitive subject. I just want to give everyone a heads up. But Santa will pay for his crimes. When Addie was young and I would give her Christmas presents, I never wrote from Santa because I was like, I'm broke, okay? I need to get the credit on this one. I need her to know this is from Dad. I'm not selfless enough to attribute it to a bearded guy from the North Pole. I'm going to make sure that she knows that this came from your dad's wallet.

that's right right right so anyway so now so they have these they have these dogs they've they've tried to comfort them with food from the robots and now the robots are swooping down and picking them up and then how far do they have to fly well the thing is they send the drones in to pick up

the dogs and the dogs are gone and there's a banner that says stay strong la palma the dogs are fine signed the a-team and then it has all these red spray paint marks they think are to Reenact or to sort of Invoke or evoke I guess is really the word there basically They're trying to make this A-team thing look Like on the credits of the A-team When the bullets fire through Sure yeah yeah yeah So they some some group calling Themselves the A-team snuck onto this island Because you're not supposed to be on there Rescued all these dogs And then left a banner behind saying the dogs Are fine and they've released video of the dogs And the dogs are doing okay

So they went and they got the dogs presumably in some less electronic and maybe potentially less scary way for the dogs they just went in there as humans and just sort of cleared them out yeah it was a more brick and mortar operation yeah

right you know because this is a great story well the headline is a little bit misleading because when i first saw it and i saw these dogs were trapped i thought they're trapped like a river of lava is flowing around them yeah and it's more like you're just not allowed to be there because it's dangerous like i've looked at more pictures you know what i mean yeah so the this this so-called a team was able to go in there they basically just violated the rules of you're not supposed to go you know into this particular area and rescued the dogs which kind of raises the question like did we need the drones in the first place like yeah could you just make an

official carnival personnel go in there hey he's not carnival personnel sorry that's a line from the jerk um but uh you know what i mean can't we just have i understand you want to keep the public out and maybe even the a team um but like yeah can't you just say hey on this afternoon we're going to go in and a little strike force of 10 people who were prepared for the worst and have taken all the precautions go in and scoop up the fidos yeah i mean that's that would be what i

would have voted for as opposed to the drone situation yeah i think people have drugs and they want to use drones i think that's what's going on i think you're right about that um we for a lot of these TV shoots now it's just a given that they'll have drone shots although you know you can't fly a drone in New York City

oh really I mean I'm sure you can get a permit if you're shooting something special right like shooting a movie or something

maybe I guess I just know our camera guy today had rigged up this other thing which was like a GoPro on this giant stick and he was like this is as close as I can get to a drone shot because I'm not allowed to fly drones here but they use drones all the time on these CBS shoots and it is unbelievable what they can do with these things i was when i was down in texas uh they had me driving back and forth on this kind of freeway overpass near this bucky's gas station and the drone was just following me actually they had me driving on this old country road as well and you know i had a a walkie-talkie so like i'm just driving this car by myself and i have a walkie talkie so i can hear them and they're like okay um uh you know like tell us when you're at whatever point and then they're like you'll see the drone and i'm just driving down the road and all of a sudden and they're like half a mile away they're so far from this thing all of a sudden this freaking drone just drops out of the sky and just starts going as fast as the car it is parallel it's it's just like it's i'm going 30 miles an hour the drone is going 30 miles an hour just filming me out in the middle of nowhere very far away from the people who are controlling it um it is just insane that technology i should say it's wild and yeah and it's amazing it's

amazing what the um what they capture too i mean in the right hands those are just breathtaking

um the other story i wanted to tell you about i don't know if you've if you saw this in the seattle times i am actually looking at a washington post version of it not to drag the seattle times okay but i saw this article when it was in the times and it was like local store owner uh arrested for uh running a uh like a lego theft ring okay yeah and i read the story and it didn't have the guy's name. It didn't have very many specifics. And I thought this is almost interesting enough for us to talk about, but there's not quite enough there there. Then the Washington Post comes in. This is a piece by Jonathan Edwards and says a Seattle store owner ran a Lego trafficking operation. Authorities say that the police took it.

down brick by brick and i'm like that's how you do a headline about a lego theft ring well what is the line for us though because you and i are also very critical of like using uh you know overly using puns and clever language and news stories for whatever reason this one kind of yeah

the seattle police department did this very kind of i don't know how i feel about this but you know i guess what i'm about to say is i think that there's a certain sort of performative nature of things that get displayed by police departments in the TSA.

Oh, yeah.

I think they want to prove that they're, and there are many hardworking, fine police people out there, but I think they also kind of want to prove that they're really getting the quote-unquote bad guys. So they'll do that thing where they lay out all the cocaine on the table and all the illegal guns or whatever. The TSA will show you that they confiscated some medieval weapons someone was trying to bring on the plane or whatever. so they did that with the legos that were apparently involved there there's this picture from the spd headquarters of like a hundred very expensive elaborate boxes of like lego sets that they confiscated from this store um called oh yeah rummage around so basically what happened is this guy mark stephen brady is his name he's 67 um there's this amazon there's a brick and mortar amazon store uh down near pike place and the people that were working at this amazon store were noticing that people were just coming in and stealing lego sets particularly ones from the mandalorian yeah and they were like pretty brazen it sounds like like people would just come in take down like a hundred or four hundred dollar box of lego stuff and then just walk out of the store with it and so eventually the the one of the employees from this amazon you know physical location was out wandering around downtown seattle pike place area and went into this secondhand store rummage around and noticed all of the lego sets that had been getting stolen from their store were for sale in this other store and they still had the rfid tags on them oh from like where they were being you know it's rare that amazon is the good guy in a story but in this case i guess you know uh they sort of are so they called the cops and so then the cops set up this pretty elaborate sting operation involving a mandalorian baby yoda lego set where they so what they would do is they would send an undercover officer into this second hand store with uh with merchandise that was still wrapped in in like the the um security kind of tag like the thing you know so they like i think it's called a spider tag which is some kind of anti-theft thing and so they would bring basically the the deal was they wanted to bring lego sets into this guy that were very clearly stolen so that there was no way he could claim that he didn't know they were stolen and so they were they were coming in and selling him these like lego sets that they would tell him we just stole this we just boosted this from the amazon store um and then uh he was it's odd though because he was actually pretty secretive about it, according to this article. So they would come in, or if they tried to be in front of his store with this stolen Lego stuff, he would be like, bring this inside, or he would cover it with a blanket. He was very worried, actually, about being seen buying stolen property, which is funny, because it ended up totally happening. Yeah. I wouldn't think there would be that much surveillance around this. I mean, I'm kind of surprised he got busted, but I'm also surprised that he was as worried about it as he was,

and then it ended up happening anyway.

Yeah, I don't like that they I don't know, Sting's always make me feel I wish they could have just caught him Buying it from the people who were really Boosting it, as opposed to, unless I'm Misunderstanding the story, but they just kind of Pretended like they had stolen it, right For the actual Sting operation

Yes, but he had bought a lot of A lot of stuff that they Suspect was stolen, you know So it wasn't, this doesn't sound like it's one of those Real entrapment things where they literally created Like it had never occurred to the guy To buy stolen Legos, and then they came in and said we got some for you like those are the ones that get really sketchy to me yeah exactly like that story uh of those of those they were so-called terrorists in um uh in liberty city down in miami there's actually a really interesting documentary out about these guys who basically just didn't have they didn't have the the means or really the motivation um but post 9-11 somebody uh from like the fbi got in touch with this group of people and then basically Created all of the Scenario that made it possible for them to get Charged with trying to basically get Weapons of mass destruction And they were put up on very serious Terrorism charges even though nobody in that group Was like let's try to get a dirty bomb and blow It up but if you approach them and you wind Them up enough yeah you could get them to agree

That they want to have it right exactly And then it's like you just spent all this You spent all this time creating terrorists And then arresting them I do think I mean this is the obvious joke here but like i'm looking at this photo the police released of like it does look like i don't even i was never into legos really but like i know but seeing it yeah it's just like all these boxes piled on top of each other all displayed you know for the camera and you can see all the different i mean from a from a warhol maryland monroe lego set right who knew um but it would have been funny if they had put some police officers on like lego building detail and they had to create all of these things then set them out that'd be a fun that'd be a fun job that's how

you recruit cops well that and like you'd be like you get to do two fun things as a cop you get to drive stolen go-karts and you get to play with legos yeah and this is the two and you don't get

to be the same police officer right like no no no no no no no no no no no kevin bill already

You already got to drive the go-kart. Yes. This one is going to be for Terry. Right, exactly. All right, let's do a little music for your weekend before we ski-daddle. Are you feeling good today, by the way, that your Browns won?

Yeah, I am. I am feeling good about that fact, and we can talk more about it. Let's see. It's a weird. No, on Tuesday, right? Oh, Tuesday, because Monday night is when the Seahawks. Yeah, so, I mean, this is going to be the longest gap between a football game and then us talking about it because the Browns are on Thursday. The Seahawks aren't until Monday, so we'll be talking about it on Tuesday. I won't even remember this game anymore. But, yeah, no, I definitely have some thoughts, and there were some real promising, fun things to see last night, although the second half of that game did become a bit slow.

I was just mad that I got in on the DeErnest Johnson riffing late because all the good jokes had been taken.

I almost felt, first of all, okay, here's the thing. So there's this running back, DeErnest Johnson. And am I saying it right? I heard the announcer. I think I heard Joe Buck say DeErnest, and I assumed it was DeErnest. It was an apostrophe. Maybe D an apostrophe, but there are people named Darcy who put an apostrophe there, and it's not D-Arcy, right? So I'm not sure. For the sake of this, I'm going to say D-Ernest. I think that's how you pronounce it, and I could be wrong. But, you know, because—and I'm sorry, Luke. I'm going to try to make this as least sporty as possible.

I'm the one who brought it up, so this is on me, ultimately.

And it's also pretty late in the show, but because the Browns famously have two just amazing running backs, we haven't seen this guy, D-Ernest Johnson. But both the first and second string running backs were injured. So this Dearness Johnson, who we didn't have huge expectations for, comes into this game and really, really just plays his butt off. And also in the postgame interview, I got choked up. He's so young and so cute and so, I mean, he's just, he is so great. He's a great new hero for me. Somebody I can look up to. Anyway, so I got to say, Andy is the one who I think had the best joke. I mean, I was laughing my butt off. What did he say? He said, Dearness goes to the end zone when he scores. Right, it was like an Ernest goes to camp joke. Like, Ernest goes to camp, Dearness goes to the end zone. I was laughing. I wasn't even going to try to top that. But then I read the joke to Genevieve, and she laughed, and then she said the importance of being Dearness. So my contribution wasn't even really my contribution.

That was a tribute to Genevieve's follow up joke, which was I kind of thought that it could have also been funny if if you if you was like d'importance. So it was like a D apostrophe. That's what Genevieve said after I texted you. She said she said that importance of being to earn.

She had that same punch up after I had texted you of her own joke. But anyway, yeah, just I just can't say enough good things about that kid. But I will try on Tuesday's no point.

Did you like my Joel Batonio?

Oh, yeah, definitely. Screen cap.

You had to work for that, I know. I had to find an article that referenced it, watch the video, freeze frame it on my phone. And then I had to wait until after he had a holding call because he had kind of a critical holding call. And I didn't want you to think I was, like, being mean. Mocking, yeah. So I had to wait until something good happened so that it had cleansed your palate. I think about these things, Andrew. I just want you to know this.

Yeah, no, we're always producing. My name is Joel, and I guard the city of rock and roll. Anyway. All right. More on that on Tuesday. But yeah, that was that ended up being a fun night after all. OK, do you want to do some music for your weekend, though? Yes, sir. OK, let me play this song for you. Our perennial favorites, Parquet Courts. I don't know. Are they just released? They must release at least an album a year. I feel like I was listening to them when I was in L.A. and they had like, I don't know, a couple of albums, few albums, maybe. And now I am so far behind. I feel like they're just constantly releasing material. but they do have a new album that is coming out today. I'm not exactly sure what the name of the new album is, but they've been sort of dribbling out some, I don't know if that's the word they prefer, but they've been releasing some singles off of this new album. They've been spurting. Yeah, so here's one of the...

You know, spurt is a word that is also rarely good. Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, you don't usually want something... spurting like no you rarely hear that used yeah oh it's so great we were he was just spurting out creativity it's blood and then other bodily fluids are the only things that get described

as spurting well i also think like um fluids in a car you'd be like you take it into the mechanic you're like i don't know man something has been like when i when i park it it's like spurting something out it sort of smells like oil but it tastes like blood anyway i have a weird I have a weird relationship with my mechanic And my car So let me play for you One of the singles that have spurted out From the new Parquet Courts record Which I believe is dropping today This song is called Black Widow Spider

I'm trying to forget about someone I love I'm trying to leave a person behind I'm trying not to think about someone doing We're trying to work sometimes I'm trying not to picture a face I saw A face that has been burned in my mind I'm trying not to think I've seen it again Was that the final time? I'm trying to save the money for something I want Something I hope will get pieces mine But the piece comes in pieces The piece has cut Will I get enough in time? I got to move in the city When I can't seem to shake off the mood I like to watch an actor And act like them Pretend I'm a different dude Eyes on my Every move

Black Widow Spider Alright, there you go. Black Widow Spider, Parquet Course. New record. Check it out.

You know, I don't know why people have to be mean on the internet, Andrew. Are they? I haven't noticed. Sometimes. So a listener, I assume this is a TBTL listener, tweeted this at me that there's a new Parquet Courts album out because this listener noted that we talk about Parquet Courts on the show sometimes. And it was just a link to an article from the AV Club, the Onion thing. And so this is like a tweet from the AV Club. Clearly it did, I think, I don't know if it's an interview with Parquet Courts or if it's just a review of the album. But this is a tweet from the AV Club, and it has a photo of Parquet Courts. It's kind of one of those band photos where they're taking it sort of through a fisheye lens. Maybe it's like you're looking through a door or something. So the headline from the AV Club is, With Parquet Courts' new album comes a reminder of their most undervalued talent. And then there's a link to the article. And then just right below it, somebody posts, Oh, is their undervalued talent being friends with Pitchfork writers? and then below that someone says is it taking cliche 90s pictures because they think the album cover is cliche it's like why do you take time out of your day to be mean i don't know right

yes exactly i mean i saw i can't remember what it was the other day and it's probably best that i don't try to dig back and and figure it out but yeah it's just like wait you just came here to drop that like like really like could you just like have had that opinion and moved on with your day again then we get into sticky territory because I drop all kinds of opinions on this show every single day but like it's just like if you it's just like if I didn't like on the media anymore for me to just tweet it on the media and say I don't like your show anymore it used to be better I'm not listening anymore which by the way I do still like on the media I'm just using that as an example of a show that I used to listen to all the time and I sort of don't listen to it quite as much as i used to not for any reason anyway point is i don't know why i'm picking on them but like why would you just why would you need to tell them that right it's like this guy

must think like he must think parquet courts is overrated and they get a lot of write-ups and pitchfork so he has to go in there and make sure everybody knows that and then the other person this is the other thing that happens on the internet of course is once it's once somebody establishes the tone of being snarky then the other people feel liberated to come in and yeah right be rude as well because i think the photo is fine like there are over the course of american

pop culture there have been at least a hundred bands or musical groups i'd say maybe even slightly more than that like do you just go around like letting every musical act you don't like you let them know that you don't like them like isn't it just easier to to not well

this guy i'm looking at his twitter feed he's a drummer it says in his twitter feed so i my guess is he's he's in the band that he thinks is better than parquet courts but it's not doesn't get the attention parquet courts get sure including being featured here on tbtl that's right we love you parquet courts don't let them get you down do you know anything about the band love andrew yes i

played a love song a love song is it the same one that i'm about to see always see your face i don't think that's the one um that i played but love is a band that has been kind of at the peripheries of my um of my knowledge for a while and i kind of never connected the dots on them and i was talking about it on tbtl i think this summer when some and some bunch of people were like wait how do you not know love and then i started to realize oh i do sort of know love anyway great story aren't you

glad you asked no i mean you were i i am glad i asked i'm embarrassed that i forgot that you suggested a love song a song by the band love but yeah i've been getting kind of interested in them because well you want to talk you admitted to um pulling the trigger on what was a functional gun so i can admit that i like jogging around central park listening to the song the only living boy in new york by paul simon yeah sure yeah which is a little on the nose but so i was jogging the other day and i i was listening to that song and then spotify just kicked off a whole like algorithmic station based on that which was just crushing it i forget what the like four songs came on in a road that were literally the perfect songs to listen to while jogging in central park but one of them was this song by love always see your face and um it has me really intrigued about this band i was looking them up a little bit today they were i mean as you mentioned the listeners probably know more about them than than i do and then we do but um they uh they seem like they were cool i mean I think they broke some sort of racial barriers in terms of the makeup of the band and also the kind of music they played was considered pretty groundbreaking. And this song is just good. It's Always See Your Face by Love. Can we play a little bit of that, Maestro?

Let's go. And I know, I know And I say, oh, I say That it don't matter what I know Always see your face

So that is a little bit of the band Love doing Always See Your Face.

sorry i'm not trying to leave you hanging there i actually had muted my mic as well while we are on this topic though can i um tell you the connection when i was talking about some band that or some song that ended up being by love a while back the the dots that were connected if you don't mind me extending this a little bit more was this song alone again which was covered by i want to say iron and wine and uh calexico and then somebody was like i'm surprised you didn't realize that that was originally a love song do you know what i'm talking about oh yes i do i remember this conversation now yes exactly so i don't have to play it then if you know what i'm talking about love again or is the name of that song i was like oh yeah and i think that that one might even be in in one of our um beloved um uh anderson uh wes anderson movies which genevieve

today just told me that there's a new one coming out that has everybody yes it's a french dispatch i was reading about it this morning and i am i'm gonna go see it in portland next week with becca i am pretty hyped about it it feels peak wes anderson yeah it's like francis mcdormand bill murray um timothy chalamet jeffrey wright um i think it has like eight oscar winners in it or something like somebody said it might literally be a record for the most oscar winners ever in the same film my guess is angelica houston is in there too and she must be an oscar winner yep angelica was uh angelica houston is part of it um uh let's i mean the list goes on um tilda swinton is in it and it's basically a fictionalized version of the new yorker uh in the 1950s so um jeffrey wright is playing a character that's based on james baldwin and uh so that's what the french dispatch is it's a again it's sort of a um i don't think they call it the new yorker but it's it's a magazine that's eerily similar to the new yorker um that's based in a fictional french city and i guess what wes anderson does is

gets this was this New York Times profile today just like gets the whole cast and crew out to you know wherever they're shooting in this French place for like a month before they actually start filming so everyone can just kind of become friends and live together and know each other and I'm like can you just please like that's if I die and there is a heaven it's living in France with Wes Anderson it's the it's the weeks leading up to shooting of this Wes Anderson yes as I'm just like having lunch with and the other thing that struck me about him in this article because really the way that the piece works is it's interviewing all the actors asking basically why do you like working with Wes Anderson or what is it like to work with Wes Anderson and each one of them has the same kind of story which is either he reached out to them or they reached out to him and then he took them to lunch and I just imagine this like he and Jeffrey Wright had lunch in Paris because they were both there and then Wes Anderson of course lives in Paris now like the idea of sitting in a Parisian cafe having a respectable lunch with Wes Anderson just seems like something i would really enjoy jeffrey wright is the guy from westworld correct yes okay and um he was in another uh really big film that i always forget the name of i might not have seen it before before

westworld you know what i'm doing tonight i'm going to go see dune with some friends tonight so yeah but actually like i don't whenever i go see movies usually it's just me and veves on a spur of the moment hey what's playing let's let's go see a movie but yeah um camaro kevin and nita Wanted to go see Dune, so we set this up We have our tickets ready, we will be watching Dune Tonight, it seems like it's a real movie Event

Yeah, I actually am excited to see that As well, I've been trying to construct A silly tweet that is not even Good, but making some kind of joke Connecting Timothee Chalamet Being in both Dune and Willy Wonka, oh yeah, I don't know What the joke is, but did you see that viral Picture of him as like a young Wonka

No, I didn't, I had heard Tell of it, honestly, but I had not seen it

So he's like in some reboot or whatever, I don't know, some new Wonka film, but he's also in Dune. And I feel like there's a joke about candy and spice and somehow the overlap of those two worlds. There's a joke to be had there, but my people brain is not capable.

Isn't there a cookie called Lorna Dunes? Maybe is there something there? Oh, that could be a thing. Why don't you think about that this afternoon? No, no, no, no, no. This is your tweet.

Take a picture in front of the marquee. No, this is your project.

No, no, no, no. I do not. I have Legos I need to put together. Where'd you get those Legos from?

Don't ask. Uh, our listener suggestion comes from listener Laura this week, who says, because I'm a petty bee, and she used the whole word, but I'm not going to use the whole word. Sure. I feel like Laura's allowed to call herself a petty bee, but I don't want to be on the record as saying that. Yeah. I want to nominate Lizzo's newest single, Rumors, for music for your weekend. This is in honor of whoever left the rambling message about not being able to steal music Andrew mentioned in passing on Monday's show. As Lizzo says.

Oh, right, right.

OK, yeah. Black people invented rock and roll and racists can die mad about it.

Stealing music for a second. I thought you meant like bit torrenting albums or something. Yeah, somebody wrote in or somebody called in and was like, really? I mean, pretty, pretty worked up about the claims that Elvis stole music and because you can't steal music, which I did look up later. And I guess it turns out that those specific examples that are tied to Elvis may not be as tied to the truth as Public Enemy. I mean, Public Enemy is the one who taught me that, right? Like, do you remember that? Elvis was a hero to some. I can't remember exactly how it goes. But anyway. Elvis was a hero to some. Right. Elvis was a hero to some. Anyway. But yeah, no, there are still plenty of examples of it happening. So anyway, I don't know that listener's name. I'm sorry to call you out And now I have listeners calling you out I forgot that I even mentioned that

Listener Laura is on the record As echoing Lizzo's thoughts That black people invented rock and roll And racists can die mad about it So here we're going to hear rumors From Lizzo From almost TBTL guest Lizzo Who will now never be a TBTL guest

And we say almost We never reached out We just liked her music She liked a tweet Oh did she like a tweet Yes you're right She liked a tweet Okay sorry Actually you know what it was She was almost a guest

I think I almost bought a bowling alley once No but I mean she was Just getting famous enough That I think there was a chance We could have maybe My theory was if we could have DM'd her At the time We could have maybe had a phone conversation with her Where she would be happy to hear she won Song of the Summer But then the rocket ship took off after that And there was no chance

I remember it was our former boss Steve Nelson who said, hey, you guys get on this Lizzo train. And then the rest of the world followed.

She just took a DNA test, and she's 100% not coming on TBT.

That reminds me. I didn't write down any show titles. Anyway, I'll figure that out after the show. But let's get going on this. So this is rumors and also.

Featuring Cardi B I don't know this song So this is This is going to bring us To the end of the week Everyone Thanks for listening Thanks for hanging out with us We will be back here on Monday With more Imaginary Radio Until then Have a great weekend Stay safe Take care of yourselves And please remember No mountain too tall And good luck to all

Rumors are true, yeah, what you heard, that's true, yeah, I f*** him and you, yeah, if you believe I do that, had to cut some hoes loose, yeah, NDA, no loose lips, now them hoes tryna sue me, bitch, I don't give two shits, all the rumors are true, yeah, I been in the bamboo, yeah, focused on this music, my ex-man, he blew it, last year I thought I would lose it, reading shit on the internet, my smoothie cleanser, my diet, You didn't know I ain't smash Drake yet.

Spending all your time trying to break a woman down. Real shit is going on, baby. Take a look around. If you thought that I was ratchet with my ass hanging out, just waiting till the summer when they let me out the house. Bitch.

There it is. We're done.

Did you really like it? I feel like I just watched Prince record Purple Rain. Power out.