Muse

Well, who do we have here?

Carla Tuesday, WDUR, the Durr. Reverend Richard, is it true that you'll be representing yourself?

Carla, let me tell you a little story. I was walking on the beach with the Lord, and there were two sets of footprints in the sand. And then there were three sets of footprints, and I said, who's that? And the Lord said, it's Dale Earnhardt. He's a big fan of yours. My client won't be answering any more of your questions. Stay in school, kids.

at first he's silly and then he's magical and quite wonderful and you just don't know how to react except you're entranced so we're gonna play a little game called cursed or not cursed you sound like you might be a little bit jealous babe no and i i know a little something about being jealous because people have been jealous of me my entire life i have no idea what you just said but i feel totally transformed in a few hours you're going to be smarter than anyone you've ever

met all right hello good morning welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live i can't believe you're still on the air my name's luke burbank

i am your host hey where's the freaking gabagoo very happy to be back in the nest broadcast center

High in the sky above Portland, Oregon

I'm back

I've returned A very wet Portland, Oregon As we say on the show A very not dry Portland, Oregon

Didn't know you like to get wet though

As the storms continue to work their way Through the Pacific Northwest Also the East Coast is under some kind of a Bomb Bomb.com storm or something Hope everybody's doing okay out there. Things are going to be all right here on episode 3,541 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Because we have a quite fascinating story. Now, this story is a little bit old. I don't know how I missed this thing when it was making the rounds, but I did. But I had a chance to read about it the other day, and we just simply have to discuss it on TVTL. It's a story of two friends. One of the women thought they were, in fact, best friends. Best friends are very cool to be. Very best friends are f***ing dope to me. And then art came between them.

For me to be able to condone that my artism is bigger than that.

That's right, we're going to talk about Bad Art Friend. Coming up on the program, also, we will check in to find out if it's a Bones or No Bones day. Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to yet another round of No Bones. Plus, we'll do emails and V-mails, and we'll talk to this guy. The longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. I feel like I was just sitting across a table from him only yesterday doing the program. I think this guy's sense of humor never developed past junior high school. But we don't hold that against him. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining us right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I have a weird question for you to start off today's show. Can you think of a car part, any part of a car that begins with the letter J? I've been having some trouble sleeping in the mornings lately. It doesn't help that my cat...

You've been naming car parts?

Yeah, my cat woke me up at like 5 in the morning this morning, throwing up on the car. So I had to get up and clean that up. And nothing says you're staying awake for a while after cleaning up cat barf. That'll get the adrenaline pumping. Yeah, so then I go back to bed, and then I lay there for hours trying to fall back asleep. And what I'm trying to do is that game, we've done this on the show before, where you come up with a genre of movie, and you try to think of titles alphabetically.

I believe last time we did this, it ended up being the entire show. I know. We don't have to do it.

I just want to know J because, like, here's an example. So you have A, alternator, B, brakes, you know, like, and it can be simple. Like, F, I was, I think this morning I came up with just, like, floor mats. That's a part of a car. Well, a joint. Like, the CV joints were always going bad on my Honda Civic. Here's the thing, though. I do get a little, I feel like. Well, fine, then. I think it has to be a little bit more specific because, like, I wouldn't use T for tubes, you know what I mean? Even though there are tubes under the hood, or I had other examples as well. Like, I think, like, CV joint would be C, but not just a generic joint, you know? Okay. Let's see. V. And we don't have to do it. I just wanted to know if I was missing anything that's very obvious. Obviously, I could Google this. This is solvable. I don't want to throw the whole show off with this question. And it just, I kept, I've been playing this game for several nights. Can you get, like, every letter except J? Are you just getting stopped at J? No, I'm getting stopped at J. I will not move on until I hit J. See? This is where I should have paid some attention when my dad was fixing our many, many crappy cars as a kid. And I actually really do regret that I don't have a better understanding of how car engines and just things about cars work. And then, of course, all of the cars got so modern that there's just no chance. I'm not going to, unless I were to buy an old classic car and try to fix it up and work on it or something. I guess there's no reason I need to know that stuff. Although, I will tell you, my battery went dead on Sunday when I was out at that family get-together at Becca's house. Why? And I must have left. It's so weird. I mean, I'm leasing this Mazda. It's pretty new. And in my experience with a newer car that has a brand-new battery, even if you leave the headlights on for a few hours, like, it wasn't even overnight. It was just while I was at this get-together. That's my H, by the way, headlights. No joke. Even if you leave the headlights on, it's usually okay. But I must have – I don't know what I did, but I went down to start the car, and it was just dead as a doornail. And it just took me right back to my 20s when every time I got in my car, it was just a roll of the dice. You know, is this thing going to start? Are these brakes going to work? You know, et cetera, et cetera. Like it was really like I haven't had a situation like that. I've been very privileged that I haven't had a situation like that in a long time. I've been very lucky that I've been able to drive vehicles that are pretty reliable and I had to get a jump from her brother Scott and I felt a little silly but yeah it really took me back and I realized if it was anything more involved than simply a dead battery I would have been screwed like I have no ability to fix a car.

I always get ridiculously nervous hooking up the jumper cables to a car battery. Like, I get more nervous than I need to. I know they can spark sometimes. Yes. But I also know that people have done this, you know, people have been doing this forever. It's okay. I don't think anybody's, well, maybe I shouldn't say that, but I don't think anybody's had any fatal injuries connected to jumping a car. Could be wrong about that. But there's something about it that is very intimidating.

Well, it's also this idea of an automotive battery. By the way, what about jumper cables? I've thought of that.

I don't think it's part of a car.

Jeez. How about Jesus Christ, Andrew? Why are you making this so hard?

Well, I'm just saying.

I gave you two Js, and they're both wrong for some reason.

I mean, what do you want? I mean, you might have a bungee strap. You might have that in your trunk, too, but it's not part of a car.

I'm not the one with cat-induced insomnia, Andrew. I'm just trying to help.

You will be if I start calling you in the middle of the night when my cat throws up. Then you're going to need this more than ever.

No, what I was going to say is I think also – I have the same thing, by the way. Like I am holding – once the clamps are hooked up to whichever battery is hot, I am like trying to hold the other two clamps as far away from each other as possible. I think because of the trope in the movies where the guy is about to be tortured and the bad guy just has a car battery. Have you ever seen this move?

I mean, I've seen it. Yeah, right. There is a movie where I believe a Jesuit priest is tortured in this way, but it kind of happens off camera. But it's a very, very disturbing scene.

At St. Ignatius? Yeah.

No. It was about some – I can't remember the details of it.

I just know that I have seen a few scenes in movies Where it's like when things are going to get serious It's usually in a dank warehouse There's like water dripping in part of the warehouse For some reason Our hero is like tied to a chair And then they bring in the guy Usually with an Eastern European accent And his name is something like The Mechanic Get The Mechanic And then he comes in And then it's like a car battery With the jumper cables hooked up But now they're going to, like, use it to shock our hero. I've seen that in films.

Romero is a 1989 biographical film depicting the story of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Did not see that being a reference on the show coming in.

I know. Well, you go, you know, you enter a podcast with a product of a Jesuit education. This is going to happen. Yes. I did not watch this as part of my Jesuit education. In fact, it was my friend Jessica, who I met after college, who actually was into this movie.

Anyway. Really? That's a pretty weighty topic. Well, did you get together to watch the movie? Like, OK, I'll bring the popcorn. Let's sit down and watch what sounds like a pretty intense film.

Her whole kind of life and career is based around immigrant rights and immigration efforts and Latin American efforts. efforts so this was very much kind of part of her world this whatever was going on here because this bishop

was a, you know, what's the word? You know, like an activist and a, you know, whatever. Good job, Andrew. Good job.

I'm trying to find, I don't think we have a noodle update today, Andrew.

Oh, the no bones or no bones.

Yeah, I don't know how to feel today because the latest noodle one is from yesterday. I played it at your house. Let's just do this. Let's just go back. You play yesterday's game? Because, let's be honest, this whole thing is, no, I'm going to play one at random. Okay. I'm going to play one from, let's see here, I don't even know the exact date. Let's see, this was, actually this was, I think, 10-15. Let's just find out. Let's just pretend like this is today. We're going to get a Bones or No Bones Day from Noodle, the 13-year-old rescue pup. Really, from John Graziano, who takes care of Noodle, the rescue pup. Here we go.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to yet another round of No Bones, the game where we find out if my 13-year-old pug woke up with bones. And in addition, we'll find out what kind of day we're going to have. Now, I don't know about you, but it was like 1 o'clock in the morning. I was getting ready for bed, and I was hoping and wishing for a Bones day. Oh, my gosh, and we got one. Oh, we got one. Look at that. Look at him, like, standing like a deep-rooted tree. Oh, Noodle, thank you for your bounty. Okay, it's a Bones thing. You know what that means. You got to treat yourself today. Get the scallion pancakes with your takeout order. I don't care if you finish them. Get that deliriously expensive candle. Bask in your good fortune and have a great weekend.

You heard him, Andrew. Get that scallion pancake. I don't care if you – I want you to not judge yourself about ordering too much food, Andrew, because today – we're going to just call today a Bones Day.

It's that candle thing that's going to get me in trouble because Genevieve is strict. We were just talking about this last night because I wanted to buy – you know a little bit about this. There's an overly expensive extension cord that's a very designed – like when I say overly expensive, like Genevieve, tried to guess it and she wasn't even close and she thought her first guess was high so it started this conversation about like about you know whether or not she cares what i pay for and for the most part she doesn't except for two things she is very against me overpaying or in her opinion overpaying for candles and flowers we usually keep flowers on our kitchen table when possible

So, you know, once a week or once every couple of weeks, you're really inverting the traditional gender paradigm.

Yeah, I guess you're right. It's not that she doesn't want flowers or candles. It just galls her how expensive these can be if you don't get them in the right place. Like you go down to Pike Place Market, you can get like a beautiful little bouquet of flowers for like five bucks. Right. So she doesn't want me going to Safeway and grabbing one of them. And it's like thirteen dollars or something. And then candles are the same thing. You just want to get a basic candle, but they are more expensive than it seems like they should be. I will admit that, but I also would not even notice that except for the fact that she points it out to me.

I lit a candle during the Seahawk game, and it wasn't trying to appeal to a higher power. It was just because, I don't know, my apartment just seemed a little stuffy, but it was really rainy and gross outside, and if I opened the door, the rain was going to come in. So I was like, what do I have here? And I had some candle my sister Liz gave me. You know, she had that store in Portland, and they sold mostly clothing but also had little kind of fancy candles and things like that. And it smelled so good. And I was thinking, why am I not lighting more candles? I know. I love candles. Like, it really – I mean, I'm sure the listeners are way ahead of me on this, but it really tied the room together. It made it just feel like a – certainly took the edge off of the Seahawks' terrible performance. Just kind of made it feel like a nice, special little night.

Yeah, we I think we have a candle going almost every night here. I keep one in the bathroom and I don't light it during the day, but usually when it's kind of like, OK, I know I'm in for the night and we're not going out because, you know, I do have a concern about accidentally leaving a candle lit and then leaving the house and forgetting about it. So, you know, once I know we're in for the night, I will light that candle. Yesterday we had two candles going, but these were candles that we made. So, you know, we could afford to do that. This wasn't like a twenty five dollar candle, like a diptyque.

or something is that a brand of candle yeah that's like that was a very very in style candle a few years ago they had one that smelled like you know campfire and sage things and stuff like that i am forgetting if i read this somewhere or i interviewed the person um but i remember talking to someone who said that they spend like five hundred dollars a month on candles and that it's A month. It's the best money they spend. I feel like they almost subscribe to a candle service that sends them candles. It was somebody who was saying it's like they were saying it's one of the bigger expenses in their life, but it's totally worth it. I feel like this must have been a celebrity that I was interviewing for Sunday, although I would have put that in the piece.

That's not a great anecdote because I can't remember any of the important details. But I just remember being blown away either in talking to this person or reading about this person who was consuming like five hundred dollars worth of candles a month. Was it, you know, the guy from Machete, Danny Trejo? Yes, it was. Absolutely. What would a candle? What a Danny Trejo candle smell like? Leather. Fear and fear. I know I'm sure I talked about this when I was doing that profile of him or at least shortly thereafter but he was so gracious and kind to me and pretty cool with our crew but there was just a couple of times where like our sound guy annoyed him or our camera guy annoyed him I mean Danny Trejo is not young anymore right and he's still very fit but he's not a huge guy either I'd say he's probably like 555 or something and and not young But I swear to God, it seemed like he could have kicked the ass of our entire crew and me like there was this flash in his eyes when he got sort of when he was sort of fed up. I don't think you mentioned that again. He was so nice to me and is like, you know, has been sober for many years and like leads meetings and has all these folks that he kind of like mentors and stuff. And I mean, the guy is a real force for good in the world. but he also was like the boxing champion of San Quentin for a number of years like when they would let him out of the hole and you saw a flash of that dude and it was like it was really something and it kind of came when you didn't expect it it was like I think our camera guy wanted to sort of push in too tight on him in some way or also our sound guy was like futzing with the mic maybe it was a personal space thing or something but it was just like All of a sudden, it's like, whoa, okay, that's machete. Nobody appreciates the sound, guys. That's the bummer, you know? Everybody just thinks it. It doesn't matter. It's TV. Listen, sound is important, Danny. I always bro down with the sound guys because I consider myself still to be a radio person. And so I'm like, you know, I feel more connected. Like, I know a little bit more about what the sound person is doing than what the camera person is doing. Just throw terms out there. What are you working with there, that next LR to quarter inch? You know what they do now? They've got this crazy app on their phones, and they come around, and they, like, do some reset on the lavalier mic with their cell phone. Oh, that's awesome, yeah. And they just, like, hold it right to the thing. The guy Joe, our sound guy in New York when I was doing the Cal Penn thing, just kept coming around with a cell phone and, like, resetting something. It was crazy. I had an issue yesterday. You know, after we recorded at your house, I went out to Microsoft to film some stuff, and they had a lavalier mic on me because I have no chest hair. It was, like, under my shirt. And Josh, my buddy who was doing the sound Out at Microsoft Had like taped it to my chest But because there's nothing for the tape to find purchase with Midway through the seat I could just feel the mic just sliding down my chest

So he had to go and get the like really sticky stuff To compensate for my non-hersuitness But wait a second though So they usually stick it to your chest If you do have chest hair That sounds pretty bad when it's time to take it off Maybe I'm just oily, honestly Maybe it's not a hair thing Maybe it's I'm secreting some kind of Either way, I feel like you're coming on to me here Stop making yourself so attractive Yeah, exactly I was, Andrew, hot yesterday flying home from this whole thing So I had kind of a hectic day yesterday I flew in in the morning We did TBTL We did No Point Oh, can I mention On the No Point yesterday, I called somebody, Jake Browning Who's actually named Jacob Eason The quarterback who is from Lake Stevens and is now a Seahawks backup. Because Jake Browning was the quarterback at the UW for a while, right? Easily to confuse it. Like, I was going to say. Yeah, they both have the Jake name. Exactly. And it's just like, it feels like, I haven't been here very long, I guess, but it just seems like every quarterback that's ever played for the UW is named Jake. Is there a law, a bylaw, a rule? Yes. Also, I think, well, here's the, I'm, Jake, Jacob Eason goes by Jacob Eason. He never goes by Jake Eason. Jake Eason sounds like a detective film from the 80s, maybe starring Jack Nicholson. But I was wrong about that. I'm sorry. Somebody corrected me on Twitter, and it haunted me in my entire jog this morning. But anyway, yesterday was pretty busy. Then I went out to Microsoft. I did the shoot. We overcame the microphone issues and filmed some stuff. And then I went back to the airport, and I flew home. and it was a really late flight and it was an enormous plane, Andrew. It felt like the size of the plane that we flew to Australia on. Whoa, with middle rows? Well, no, but the length of it, it felt, maybe because I was in the 37th row. And I'm going to be honest, and the listeners know this, but I am kind of spoiled now, and even

if i don't get to be in first class i usually at least have what i consider to be a fairly decent seat and for whatever reason this particular flight uh at 9 40 at night was totally sold out i was like 20th on the list for an upgrade and not only did i not get an upgrade which is fine you know i understand how privileged this sounds but i was in the last row of the airplane in the middle seat i just couldn't even believe it i was like how and and it made me it made me feel so mad which the moral of the story is i need to get over myself right but i'm sitting there 37th row middle seat i'm sitting between this couple i should have just seen if they want to sit together but i just didn't want to just wanted to sit in my seat and uh and like just try to fall sleep a little bit and zone out then it was one of those things where we're just sitting on the airplane like we're on the airplane but we're not moving and now it's not 9 40 now it's like 10 and now it's 10 30 and i'm we were supposed to land at 10 36 and now it's 10 40 and we haven't even pushed back and i can see it's because there are extra bags that have shown up or i don't know they're not extra but they basically there were bags and they needed to get them on the plane and so we're sitting there waiting and i was just becoming so enraged every time the pilot would come on and go okay we're now we're gonna get those bags on board i'll let you know how it's going then comes back on goes now we have the bags and we're just waiting for ramp clearance i was starting to understand what the i was starting to understand why it is that people lose their shit on airplanes and i don't mean over like mask stuff but like when you see someone who's just in a massively triggered state on an airplane i didn't do that and i would never do that but i started to have a small understanding of of how that happens because as i sat there just in my middle seat in the 37th row and again so much of this comes from my own sort of sense of what i think i deserve in this world which is wildly off and again there's a lot of privilege tied up in that but as i just sat there already mad that i was in that seat already mad that i couldn't hack the system and somehow get closer to the front of the plane already just like watching the minutes tick away and then hearing the pilot come on and just update us i was i had fantasies of running down the aisle and banging on that like very secure door they have and just going

this is madness you know luke when we started doing the sky jinx segment on the show low those many years ago we had no i had one day started that we would only report on the sky jinx we would not create the sky jinx i do you remember signing those papers maybe you don't but let's Let's remember our oath to ourselves and to the friendly skies. I will say that no matter what the circumstance is, and in this case it happens to be subprime flying, but even if you're facing traffic on your way home after work, it's like when you're traveling at night at the end of your day and you feel like you've only got a few hours of me time left and feeling that tick down, it is a maddening feeling. I used to get that in L.A. a lot when I was kind of burning the candle up at both ends, and I'd be stuck in traffic on the way home, and I knew exactly how many hours I had to myself before I had to get up and do it all over again, and I would be sitting there on the highway and being like, okay, well, now I'm under five hours, which means I have four hours. By the time I get home, I'm going to have about four hours of me time before I have to go to bed. And just like feeling it tick away and feeling that like impotent feeling of not being able to do anything about it because you're just like locked in place on a highway with cars. Or in your case, you're locked on a vehicle that you can't, you know what I mean? If you were flying this plane, you probably would have just like hopped up on a curb somewhere and passed the other planes and taken off. Right. But you just you don't have any control in these circumstances.

That's right. And you're right. It was the end of a really long day for me. i was really exhausted and i had it in my mind oh if we you know if we land at 10 30 and i can get home relatively quickly i could probably just like lounge on the couch for you know a half hour i'll watch chris's show and i'll uh you know just kind of like um decompress and unwind i didn't want to get home at one in the morning and then just go get right in bed and then just wake up and have it be like today and so that was adding to it and then when you're you know once once you have an issue with your airplane not pushing back on time then everything else is out of whack then you lose you lose your place landing in portland because of you know air traffic control and what the windows are for different flights you lose your spot on the runway so of course we push back and then there's like 30 planes in front of us so now we're like it's taking extra long it's like all the other timing gets thrown off anyway i was i didn't do anything i just sat there looking at tiktok thank god for tiktok by the way because that's really what kept me from going full air rage on it was i just had my little headphones in I was looking at TikTok, and what I told myself was, Luke, if you were home, you'd probably be looking at TikTok. If you were sitting, you'd be sitting in bed or sitting on your couch, and you'd be looking at TikTok, and you'd be drinking a bubble water, and you're basically doing that right now. It's just you're sitting between two evangelical Christians that are passing Bible verses to each other on their phone, which is what they were doing.

As far as things you can pass, that's not the worst thing.

No, it was fine. again i don't know why it didn't occur to anyone in this situation to just move like i should have just said can i have the window and why don't you sit next to your husband it was like they did a thing where it was like they booked the aisle and the window seat hoping that nobody would go in between them probably hoping that no one would go in between but also maybe it's like he likes the aisle and she likes the window boy that would be a pretty boring sitcom no that'd just be wonderful

but um but we do it mostly so that uh you know if somebody is like it just makes it harder for somebody to take that seat between us. And then on the occasion that somebody does take the seat between us, we will, you know, at least offer to switch around if they want. But boy, even saying that is reminding me how long it's been since I've been on an airplane with Genevieve. I did have to fly back from Arizona for, you know, after our TBTL-a-thon. But aside from that, I haven't flown hardly at all. Can I say something that blew my mind when our friend Hannah Brooks Olson mentioned to me the other day she mentioned that she has never been on an airplane with her parents and i realized i've never been on an airplane with my parents either i've never flown with my parents now she brought it up we were talking about something and she said this is not the case for me because my family we grew up solidly middle class she did not she was on the poorer side of things and she said that it was for her it's kind of a mark of middle class it shows that you're middle class if you've ever flown with your parents i'm not that's all she said so i don't want to bolster that argument or defend it here i don't know if it's right or not but it did occur to me i have never flown with my parents it's because when i was growing up we would take road trips we we had this van and we would go down to florida um we were spoiled the van had a vcr in it not to brag i would watch the pilot episode of quantum leap that i had on a vhs tape um but i was like you're right there has never been and i have a dad and a mom who are both living and a stepmom so there are opportunities here for me to fly with these folks but i've never been my mom was a flight attendant i've never flown on an airplane with any of my parents i uh flew with my parents

when i was really little we flew to philadelphia i think a couple of times and i don't know i can't Or if I was telling the story on the show Or if I was telling it to Becca But the first time that we flew to Philadelphia I think my parents might have purchased One airline ticket For the whole thing I feel like it was on TWA And it was a deal where it was like Buy one, get one free Bogoff And then it was a Bogoff And then kids fly free If they're like under two So it was probably just me And Liz and Sarah at that point and i wasn't under two but i think my parents lied which is hilarious because they were very christian and very moral other than when it came to ripping off major companies um and i think it was my mom bought the ticket my dad's ticket was free and then like three of us

were just cruising on their laps yeah and you and you probably like you won a coloring contest which got you you were allowed to fly with the pets down in carriage i i'm pretty sure that we somehow got

the whole Burbank clan out to Philadelphia on the one purchased ticket oh my god um but then we flew another time we took another trip to Philly I think when I was a bit older and we then we drove down to um New Bern North Carolina and visited my dad's dad Farnham Burbank um down there uh in North Carolina but other than that and then I flew with my mom to the funeral of the patriarch of the church they went to a guy named Jim Durkin in Eureka he had kind of been the founder of this thing gospel outreach christian fellowship and he passed away and we went down for the funeral and i remember flying with my i think it was my mom and my sister liz was that someone recently was

that since we've known each other because i remember you mentioning that but i couldn't

remember if it was an old story no it was really really a long time ago but um uh but anyway i guess my point is after the age of like 20 i've never been on a i can't see any circumstances in

which i will ever be on an airplane again with my parents yeah right i mean even if you were having some sort of a family reunion in a different part of the country like you don't live up here anymore and even if you did you would just you know you fly all the time you just have your own system you would book your flights they would book theirs um same with me i don't live in the same place as any of my parents so i don't see any reason why i would ever fly with them also i don't think my parents really like flying i don't think that again we never did it as kids my dad was not like a businessman who flew around or anything like that. And so I think that they find flying to be a huge pain in the keister, if you don't mind me using that language, which I kind of do as well, frankly. It's funny. I love airports, but I don't really like flying. Like if anything could be like if everything was negligible as far as budget and time commitment, I'd rather take a car somewhere than fly.

I was so close to just driving home last night. I think this was also what added to my fury was – so I get done with the shoot, and I start driving towards SeaTac, but my flight isn't for like a few hours. And so I'm like – I'm thinking, would it be faster for me, more efficient to just drive – I had a rental car. Would it be faster for me to just drive this rental car to Portland? That takes three hours. My flight isn't for like three or four hours, so I've got like all this time to kill. and so i'm on and i'm in bumper to bumper traffic on southbound i-5 going through downtown seattle and i am i'm on hold with alaska airlines trying to figure out if i can get a better seat on this flight and i'm also trying to check the avis app to see how much it's going to cost me to change the return of my rental car and it won't tell me so i'm like huh so i hang up with alaska airlines i call avis and i say like how how much will it cost me if i want to return this to portland And the guy goes there's no charge And I was like oh wow okay well that sounds great So now I make the decision I'm going to drive to Portland And just cancel my flight Well I go on the Avis app and I do I change where I'm going to return it And it says it's going to be $400 more So clearly the dude had no idea what he was talking about The only customer service Other than the New York Times customer service That I found to I found Avis customer service to be uniquely unhelpful Like And you're a wizard And I'm a wizard You'd think if anybody would be getting the special white glove treatment it would be me but like there's something about avis's hierarchy training system who knows culture of their like i have never called the avis helpline and gotten a satisfactory answer or help for instance this dude told me it was free if i would have driven down to portland and just dropped the car off it would have cost me 400 more dollars and that would have been my word against his Luckily, I punched it into the app, and when I went an additional screen into it, like, so I was telling Avis, I'm going to bring this back to Portland now. That's when it told me, oh, hey, by the way, it's an extra $400. So anyway, I had just been sitting on my hands. I went and got some Thai food in South Center, and then I just was kind of like sitting at the airport forever, which didn't add to my mood, I think.

Why are you so loyal to Avis? Is it because you have reached wizard status and it's too much work to develop that loyalty program with another company? Or is it the best? I mean, are all rental car agencies pretty much the same?

It's because it's the one CBS uses, and it means that I have lots and lots and lots of, like, points with them now. So if I'm going on a personal trip, I can use those points. And because I am a wizard, I don't have to actually wait in the rental car line usually. If it's a large enough airport, I get off the plane, and I just – my phone just tells me go to parking spot N32, and I just go there and get a car that already has the keys in it. Mm hmm. And that little and I'm sure the other agencies have a similar program, but just the fact that I don't have to go get in line and like do the paperwork. Yeah, that is so life changing that that's just why I always use them.

And if CBS doesn't have the flexibility to let you use a different one, that makes sense, too. But I was actually just sort of pondering the success of these loyalty programs, because now even if you stopped working for CBS and you didn't have that compelling, you would stick with this company that you say has terrible customer service. But you've you've already reached that status. And so, therefore, the idea of of working with another company to get up to that status, again, whether it's a I need to fill out this paperwork to pay for wizard status or is it you got wizard not just from paying for it, but through experience. Right.

through putting the time i think it's i think it's something i don't know how honestly i i don't know how if it's that difficult to achieve that i don't know if it's because cbs has some corporate relationship or because i rented enough cars it wasn't like the airline stuff where i had to like obsessively make sure i was always on the same airline and you know i don't know like it was it took a lot to get to my little airline status the rental car thing was less of a hassle i don't really know how it works i just know that one day i was a wizard and once you're a wizard yeah you'll never go gizzard lizard what i don't know why we go out with king gizzard the wizard lizard is it a song is that really a song no it's a band it's actually kind of a good band i think they're called king gizzard the wizard lizard oh um addy turned me on to them and uh and they're actually pretty good they don't

sound like a band that's called king gizzard and the lizard wizard or whatever like that sounds

like a band i wouldn't like but actually like their music you're absolutely right as the name of the band by the way you were saying it like you weren't sure if you were messing i wasn't sure order but it is king gizzard and the lizard wizard yeah why does my brain remember that but almost nothing else that's not true though i can say that your brain remembers all kinds of

shit but it's not yeah okay i do have a decent memory although it's of course less less decent than it used to be but it is just strange that it hangs on to that and sometimes not other things that I would like it to hang on to well it rhymes I think that helps that helps just I need to in my mind categorize anything that I want to remember put it next to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard on the little shelf in my brain and then when I go to find it I just go it's the thing that's right next to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard there's a little king

there's a little wizard a little lizard unfortunately there's also a gizzard we're building a memory palace yes exactly and then right in between it is my birthday. That's not today, is it? No, it's not. It is not today.

But it's coming up.

It is coming up, yep. I know you low-key it, although you don't low-key it as much as you used to. No, I'm not going to be obnoxious about it. It's the end of November. We're a month away. Okay, the end of November. All right. You can give me that extension cord.

Putting it next to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Andrew's birthday, end of November. Got it.

Oh, you know what? It might be on Thanksgiving this year. Is it? That happens? Yeah, it happens once every, you know, few years or whatever. What date is Thanksgiving? It's always like Thanksgiving weekend. No, it's a couple of days after Thanksgiving. So there you go. So now we know it's the 28th, right? 27th.

That's what I said, the 27th. Andrew's birthday in the 27th.

Put it in the memory palace. Wizard, lizard, birthday, November, gizzard, wizard. Got it. Got it.

I'm going to work on this during the break, and I'll have it totally locked down. Speaking of which, let's take our quick break, and then we'll be back. I want to talk about Bad Art Friend. And I was riveted by this article yesterday. It's coming up on TBTL. It's time to thank some donors of the day. These are the wonderful, generous people making today's episode possible with their donations. Folks like Sarah Nichols-Smith in Seattle, Washington. Hey, Sarah.

I think Sarah's got a, I think she's got a, I could be wrong here, but I think Sarah's got a pooch who's dealing with some medical stuff right now. I saw a photo on Instagram yesterday, so good luck to you and your pooch, Sarah.

I, for a moment, thought you were going to say, Sarah's got a poo, and I was like, that's an extremely personal piece of information about this generous donor.

It's true of all of our donors, though. Not to share too much information, but all of them do have to do that at some point. Yes, everybody does.

As the book famously pointed out, everybody does do that. Except for Stephanie Thelon in Gig Harbor, Washington. She does not. She's got it all worked out. Yeah, she's like my mom. She never passed gas until she was 18.

Kara Tillman. What a rattle that was, too. I know. A tremendous rattle.

Kara Tillman is in Austin, Texas. I love Austin so very much. I was at this Microsoft shoot Talking to somebody who said Oh yeah I work in Austin And I'm just remembering all the fun times we've had there Thinking we've got to get back there at some point What's the name of the The bar and restaurant That the Ten has The front page or something

Oh man yeah I think you're right I think it's the front page This whole time Ever since you said Austin Because I like to shout that out

It's Schaefer with the front page

You see Your brain remembers all kinds of stuff

Sometimes it comes through Kara, thank you so much Also thanks to Kathy Walquist in Orangevale, California Amen That sounds like a beautiful place Missy and Joe Boyle are in Watertown, Massachusetts Do you know where Watertown is? Is that near Boston?

That rings a bell Near the water? No, believe it or not, it's landlocked And dry as the western wind Do you remember a commercial growing up? I don't know what it was, but I remember describing something one time as dry as the western wind, and it made my parents laugh, and I didn't know why, and it turns out it's because I was just quoting a TV commercial that was on in constant rotation, and now I realize, as an adult, hearing a little kid say something like, this pork chop is as dry as the western wind is a pretty funny thing to hear, but anyways, I have no idea what that commercial is, it could have been local, who knows.

Yeah, I'm looking, I'm trying to find, I just Googled dry as the Western wind to see if what it brought up. I wonder what that was an ad for. I mean, is there a chance?

Did I, I could be wrong about this, but am I old enough to have?

had cigarette commercials on television in my lifetime because i feel like it was a claim of like a bad cigarette was as dry as the western wind interesting okay yeah i think you were old

enough because i feel like i certainly remember lots of billboards but i think i have kind of could be mandela effect but i feel like i have a vague memory of seeing cigarette commercials on television there's also the wayward wind which is a great and heartbreaking song by, see, I can remember Schaefer's Bar in Austin, Texas, but I can't remember the singer.

Is it King Lizard and the Gizzard Wizard?

They cover this song. She, of course, she, I can't believe that I'm spacing on her name. She's a country western singer who sings all the heartbreak songs from back in the day. Like, oh, oh, all of her songs are about getting her heart trampled on.

Right, right, right. It has the divorce song.

No, I think that's the D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today. No, this is like Carrie's favorite singer. Wow.

I didn't wake up with an especially good brain today, and I don't wake up with an especially good brain any day, but I mean even relatively speaking. So this is painful.

I'm back in baby's arms. How I miss those loving arms. I'm back where I belong. Back in baby's arms I think she died in a plane crash Patsy Cline Patsy Cline I'm so sorry to the listeners Yeah I am so sorry

This is who I was thinking of the whole time I was almost She also has a divorce song But she doesn't spell it out It's a different divorce song

Oh Because there's that other one That's Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E Oh yes Becomes final today

I just looked that up That's Tammy Wynette Right Who also is always singing about getting trampled Right

I thought there was kind of a theme going on

In the 60s That's right For these countries. Am I leaving that all in, or do you want me to cut it out? Where were we? We could just pick it up with, let's see here. Schaefer, the front page. Thank you, baby. I got to do the music, too, because I'm not. I wasn't ready for this.

We also have to thank Whitney Brown in San Marcos, California. Whitney is, right now, was just driving and being like, it's Patsy Cline. And she thought, I'm withdrawing my donation. And then we said her name, and she's like, dang it, I can't, because they just gave me a shout out. See, that's how this whole thing works. Anyway, thanks, Whitney. Thanks to all of our donors of the day for making the show possible, even on the days when we don't wake up with a particularly good brain. We couldn't be here without you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. It's like our version of No Bones Day, No Brains Day.

Oh, that's, yes. Brains or no brains. Welcome to Brains or No Brains.

This is where Luke and Andrew figure out if they woke up with brains or not.

Oh, no. Unfortunately, that's almost not funny. It's so real with me. Some days I'm just doing the show and you can just feel like this is the perfect example. And me trying to talk about Romero before. And I'm still thinking of the word I was looking for that was not activist. I guess it was organizer, I think, is the word I was looking for. But I started off the show. I have not been able to shake that sentence of me just slowly saying words more slowly and quietly.

I don't usually get a case of this, but I feel very embarrassed about not being able to remember Patsy Cline. The Patsy Cline thing is tough, too. The amount of Patsy Cline that I have consumed in my life and, you know, just the fame of Patsy Cline and then me not being able to get that name and then me getting stressed out that I wasn't getting that name. Like you could If somebody went back and analyzed the tape You could hear me And I know this is something that you're familiar with too, Andrew Slowing down and trying to think If there was a way To say it was Patsy Cline without saying her name Because I was realizing that I wasn't remembering it

Yes, I know when I'm doing that That you know what I'm doing as well I actually really don't Because I don't listen a lot on the show We were doing a no point conversion the other day And I think I was listing Browns players And I listed three in a row maybe I was talking about injured players this is several weeks back I remember this by the way I mean these are the things I hang on to and I remember I had just said their names and then in the same sentence I'm saying the three names again but forgot the third name the third time around or the second time around and I just said and the other one I don't know if you remember that but I think about that that's the type of thing

at least you didn't call Jacob Eason

Jake Browning well that I think is an easy mistake to make but either way you're going to need that you're going to need that alphabetical list of car parts and when you're going to sleep tonight after this

thing have you um had a chance to to take a look at this bad art friend piece i did yeah i read it yesterday it is riveting right it's a piece by robert colker and again i know we got to this almost a month late but Yeah.

I just I feel like it's still worth talking about this crazy story of a woman named Don Dorland, who is a writer and also decided she she set up in the piece as somebody who just seems sort of unrelentingly positive. You know, she's just, you know, writing kind of affirmations on Facebook and, you know, again, is very interested in the world of writing and wrote for Grub Street, the kind of restaurant review, whatever it is Grub Street does, and also decided to donate a kidney and I think kind of a blind donation. So it wasn't like somebody in her family needed a kidney. She just wanted to be of service and donate this kidney. So she did. And and then the piece makes it sound like this became a big part of her personality, like kind of posting things on Facebook and lots of hashtags about, you know, donating kidneys. And it wasn't she did not do it subtly.

No, it sounds really irritating. We all have people in our lives like this or know of people. When I say our lives, I mean our Facebooks and Facebook plays a big role in this. Right. Like and I don't know this person. And, you know, you want to give people the benefit of the doubt in her mind. And this is a big part of the mentality here. In her mind, she likes to she thinks she likes to live a life where she's where you emphasize doing good for others. And it's about them and not you. But clearly, this kidney donation was really about her because she kept on bringing it up. She would post things to Facebook. And if certain people in her life didn't give it a thumbs up on Facebook, she would reach out to them individually just to see how they are doing or like that, you know, and then to see.

She would go to writers conferences. This is pre-pandemic, and if nobody brought it up, she would sort of follow up like, hi, why didn't anyone bring up the fact that I donated a kidney? Which at a certain point, you know, you start to see how it loses its selflessness. So in one of these, like, kind of writers' groups or whatever, she's sort of friends with a woman named Sonia Larson. And Sonia Larson also had worked for Grub Street. I think they had worked together in Boston at some point. And Sonia Larson and her are kind of – they're friendly. In fact, it sounds like Don Dorland actually, the kidney donor, the D is for donor. That's how you remember who's who in this story because it gets a little complicated. But I think Don Dorland had actually kind of gotten Sonia Larson in the door at Grub Street and considered that Don considered them to be really good friends. And then things start to get a little weird at some point because she kind of hears through the grapevine that Sonia Larson has written some kind of a short story or a piece about somebody who receives a kidney donation. and um and so she kind of reaches out and says oh that's that's kind of interesting that you wrote something about someone who got a kidney donation because you know that's something that I went through I donated a kidney and um Sonia Larson is like oh yeah you know after a couple of uh emails uh from you it sort of sparked a little bit of inspiration and then I went off in a totally different creative direction like it's clear that Sonia Larson is initially wanting to really low-key the role that Don Dorland's story played, her real-life story played in this fictionalized thing that Sonya Larson wrote. Well, as time goes on, more is revealed about this story that Sonya Larson has written. And it's not just some kind of sort of inspired by real events and then goes in a totally different direction. It's basically a takedown of Don Dorland. It's basically a story about a white woman who is self-obsessed and donates a kidney to a woman of color, but it's really about her. And she uses this Facebook message that Don Dorland had posted, which I'll just read to you. This kind of seems like everything you need to know about this Don Dorland woman. Personally, my childhood was marked by trauma and abuse. I didn't have the opportunity to form secure attachments with my family of origin. A positive outcome of my early life is empathy, that it opened up a well of possibility between me and strangers. While perhaps many more people would be motivated to donate an organ to a friend or family member in need, to me, the suffering of strangers is just as real. Throughout my preparation for becoming a donor, I focused a majority of my mental energy on imagining and celebrating you. So she's sort of writing this to the stranger who got her kidney.

But she's also posting it publicly on her Facebook page saying – or in Facebook groups saying, this is the letter that I'm writing to my unknown donor – or I'm sorry, organ recipient.

And so Sonia Larson's piece or her short story features the – I mean the protagonist is really this woman who, I mean, receives the kidney who's a character that actually Sonia Larson has apparently written about in a lot of different books. And Sonia Larson is a sort of semi-successful writer. Don Dorland is kind of over on the sidelines Not really making it in the world of writing But just obsessed posting about her kidney donation anyway uh sonia larson puts that basically a practically verbatim thing in her short story from that facebook post and anyway what ends up happening is this very kind of like awkward toxic battle between don dorland the kidney donor and sonia larson that involves lawsuits and trying to and like you know suing for defamation trying to get the book pull or the story pulled the the the the story um what's it called the kindness i think yes or maybe name of just kindness maybe anyway the story yeah the story that sonia larson wrote ended up getting picked up as one of those like books or stories that everybody in a city reads it was like a i think the city of boston it was like they were going to buy 30 000 copies of the of the book or of the story and distribute it and it was going to be like everybody in boston reads the same book and it was going to be this story of this like very self-obsessed white savior kidney donor and uh the other woman don dorland is like trying to get it pulled um from you know uh from the festival thing from the festival or whatever it's just going back and forth and then really What I found particularly fascinating were the like in the friend group dynamics, because what you realize by the end of this piece is that all of these writers really hate Don Dorland, the kidney donor. Like she's one of those people. And I think we all have these people in our life or in the periphery of our life who's just so extra. And you're just you and the rest of the people in the group who are normal are always going like, what is this person going to do next? I assume I am that person in our sports text chain. andrew i'm the don dorland of our sports text shape but i mean the but on the other hand it also doesn't seem to me totally cool what sonia larson did to actually literally take you know this material and then effectively reprint it she changed some of it eventually when she got called

out yes this is and i know we can't go into all of the ups and downs and the article is just or The story is just so it's just so well written and laid out so well narratively. But when Dawn, the person who donated the kidney and had written this open letter, I guess, to the recipient, when she first discovered like a copy of Larson's story, she saw, you know, the the quote that was very similar to her note. And she's like, this is almost the same thing. And then as time goes on, she kind of unearths an earlier version, an actual earlier audio book version where the note is almost exactly the same. I mean, maybe one or two small words were changed. And it's clear that Larson, as the as the noose got tighter, for lack of a better phrase, realized, oh, maybe I need to change this up a little bit. But, you know, you also have this friend dynamic where this whole time Dawn, the woman who's a bit extra or a lot extra, is sort of thinking that Larson and her are much closer friends than they are. And she's kind of reaching out and saying, hey, why didn't you respond to my Facebook post about giving a donation? And, of course, Larson's giving these like these personal responses back, you know, in one to one communication that you can tell her these very kind of tight lipped, polite things to say. Like, I did not realize that that was so important to you that I respond. That is very good for you. And, you know, before you even get to the part of the story where you realize that Larson and all of her friends are dunking on Doran all the time, which became part of discovery in one of these lawsuits. So, yes. And so now there's this lawsuit like what is the copyright on something that you write an open letter and you post it to Facebook? Like, can a can a writer actually pick that up and use it in their book? And, like, is there copyright on something like that? Because the thing is, like, Larson's point is this story is not really about Doran. It's about, like you say, this kind of white savior narrative that we see over and over in real life. And that's what she's trying to get at. But now everybody is just focused on this, like, did I steal from Doran type of thing. But the thing that I found to be most delicious sort of was because I think that they're both awful. Both of these people sound awful. Larson yes not necessarily with her original intent but with her inability to at some point realize hey what I did here was wrong I should just like apologize and just like put this behind me she couldn't because I mean this was the biggest literary literary chance of her lifetime to be right yeah this was a big deal for this I think I think it got into best American short stories like this was the book or I should say the story that really took off for her right and so now Doran's coming in wait I've said it so many times Doran right yeah Dawn

Patsy Cline

Dorland I'm sorry Is kind of coming in and ruining That so I understand emotion

why she's digging in but okay all of this i'm talking a mile a minute but all of this to me uh comes down to this point she keeps on arguing no no this is the writing process you're allowed to borrow from things if i see my neighbor planting flowers i don't have to get his permission to include that a neighbor plants flowers in one of my stories and it's so freaking disingenuous because there is in like you said in discovery in these like in the legal documents that unearthed all of these text messages and and emails between her and her friend group where they're they're dunking on Dorland she even says show title I think we already have brains or no brains okay she says I know I should change more of the wording of this letter but I can't she's just gold she's like I can't change and then later on she says I could write about Dorland forever her story she's just gold now you have like these two sentences that like very specifically you are you know being catty to your friends in a way that i have been catty with groups of friends as well but like you've been caught red-handed you just said from a literary standpoint you don't want to change the wording on this because it's too good and you also said this person this person's life experiences are a gold mine for me you know what

i mean like yeah you're sunk man and well i also just wonder what uh the uh what sonia larson's how she thought it was gonna go so like she starts writing this this story and she obviously you know bases this character on don dorland who's annoying and i agree with her by the way that facebook post is gold like it is just the thing i read it's like so perfectly centering yourself in a story that really nobody asked you to do or I mean I guess if you're donating kidney you are in the center of that story and yet there is a graceful way to handle something like that and then there's what Don Dorland was doing and I agree that that there's something so unbelievably and perfectly narcissistic about the way that Facebook post reads that I also if I were Sonia Larson would be like the the truth of this the way this is written is so profound you couldn't make it up like if you tried to if you tried to write it and rewrite it you would get it it would be less good than the real thing right so i get why she i get why she wanted to use it but it's like did she think that sonia larson was never gonna figure this out right she starts writing this book or this story i keep kind of going between uh she starts writing this story and then i mean at some point it's done and it's starting to you know get attention and starting to kind of take off and she has to know at some point that this is going to get back to don dorland that she basically made her a character in this book and this story and that she sucks yeah I know I mean

I even you know when you first start reading the story and you have an inkling of where it's going I started I started to get tense at that point because I think about all the times on this show where you know like I mentioned a story that I think maybe somebody from my past won't hear but they will I got a text message from my old childhood friend two weeks ago him reminding me of something i said that was slightly unkind or maybe unfair to him on this show five years ago i'm not kidding you yes he's still upset about that we're still in touch but just out of the blue he's like he i don't want to get into the details of it but it's like i still think of things that i say on this show or me using my friend's name in an anecdote i told the other day which i really wish i hadn't done because it's a very specific name um but like in this case You're writing this thing and you're putting it out there And like you Your other friend is a writer It's not like you're writing about your tow truck driver You know

Right and is obsessed The other thing that comes out in this piece is these like You know these kind of This world of this sort of level of writer They all know what each other are publishing And who's getting in what magazine And who got which fellowship Who went to Bread Loaf etc Like it's a very small world There's no way that Don Dorland is not going to hear about this i also found myself reading the article and thinking oh this don dorland like she is annoying and then i get to the sonia larson i was like well actually this is not cool i couldn't decide who i was rooting for and then like you i ended up sort of rooting

for none of them another this is just a weird detail that some people might know and it rang a bell to me um i think i might have heard this somewhere before too but the just from the legal standpoint, the detail about J.D. Salinger's letters, the fact that he had written private letters to other people in his life, and then those people were willing to hand them to a biographer. I'm probably messing. I'm just giving the broad strokes here. But then he was able to sue and keep those private letters. He, Salinger, the writer of these letters, was able to keep these letters from going public in this book because the court decided that he as the writer is the owner of those letters, not the recipient, which is very interesting, I think. Huh.

Well, note to people taking part in the TBTL card exchange. Yeah. Yes, exactly. You know, anything anything that you write, you will you ultimately retain the rights to, I guess. Yeah, it was just a crazy story. Do you think ultimately so you you come down on the side that this was. I mean, it's sort of terrible. Well, terrible is overstating. It's kind of not great behavior all around. It's not great behavior by Don Dorland to just be. I mean, she just sounds annoying AF truthfully. And it's also not cool behavior by this Sonia Larson person to, again, I don't even think it's wrong that she wrote about this person, but she needed to just own it. Like what she could have done is said, I mean, I'm not saying I would have the stones for this, but really the way to handle this would have been to say to Don, hey, I'm writing a book or I'm writing a short story. I really have to get that straight. This is annoying. I'm writing a short story. It's going to be about kidney donation. I'm basing some of it on you it's not going to look great because I think you're not great I think the way that you are going through this is kind of, it's annoying to all of us nobody likes you, like if she had and again that would be really hard to do but if she had been up front about it then I think it would be fine for her to write the story the way she wanted to and to base this character on her, the thing that she did really that was wrong was try to act like there was no there there like when there was a lot of there there

well that she continues to act

that way and act that right because the lawsuit is still you know it's still churning its way through the courts i mean as of publication this is not resolved fully but but we're also sort of

i think inflating two different aspects here like i don't fully agree with you that it should have been her moral obligation to say to her hey heads up i'm writing something that's going to infuriate you if you read it don't you know like i feel like she could have written this entire story without borrowing that language. I mean, weirdly, it hangs on this one paragraph, right, which is a direct ripoff. Like, if Dorland's bigger point is not about this particular paragraph where at one point it was word for word exactly the same, and if it was just generally speaking, this is somebody writing about my, this is somebody taking a different angle on the events of my life, I actually think that is fair game. And it's up to the individual writer to decide whether or not they can handle that sort of awkward, that social awkwardness and the anxiety that goes along with it when you're clearly including inspiration from somebody that you know. I mean, I think that's something that people have to do all the time. You know, you think about David Sedaris and how his family might have reacted to his earlier stories as he's writing them and he's writing exaggerated versions of them into his stories. That's just a reality. But the fact that Larson continues to deny that that there's any ethical issues with using this exact open letter as it was and then even just changing it a little bit again, she just needed to back off at some point. I don't think she had to give a heads up necessarily. And if she has the stomach to write about people in her life where it's clear echoes but the names are changed, I think you're legally fine. But the fact that she's getting more and more sort of pugnacious about this and denying and, you know, her point, she said, you know, she thinks it's a tragedy that the bigger point of her story is lost in all of this, which is the white savior narrative, which I think like I'm with her on that. Like, I don't think she's like purely wrong on that. But that's not the story anymore. The story is you plagiarized something. And now you're trying to twist these words into saying, no, no, no. It was just lightly borrowed. And if my neighbor's planting petunias, I'm allowed to write about a neighbor planting petunias. That is such a false, false comparison there. It is infuriating.

And she also tries to sort of bring in this notion that like Don Dorland is white and Sonia Larson is Asian-American, I believe. And she at some point tries to kind of like throw this thing in of like, I'm a woman of color and a white woman is coming and trying to tell me what I can write about. And it's like that's not really what's going on here. What's going on here is you plagiarize something, as you said, and and you need to just kind of own up to that.

I mean race does play a part because I do think that part of the story part of the message of this story is about like as you said in your setup you know it's not it's not like this whole story is divorced from race but in some of her quotes you're like you're again you're kind of your argument is floating around a little bit too much.

Well, she cycled through like every possible argument that she could for doing this. You know what I mean? As these lawsuits came around and as as it became more and more clear what she was up to. I'm talking about Sonia Larson now, the writer. She it was like I feel like she kept trotting out different like different explanations and excuses, always trying to kind of minimize the simple fact that she plagiarized this thing off of Facebook, which was, as she indicated.

freaking gold yeah right you know i don't blame her for that but um yeah anyway uh a a really fascinating story uh from robert colker uh would recommend checking it out in the times bad art

friend here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female oh man it's

not from a female all rightily got any emails or uh d-mails yeah here's a headline you love to see. Dory Monson wanted to coach Shorewood High girls basketball. His tweets did him in in today's Seattle Times. Eric Lucidus. The wonderful Eric Lucidus. I haven't even got into this piece, but this has strong bad art friend vibration.

Is Eric Lucidus, is that a byline you know? I actually don't recognize that name.

Yeah, he writes great pieces in the Seattle Times. He's a reporter, but he just has an amazing, I mean, he's been there forever. He has a really good eye For quirky stories And interesting people And I think he's even I think he might have Written about the demise of TBTL Or maybe the rise of Ross and Burbank I did some kind of interview

But he just generally

Very often when I see a piece In the Seattle Times That I'm like oh I'm going to definitely read that Later on It's either written by Eric Lissidis or Christina Claridge Or Christine Claridge I should say They're both really good writers at the Times.

Okay, I have an email that I want to get into, but first, let's just get this out of the way. And I'm sorry to new listeners. I don't know if we have any new listeners who've made it this far into this particular Bad Brains episode or No Brains episode, but I can't go back. What if we did a whole episode on the band Bad Brains? Bad Brains. They were like kind of funky, right? Weren't they kind of like a funk punk band or something? I don't know. I don't think it was up my alley. Oh, by the way, the song that I was thinking of by Patsy Cline that's about divorce, I believe it's called A Church, A Courtroom, Then Goodbye. We could go out with it, but as a man who recently did go through your own breakup, I don't know if that's going to put you in the right mood to close out a Wednesday. I'll let you make the call on that. You can think about that. But here's the question in front of us right now. This is posed by Patrick, who sent in an email with a subject line, a philosophical question. Again, I'm not going to explain all of these references. Says, you know, you know, which would you rather fight? Ten splooch the diarrhea turtle sized swole zonkeys or one swole zonkey sized splooch? I think you made the right call to not try to contextualize that. Oh, by the way, there is a team called the Zonkeys. My brother in law, Zachary, texted me. He says, I can assume somebody already wrote in about the Zonkey story from last Monday to tell you all that. Tijuana's pro basketball team. So it's not even the pro basketball team of Tijuana is called the Zonkies. You love to see it. That could be a show title. That's better than brains or no brains.

Wow. The Tijuana Zonkies. That sounds like a fun. It's a basketball team, you said?

Yeah, a basketball team.

It's a fun night to go see the Tijuana Zonkies.

Would you rather fight ten splooch-the-diarrhea-sized swole zonkeys? So, in other words, there are ten swole zonkeys that are about the size of splooch. Or one splooch the size of a swole zonkey. I guess the one. I don't think there's a huge size difference. I think you go for the one zonkey, right?

Well, is it splooch on the size of the splooch that's on the sign that you saw in the bathroom in Australia?

Is it to scale? So it's like literally the size of my fist. Okay, if that's the case, I guess I would take 10 of them. But either way, then that's messy because I'm kicking them all over the place. But anyway, let's just move on.

I mean, like a giant sploocha?

Yeah, that's no good.

That's the size of a swole zonkey?

I don't want to mess with that. No, that's true. Okay, let's get to something slightly less disturbing. Stacy says, I never thought I'd be sending an email like this, but I have a dilemma. There is a drop you used to play Isn't that, are you laughing Wasn't that the old trope I never even read these magazines But I remember there was a time in the 80s Where it would be like penthouse forum You'd always have some character like Kramer in Seinfeld Opening up a penthouse forum And say I never thought I'd be sending A letter like this but dot dot dot

I do remember those That wasn't why I had that reaction And I did read those by the way If I could get my hands on them And, yeah, it would be like a real erotic letter that would almost always start with, I never thought I'd be sending this. I never thought I'd be writing this.

I'm really glad I brought this up because this is an email that Stacy once read with her children. So, sorry about that.

Stacy Stacy says there is a drop you used to play I would say I still play it that said something along the lines of have a great day sweetie what you do is really important I have taken to repeating this drop to my kids in the morning when they head off to school and I get many eye rolls the eye rolls I can handle but the trouble is they don't believe that this isn't a thing I just made up as a result I've spent more time than I'm comfortable admitting searching for this drop online with no success can you please tell me where that drop is from or even better play it again on the show so that i can prove to my 11 and 5s that i'm not losing it please help thanks

stacy you know the drop right luke you played it for me off the air the other day and i was crying loud i played this so this is the drop this is the three second drop sweetie have a good show

what you do is so important which is a you know it's a great drop to use in a little sound montage um but so to answer your question stacy that is from comedian maria bamford in a just a wonderful a wonderful little bit she did in kind of a stand-up show i think it's actually was more of a sit-down show on tiki-taki um but i can't play the whole thing because it's not it's not filthy it's just really dark that is a very dark joke that is not appropriate for tbtl you would agree with that right luke i don't know if i agree with that oh really do you want me to play

it well i don't know i mean look maria bamford our listeners love maria bamford i i love her and her work i don't i mean i mean i'll hey i'll get you a toe i mean i'll play it if you want i

kind of i kind of assumed that we i i thought you felt the same way but if you i mean maybe with

this trigger warning that's kind of what i'm thinking i i think if we give everyone a heads up that this is this is this has got some very dark humor in it but again the fact to me it's who does who does this uh comedy come from it comes from maria bamford who i don't know just a known quantity to me and somebody who i know our listeners love so somehow that kind of also feels like it's a a reason to to maybe play it i don't know yeah i mean let's think what's the downside of us playing it it would be offensive to people i guess yeah i mean i guess and i've

given a lot of context here and it's Maria Bamford talking. By the way, we also have this drop that I sometimes play from another listener who... What's that drop

that's like you're doing a good job

sweetie. What you do is so important. I like to play that sometimes. Sweetie

have a good show. What you do is so

important. Now do we want to hear the whole thing? It's a

minute long. Let's do... I mean, honestly, it's so funny even though it is very, very, very dark. But again, this is a good chance for those of you still listening. And Stacey's kids maybe Maybe they shouldn't hear this I don't know I'm not telling people how to parent

She'll listen to it first

But this is a good This is a good chance for us to all remember Who is the joke on Exactly You know what I mean Where is the laser of comedy Actually pointing and what is it hitting So when you're hearing something that sounds Kind of dark and kind of upsetting You gotta remember who is the joke actually on In this case it's a swole zonkey

I believe so Take a listen to this

So, Mom, I'm doing a show tonight. Oh, sweetie, I have a joke for you. Listen, a friend of mine, she was in foster care, coincidentally. She was airlifted out of the Sudan in the late 90s where she had been be-armed and be-legged by the John Jewett, the horseback militia. She's a hoot. She'd love to do stand-up, but she can't stand up. And so she's in a hospice situation. She's so funny. It's really just a matter of time. The priest comes in. She's hilarious. He asks her, would you like us to light a candle for you in the chapel? And she says, sassy as you please, teletyping through her eyelids. Well, how many candles you got? Because so many horrible things have happened to her and keep happening. Sweetie, have a good show.

What you do is so important.

Everyone, please remember, the joke there is on Maria Bamford's mom, this character. yes yes keep happening to her i believe is the critical oh my goodness component of that bit

i think that i could be wrong here but i think that stacy wrote in for some help and i just made her life more complicated by beginning this email with a conversation about penthouse forum and ending it with that bit of tape so enjoy your family times we but we warned you it was

a no brains day. It is definitely

a no brains day. So if you're still listening

that's kind of on you. I wonder

if we should start just doing that at the top of the show. Andrew, is it a brains day or a no brains day? We need to find maybe there's some sort of test we can do to figure out if our brains are working in the morning. I'll work on imaging for that. We'll say doctors.

For your brain

Do you want to Go out with that Patsy Cline song We don't have to

Patsy Cline the artist That I can never forget the name of The artist that I always just have right at the tip of my brain

Cline is fine Right up there between the

We're not going to go with King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard I mean if you want to we can I just No let's go with the Patsy Cline song You know what I'm going to do Here's what I'm going to do Andrew for you

What are we going to do here?

My manager's out of town this weekend, and I'm going to do something I wouldn't do if he were here. I'm going to pick a King Gizzard, Lizard, Wizard song for Music for Your Weekend. Okay. Okay. I'll pick the best one, or at least the one I like the most.

That sounds good. You know, it's starting to ring a vague bell. I don't know if it's just because we've said it so many times now, or if you might have, like, a couple of years ago, maybe played a song as Music for Your Weekend. I'm not sure. Possibly. Anyway, okay, here we go.

Okay, we'll do that on Friday. That will wrap up today's festivities. Thanks for listening, everyone. Thanks for helping be a part of old TBTL. We do appreciate you all. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Until then, stay dry wherever you are. Stay safe. Take care of yourselves and each other. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

We cry. Our friends wished us luck. There forever As we walked from the church Side by side The next scene was a crowded courtroom And like strangers we sat side by side Then I heard the judge make his decision And no longer were we men and white

Sounds like you're really going through some tough stuff right now. It's too bad there's not doctors for your mind. Power out.