Muse

Hi Luke and Andrew, my name is Julian, and I'm 10 years old and I listen to your podcast, and I just wanted to tell you a joke. Why? I mean, what do you call a potato that sits very still? A meditator. Thanks, power out.

TBTL the faces may not look familiar but the voices this zany radio team have developed a unique style of frolicking on the airwaves it's kind of meta and that anything meta sign this guy up

because i am i am totally down for that that's a donny brook that's a total donny brook a donny brook you know what a donny brook is it's a donny brook and what's the deal with popcorn It doesn't taste like pop, and it sure doesn't look like corn.

Can I just say, and I think this is really important, so I need everyone to shut up.

I love your hair. Oh, thank you. It's genetic and unattainable. We're the number one show in hospitals and on sinking riverboat casinos. It's party time, chumps.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Hello, CD listeners. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I hear you inside, bumping them gums, telling them lies.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center in Portland, Oregon, where we are looking at another really lovely day. It is cold, but we are fortunate that it is dry here.

Now who's in charge, winter dryness?

Didn't know you like to get not wet, though. Thinking of folks up in Whatcom County in Washington State, though, today, and other places in the Northwest, even up into Canada, where there has just been all kinds of flooding. Hope everyone is doing all right up there. We are doing just fine here in Portland at episode 3,556 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Physical therapists are weighing in and they are saying, for those of us who are prone to this, we should stop sucking our stomachs in all the time.

I would say, can you please stop doing this stuff?

I speak as a stomach sucker or innerer, but apparently it's bad for your pelvic floor. We will look into the science and the physiology on that coming up. Also, Staples Center down in Los Angeles, which, honestly, that sounds like a kind of a bad corporate name to me. But it just got a new name.

Welcome to the Internet.

It's worse. Although, it's arguably less corporate. I don't know. We'll talk about that, too. And then, speaking of commerce, over in China, some of the most popular programs that people watch, you know, online in terms of real people, non-scripted television if you will are like qvc style shows people just selling things there's a guy sold like a billion dollars of product in like a one night online in china i don't want to sell

anything buy anything or process anything as a career they say that it is coming to the u.s very

soon uh and so we will get into that as well all of that with the help of this young man the longest running cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he is getting ready for thanksgiving my friend how about some meat you like turkey who are you calling turkey he is andrew walsh you're joining me right now from the roosevelt neighborhood of seattle

washington good morning my friend good morning luke how is it do you suppose that i wake up yesterday with that spice girl song in my head wannabe and then this morning i because that was a real head scratcher for me i was like what what what did my brain do last night while i was asleep that I wake up with if you want to be my baby, you got to get with my friends or what have you. If you want to be my lover, I believe, you got to get with my friends. Right, so you told me specifically that I was not allowed to use the word, that I was not allowed to use the L word on this show anymore. You don't like it tripping off my tongue. This morning I wake up with Like a Prayer. I'm awake for about 45 minutes before I realize I've just been singing every lyric that I know of Like a Prayer as I'm, you know, getting ready for my day. I haven't heard that song in quite some time. I don't listen to you know, I don't listen to a station that would play that. They aren't playing Madonna on Kixi yet. It's still newfangled.

It's too newfangled for Kixi.

So I want to know what's going on with my brain as I'm sleeping that I'm waking up with these bangers in my head. Well right, because this is definitely coming from your dreamscape.

Have I ever shown you my shattered dreamsparks? It's upstairs in my disappointment closet. So you're dreaming about the Spice Girls and Madonna. Andrew, is it possible you're having a That sounds saucy. Oh, wow. God. How's that?

Don't.

i mean you're not allowed to say the l word and i'm not allowed to try to make that sound

you're not you're not allowed to roy orbison on this show my friend i'm so bad at that it's why

my spanish even if i were to actually learn enough vocab and enough conjugation to be able to be an effective spanish speaker the rolling of the tongue hence the legendary boo ru ray exercise that was me walking around for like a week just saying boo ray trying to figure out how

to roll my r's and i never got now i could be wrong about this and this isn't exactly where i thought the conversation would go although i don't think i'm disappointed that it has gone here i think that i think those might be different things i think if you're going to make the sexy Well, we'll here to refer to as the sexy rattle. I think the sexy rattle comes from the back of your throat, whereas rolling your R's comes from the tip of your tongue, right? Right, but if you can't roll your R's like I can't, you have to fake it. With the back of your throat? You think it's easier to do the sexy rattle?

You have to use the Roy Orbison muscle when you should be just using the front of your tongue.

I don't think that's easier. I think that's like trying to stop a car with your feet. Can you roll your R's? Not good and certainly not in this situation. I used to be able to do a bit of the Roy Orbison, again, sexy rattle with the back of my throat. I practiced that a lot in high school for some reason. I could pull it off, but I cannot do it now. First of all, I'm a little bit out of practice, and I certainly can't do it with this pressure on me right now. I'm already half laughing. You have to be in a very relaxed, I would almost say, med mood. Red meditator state in order to.

We were texting about that last night, you and I saying we're getting pretty close to all of the intro tape being our young listeners, our listeners who are who are, you know, still under the age of 18, just leaving us awesome jokes on the I'm very into that, by the way.

Yes. And and I love it. And it's our way of trying to, like, get our show under the umbrella of the kids programming in American public media, because it seems like that's where it's at these days. So that's also just a so thank you. You go to the meetings. I don't. For getting me there. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, I don't know why those songs are in my head. I will report tomorrow. I mean, I don't I didn't like think like, hey, what was that song in my head last night or whatever? This is just natural things that happen. But if I do happen to wake up with a song in my head tomorrow, I will let you know what it is. Could it be Britney Spears related?

Could it be Britney Spears adjacent? Because she has been so in the news, and maybe you go to sleep, and some part of your brain remembers that you heard a thing that the conservatorship has been disbanded or whatever. And then your brain kind of starts there, and you don't remember this because you're asleep, but then it migrates over to the Spice Girls or Madonna.

I mean, listen, anything is possible. I haven't been deep into that world. In fact, I was the one. I've been posting that. I think it's a shame. I think that she needs somebody looking after her. Definitely.

And I admire your consistency on that topic

You've been the one Caged Brittany person

And that's a lonely island And you're on it and you live there And I respect that

I love and care too much But I don't That just hasn't been And I know that especially for a lot of our listeners That is something that's very kind of close to their heart And also the broader ramifications Of conservatorship and what it raises But I'll be honest It's not like something that I've been like kind of obsessing over or or, you know, like spending a lot of time with. I've been following it very casually in the news. So I that doesn't that doesn't seem right to me, but I don't have any better ideas. So sure. OK, so it's official. You've been dreaming about Britney Spears and Madonna and the Spice Girls.

Remember at the end of yesterday's show, I said I had an unexpected visitor at the Livewire taping on Saturday night.

I do remember that now. It was the best tease in the world, and then I forgot it immediately.

Yes, it was so compelling that you had no memory of it as today's show started. I am literally like, hey, that's our show. Thanks. We'll see you later. And a guy kind of rushes the stage. He's in a mask, obviously. And it's almost like before I can get off the stage and, you know, I'll chat with some folks afterwards. This guy's like right there. And he goes, hey, Luke, it's your doctor. Oh, I should have. I tell all my 45-year-old guys, doctor came to the show, San's wife, because if you remember, the story was, he was like, he was aware that the stuff I do for my radio job, mentioned it to me, mentioned it to the, you know, physician's assistants that were there who couldn't have been less intrigued, rightfully so, and then proceeded to tell me that he lives like a block from the theater, but that.

He was probably not going to come to the show Because his wife is not a public radio fan Right, yeah Which was just the strangest thing for him to bring up Living near the theater and me to say Hey, you should come by And then him going, yeah, I probably won't So imagine my real shock when I came off stage And there he was He had come to the show How did the interaction go? It was brief because, again, it was I think he probably had to get back to his non-public radio listening spouse Because he seemed like he wanted to grab me before I was, you know, a very And let me be honest A very short line of people want to talk to me, but he didn't want to be at the back of that line. So I just shook his hand and I said something like, what I wanted to say to him was like, didn't you run a battery of tests on me? And how do I find out how that went? Yeah, right. Did you bring the x-rays? Yeah. Like, because, you know, there was, although I will also mention that my extra heartbeat, I'm just back to being a mere mortal now, Andrew, with the normal number of heartbeats. That's a bummer. is i guess probably better for my body but but you know i was feeling pretty cool about having an extra heartbeat but you know they did all the kind of normal stuff when you establish care they kind of want to get a baseline for your health so they took blood and they were checking various levels and things and i never heard back from them my guess is that it is in it's all in the portal or something like if i log into the you know the web portal for this particular health care provider probably the the results are there can you see that being the thing now they don't call you and tell you like yes you're that all your stuff is fine now they just it's it's in something that's you know dual um authenticated so like only you can see it or

whatever yeah that's almost definitely how they're sharing that information with you and they're almost definitely sending some email to you and some dead letter office email account you have that you're not seeing and also you'll never be able to hack into the mainframe to see that so

Oh, I hacked into the mainframe yesterday, Andrew, and updated my benefits. Oh, I want to throw a little throw a little more at my HSA because we're it's open enrollment.

Yeah. Yeah. I did. I did that, too. You know, I do want to go back to this doctor story, though. You running into him at the at the show, because I wonder if there are some other people in the medical community right now. I don't care about this in this context, and I don't think you do as well. but he really should not have done that probably like i think because of like you mean told the other people at the office that i do a radio show well maybe or come to live but certainly like kind of come to live and be like i'm your doctor you know now this is a story of the extreme other end of that spectrum but i recently um had uh my final by the way luke uh physical therapy appointment for my hand right so it's been a long time yeah thanks you know it's not it doesn't have the full mobility it used to have but i can you know i can do all the things i need to do in life like the two important things are i can type on a keyboard and i can grab a handful of round ice cubes out of my special ice cube tray without dropping them so what else do you need out of life but anyway um for the past i mean quite some time now four months like i don't maybe more i I have been weekly going in for these appointments where a therapist, the same therapist, Kelly, will, you know, like bend my fingers back and forth, kind of stress them and just try to get more and more mobility out of them and then measure, you know, measure how much they're bending and compare it to last week. And then showing me new exercises to do at home, which I sometimes did. But during these hour to 90 minute sessions, we would talk about all kinds of shit. I mean, sometimes I wonder what the rest of the people in that office thought of our conversations, and knowing that I'm just one of probably seven people she's having these kinds of conversations with a day, but we would talk about politics, life, and I ended up knowing, not at all a weird way, and it never made me uncomfortable, but I would know about various projects she was working on for her kids' school and the issues that she was running into with some administrators there. and like we would go you and your life your hopes your ambitions your dreams that basically describe your yeah we talked about all kinds of stuff so that you really feel like you know each other right and that you're just hanging out and when i was leaving for my final um my final appointment which was somewhat i will admit somewhat awkward which i probably i i probably added to a little bit because i know this from genevieve going to a physical therapy thing a while back that like you don't just stop going like you stop going to a doctor when you're healed like you graduate like there's all this like language around physical therapy where it's like they'll kind of celebrate Genevieve brought home like a certificate of graduation from her physical therapy thing a while back now I'm breaking HIPAA violations um and I was like what is this she's like yeah it's like a whole deal that they do she she went somewhere else but now I'm in this other physical therapy office and the language is still the same it's like oh so I hear you're graduating

today. I'm just like, I think it's my last up.

appointment we don't have to go with the graduation language but i didn't say that i just don't go in

for stuff like that so much but i wonder if the theory behind that is that if you the way that you talk about these sessions and the way that you kind of frame it it inclines people to actually come do the sessions more if you're talking about it almost in a scholastic way like there's got to be some intent behind that kind of terminology right yeah i'm sure and differentiating that

we're not doctors we're teaching you how to maybe do exercises so that you can help yourself i don't know and it's all fine i'm like i don't want to crap on the system but you know me i'm just like a very low key kind of person when it comes to that stuff like i really did not want a graduate certificate and for them to gather around me and hold hands and dance around in a circle and sing my praises um i saved that for the tbtl picnics so anyway um so as i'm sort of leaving she's like kind of, she's kind of using the word graduation, but also knowing that I'm probably not, like, super into, like, making a big deal out of it, and whatever, and she said, okay, well, it's been really nice, like, you know, getting to know you and everything, she's like, you know, maybe I'll, maybe I'll see you, hopefully, you know, not here, but, you know, maybe, maybe at the grocery store or something, but then she said, but if I do see you at the grocery store, I can't say hello to you, because of HIPAA stuff, or at least, you know, or she straight out said, like, if I see you, I can't say hello to you and I don't know if that was her way of telling me like if I see her I can say hi to her I could probably initiate it but she can't go running up to me in the grocery store and be like hey Andrew I'm your therapist how have you been kiddo which is interesting because unlike

my doctor what from what I understand this therapist has not cradled your testicles we

don't get into everything that happens in physical therapy my point is that I'm not did you get held

back my point is um andrew is not coughing at a sixth grade level we need to keep him back in fifth grade i'm saying my point is like what i have been through with this doctor well you have actually much more of a relationship with your physical therapist because of the number of times that you spent time with her my relationship with this doctor is more more brief but but more personal in that like it was a full-on physical exam and so therefore the same principles that cause your the person who's been bending your finger to want to be discreet should apply even more so to this actual doctor i do not think he tends to roll that way right especially and i

don't know if you were just sort of saying that like shorthand but if he really ran up to you and said hey luke it's your doctor and you're like the most 100 and like you know literally if there's any attention on anybody in the room it's on you you're getting done with your public radio show in a very public area and then somebody running up to you and saying hey luke it's me your doctor like that i mean that is like the complete opposite of what my therapist was saying to be prepared for if we is it weird that he started sponsoring live wire no that's brought

to you by luke's doctor you don't even remember his last name dr doug i say it to all my 45 year olds that's right um i guess you know i hadn't really thought of it that way but i guess you're right it's odd because this is one of those things that clearly if it if it if i was embarrassed about it or if it bothered me i wouldn't even be talking about it on the show so i kind of don't care but i also hear what you're saying which is at about every turn this this guy has kind of played fast and loose with the uh discretion that should that should surround medical care

now what do you now i'm going to make this uncomfortable though uh or more uncomfortable If he's into live wire At this point he probably knows enough About you to know about TBTL like what are the chances That he's actually listening to this conversation right now And listening to me accuse him Of misconduct He tells all his 45 year old guys don't start a podcast

Yeah no you really comfortably Feel like there's zero chance Zero chance like that I can't explain it to you enough you know how you just Get a vibe when you talk to someone Even if you're talking about How do I describe this I just can tell from his manner that he's super I mean he's a doctor he's super busy he has a family he listens to public radio as he's driving around probably or at home you know puttering if you get to do that as a doctor but nothing about him indicated to me that he listens to podcasts will go find this what is googling me and then figuring out the other things I do and then consuming them I just I would be pretty shocked and and also you know i mean i guess i would say he's all if he's listening to this uh he has heard me say that i don't really care it's just funny to me so i would you know i would be comfortable having this conversation with him in person it would be me that he without an issue preferably without a

shirt on yeah right um what if i put his full name in today's show description so that seo so But if he ever Googles himself, he will. come across this episode yeah let's do what we can to you know flag this for him if possible

hey how's your myspace page doing i was about to ask you do you think he's on space hey

that's a great question let me log into the web portal at my health care provider to see if he's on there um have you gotten any more friends and also have you have you been like um jazzing up your page at all it has been awesome luke in fact i've spent

So last night I logged in last night and accepted, I don't know, maybe 20 to 25 friend requests and have been, you know, some people have filled out their profiles. Other people clearly just, you know, just dip in their toe and just setting up, just setting up a page, but leaving everything blank. But like I was basically accepting all friend requests yesterday and I'm seeing a lot of people who in their description are like, I'm just here to hang out with tens. And let's see, as of right now, and I've got two messages waiting for me. This morning, I just logged on while you were talking, and I had, like, I don't know, 30 more requests. I'm quickly going through them and making sure that they're not spam bots and accepting them as we go. A lot of familiar faces in here, Luke. A lot of long-time tens. And it's just so much fun. And other people are jazzing up their page quite a bit by using the layouts function, which is maybe just one step beyond my comprehension level where you can actually have sparkly backgrounds or whatnot. I ended up on one person's page who did have a YouTube song autoplaying. In fact, I'll play this for you. The only kind of spam bot kind of person friend request I've gotten is not from a person. It's from somebody named Perti, P-E-R-T-I, Perti, the virtual singer. And this is a, you know, some sort of an animated young woman with purple hair. When you click on it, this is what her page sounds like. I believe this is the robot's AI automatic music, Perti, the virtual singer. When you open it.

That beat kind of slaps.

It's not bad. Hi, I'm a virtual singer named Purdy, and I just released my first few songs. Purdy, by the way, how many friends does Purdy have?

How fun is it to live in Blade Runner, by the way? Yeah. The visuals are very Blade Runner-y, too. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Purdy's Twitter page. Oh, really?

So Purdy's out there on all the platforms. Yeah, Purdy has definitely beaten the bushes on the social media. Should I just accept Purdy's? I was like, I'm not going to, like, you know, like. The very first friend request I got was from an animated AI singer, and I was like, that can't be how I get. But I have revisited this page several times to hear this song. I wonder if the music is also created by AI. I think that's the point. Yeah, thoughts? Oh, I see. As opposed to just the singing part.

right or just like someone is really well i guess what would make it a virtual because that's a if ai created that song andrew it's a pretty good song which i don't want to admit because like i said this feels like the kind of thing that you get into a some kind of johnny cab in the future and purdy is holographically performing for you in the back seat of the cab that's you know like

a hover cab or something which is not the worst world to live in i was wondering you know on job

uh on the person who um created space hay this person in germany i think i'm wondering if you get a bunch of new followers if on will actually take note because one of the things in that article about this myspace reboot space hay is that on does all of the like tech on it like if there's a problem you email on just like fixes it for you because it's not like hundreds of thousands or maybe it is at a hundred thousand but it's not millions of people yet and and that was actually kind of charming in the in the original article that i think you sent me about just like basically on this is just a labor of love for this on person and also there's a lot less like with facebook obviously there's so much there's so many privacy concerns it sounds like there's a lot less of that with this because on is not trying to monetize it is not trying to sell the info to someone at least as far as we know until purdy gets in his ear yeah right what's going on there but it's sort of like it seems like this if there's such a thing as a kind of um you know slightly less immoral social uh media website it seems like this right now space hey

is kind of that yeah certainly and let's face it like right now i feel like this is it that i you know i'm now friends with our friend uh celine prom queen uh and uh i was very excited to see that she is on here uh as well i don't know she i assume she signed up maybe after hearing the show yesterday although maybe i can't take full credit for that it could be a coincidence And. But as she put in my comments We are home Here we are, we are home And this is what it feels like to me right now But my gut tells me This might go the way of Ello Like I might accidentally forget about this Before too much time passes But did you have 30 friends on Ello though? I don't know On Space Hay Did you say hello? No, I said hello On Space Hay There is a place where you can link to all of your social media accounts and it kind of like you click on a tab and it's like it's got it all laid out for you like Instagram account just put your name here Facebook account just put your name here right you list it in that way and it automatically links to it and one of the options is ello so the only social media page I linked to with my space a is my ello account which I had not logged into and I don't know well I think we set those up when we were when I was living in LA so that's like 2014 2015 and I had I had forgot what I was even doing with that space because LO is really like it's supposed to be a space for like kind of creators and artists and it's more of a visual kind of layout and it's not busy it's almost the opposite of space hey in some ways um and I saw that uh the first thing I saw was our buddy Aaron Roden uh in his profile on elo which he has not updated in uh a long time so i sent i sent him a note via elo saying wrote and it looks like you haven't updated your elo page in a while are you is everything okay let me check my palm pilot i haven't heard back yet although i might not have notifications turned on for elo so anyway this could go the way of elo but i'm having a blast right now in fact like i still have i'm going through right now i still have about 10 more look it looks like j dog um Is a friend of mine now David from the Smittens I'll accept that of course I'll accept that It's all the old gang

I could see this also being something you do get into Because it sort of Scratches the puttering Itch for you The digital puttering I mean kind of in the way that you like Minecraft and stuff like that that you can just kind of tweak And mess around with and change Things and like there seems like there's a lot of stuff That you can go in and tweak and kind of just like Again digitally putter with Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.

Kind of curate something I'm looking for. But what do you do to topiary? You kind of cut it back.

Trim, prune.

Yeah. Kind of shape. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to trim, prune, and shape my Space A page. And by the way, I wasn't joking in my tweet yesterday. Like, listen, I'm not saying this because I want more praise. I'm not saying it deserves more praise. But I am so damn proud of my what do space horses eat joke yesterday.

Yeah, I don't want to sound like I'm not supporting you in that joke. But I didn't realize how – if I can just say this, you kind of – you sort of threw it out as it were. You kind of tossed it away. As it came to me. As it came to me. That's the thing. I didn't set it up. It came into your brain. You kind of mentioned it, and then we kind of moved on. And then it was only afterwards when I saw various things that you were doing online that I realized how excited you were about that joke. I think it's a great joke.

I agree that I didn't tell it well, but I think that – let me put it this way. I think if space hay becomes a household word, and everybody is talking about space hay, and then people take that joke, hey, what do space horses eat? The answer is space hay. I think that's a really good joke. I'm not saying that I told it great yesterday because that was like the creative process. That was the writing phase. Right, of course. It's messy. We've read it. It's the sausage being made.

Exactly. But you were there for that, and you should feel the energy. Definitely. Hey, speaking of artistic projects, I just want to give a quick heads up to everyone. There is a great documentary that's on Netflix right now called The Sparks Brothers. Have you heard anything about this? Have you watched this by any chance, Andrew? I think you would really like it.

Oh, shit. I just got the email. We were talking about this before the show about whether or not I was going to be called into jury duty next week. And I thought there's no way they're going to call me in this late before the holidays, the week of Thanksgiving. But it does say that I am scheduled to begin jury duty on Monday before Thanksgiving. Is it virtual or IRL? I'm looking here. This just came in. I'm sorry. I'm going to answer your question in a second. Jury candidate scheduled to begin jury service on November 22nd, 2021. Do not report to any court location unless you have been given specific instructions by a bailiff or email by telephone. Jury selection will be conducted remotely, not at a courthouse. That's great. Okay, I can figure this out and give you an update later on that, Luke. But we also might have to work around this for TBTL. So there's an update on the jury duty for those who are waiting.

Regarding this documentary I haven't seen it All I I mean I've heard Them interviewed They were on Comedy Bang Bang The Sparks Brothers And of course You and I Obsessed over The best theme song To any public radio show Ever A while back Which they wrote Which is What would we do Without books

Oh that's them I had forgotten That part of it They Yeah this documentary It's made by Edgar Wright Who is The guy who made Last Night in Soho Which actually I didn't think Was that great of a movie But this one Is really good And it's just the story of these brothers They're a duo They play under the name Sparks And some of our listeners who are music heads Probably know about them But it was news to me But it just follows They have the most unlikely career Because they were actually really successful But mostly in Europe But they had this very kind of unique aesthetic They kept changing their sound like every album So they kind of never got over the top Some of their albums They sound a little bit like maybe Queen or something But then they were like ahead Of all the 80s bands on synthesizer In like the late 70s They got together with Giorgio Moroder Who's the guy that you know Has done stuff with Daft Punk And was kind of like a synth guy From back in the day And they put out this album That was like a disco hit I mean they just had all kinds of Interesting musical little I don't even like a lot of the music But I like them One of the brothers has a mustache That if you're being uncharitable You would say looks like Hitler If you're being charitable You would say it's Charlie Chaplin

Wasn't that a whole Is there a narrative around that though too Wasn't there some debate about the mustache And didn't he change it Or that wasn't addressed I mean it is changed

He has changed it over the years He doesn't have the Hitler one anymore He has kind of a little like a John Waters

Yeah that's exactly what I saw somewhere That oh yeah the turning from the Hitler mustache Into the John Waters I'm trying to think where I saw that So I thought it was part of the documentary I guess not

but he this these the story of these two brothers and kind of their creative process and again how they sort of are like the most famous band the kind of nobody's heard of although the people who have heard of them it's all musicians so i think beck who i've heard not great things about honestly like um when i was hanging out with a another musician who had toured with beck they were saying that like literally the only the only person that they've ever toured with or band they ever toured with they actually had really actively bad feelings about was back so who knows and this other person who were on name remain nameless was an extremely positive and friendly sort so i tend to sort of side with them but you basically had like beck said if you're on a tour bus with any musicians after about an hour the conversation will always turn to sparks because they're just kind of like so influential uh patten oswald is in it uh i think mike myers is in it uh and a whole host of kind of famous people who just got obsessed with this duo Sparks they definitely seem like they should be from Germany or something because the shtick with the brother who had the questionable mustache he would just sort of sit there with this kind of like one eyebrow raised like look on his face and he would never smile it was always kind of like he was always sort of I don't know vamping a little bit or looking into the camera in this odd way but being almost like a mad scientist it was like their whole vibe was very Very weird But also very influential too All these other bands said Oh yeah we got like We started like playing the synthesizer Or the keyboard And not looking like we were having fun Because of Sparks Like they just They're just It's a very very well made documentary So I wanted to mention it to the listeners The Sparks Brothers on Netflix Netflix Netflix Yeah Netflix I'm sorry I was so poor as a kid We could only afford Netflix

Are you making that up on the fly Or is that Are you quoting somebody else's tweet I'm repeating

I'm making that up on the fly It's the short answer But I'll be tweeting about it later

That's how you'll know

How much I believe in that joke When I do it later Alright let's take a quick break here And then when we come back we will get into the top stories Do some emails and v-mails Coming up here on TBTL

Boobs Where would we be without boobs

Okay, I know that we had a conversation about this at some point previously on the show, but my question is, did they write this specifically for Michael Silverblatt on KCRW, or was it just a song they had that they thought was ideal for the theme song?

I'm pretty sure they wrote it for him, because I believe he had a different theme song, And this is a show called Bookworm That's been on KCRW for a long, long time In fact, the tape that we played Was it yesterday? Yes, thoughts for your thoughts Yeah, from Parks and Recreation I believe that's a direct parody Of this fella I used to work with Who has this weekly half-hour Highly intellectual book show And I think

I think that he had a different theme song and at some point either needed to change it or wanted to change it. And I believe they commissioned, he and KCRW commissioned Sparks, the Sparks brothers, to write this song.

You know, just your traditional public radio fare. Well, that would make sense, too, because they're from California. They're from L.A. I was saying before the break that they seem like they must be from like they were born on the top of a mountain in the Alps or some shit. Like, they just are so weird and European-seeming. But they're from, like, Pacific Palisades. Like, they played football in high school. Oh, really? Which is kind of a funny additional, like, you know, component to them. It's sort of like the pretenders being from Ohio.

Oh, you know, I'm just so used to that.

Chrissy Hines seems like she should be from England to me.

Oh, that's interesting. Now that you say that, yeah, I feel that.

You know how there are just certain people that just go off of a strongly European vibe?

And she's from—well, see, it's funny. I would have guessed New York like I get more like New York vibes from her right but you're right like she's not even just from Ohio she's not even from Cleveland she's from Akron and she was always fighting publicly with the mayor of Akron Don Plasquellick I believe his name was what look it up Don Plasquellick I'm saying it slightly wrong Plasquellick I'm just laughing that she's warring with the mayor yeah oh I thought you're laughing at my pronunciation of a former Akron mayor's name yeah when I was going to school in Kent which of course is just outside of um which is just outside of Akron is in the Akron uh region um there were often headlines because you know that whole song I went back to Ohio but my city was gone was her loving her roots but feeling like the city was constantly making poor decisions I don't know on a granular level which policy decisions she disagreed with but she was heartbroken to grow up and kind of, you know, go on her career and when she would return home to Akron, Ohio, be disappointed with the state of Akron. And so she was often, there were often in the Akron Beacon Journal headlines about her publicly calling out the mayor,

Don Plasquellick, I believe. From theclevelandscene.com, Akron struggles to be cool enough for Chrissy Hines.

There you go.

When Akron Mayor Don Plasquellick first heard The Pretender's 1984 hit, My city was gone He was none too pleased Singer Chrissy Hyde was clearly taking shots at his town

Hey, I got something right

I'm so excited about this You know what? It's an Andrew W Wednesday Take the W But I'm going to also give myself a W Because Hyde, an Akron native who lives in London Oh, there you go That feels right to me It feels like she's one of those expats Who's like, I'm just more comfortable in London Now here's my next question Who seems more like they probably are British? John Lithgow or Kelsey Grammer Neither of whom are British John Lithgow or Kelsey Grammer Lithgow Lithgow seems so British There must be some Third Rock from the Sun reunion show Happening because I keep seeing these pictures Online of the original cast But the picture was taken recently Lithgow does not Look in any way Different than he did in The Third Rock from the Sun days Or even Raising Cane That was the movie where he had, like, multiple personalities, and he was... I never saw that.

Harry and the Hendersons, of course, is a big one.

Yeah, Lithgow is... I have to say, Lithgow looked like he was 60 when he was about 20, and that's the move. That's the move, dude. Get ahead of it.

I have been watching... I don't know why, because I was kind of just... Of all the good TV out there, I don't know why I'm watching the latest season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I feel like there's probably better stuff out there, but it's just, like, it's easy. I know the backstory. I can kind of put it on and just kind of watch it casually, which is my move. I'm just so scared of commitment to a TV show, I think. So anyway, I've been just kind of dipping into a little bit the new season of Curb. And it's amazing because Larry David hasn't aged at all because he looked 80 when he was 17 or 70. And everybody around him is aging. And you're like, oh, wow, everybody around you is aging except for you because you were always old.

I have that feeling or that experience a lot with Larry David where I'm like, when I see him being interviewed or something, I'm like, wait, he's surprisingly spry. What is he, 100? Mm-hmm. And it's like, no, he's probably like 60, but he's looked 60 since he was 16. Yep, exactly. I've never, like, there's never been a youthful photo of Larry David. But again, it's working because as time goes on, I feel like Larry David is getting more attractive as everyone else is getting less attractive. Mm-hmm, exactly. I'm going with the conventional norms of what attractive is, okay? Yeah, right. But, like, because he got there early, and so it was, like, probably not, you know, 20s and 30s, other than being fabulously wealthy from Seinfeld, the 20s and 30s were not good to Larry David, but, man, the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Mm-hmm, yeah. Like your Kixi playlist. The 50s, 60s, and 70s are. They're going to be great for him. As Larry now as it was then. All right. Let's thank some donors of the day. People making conversations like this one you're hearing right now possible with their financial support. So we're sorry. Andrew Kugelman is in Dallas, Texas. Thanks, Andrew. How about Amber Mills in Beaverton, Oregon? I know where that is now, Andrew.

Oh, I know where Beaverton is. When my friends moved to Portland, that was the first place they lived for a while until they found a place in the city.

I didn't used to know where it was. I mean, I knew there was a place called Beaverton. I knew it was where the Nike campus was. But I couldn't have, like, driven there without MapQuest or whatever. But now I can.

I think I took a train from Beaverton into Portland one time. It was a long ride.

Like the Max train or something?

Yeah, something like that. Or it might be one of the, yeah, it was like a Max train, but it might have a different name because it goes out of the city. I don't know.

Also, Dan Kuchia is in Phoenix, AZ. Thank you, Dan. Karen Sharpier is in Seattle, Washington Thanks, Karen Joan Wheeler is in Baraboo, Wisconsin Probably a lot of moose there, right? Probably, I think I did that right Or is it, it's Baraboo, right? I don't think I know, but There's got to be a come and go in Baraboo that we can call That will tell us I mean, what else could it be, Baraboo? Yeah, I think it's Baraboo I think it's Baraboo. I don't know if, I don't think that, you know, I mean, you've got Minnesota Public Radio, Andrew, then you've got, of course, Wisconsin Public Radio, your buddy Mike Arnold. Mm-hmm. And I have this memory, and it's totally Mandela effect, of when I did that week of filling in for Carrie Miller on MPR, Minnesota Public Radio, and I was taking calls, and it was just like, it was like Shakopee, and I swear to God Baraboo was in there, but I don't know if people could call in from Wisconsin.

Yeah, I mean, there might be some overlap, and I don't know where their transmitters are.

Baraboo. Joshua Doolin is in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton. Where he may or may not be warring with the mayor. New headline, Dayton, Ohio tries to be cool enough for listener and donor Joshua Doolin.

Kim Deal fights with the mayor of Dayton from London.

Is she from Dayton?

Yeah. The Deals are from Dayton. A lot of people are from Dayton. A lot of musicians. Kind of a big deal. Say that.

In Dayton, they're kind of a big deal.

You're really trying to catch up to my horse joke.

I am. I'll be tweeting about all this. Hey, thanks to our donors. We really appreciate you.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story.

It's interesting that we've already talked about physical therapy today on the show, Because it comes up in our top story From the Washington Post Allison Chu writing Stop sucking in your stomach all the time It could be bad for your health And in it this reporter talks to A number of physical therapists Who basically watch people When they're out kind of in the world Because they're physical therapists And they think about this kind of stuff And they notice that a lot of people Are sucking their stomach in all the time And it's actually bad for something Called your pelvic floor which has to do with among other things bowel control and controlling your bladder maybe more accurately and if you think about it if you tense up your stomach like the if you're going to try to tense your stomach you're kind of drawing everything together and they say that that's actually a bad thing to be doing all of the time for a variety of reasons um and and that even though you know sometimes if you're doing a workout or if you're like working with a trainer or even a physical therapist they'll say something which is try to pull your navel to your spine But what these physical therapists are telling the Washington Post is there are times, like if you're doing weight exercises, if you're lifting something, there are times when you want to really like strengthen your core and you want to draw all your muscles together. But you don't want to be doing that like 12 hours a day. It's actually bad for you. This struck me because I don't think that I have unclenched my stomach in 20 years. like maybe i want if i'm at home if i'm watching tv but even when i'm home alone watching tv i will be lying on the couch i'll be reclined which is a little more kind of you know makes things look maybe a little more taut than they really are like i can't think of the last time that i unselfconsciously just relaxed my stomach and they even say in this piece if people are clenching their stomach for too long it becomes hard to not do it because

it's a habit and i think i'm in the habit which is so you've been doing it for a long time because you've heard or you believe that it was a healthy thing to do yes well well a couple things one i

used to and i don't want to get into like body types or body shaming anyone so please just understand i'm only just talking about my

my journey in this body but when i was you know when i was younger i was very very very thin um and had a very you know flat stomach just because of you know genetics or something and so then when i got into my 20s and my metabolism slowed down and i started to realize oh i'm actually i have a you know a stomach happening here and so i think at some point i started getting in the habit of just kind of like always having my stomach tensed up like i'm i'm doing it right now i'm not even trying to um like to to have my stomach so i'm gonna go from like i'm tensing it right now which is my sort of default setting now i'm gonna relax it it actually feels weirder to me relaxed and none of this is being said uh as any kind of humble brag on my part because it turns out i'm doing the wrong thing but i have really been doing this i mean certainly if i'm out in the world if I'm if I'm walking on the street or if I'm in a store at all times I am not like letting my stomach do its full kind of distension if you will I'm always keeping it a little bit back not as much as Johnny Cash is in this famous photo that I love so much if you google Johnny Johnny and June Cash swimming pool there is a picture of them and they're just like in a I think it's like a public swimming pool and Johnny Cash I don't know it's probably 50 or something and he is doing the biggest like i'm like sucking up like i'm trying he's trying to look like he has abs which is the funniest thing because like you're johnny cash no one cares if you have abs but the idea that even johnny cash was was uh susceptible to this what kind of made him it humanized him to me a little

bit yeah i can picture i was even going to reference that because i was going to say that like everything that you just said about going about your day sucking in your stomach like i didn't know that i didn't know that you did that i didn't know that people did that i didn't know that that was a thing like i only knew of it like as a oh no i'm going into this situation where i feel yes yeah like on the beach i was gonna say like maybe you chick walked by yeah or if you're like you know posing for a photo in a pool and you're gonna johnny cash it like that makes sense to me to a degree like it again i'm not i'm not saying this to be self-deprecating or whatever like what i'm working with here sucking in doesn't do anything like that's just not It may not do anything for me either, for the record. Working around the edges there in a way that is not going to be discernible. So I've just never fallen into it as being always, you know, growing up as a heavy kid and always being a bit heavy. So, yeah, no, that's surprising to me. I didn't know that people were going around doing that.

I think a lot of people are. I think more people than you might realize. And, again, it was also something that I assumed was also just good for me. Because if you if you do go to yoga or anything like that, they're always talking about trying to strengthen your core. And so I just sort of thought, well, I'm just working on my core all the time. But it's again, it's actually bad for some of the muscles in your pelvic floor and other things. You're just engaging them in a way that they they're not really meant to be engaged that much all the time. And again, to your point, it's unclear to me if this actually makes any difference in how I'm appearing to the world. It's just a habit I got into many years ago And it just kind of Old habits die hard I guess Because like I said For me to be not doing it feels More uncomfortable even though that should be the relaxing Thing that should be the like Gosh I can stop with that but the Stopping with it actually feels weirder to me

Well maybe and I don't I don't know if this Is related Or not but I guess the one part of this I Can identify with is you know Genevieve will often point out that the clothes I wear because probably because I am self-conscious and have been self-conscious of my body my entire life um the clothes I wear are not the clothes that would make that are the most flattering on me like I always liked baggy clothes part of that is probably just growing up in the 90s and what have you but I think a lot of it also was just like that's how I was comfortable like I think I've told you before like I don't know if I have a photo of me in this particular shirt but like I had a shirt that was a white like kind of plain white but a flannel material and it was a chamois material that was I think a three times extra large or whatever and I wore it in high school when I thought of myself as being very fat by the way and I look back and I was not fat at this point and it just we've talked about it before because I look a lot like Scrooge McDuck in his night shirt holding like a candle as he goes to check on the Ghost Duck of Christmas Future. I think I messed some of that up there. I'm writing that down though

Ghost Duck of Christmas Future is definitely

actually we do need a show title so please write that down um but uh you know i always would drape myself in big clothes now i'm not wearing that kind of stuff anymore but i still have a tendency to wear shirts that are bigger on me because i very much dislike the feeling of like maybe sitting down like standing up and having a shirt that's like kind of a that that actually fits me correctly but then sitting down and having my belly like kind of push out onto the shirt is such an uncomfortable Thank you.

feeling to me that I'm always buying shirts to make sure that they're roomy that I can swim around in here so that's kind of a thing where you say that you would sit down to like kind of relax your belly it feels uncomfortable to you that's how I feel in a shirt that probably looks better on me but the the feeling of pressing out on the material makes me uncomfortable same with

same with like kind of tighter jeans I would say I can tell where I'm at in my personal weight journey based on like how my shirts fit and which shirts fit okay like i have it actually fully dissolved i mean literally like fell apart but i had this red gingham shirt that i had worn forever and ever and ever and really loved and but i could only wear it if i was like kind of at a certain weight because otherwise it was just like the i'd be on the airplane looking down and just like amazed that the the buttons were actually able to keep it together under the amount of like tensile pressure uh-huh they were subjected to um and so but then you know this is another thing too where i guess we're different usually what i do is i buy clothes kind of aspirationally for me so it's like i should just go up to a large or even i don't probably not an excel but a large but then i'm like but i used to wear a medium and if i just get it together i could be back in that live in that medium lifestyle anyway point being if you like me have been holding your stomach in for 20 years stop doing it because you will be peeing your pants when you're old because your pelvic floor will be shot so that's a motivation to not what's what's less sexy having a normal human belly or urine soaked pants why can't we have it all um the uh staples center in los angeles is um is being rebranded come christmas time it will be the crypto.com arena uh this crypto marketplace that is crypto.com paid 700 million dollars for the naming rights to what was called the staples center it's weird how you would miss something being called the staples center because that's a pretty shitty name as well but that still feels somehow like you know i don't know it's a store that i've seen as opposed to a idea of money that's already eluded me and makes me feel like you know sad all the time because i didn't get in on it whatever ground floor there was

Yeah, it's funny. Like, I don't have a connection to this, you know, part of the world or this facility. So I'm not going to pretend that I have strong opinions on it. But you're right. I've definitely gotten used to Staples Center, which was probably, you know, given that moniker around the time we were all complaining about, you know, the corporate sponsorship of these arenas and kind of them seeming more soulless than, say, Soldiers Field or what have you. and the thing is like as far as corporate names go staples is not the worst because it's a thing it also it also like safe co wasn't the worst safe co wasn't the worst and also staples are a thing like you know what i mean like i sort of pictured the red branding of of staples the store but it's also a staple which is like a simple thing and it's a word that has two different meanings and like i don't know it's pretty innocuous whereas like what is this uh torrent what is it it's the pirate bay yeah pirate bay exactly all right somebody oh somebody's been

hanging out with old walter oh yeah you know the apple didn't fall far from the torrented tree yeah uh crypto.com arena is what we will have dot com yeah isn't it a weird thing to think about just the idea of naming rights because basically what a company is doing is paying money to essentially force you to say the name of their company yeah repeatedly because at some point i mean you know like in seattle we're talking about oh we're going to go to the baseball game unless we get our whole friend group to agree to just keep calling it safeco which is also a corporate name but like you have to call it t-mobile because that's what it's called you have to call what used to be century link field lumen field because that's what the name of it is but it's a strange thing because you know brands can't force you to use their brand you know they can't force you to use nestle quick in your milk or whatever but by doing this naming rights thing they really do kind of drive our behaviors in that we have to call it i don't know if i'll ever go to crypto.com arena but if i buy tickets to a lakers game which would be unexpected and i was going down there i would say i guess we're going to i'll see you at crypto.com arena you just got to call it it because it's the name that's what you're telling jack nicholson hey i'll see you see you at the crypt I'm going to say something That has many meanings when you're talking about Jack Nicholson

He's looking old Speaking of the anti-Larry David I Am going to say something I'm going to just blaze a bold path here That I am willing and ready To immediately back away From like a scared rabbit The boldest of paths Exactly But I honestly think as much as I hate Amazon And hypocritically so Because I just bought some products off of Amazon literally last week So I just want to be honest about that I'm not saying I'm holier than thou with it But I do hate Amazon um and what they're doing to the world but uh i would i think prefer to call the new um the new arena here in seattle that they have naming rights to i would rather just call it amazon arena than climate pledge arena because it's just such to me like making us say climate pledge arena it's just like and again i don't want to get into it and i'm not the best person to do it but like what amazon's practices are doing to the environment is so ridiculous like they could change business practices that would have such a huge impact uh on climate change or or you know the battle against climate change but instead what they're doing is making us all call their stadium climate pledge arena and it's just not not stadium but it's just so galling it's so galling it's like it's like it's like jeff bezos grabbing me by the wrist and hitting me in the face with my own hand and saying stop hitting yourself that's what it feels like every time we have to say climate

pledge arena well it's like bezos taking your hand and then whacking you and saying stop pledging to fix yourself stop climate pledging yourself i don't know what do you think just i'm the

without going into all of my stuff would you rather call it amazon arena or climate pledge

arena you've made an interesting argument because i think well when i first heard climate pledge arena i was like that's a sounds like a ridiculous name then you know like anything it just we said it a lot particularly in the lead up to the crack in uh season and then it just started to feel like the name of the place and then i kind of was like well even if it's bs if we have to say climate a lot is there some value just to having that word i mean not like the climate is being undercovered but but you know it still just seems like forcing people to say that to to even for a brief second kind of reckon with the idea of climate change and what people what we are doing about it i thought well maybe it kind of nets out at a slight positive but when when based on your argument which is like amazon well in a way i mean it's not amazon bragging it's them saying we're pledging to make the climate you know better but don't pledge just do but they're not doing as you know and also and also you that is famously i love star trek but um but your point is they're not doing they're not doing the things they need to do they're just they're it's it's they're

talking about it but they're not doing it yeah yeah and again i don't have the numbers or the statistics or what have you but it is my my belief that and again like we live in a world where you know home delivery is a core component of our lives now or most of our lives even me a guy who still really much really very much enjoys going to the grocery store and that feels like quaint and old-fashioned like even i realize like no this is a part of our world now and amazon is a huge reasons for that and so i'm not saying that like everybody needs to everybody needs to you know stop buying things online and go to the store i mean that would be great uh especially for local businesses but i understand that's not happening but even in doing what they're doing and just leaving aside all the other shitty things and the way they treat employees uh all over the company just like there's just no way that amazon like sending these these unrecyclable like plastic puffy envelopes that are like 17 times too big for the little replacement buttons on your pea coat or what have you. It just seems like they are not actually interested in taking any steps that would hurt their bottom line to actually do the things that would keep plastic out of landfills. They're just going to buy the naming rights to this arena in Seattle and call it Climate Pledge Arena and make us say

that. It's interesting that you're talking about Amazon because that kind of leads us into this last top story from the new york times shira ovid writing why the internet is turning into qvc and uh this reporter writes about um this guy in china a chinese online pitchman known as the lipstick brother sold 1.9 billion dollars worth of merchandise in a single day online like this is apparently very popular entertainment in china is to watch online channels where they're also selling things essentially qvc and that we don't actually have that in the u.s but that it's coming because youtube is going to try to turn itself into one of these things and and and google is upset that when people want to buy something they go to amazon they might search for it on google but they'll go to amazon to buy it so it looks like google is putting some things in place to also try to be an online marketplace everybody in you know servicing the u.s market wants to get to the point where we are watching the u.s version of qvc and watching youtube creators pitch us stuff in real time and then buying it right there and youtube getting a cut of it i know this is

different but there's several things we've talked about that sort of swirl around this a little bit um one of them is kind of um well we saw a lot of this especially during the pandemic pandemic but like the the people buying baseball cards and

then having somebody else open them online yeah exactly and watching that on the youtube also and i'm looking for it now in our old show sheets and i can't find anything but like genevieve on on after these messages somebody sent in an a commercial it was just like a bonkers commercial it was unclear what it was for but we finally like untangled it it was like a commercial airing on you know on broadcast television that was for some sort of site where you go and you Watch them auction Off basically it was like QVC It was basically go online and watch our QVC Channel but it was also for like what are Every time it comes up I say this to Gene What are those rocks that you break open And then they're like kind of shiny and crystallized Inside I don't

Know what that's called it's you mean

It's a natural naturally geode I think maybe is the Word like and it was like this commercial For like go to our site and And then watch us every Wednesday for the the selling geodes show which is not what it was called but it was like crystals and geodes and all kinds of other things that um aaron rogers probably used to immunize himself um anyway it was just like weird it was a broadcast tv commercial is my point for i think maybe the type of thing

that you're talking about i i just this article had me reminiscing about qvc and how you know there was a period of time where there just weren't as many channels and if you didn't have sometimes if you didn't have cable you would still get qvc like if you weren't paying for cable and it was almost like the closest thing we had to cable sometimes it'd be like well it's this is you know up in the 20s so it feels like we have cable but all it is is you know qvc but there's something very hypnotic about watching and i've never bought anything from qvc nor would i ever want to i think i've never seen anything that i actually was like intrigued by to be the owner of, but I find it to be very relaxing television to watch. I kind of love it. Even when they're selling swords? 11-01! Let me see if I can do it from memory, then I'm gonna play it. Okay, do you have it there? Do you need me to look it up? No, I've got it right here. 11-01! That's about all I can do of it.

It's not bad, though. I hear it, though. I like the guttural nature of it.

11-01-1816 is the item number on this one. And the nice thing about these practice katanas.

Oh, that hurt. Every time I win. Oh, that hurt big time. A piece of that tip just got me, Odell. Oh, that got me good. You all right? A piece of that tip just got me. Odell. Oh, right now. We may need emergency surgery in the studio. God bless Odell.

I want the oral history of that. Get on it, Mel Magazine. I was going to say, that's Mel Magazine. You know, like, I want to know, like, was the guy okay? He seemed like he was okay. Did they bring Odell on? Like, did Odell, was this the beginning of Odell's on-air career after this? Was this like a kind of a, you know, his Lou Gehrig filling in for Wally Pipp moment? Like, I just want to know everything. I want to know all the behind-the-scenes stuff about this event. Yeah.

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 all right uh any emails or v-mails striking your fancy here on this wednesday yeah

sorry i was a little distracted i was look i was going through old show sheets and looking for that commercial yeah trying to look for that commercial i was telling you about i struck out though um Hey, how about a coyote story?

Hi, this is listener Sarah in Ballard. And I was just listening to the episode where Luke talked about his scary coyote slash coyote encounter. And it reminded me of a time that I had a very spooky encounter with a whole pack of coyotes. Jeez. I was like 20 or 21 and I was helping out my boyfriend at the time who did um bird surveys for the U.S. geological survey uh during his summer's off that was his summer job and so I went along with him that summer as a volunteer and and it was pretty near the beginning of the summer I didn't have a lot of like experience doing field work yet I was still like pretty green and we were in this tiny town called Mesquite, Nevada and the surveys we were doing were all in riparian areas so like really dense, like willow and other, you know, dense plants you would see next to rivers. And we were walking... Is that what riparian means?

I'm not sure. I don't know that I'm familiar with the term, honestly.

I've seen that term, and I've never known exactly what riparian, let's see what the internet tells us, a riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. No kidding. I don't even think I've heard that before.

You know, plants you would see next to rivers, and we were walking, we'd like parked the car, and we were walking down this dirt road to get to the actual river to start our survey, and i heard we heard like a whole lot of coyotes just like dipping and howling and like we couldn't see anything off the either side of the road my partner just he was fine he grew up in phoenix there's coyotes everywhere he didn't care at all but i was freaking out and he was just like we're gonna just stand here and it's gonna be fine and i was in my head i was like through you that's a And the pack of coyotes and their yipping and howling got closer and closer and closer and closer and closer until I swear to God they were about to jump out of the bushes and then they just went silent.

One of them was on roller skates with a rocket on its back.

that's that is what i saw some people saying that the best way to uh the best way to fend off a coyote attack is to have a bucket of black paint and just paint like a tunnel that doesn't exist exactly hey how about that um video i put it in the newsletter last week how about that video of the um of the mountain lion stalking a runner thank you for that i want to say thank you for

that voicemail i didn't mean to step on the end of it there with my wily coyote joke um i'm glad that that listener is okay um but yeah that video that you put in the newsletter of a guy being stalked by a mountain lion is heart palpitating right like it is so i mean you know the guy's alive because he posted the video but i do not know what i would have done in that situation this guy's out on a pretty rural just like hiking kind of road maybe a logging road actually is what it looks like and this uh mountain uh this uh i guess mountain lion yeah he had he had basically stumbled past this mountain lion and her cubs and so this mountain lion was not happy about that and just followed him for like 10 minutes or something yes like well six

minutes is a full six minutes and there was something so real about it well because it was real you know what i mean but um yeah and you can just hear him he's trying to make noise both because he's taping the whole thing he's sort of narrating it to us but he's also just like trying to make himself sound big and scary to this big and scary cat and like trying to maintain dominance while he's slowly backing away obviously every instinct would be like to turn tail and run but if you do that this cat is just gonna pounce on you and like i mean at one point he says i didn't i don't want to die today or something like that and it's just like it is so it is

such a real feeling he's just alternating through he's working through every elizabeth Kubler-Ross stage of seeing a mountain lion which is bargaining depression like he's going like just go back to your babies just go back to your babies and then somebody's like I don't want to die today and somebody's like he's mad at it he's like get out of here like he's just trying every possible thing I'm amazed that he was able to walk backwards up this hill because it's very it's rocky I mean he's on a he's it's a it's a road again it's probably like a logging road or something but Like because if he turns his back on the mountain lion, the mountain lion then usually was taking that as an opportunity to get closer. Yeah. Like the mountain lion was keeping somewhat of its distance because this guy was facing the mountain lion. And so, you know, he was that means he's also walking backwards. If he were to fall, if he were to trip and then get beyond the ground level, you'd think he'd be curtained.

Yeah, I'm sure he's looking over his shoulder. The cool thing about the video or something to note about the video, maybe I should say, is, you know, it's not a GoPro type of situation. it's not mounted on his head it's just him holding his camera out so there are times where you know he could be holding the camera straight in front of him and kind of glancing over his shoulder as he walks backwards but you're right it looks like it's uphill on this very rocky um on this rocky like logging road or something it is yeah it is very scary hey um actually before we get out of here because today's wednesday tomorrow will be blurs days and the music for your weekend i'd like to do some um just go through a couple of quick emails here if you don't mind this is something i have been meaning to bring up on the show for weeks now right because i think it was a couple of weeks ago or was it just last week and time has no meaning uh when i played that song by a musician named candy i can't even remember the name uh of the song it's like don't you know that i was dancing in the club too that's not actually what it's called uh but that's the theme anyway a lot of people, including your brother, who I

forgot to respond to a lot of people coming out of the woodwork to say hey this person candy who you were trying to remember or learn about for the first time from like 2001 is actually mostly known as a real housewife of atlanta honestly one of the most reasonable likable and talented across all of the real housewife franchise according to listener jennifer who um wrote in she says She's also a rent, a restaurateur with her husband, a creator of an adult toy line called Bedroom Candy, which Jennifer included a link to. I know she didn't include a link to the restaurant. And additionally, she's a kick ass mom. I hope your Monday is going great, says Jennifer. So, yeah, everybody who wanted to tell me that Candy is famous for something much bigger than that song. Thank you.

I the real housewives thing is just I've never been able to I mean I know my brother and his fiance they love it I know that Howard Stern watches it a ton I mean millions of people watch these shows and I watch a lot of stuff that's total garbage it's just weird that that's not the garbage that ever appealed to me yeah me too it's just there's something about the production it doesn't like you mentioned before watching

something that feels calming i don't get the calming sense from qvc um but i get that calming sense from other things right like having murder she wrote on in the background but not really paying attention to it feels cozy to me um so yeah when i turn to that kind of comforting tv it's not usually kind of the brightly lit modern you know kind of housewives type of programming

right and my problem with all of those shows that are reality shows is if they would just mount i have always said this about the Kardashians too you know if they were to just mount cameras in the home of the Kardashians like I'm sure they do have cameras mounted but what I mean is if it was like the loud family if it was just where they're just rolling all the time as opposed to I would be really interested in that I'd be interested in you know any family in America if you just filmed them 24 hours a day and then just edited it together I would be interested in that just I'm interested in humans and you're a voyeur but and well with my Shrek mask on they don't know it's me but but the problem I have with those shows are because because they're worried that you know real life is not interesting enough there's always a there's always some MacGuffin there's always some kind of you know like plot point that's being introduced that's like they've got to learn how to play tennis today or and that's the part that always I just get annoyed with is the very clearly manufactured plot line where the producers have said now you have to go do this or you have to be mad at this person about this that's the i would watch the real housewives if it was more documentary i think than it is i'm gonna read another uh quick email here

um uh this is from julie class of 1987 uh actual snohomi here and i want you to know that ron and don may have popularized the term snohomi but snohomish high school students were using it before Ron and Don were. Use it all you want without guilt. Yours with Panther Pride, Julie, class of 87. So, Snohomi, not a Ron and Don-ism. Graybar Hotel? Possibly. Jury's still literally out on that. Are you going to be on that jury? Do you know yet? I might find out. And then, finally, here, this is not a quickie. This is a little bit more of a story, but it's really good. I will deal with it efficiently. Laura in Tucson, Arizona, says, to commiserate with Luke's seat woes, this is on an airplane, Luke, I wanted to share the story of my very worst seat assignment. I was flying from Thailand to New York City while in Thailand. I know, right? Already just thinking about that. That is a long flight. While in Thailand, I had fallen off a boat onto a concrete pier and had broken my shin. I know, I know, but we just need to move past this part. So I was unable to walk. What is this listener's name? This is listener Laura in Tucson. Let's see. I was unable to walk for the trip home. Unfortunately, I was placed in the middle seat of a five-seat row all around me on both sides. And the entire row in front of me and behind me was an American high school band camp returning from a trip to Asia. This being the end of their trip, they were all breaking up with each other. It was so much emotion all around me for 18 hours. Eventually, I decided to order a cocktail, but the flight attendant wouldn't serve me because she said, I promised your band director I wouldn't. I was 24 years old. Upon arrival, my boyfriend was to pick me up. I learned when I checked my email, however, that he had dumped me while I was somewhere over the Indian Ocean. so I'm stranded at JFK airport. I had to call a different ex-boyfriend to pick me up I mentioned that my

leg hurt in between the broken shin and the marathon airplane ride without getting up, and he took me straight to the emergency room where I was monitored for a blood clot and had to spend the night on a gurney in a hallway. Moral of the story, check in early for your flights. Power out. Oh, my. That takes the cake. Answers to the name of Lucky, I believe. It's the punchline to that joke. My God, Laura. Laura you can you can survive anything

The closest I've been to that and it's not anywhere near that bad was I was flying back from Italy This was 9 10 actually this was the day before 9 11 And I had tried to wash my hair in the sink of the hotel room by the Rome airport And I had tweaked something in my neck and my neck was spasming and somewhere over the Atlantic It just went from being like kind of painful to like you need to lie down on the floor you know kind of thing like you cannot be upright so they wouldn't give me any aspirin or anything uh probably legally that's a problem and so i i just remember we landed in like dallas and we were trying to get to our other like our connecting flight and i'm running through the dallas airport and i'm like i have tears coming out of my eyes because of the pain of my neck but i'm just holding my neck i'm i think i've probably used this reference before on the show but that chris kattan movie monkey bones where all his bones are broken but he's somehow not i don't know i don't know the plot of that yeah but i was like chris chris kattan i saw a stand-up bit from chris kattan where he said he was on a dating uh like a dating app kind of thing and people were like are you really chris kattan how do we know you're chris kattan he goes because why would i lie about that he's like of all the people that I could impersonate on this thing. You think I'm going with Chris Kattan.

This is a pretty good bit. I would at least be the copy machine guy. Right, right. Rob Schneider. Rob Schneider. I couldn't remember his name. It would have been funnier if I could. No, it was good. It was good.

All right. Any other emails that we need to get off the books?

No, let's leave that there. You know, Rilo Kiley, I think I do this every time. I'm trying to think of an airplane-related song. This isn't even an airplane-related song, but Rilo Kiley has a somewhat—

Would you like to listen to it on an airplane?

Yeah, well, they have an album called Takeoffs and Landings, and they're sort of an aviation theme throughout it, but this song that I like to play off of it is called Science vs. Romance. Are you cool with that? Sure. Are you cool with calling the show Ghost Duck of Christmas Future?

I insist on calling all shows that going forward. All right, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thank you, everyone, for hanging out with us. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you, so do join us for that. Until then, have a great Wednesday. to carry yourselves and each other and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

I used to think If I could realize I'd die Then I would be A lot nicer Used to believe In a lot more Now I just see straight ahead That's not to say I don't have good times But as for my days, I spend waiting Crash sites keep me up at night Impact, division, it splits into Directly underneath you As for those things that act as markers in your life

From the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas comes the story of a man trapped in a bizarre world and his only hope you're gonna need a new body is to become someone else what's wrong with my neck you broke it you're an organ donor

Fire in our body!

Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, Chris Kattan, Monkeybone.

Stop that pitman!

Rated PG-13. Power out.