Muse

We like different things, and that's okay, cause we just like different things. Me and my mom like our eggs in a different way, and that's okay. My mom likes them fried, I like them scrambled with cheese.

TVTL

i'm gonna suggest that we have a little constructive talking time not long at all i mean maybe maybe 10 minutes or um okay or maybe 15 is also good but it'll be so amazing you'll love it it's gonna be

the best ever i love this show do i wish our fans were a little more hip yes do i wish they were a tad more on top of their hygiene? Absolutely. Do they have a confused look in their eyes like a dog that's heard a strange sound? Yeah. But strap that dog to a sled and baby, you'll be flying across the tundra. Hey, can we get back to the funny? All right. Hello, good

morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live is it too early good fish sandwich my name is luke burbank i am your host all men is trash except me and timothy shablagoe coming to you from the hollywood studios here in beautiful portland oregon gotta do it again right now we are looking at a absolutely gorgeous monday there are still some some leaves on the trees there was some kind of a I don't know if meteorological is the exact way to describe it but there was something that happened this year that made the leaves more vibrant it had to do with a lot of rain and then warm temperatures or warm temperatures and then not so much rain I don't know something happened where the foliage at least here in the 503 is just unbelievably beautiful and even more appreciated this morning after the just absolute, just disgusting weekend of weather that we had. It was just... Didn't know you like to get wet, though. It was torrentially raining. So anyway, it's nice today, and we have a heck of an episode in store for you here on episode 3,549 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. There's an interesting new bot on Twitter.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to my Twitter.

That is actually very followable and very interesting, and I think of particular interest to my buddy Andrew, based on some of his habits, if you will. So we will talk about that. And also, looks like I may have some new co-workers at CBX.

You're listening to TBTL. Booyah! In your face!

That's right. the son of the guy who invented Alvin and the chipmunks is trying to sell them and CBS is very interested so we'll talk about what's going on with that plus emails and v-mails and the aforementioned longest running co-bro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he is of course a soulful rocker from New Hampshire he's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of seattle washington good morning my friend hey good morning luke did you say you

still wanted me to check the local police and fire scanner during the show yes i actually sent

you a formal request through the apm uh system going back to my roots here is a um cairo news desk editor that's right i did have editor in my title at one point famous for saying you know if

it bleeds it leads that's what you've always said i'm gonna put this away now i don't know if you could hear it coming down the line but i did open up my scanner app because there's some i don't know some sirens are wailing as they go down my road here it sounds like somebody has suffered an ankle injury something involving a four-story structure i don't know what's going

on i was trying to four-story structure fell on someone's ankle yeah i think that's what happened

that's like the kind of lie that my dad told when he he punched something one time so hard that he broke his hand but then he told the nurse that some paint cans fell on it and he thought he was being real clever about that and then the doctor came in and said boy you punched something hard i was like oh my all my crafty lies turns out the medical community they don't know anything about vaccines don't listen to them regarding that but they can tell whether you broke your hand from a paint can falling on it or punching something so speaking of um of dads and injuries

and questionable medical stuff the uh one-time charlotte hornet rex chapman who i'm still determined to do a...

ding-dang television story about. Oh, yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, good idea. Get the green light. I've talked about him on the show a lot. I'm sure many of our listeners are familiar with him. He's kind of a big hit on Twitter now, but he's had an interesting life story. He was a pro basketball player, and he was a really good one at that, and then he unfortunately fell into opioid addiction and ended up with his life really going in the wrong direction, sort of was making news for being caught stealing things, you know, from Walmart and the like, And for like a guy who I think maybe won the NBA three-point contest a couple of times, it just seemed like a pretty far fall from grace. But then he was able to get cleaned up and has just really, really had what would appear to be a great and rewarding life for the last five, ten years, which is awesome to see. But back to the Twitter thing, he's just really good at finding, you know, heartwarming things and memes. He doesn't usually put out the kind of fire snarky tweet, but he put out one this weekend, and I'm paraphrasing here from memory. But it was a photo of a car that was smashed in, and he said, my 76-year-old father was in a car accident this weekend and was injured, but he's a pretty tough guy. And after we weren't able to get a hold of Joe Rogan for medical advice, we went ahead and handed it over to the orthopedist at the hospital where they put some screws in his ankle. Yeah, that's great. It was so good because, A, I didn't expect it coming from Rex Chapman. And, B, it just kind of framed it in this way. I'm always looking for some airtight way to talk about this with people, people who are nonbelievers in what is obvious science. And, I mean, there you go. It's like if you rolled, you know, if you if you were in an auto accident and your ankle were shattered, you wouldn't call Joe Rogan. Yeah. You'd go to the people who spend all their time fixing ankles. I mean, it's just so simple. And there was something about how old Rex put it. I call him that even though we've never met that. I just thought was really pretty, pretty great.

I didn't even know where you were going with that at first. And I was I was trying to come up with a Joe Rogan joke. So I didn't even know that Rex was going to take us there. But yeah that's the exact kind of You're talking about trying to like sum something up In a way that people will understand And of course you had tweeted Or no no you had said something on this show about like Yeah like hip replacement surgery isn't political Which Chris Hayes Repeated on his show which got us a bunch of New listeners which I then sent Scampering away by delivering a terrible Performance the next day but You know I mean I guess if I'm being totally fair

I don't want you to take my laughter as Confirmation that you chased away New listeners I'm laughing just because you're being funny But I don't think that happened for the record.

But I mean, of course, the argument is like, well, you know, no, the government isn't forcing you to get hip replacement surgery, which would be the argument on the other side, just to just to be intellectually honest about it. Not that I'm obviously not that I'm throwing my lot in with those with those ridiculous people. But the thing that really bothers me, if we're going to start like some on the somewhat serious topic or somewhat seriously on this topic, is you look at the Aaron Rodgers thing. Right. And he's he he frames it as being a free thinker and not and not taking just like the advice of the professionals at face value.

because what's it like to have Aaron Rodgers in your crosshairs as part of the woke mob right

exactly but it's like but you're not being a free thinker you're just throwing your lot in with other people who are telling you to follow their protocol and their protocol is nuts like that's the thing it's not like all these free thinkers are going out studying it out and then coming up with their own solutions in their laboratories they're all just doing what Joe Rogan is telling them to like you're choosing between the CDC and Fauci or Joe Rogan like that is it and you're just throwing your lot in with somebody else nobody's doing any free thinking here it feels

aaron rogers is such a and i know we talked about this on friday um but i have been trying to develop develop a sort of unified theory of why people are so weird right now as when it comes to the the politicizing of like something as simple as the vaccine and i really think about this a lot And much like me trying to come up with a special theory of relativity, I still remain very far away from an actual coherent theory on this. But one of the things that I think about is I think a lot of people are dealing with a lot of emotional stress in their life. And I tend to think that our cell phones have something to do with it, the way that we're living, the sort of disconnection from nature. there's something going on that has a lot of us feeling unsettled and unsettled. I think maybe in a different way than people were unsettled in the forties. I'm not saying the forties were the greatest. In fact, they were pretty bad for a lot of people who weren't white dudes, but I think there's an ennui that we now have. And I think that that feeling of like lack of control.

and kind of feeling like things used to be better or you're having something taken away from you or you feel lonely but you also have all these people online that you're interacting with but maybe you're not getting the full kind of emotional benefit from that. Anyway, all of that leaves a lot of people feeling very weird and for some part of the population, the way they try to get control back is by thinking they know more than the sheep of the world or somehow getting into this mindset where the government is lying to you and Anthony Fauci is bad and you should take horse dewormer and worm dehorser, it somehow is putting a Band-Aid over some emotional pain that people are in because it's obviously not logical and it's not scientific, right? So it has to be emotional. But Aaron Rodgers exists outside of that for me because he's the reigning MVP of the NFL. like i some person who's living uh marginalized financially in a in a place where they feel forgotten by the the big city liberal elites etc and they're they're going on facebook but they they didn't go to a particularly great school they don't have much media literacy they're believing what they're seeing and it's wrong i can almost kind of like understand how that person got there i don't understand aaron rogers ended up there the dude is super wealthy loves jeopardy has he doesn't fit into this thing i'm trying to create as a kind of a um am i going to use this right andrew a rubric what we learned the other week what that actually means because i've been misusing it um i just don't understand aaron rogers fits into this thing that i've been trying to create as an explanation for why so many people are just acting so bizarrely now this is

to the side of your point but while we're just solidly rooted here in Aaron Rodgers vaccine denial talk here um couple of observations from you see it as vaccine denial I see it as immunization embracing right oh Genevieve had a good joke because so actually this kind of ties into one thing I wanted to mention I was watching there was only one football game related to my life this weekend or of interest to me um because as far as I know the Ravens didn't play uh so So anyway, I was watching the Browns game this weekend, so I just watched like, let's say, half of my usual intake, three, three measly hours of football. And about halfway through it, I saw a tweet from Danny O'Neill, our buddy and former 710 ESPN colleague, who said, hey, has anybody seen an Aaron Rodgers Allstate commercial yet? No, I'm sorry, State Farm commercial yet. And suddenly I was like, oh, no, I haven't. Like, I had not seen any news headlines saying that Aaron Rodgers is pulled from this. I know that he lost a different lesser sponsorship deal. But they were only going with the Patrick Mahomes ads. And Genevieve had a great joke. She said that they should just make new Allstate commercials with him. I'm sorry, State Farm commercials with him where somebody says, hey, do you have insurance? And he says, yeah, I'm covered. That's a pretty good spoof. That's a really good spoof, right? Yeah, it is. But it did raise, as we were sitting there watching TV, I saw somebody else tweeted something snarky about Jeopardy. And I was like, that's right. Like, did he break Jeopardy protocols? Has have people been looking into this? Was there like an assumption that you had to be vaccinated or was there a rule that you'd be vaccinated on set? And there was an assumption that he was. Do we know about this?

I don't know about that. But Becca was mentioning that over the weekend, too. She was like, everyone at Jeopardy must be pissed. Yeah, because presumably a place that's, you know, based around knowledge, albeit somewhat trivial knowledge. there are a lot of rules in place for getting you know folks back together in a close space although again how was he as a person who i can't go into a tgi friday here in portland without my vaccination card or a photo of it yeah how is he just like i mean maybe that's the the privilege of being aaron rogers is you just tell everyone you're immunized they assume you're not smart enough to know the difference in the terminology and then no one just asks a follow-up question you show up at jeopardy and because like anytime i do any kind of gig i have to log into various systems when i was at microsoft last week i had to do it when i was on cbs you said has really

strict rules about that before the vaccine they had very strict testing rules yes i had to would

have to like uh you know sort of zoom with a nurse and take my temperature on camera and show the nurse the temperature to prove that i was you know not feverish etc now i get this weird email literally every day from cbs telling me i'm allowed to go to work which is really funny because many days i'm not working for them or i'm in portland or i'm doing something unrelated but they have some system called like viachi that i because i am vaccinated and i put all my info in it's every day it lets me know that i'm allowed to go work for cbs because it's obviously generating we have something going on with our workplace that i'm assuming you haven't seen the emails on that i keep you assume correctly that i mean to get on top of um they want like the hr department wants to just kind of i hope it's okay that i talk about this i'm sure it is um the hr department just wanted to get people's vaccine status on record so that down the line it would you know kind of ease any issues about um access to the facilities but they and i said Well, that doesn't really affect me. I wasn't really thinking about it too hard because, you know, if we have a special trip to go out there at any point, I would provide them. But they're actually trying to collect it company wide also. So they just kind of have an understanding of, you know, what percentage of their employees are vaccinated, which I think is good. But the thing is, they don't want to do it via email or anything for privacy reasons. Like you can't just take a picture of your vax cards and email them in. So they're setting up these. I don't really know why I'm talking about this. I just found it. I found it somewhat interesting. So they were setting up these like quick, like three to five minute, probably less than that little Zoom calls with H.R. Like you could sign up for like a block of time. And at some point, like you get on with an H.R. person, you basically just flash your your vaccine card via Zoom. And they're like, OK, done and done. And and then they mark you as vaccinated. But it's interesting, like for me, it would be like a million times easier if you could just be like, here's my vaccine card. I've emailed it into H.R. using a portal. But they're like, you know, and I think rightfully so, I guess, like, you know, careful about having that. And they don't want to I don't think they want to have the information on your vaccine stored in an email server. Right. They just want to check off that you have your vaccine card, if that makes sense.

I was thinking about a version of that the other day, because like I already mentioned, to go into a lot of places. Well, really everywhere in Seattle and Portland now, if they're doing, you know, they're they're following the rules. they should ask you to see your vax card and what i have at this point is a photograph of my vaccination card and every once in a blue moon a place might ask you for your id too and they may cross-reference the id with the vaccination card but truthfully they just look at this card and the card is just i mean you could print it out from the internet and the handwriting on it is from whoever you know gave me these shots and they wrote down some series of numbers but i could very very very easily have faked this situation and i what i guess what i think is is that i'm glad they're doing and i mean anything they do is better than nothing but i guess the thought is we're going to ask you for your vax card if you're willing to show us something that looks like a vax card on your phone and if you're pleasant about it it probably means you're in the category of people who got vaccinated if you start karening out again peace and love to our listeners named karen i actually really i'm trying to not use that word but that term i guess but if you i mean yeah it's it's sort of like a it's almost like a personality test it's like hey can i see your vax card and if a normal person goes oh yeah totally here let me show you and then you make a little joke or whatever and then you move on they're like that person has demonstrated that they're probably not crazy or i should say that they're probably not being uh you know unsafe about this now if you're weird about it and you're like oh do you really have to see it etc etc or you like you know like again it's almost less about the card and more about how the interaction goes that lets the person know that you're probably on the team of those who are getting

vaxxed yes yes to everything that you were just talking about and i could even throw in my own examples as well like i've had conversations with servers who are kind of like the fact that you came in here offering to show your cards means i don't need to look at them i've talked to a bartender he said you can tell the folks a mile away you know like if they're going to start right away with some sort of excuse or some grousing or whatever. But for the most part, we're talking about, you know, first of all, we're talking about industry workers who are there to serve food and already have a hard job. Like these rules and regulations are just there to like kind of, you know, make sure that on the whole society is following the rules and we're not going to probably be chasing down one or two people who are trying to get into teddies with a fake vaccine ID, you know what I mean on a Thursday night all of this I agree with everything you said all I was going to say though is I I have a burning question I didn't even think to bring this up on TBTL and this is the perfect TBTL conversation I think is Genevieve with no help when it came to this Vives and I as you know Luke I think Vives mentioned it when we were hanging out uh this weekend we uh went down to see the Seattle Symphony on Saturday night and I didn't know that ooh la la yeah we did because you were very excited that shostakovich we were supposed to hear some shostakovich which ended up getting uh stricken from the the program at the very last minute because of some um i'm assuming there was some either family emergency or somebody got

shostakovich tested positive exactly he's in the covid protocol it's actually kind of cool though

because the replay so they played something else for that part of the program um but now everybody who bought tickets for saturday you know.

night show gets a recording of the Thursday night performance of Shostakovich so I'm excited for that the emails will be coming later today all of that is to say so I but the only reason I told you where we are is because I think it will give you some context to help deduce what I'm about to ask you so we are at Benaroya Hall downtown this is a you know for for whatever stereotype it is it's a classical music going audience of which I'm not usually one uh people are you know kind of mostly dressed up for a night on the town or what have you and there's one woman i'm gonna put her at age between i don't know between uh 65 and 70 maybe and she is you know i guess dressed nicely um not you know not to the tens just dressed nicely for to see a show and she's wearing a mask and the mask is black with big white letters that say because like because it's kind of a normal font and then fauci is really big and then says says so underneath it she's wearing this mask that says because fauci says so wow and i am trying to figure out if this is a pro is is it is this a wauci in an ouchie or is this a pro fauci miscauchi i know you think this is this is definitely a protest it's a grouchy anti-fauci have you seen this is this a thing that we've

seen around or you're just hearing about it i've seen things like it i mean they're the ones that are extremely overt that say like this mask is as ineffective as my governor yeah those are obviously pro masks those are people that are very in favor of like jay insley or whatever but that is a person who is who is pouting uh my read of it is well just think about this i think you and i both tend to think that tony fauci is is doing his best we're both pro the message that he's spreading would you wear a mask that said that like i don't think there's any universe in which someone who's pro fauci is wearing that i think it's somebody who it's what an interesting what an interesting mentality you love the music of shostakovich so much that you're willing to wear this mask but you hate the mask so much that you have to let everyone know i would just think a person who thinks that you know this is a bunch of bs would just stay home but to go out and wear the mask there's something very childlike about that it's like a kid who's in the store and their their parents won't buy them something and they're just kind of crying all the way down the aisle and then they're still kind of crying they almost like forget that they're still upset they like stop crying for a minute or stop fake crying and then you go oh you're doing better and then they go back to fake crying like it's just so juvenile to be like i'm gonna wear this

mask but i gotta tell y'all that i don't like wearing this mask do you see why you could see how like you know because he has become the sort of figure that you could see people like kind of celebrating fauci and maybe because like here i'm looking i wanted to look it up while we were

talking here and i see that you can get somebody selling those on um what would the like blue

lives matter version of etsy be see here's the deal so i'm on t public right now and by the way my gut says you're more right but i'm on t public right now and they're also selling mugs that are just kind of like nicely designed mugs not my style but because fauci says so and t-shirts and yes masks and so i almost wonder if it's kind of and also now it says dr fauci stickers recommended i stand with fauci i stand with fauci now that's an algorithm but i do wonder if there is a chance and again and maybe it's the context of it like this is what genevieve said she said god i don't know she's like and how much are we influenced by here we are like you know just sort of um hanging out in the uh like loitering in the in in the lobby of benaroya and so you bring a certain fancy you bring a certain context with that as opposed to if i'm you know if i'm at some sort of a right-wing rally then it does have a different connotation it was hard for and then i'm kind of like well am i just being am i being snooty or or kind of giving into some sort of prejudices here But I was like, I don't know. I could see this woman being like kind of pro Fauci and also maybe not quite getting why somebody like me might think that that's a sarcastic thing. Right. I'm still a little I lean towards what you're saying.

I don't know, though. You've actually got me. No, you've got me reconsidering my position because of the context. Not that, you know, MAGA chuds don't like classical music, but I just but they don't. But it just seems less likely to me that that would be where you would find someone, again, who just was like, I hate this mask so much, but my love for classical music overrides. You know where I've seen people? Here's my point. You know where I've seen people with the this mask doesn't do shit kind of thing? Casinos. You know why? Because their need to get.

is more powerful than their anger about the mask that's like an addiction potentially right this is classical music and so i it's making me think that this is a person who who probably is pro fauci is probably not the greatest reader of tone and is bought this because like they saw it on facebook or they saw it somewhere and i mean the coffee mug thing is what really throws me because Like, I don't see anyone buying that coffee mug as a way to try to roast Fauci. It's because it's so to the side of the whole conversation. That makes me think of a person who's like, again, in a kind of slightly bizarre way going, if Fauci says so, then I'm going to do it. Like, which as a pro Tony Fauci guy, I don't I wouldn't buy that mug. That feels that feels slightly weird to me, too. But I think I'm I'm I've come around to thinking this person is trying to make a pro mask statement.

Yeah, now I'm now because now I'm looking again as you're talking. I'm looking and like these masks seem to be bundled up with other masks that say listen to Fauci. So, yeah, anyway, I don't know if we're any closer to it. But, yeah, that was one thing that I saw that I was really I was really puzzled about. And Genevieve just could not weigh in. First of all, Genevieve almost walked into this woman twice. They were so close to each other and should even notice two times. So I was like, man, you could never be a Columbo.

Just one more thing. Is that pro Fauci? I feel like Columbo and Anthony Fauci would be friends

Wow, I was going to say, yeah, was that Fauci, Columbo, or Gilbert Gottfried Or somewhere just like the perfect kind of a cosmic stew

I call it a cosmic jazz Did you guys see any cosmic, did you see any cosmic jazz this weekend? Any cosmic gumbo? Cosmic gumbo?

No, unfortunately not, that's next weekend

But you did enjoy the concert, it was nice, despite a lack of Shostakovich

Yeah, yeah, it was actually, it was really nice They had a apparently it was quite the weekend for the for the symphony. Again, this is not something that I'm usually well steeped in. So I don't want to make it sound like I know what I'm talking about as far as this. I think this is the first Seattle Symphony show I've probably ever been to. It was just sort of on a whim. I saw that the Seattle Times had done a little write up on the guest soloist, this violinist who is coming to town. And sometimes you just see something in the newspaper that sort of sort of sticks in your head. Like, hey, I'll just buy these tickets and take the train downtown. And the train stop is right next to it. It just seems like an easy, easy, fun little thing to do in Seattle.

This train stop is going to change your life, Andrew. Oh, I love it.

I talk about it all the time. It is so freeing. It is just so freeing. Like, walk three blocks, get on the train, get off the train, walk across the street, and there you are. You're watching a symphony. I'm in love with it. Never want to drive again.

But, I mean, you never wanted to drive in the first place.

Yeah.

Let's be clear.

I mean, it's just like, well, parking around here is changing, too, because there's like, you know, this is a kind of a residential area behind where we live where we park our car but like two big buildings just went up um and so it's like now it's this back in this realm of like hey if i get in my car there may not be a spot for me when i get back so maybe it's easier for a quick lunch to hop on the train and go to the u district instead of uh in which is just like a mile from my house instead of getting in this in this hunk of of metal and looking for parking there and hoping i have parking when i come back and like honestly i like seeing how it all comes together This is how pro-density people, which I consider myself, want things to work, make it a little bit less convenient to get in your car and a lot more convenient just to get on a train and life gets better for everybody, potentially.

But I guess what I mean is it's actually driving decisions for you now, because like you just said, like, maybe if you don't have that new station right by your house, maybe you don't go to the symphony because of, you know, just sort of one more little if there's one more little hassle associated with something, that might be the little straw that that stops the camel from going to the symphony, I believe is the age old saying. um but now for you it's like i because because again your tendency and we'll get to this actually when we get to the top stories about your new favorite twitter feed but like you know your tendency is to you like to you like to go out and do things you're but you also like to be home and have your andy times and and the the fact that you can now very conveniently go get more places with less hassle for you will probably you know actually impact the sorts of things that you do in your life now in seattle because of that yeah and i mean you're talking nighttime too but

i i've seen and that is potentially true like i was starting to say i think or maybe just thinking that um i also saw some little write-up about some new exhibit that's at the seattle art museum which is it again it's right across the street from from the symphony hall so like again it's like i don't i might have read that and thought in the back of my head oh maybe i should check that out but then never really follow up on it but when i think oh yeah like literally i can walk three blocks and suddenly get on this fast moving machine and be there like there's a much bigger chance of me going to that and by the way like we're bus people too like we will take gladly take the bus somewhere but there And this is this is unfair to buses, but it is it is what it is like getting on a bus and going to the symphony feels different than getting on a train and going to the symphony like it just does. And also like the idea of getting on a bus and potentially having to transfer. And so you're standing on a different street corner, different part of town waiting for the next bus. Hello, airplanes. Yeah, it's blimps. You win. Bye. But it's the daytime stuff that really gets me to like I can like again, I'm in my little ruts of, OK, let's say. on a thursday afternoon you and i are doing tbtl related stuff until 2 2 30 or something and then it's time for me to get a late lunch and then start working on the on the weekend like you know the newsletter and various production stuff i gotta do it's so much like usually i'd be like okay well what are the four places that i can walk to and bring food back here so i can continue working on this or now i can throw my laptop in my backpack get on uh get on the train and being capitol hill in two seconds go to a little diner there which i did a couple of weeks ago and then go to a coffee shop on Capitol Hill with all the young, cool people where I can people watch and do my work there. It's just I just feel like it really has opened up a world. Now, again, I could have gotten on a bus or two to get to Capitol Hill and done the same thing or driven, but it just doesn't seem as appealing to me. It's yeah, that's I've always felt the same way.

When I lived in New York, I loved taking the subway. There's something about and I know that people who study transportation, they have a term for this and I don't know what the term is. But when you're on a dedicated line of track, either elevated or subterranean or even just like the MAX here in Portland where it's like – I live, by the way, near a MAX station now in my new location. And I was thinking this the other day. I was like, you know what? I'm going to get out and start exploring kind of where this MAX will take me in Portland because traffic can be pretty rough here at times. But there's something about being in a mode of public transportation where you're on a dedicated line versus you're just inside of a bus that has to sort of mostly do the normal traffic laws and sit in the traffic. I mean, there are a few special lanes and stuff, but you know what I mean? That, for me, is why the bus feels a little bit less special. Also, I've never once been on a bus where a terrorist set it up so it couldn't go less than 50 miles per hour. And I feel like I mean That's half the reason you get on a bus To have an adventure with Keanu and Sandy B Sandy B

Also planes are kind of similar too right If you're talking about transfers What is a layover other than a transfer that flies I just came up with that That's pretty good Right now it's almost impossible to get to I think it is impossible right now To get from Seattle to Cleveland Non-stop I heard Alaska is actually going to open up a route sometime soon, yeah, but as of now it's one of those things, it's just like one more hurdle like, oh, am I going to fly all the way to Georgia to get to Cleveland, which is sometimes what you have to do

I think I flew to Pittsburgh last time if I remember right but it was still it was a long long journey, I'll tell you what well, let's not we did enough travel talk last week so I'll leave that off at least for this Monday episode of the show. And I guess go to this break, which we're a little overdue for, and then we'll come back and do these top stories. We've got some e-mails and v-mails. Oh, and some donors of the day to thank. So don't go anywhere. This right here is TBTL. Let's thank some donors of the day. These are the kind-hearted, long-suffering, deeply empathetic, financially secure people who are keeping TBTL going with their monthly support. People like Sybil Adams in Seattle, Washington. Thank you, Sybil. Holly Barnett-Reba is in Lakewood, Ohio. Do you know Holly?

I know Holly from social media. We've interacted before. She's an active 10, and I did remember. You didn't, like, grow up together, though. No, no, I don't know, Holly, but Lakewood. I did live in Lakewood, Clarence Avenue. I lived there for several years. Some of the best days of my life, some of the best summers of my life, Lakewood, Ohio.

I wonder if all the Ohio talk on this show, I guess it doesn't, it wouldn't really translate because this isn't really being transcribed anywhere. I was going to say, I wonder if, like, we somehow attract, like, if we attract people from ohio if we attract people from seattle attract people who grew up evangelical i'm trying to think of the recurring topics on the show and if somehow algorithmically that would bring people to us but i guess again that doesn't really make sense because it's this isn't something that's being put out in text form anywhere people who like

brains uh-huh that doesn't stop a foamer that's the people who like kelly kilburn kelly kilburn in seattle washington sorry i got really excited i'm friends with kelly oh there you go okay so you have friends i don't i'm i'm real actual friends with kelly kilburn um and uh i it's nice to see you on the list kelly thanks i i i hung out with kelly and addie and my cousins on the roof in Seattle last summer, I think it was. And we had a lovely time. And at no time do I remember Kelly mentioning that she's funding this operation. So thanks, Kelly. Elizabeth McCullough is in Seattle, Washington. Thank you, Elizabeth. Then we've got Megan Rodriguez checking in from beautiful Austin, Texas. And then where would we be without Kate Rappel or maybe Kate Rappel and Matt Sutton out there in colorado springs colorado thank you to all of our donors of the day we would not be here doing the show without you thank you babies hello and welcome to top story can i tell you something andrew that just happened and is making me mildly crazy i had to tell myself to put it out of my brain so I could keep doing the show with you and even however much focus I bring to this game day in and day out, which is probably limited. Probably the only way for me to clear for my brain is to tell you about it. So I, you know, I bought this little funky house and I'm going to be trying to fix it up a little bit. And I had a meeting with an architecture firm here in Portland because they're going to help me with the plans and all that because it's the stuff that needs to be permitted it's not like i can just kind of like get walt b down here and try to uh you know i don't know take a weekend and knock it out this is like some pretty major stuff so anyway i have to go by the office today the architect's office and sign a contract with them give them a sizable check to get things started and give them a key to this house now the thing is i could i i knew there was one key to this house that existed. And the reason I knew there was one key that exists is because I had hidden it somewhere up near the house because I had this great fear that I would drive up there at some point and forget to bring the key with me and have wasted like a 35, 40 minute drive. So I thought what I'll do is I'll hide it in an area in this sort of like rock pile and I'll know where it is. And that way, no matter what happens i will always there always be a key at the location so the last time i was up there doing some stuff i had the key in my pocket and i started to actually got in my car and started driving away and i was like uh don't do that you need to return the key to its hiding place

because the key needs to live close to the house the key cannot live in portland with you because that raises the possibility that you'll forget to bring it up to the place so i went back i put it in its special hiding place i was very proud of myself well what i realized when the architecture firm said we need a key to the place so we can go do measurements the key is up at the other place so i got up super early this morning because today is is is very busy for me i'm doing this with you we're doing no point dftb is coming over for no point i've got a couple of livewire things to record uh tomorrow i'm flying to the bay area in the afternoon anyway i'm i got a lot going on and the only time i could figure out to go up and get this key was early this morning luke must have got up early to drive and get this key, which I did, got back in time to do my little jog. I was very proud of myself today, Andrew. And then as the donor music was playing, I was looking for a pen and there is a, there's a kind of a desk here in the Hollywood studios with me that used to be at the, in the entry of my old apartment, the nest broadcast center. And I opened the desk to see if I could find a pen in there and sitting in there were two copies of the key to the other house how did you that i had i had forgotten they existed i couldn't remember i could i don't want to throw becca under the bus but i did ask her yesterday i was like do you remember how many keys they gave me because we went up there together when i was getting the keys from the real estate guy but it was kind of a blur and i don't know i just i'm also in the midst of moving so i have like a bunch of different keys that are kind of in my life right now but they none of them were related to this this other this little house so i just was like i guess there was only one key i guess there was only one key so i drove up there's where he got the key came

back down and uh right here two more keys two more keys my my question for you was going to be obvious so obvious that i was going because i know the answer and it seems silly to even ask the answer is your luke burbank but or bubank like.

Are you still going by? I am. It's after Halloween. Are you still doing the Luke Boobank thing?

Well, you consider it to be after Halloween. I consider us to be in the run-up to next Halloween.

It is a long, long run-up.

Luke Boobank is always getting ready for Halloween.

It makes me feel a little bit better to hear you stumble on that. I'm making a joke about my stumble, and I still couldn't even recreate the stumble. It's hard to say. Luke Boobank, that's difficult. Luke Boobank. Lurk Burbank. Yes. Lork Borbant Okay, so what I was going to say was Yeah, obviously the question is Why didn't you just get, you know, keys made right away Keys are easy to get made at any, like, kind of hardware store They really are It just didn't occur to me We're big on that in this house You wouldn't be surprised to hear You wouldn't be surprised to hear it from me You might be surprised to hear it from Genevieve But I think when we rent a place The first thing we do is we get a few extra copies made

Well, you know what's funny Is the first thing I did when I got this new apartment that I'm in Was go to my favorite place Called Kimi That the listener told me about The listener whose name eludes me at the moment I apologize These are these little kiosks Where you can go and if you have a fob For like your apartment or whatever You just put it on there and they just will make you copies And it's so amazing Another thing I'll say about my new apartment This just to me is kind of a microcosm Of why I think I like it better here already So when I was getting my little welcome packet they gave me a remote control for the gate for the parking gate it's like kind of a clicker you know it's like a little remote control clicker and they said the the person helped me said this is also the fob for the elevator and it was like oh this is a little bit large i go is it possible for me to get like a smaller fob i don't want to be carrying this remote control around with me all

the time yeah just rather the elevator yeah how big are you like a deck of cards or smaller than

that but just like larger than you want to have hanging off your key chain or trying to just deal with like i wanted that to just live in the car kind of like a garage door opener yeah that i could just use for that purpose and i was like are there any could i get a smaller fob but she said we can give you another fob but just so you know it's 75 and i was like well okay you know and this is just the cost of moving it's just cutting into my savings that i'm trying to make by moving

apartments i was like okay did you say how what size it would be before you uh committed she

described it and i i think i had a sense for in fact it's it's exactly like the fob i had at the old apartment so i think there must be a standard thing but she described it i was like yeah that sounds better so she goes to the office and then she comes back and she goes you know what i was talking to the manager we'll just give you one nice nice nice that's what i'm talking about humans working with humans that's right but no i didn't um for whatever reason why am i gonna go to this place with this conversation andrew when i got the key or what we now know were keys to this little house that i bought i think part of why my brain didn't go to i should make a bunch of copies of this right away was because i was so i was sort of slightly overwhelmed by the scope of what i need of what i wanted to do to make this the kind of place where i would actually live if that makes sense like i saw i saw you know this thing listed i saw that the price had dropped dramatically which is always a good sign you know in a hot market you want to try to go find a place that someone has recently reduced the price by a hundred thousand on that doesn't mean built on a native american burial ground um so anyway i i saw it i i was there were some aspects of it that i thought were really cool it has a kind of cool view of the columbia river which i was very into I mean, really what it came down to was the potential for me to sit in the yard of this house and watch the sunset, Andrew, which was a very big part of my life when I lived in Bellingham. And I had just had this thing in the back of my mind of I need to watch the sunset more for my mental health. And so I went up there and I realized this was a place I could watch the sunset from. There's a lot of natural beauty. It was within my price range. I just kind of went for it because I'm sort of impulsive. and i kind of didn't think the bank was going to give me the mortgages like the loan as quickly as they did like i called them and i said here's how much this house is and i would like to get a loan for this amount and like two hours later the person called me back and said okay you're pre-approved if you want to go ahead and it was just something about that it just happened like boom boom boom and so whatever i you know i i went with it quickly and quickly approved loans has never

been a problem for our society so i think it's probably your problem what is 40 interest is that bad no that was part of it is it's something called sub pre-may loan it's awesome oh that

sounds so good that's like the best the most pre-may loan you can get is there a way for sub pre-may loan to be the show title They said it's a ninja loan. No income, no job verification.

You can roll it. You can push it, but you cannot walk it.

Now even Luke can be approved for loans. Actually, you know what? That was another part of it. It's a really good interest rate. And I ran it by Carrie, who now works in the real estate field. And she was like, that's a good interest rate. You should be happy you got that. And so all these forces kind of converged. Right. And I was like, or elements converged. And again, the chief one being my impulsiveness. And I just was like, OK, I'm just doing this. I'm just going to do this. So I did it. And then it wasn't until I went up and I got the keys and I was really like that. I really took it in like the gravity of the situation kind of set set into me, which was I now am the owner of this place. I went from like, you know, co-owning a house that I was, you know, quite comfortable in and really loved in Bellingham and, you know, had put a lot of work and money into. And it was really kind of my little castle, if you will. Like it had all the stuff the way I wanted it to. It made me feel really happy and really just like emotionally calm to be in that house. Now it's like I rent an apartment in Portland. I bought this weird, funky house, which I'm walking through it, realizing everything needs to be changed. And, and I've never actually done that solo, if you will. Like the other thing is I've been, you know, I, the, the remodel in, in Bellingham, I was, you know, I lived there with some, I lived there with Carrie, uh, Vanessa and I did a big remodel project at the house in Seattle. Um, and so all of this, uh, previous ex of mine, we did a big project in Los Angeles. There was just something about kind of thinking, I did this thing as, as I like to say now, quoting uh tiktok well if it isn't the consequences of my decision making like i'm just kind of walking through this little house kind of mildly stunned like i really did this i really now own this i really got to figure this out and somehow in all of that fog making copies of the keys just kind of moved down my list of priorities i'm actually feeling good about it like right now i went up this morning and it was still dark because you know the northwest and i'd never been at the place when it was dark out and it was like there's all these twinkling lights of these various uh you know uh industrial shipping operations along the columbia river there was a big like you know ship like a big kind of like i said a commercial ship of some kind silently gliding down the columbia with its lights twinkling and that gave me a really good feeling i was like okay I'm into this right so I'm not in a bad place emotionally with it right now but that day when I got the keys I think my mind was fairly clouded is what I'm trying to say no I mean I think that's

I think that's well I'm being honest here like I was gonna say that's relatable in a certain way no it's the least relatable thing I've ever heard because I'm not impulsive not to you but maybe some of our but what you were talking about about the emotions you know you started that by saying why am I taking it here? And I will say 99.9% of the time when you say that, I'm like, yeah, I don't even know what's going to come out of your mouth. And I'm like, just don't, just don't. But no, I'm glad you explained that actually, I think because, I mean, you've alluded to this place, but you haven't really talked about it too much about like what's actually going on with it. And I appreciate you sharing that in all earnestness. Boober, boober. Shit, I fucked it up.

One other thing too, I think I was saying this to you, I might've been saying this to Phyllis on Friday night. I was saying it to someone. What's kind of weird about this, too, is that this experience I'm about to go through, if I can actually, like, figure out how to get all the, you know, financial end of it worked out of, like, actually kind of doing some work on this place, is in my previous life, when I've been doing something like this, I've been, as I mentioned, in a relationship, and that's meant I had to negotiate things out with someone else. and that's been at times a source of stress and there have been so many times where I in those situations was like I just wish I could just do this how I want I just wish I didn't have to like get a compromise on everything like it just it's killing me and now I don't need I don't have to get anyone to sign off on anything it's I can do whatever I want and it's very daunting and not as much fun as I thought it was gonna be to just have like my run of things It turns out sometimes collaborating is really good. And even though in those other times I felt very sort of, I don't know, I felt stressed by the need to reach consensus, I actually am feeling stressed now about the fact that I don't need, I don't have, no one else has a vote in this except me.

So I'm looking at the plans here. It looks like you have a special room cut out just for a claw machine, an air hockey table, a fully stocked bar and. a disco i have a ball pit yes right let me just tell you about this twitter feed really quick because i've alluded to it a couple times now and i i said that this has to do with your way of viewing the world andrew i saw this on mashable somebody named tim martian writing about this this is the headline this random restaurant bot account is the best thing on twitter the good the bad the totally freaking weird it's called at space restaurant space bot and what it is is just a bot that tweets out random restaurants from around the world and just photos it somehow stitches together any photos that people have like posted on the internet from for instance shoops on the boardwalk in st croix or a place in guatemala called garcia's retro restaurant or a robana restaurant in eritrea and it'll just be like a picture of the outside of the restaurant a photograph of some food from the restaurant and then other just kind of like random things basically again just going out and finding whatever is publicly available photographically about a restaurant and then just pulling it all together and andrew when i tell you that it is fascinating there is just something totally intriguing about looking at these restaurants and the food and i finally get why it is that you google street view things before you go to them like i i started following this bot and i'm like it's it's just great i love it yeah and well

that's interesting like my not that i don't enjoy doing that like sort of sometimes um like kind of going on a little google walking tour via google maps i just did that in a various neighborhood um the other day genevieve sent me some like gorgeous house she's like oh check out this house genevieve's always looking at apartments and houses and we're sort of thinking tell her

to send those to me if you're not interested that's really that's really my vibe i um no i

i was i was looking at it but then what i do is and i don't think she does this like for me walkability everything that we were just talking about the train um uh is huge for me right like what is the vibe of the neighborhood i don't like being more than a couple of blocks away from a you know somewhat vibrant stretch of street with you know just like something going on i don't want to be buried just like you know 17 blocks on either side of me without any businesses like any kind of restaurants or even dry cleaners or or small grocery stores or what have you so what i'll do is i'll look at the house and then i'll you know i'll just do google street view and literally just like kind of walk around the block and just kind of walk around and see like okay well here's this thing here what would this walk look like and i was doing it the other day it's fun to see the people like just random people waving at the um google street view car i feel

like in in the modern era what we all one of the most important things is for us to all have a plan in mind for when a google street view car comes what are we going to do don't get caught unaware Don't find yourself improv-ing that You need to have a plan I don't know what my plan is I'm going to develop it right now I think it's maybe I'll try to get caught mid-crane kick From the Karate Kid But both feet off the ground Almost like a David Lee Roth move You're not coming to David Lee Roth, are you?

Oh, no, that's right You guys are going to the show in Vegas, right? Yeah You're not coming to that? No, I'm going to stay home Have an Andy weekend That's some ways away What was I getting in that, though? I was walking around the neighborhood. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, but so first of all, that's why I wear breakaway pants. I was going to say that. So I do have a plan for that. I was walking around the neighborhood. I can't remember what I was getting at with my virtual. Oh, oh, oh. You were, yeah, this Twitter thing. Sorry. So it's kind of two different things. Like when I'm going somewhere and I'm feeling a little socially anxious about it, that's when I use the Google Maps just to kind of put eyes on a place. And I don't know why, but it does. What you're talking about is a little bit different, which is sort of like kind of virtually Exploring the world but I Also enjoy that certainly like I I've enjoyed it when people send us like those radio Apps sort of where you can just Do you sort of is that why you Put this on me a little bit this idea of I'm just sort Of dipping into a different culture even if It's just a few states away

Yeah and also just to kind of like I said this a lot of So the way that this bot works the guy that wrote it Is a guy named Joe Shoke he said obviously people Like and are very interested in food he said Restaurants are culture not just the food but the architecture the people their haircuts um he goes not sure if landscape is culture but it's compelling nonetheless the way that the bot works is it chooses a random country then a random city then it pulls up the same data that you would see on google maps including a user-sourced photos and it just kind of like stitches them all together i don't know there was just something about looking at like the outside of a mcdonald's in uh taiwan like that just was totally fascinating to me and it made me think of you street viewing a place uh you know before you go there to just kind of get the lay of the land uh

Well, this makes me sound like a creeper, although I've mentioned it before. I mean, I enjoy there are like kind of feeds that are dedicated to public like kind of live feed video cameras. And just remembering last week you were talking about the early, early, earliest Internet version of that where you could watch like a quote unquote video of Red Square here in the University of Washington that would refresh every 60 to 90 seconds, I believe. But, you know, they have they have open cameras like that all across the world. And you can like just find one like, hey, here's like and my favorite ones are kind of vacation ones. Like I get a real feeling from a vacation area restaurant, like people eating like probably middling baskets of fried seafood or something on a boardwalk somewhere under a blue awning with white stripes, like just gives me a feeling of vacation. So I do enjoy that a great deal.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

We didn't get to Alvin and the Chipmunks. I kind of mentioned at the top the basics of the story. I guess we can just handle it here. They're trying to sell the life rights, the everything rights to Alvin and the Chipmunks for $300 million. And Viacom is in the lead to buy that. So look forward to me and a hologram of Alvin, Simon, or Theodore in my next CBS commentary. I look forward to the squeak hole.

We got a voicemail from listener Kelly last week talking about how she's in this situation where she booked a hotel a long time ago, pre-pandemic. She booked a hotel room for some business travel or something. And then since then, she's in their system, and she's constantly getting emails for other people's stays at that hotel. And they're automatically appearing in her calendar. So she'll open her calendar, and it'll look like she's supposed to be staying at some hotel in, I don't know, Boston or something, when really she is not, and she cannot get it sorted out. We got a voicemail here from The Perfect Ten, Nick, who sort of has a similar thing going on.

Summies, Nick, Minnesota. Kelly's voicemail about the hotel bill reminded me of I kind of have an ongoing problem like that. Another woman who I think is in Virginia keeps using my e-mail address instead of hers. I know this is an issue because her dog's vet bill was sent to me by mistake, and I reached out to her with some sleuthing on Facebook and said, hey, you might want this because you need to pay it. I hope your dog is well, blah, blah, blah. That was a couple of years ago. She said, oh, thank you so much, blah, blah, blah. You know, I incorrectly sent my email wrong or whatever it might be. Well, it has just started happening again.

I've got emails from... Sorry, I killed the wrong button when you started talking. What did you say?

Why was her email perfect10 at gmail.com?

I have a tbtltattoo at gmail.com. I don't know.

I got emails from Resume Builder for her because she's going for another job. I've got something from a church and a couple other ones, and it says, Dear Nancy. And I think her last name is Arms as well.

Which is weird because Nick's last name is Armies. I think we have that well established on that. New Sleeveys. Yeah, exactly.

Sasha are again asking, hey, I'm getting your emails. Please just be mindful when you're using your email address because I don't want something that she puts her email address on, something that's really important, or maybe she puts it on there and I get millions of dollars somehow, blah, blah, blah, but I highly doubt that's going to happen.

Thanks.

Bye.

See, that's very conscientious. I think a lot of people would just delete those emails, but the first one that Nick got, he went and he started doing some sleuthing on Facebook to track this person down. I don't know that a lot of people would do that.

My version of that, which is a little different, is that there's another Luke Burbank, not the one in Idaho who doesn't like me, but a one in Missouri who also doesn't appear to like me. Because we asked, like in the early days of TVTL, when we were a radio show, we tried to get him to come on the show. And he declined. He used to be head of the Missouri Cattlemen's Association. Now he works for some giant agribusiness. But he is also a Bonvoy member. and every time I stay in a hotel that I'm trying to get my Bonvoy points for I have to be super careful that they're not giving the Bonvoy points to the wrong Luke Burbank and so I have to say like I'm like am I in your system and they go yes and then I go where does it say I live and if they say Missouri we've

got a problem because if he and i were cool if he would have come on tbt all those years ago i wouldn't really care that much but i'm not gonna like i'm not gonna let him get my bonvoy points

no do you ever see i doubt you would be in this situation as much as somebody who doesn't rent as much and rent the types of houses that veves and i have rented in our adult life but do you ever get mail that comes to your house that has the proper address but the wrong name and then

you google that person like i do i don't do that but can i just tell you so this this is luke's luke's remodeling project talk that house that i bought i go up there to get mail and because all kinds of stuff is showing up there now for me um as like when you you know when you buy a house they start sending you a bunch of stuff and like deeds and utilities and this and that so anyway there's still mail coming for the previous owner sometimes and i've been making a pile for the previous owner but i'm also like you know you could forward your mail guy and but i was fine i was saving it and i have been saving it and i was like i'll just have to figure out maybe through the real estate agent how i get this stuff to this person and then got a piece of mail from the nra to the previous owner and let me tell you who's not getting any of their mail that's a federal of offense uh not if it's my house right i don't know i'm gonna bury it in the yard if you're an

nra membership if you're a postal inspector you have to tell us what's the movie what's the movie where that happens um are you talking about if you're a cop you have to tell us i don't i just

know i thought there was like a movie where maybe i'm thinking of like a just a real life story there will occasionally be these stories of like a a mail delivery person who just hoarded mail and And then, of course, I don't know why I have to go back to politics with this, but like around the time of the last major election, some of these supposedly like smoking guns of like mail fraud, et cetera, you know, voting irregularities were like attributed to like a single postal employee who had like 8,500 pieces of mail in their car. And I'm like, no, that's a person who's just gotten in over their head. Yeah, right. That's a person who's overwhelmed. And it was like a 7-Eleven parking lot They found a car and it had like All this undelivered mail And I was like, no, that's just called If Luke was a mailman You know, like you're just like I don't feel like it today I'll just get it there tomorrow And then pretty soon it's out of control

What if this letter from the NRA Is the NRA responding to this person's lawsuit Against the NRA

Well, I can't open it Because that would probably be some kind of mail fraud

Exactly But that's probably what's going on, right?

I'll tell you what. I was all ready to do what I had to do to make sure this guy was getting his missing mail. But now it's become a lower priority answer. Yeah.

Just forwarded all to Wayne LaPierre. Actually, he stepped down or something, didn't he? Did he get fired or step down? No.

Is he? Oh, no. Maybe I'm wrong. He's on a yacht somewhere offshore because he's afraid of his own members. Oh, that's right. I do remember that.

All right. Should we leave? Yeah, let's leave it there. I have some more voicemails. I can play them for you tomorrow. Something to look forward to.

We got a jubilant Cleveland Brown-based no point to get to.

That's right. Yes, I saw some emails from listeners, too, just coming in on a Sunday just saying, how about them brownies? I always appreciate that.

All right, so we'll wrap things up for today, but we will remind all of you that we will be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you, so please do join us for that. Until then, let me – oh, we didn't even talk about the music. I don't know.

Well, suddenly I was just dialing up words by doves because it was all happening so fast.

Yeah, let's do it. Old school. I love it. All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll see you tomorrow. Have a great Monday. Stay safe, take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

We'll be right back.

I don't really know how to end this conversation, so high five, sure. Power out.