Muse

Zerts are what I call desserts. Tray trays are entrees. I call sandwiches Sammies, Sanduzzles, or Adam Sandlers. Air conditioners are cool blasters with a Z. I don't know where that came from. I call cakes big ol' cookies. I call noodles long ass rice. Fried chicken is fry fry chicky chick. Chicken parm is chicky chicky parm parm. Chicken cacciatore, chicky catch. I call eggs pre-birds or future birds. Root beer is super water. Tortillas are bean blankies. And I call forks, food rakes, TBTL. Chips and dips, chips and dips. I love chips and dips. What's your story? Talk to me.

You don't dress down to the sweat pant. You dress the sweat pants up.

We are still on for this afternoon, right? Operation Monkey Brain.

I'm sorry, but when I hear an undeserved compliment, it makes my ears want to throw up. Oh, your ears are always throwing up about something.

What podcast are you talking about? The TBTL. TBTL.

Well, hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's a kind of magic. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Oh, and the adventure begins again. Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center in Portland, Oregon. It was quite foggy this morning. There was actually a fog advisory. But then starting in the next couple of days, things are going to get less dry, as we say on this show. Also thinking about our friends up in British Columbia who are looking at another atmospheric river of water coming through this weekend. And places where the flooding is just starting to recede. Places like my old stomps of Whatcom County. So, hope everybody is able to stay safe and dry as we go through this Thanksgiving weekend. Which I am so very excited about. Also, I'm trying to be very safe about. Which is why I, right before showtime, very carefully swabbed both of my nostrils. A minimum of five large circles each while applying a home COVID test to myself. We will find out the results to that, I guess, and if I'm going to enjoy Thanksgiving after all. Coming up in a few moments here on episode 3561, as in 3,561 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. We will have the results of the COVID test coming up. And also the interesting story behind an actor named Lou Cutel, also known as Amazing Larry from Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

Is this something you could share with the rest of us, Amazing Larry?

He passed away, sadly. But there's an interesting story behind that scene, which has always been possibly my favorite scene from that movie. And something that I have just said inside my head for about the last 35 years of my life. So we'll look into that. Also, Andrew is finally about to become a full-fledged member of the fun-loving Criminals, our sports text chain, and I will explain to him why. Coming up in just a few moments, plus some emails and V-mails, again, as we head into the big Thanksgiving celebrations. Speaking of my friend Andrew Walsh, of course, tomorrow he's going to have turkey, but you know what he's having today. I might have tacos when I go home. I'm not quite sure yet. It's Taco Wednesday at his house, which is in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, which is where he is joining us from right now. Good morning, my friend.

This is a terrible way to start the show, Luke. But let me ask you this. Can you hear me? Can you hear me now?

You're not legally allowed to say that, by the way.

Okay, you can't hear me.

There's the property of, I believe, Verizon Cellular. I don't know what they were calling it back then. Was that the company that the guy with the glasses, Paul with the glasses, was saying that on?

Yeah, it wasn't even like Paul from Horizon, but then he switched teams. Yeah, yeah. Okay, but you can't hear me. That's fantastic. That was a legit question.

I mean, I can hear your voice. Was that the question? Can I hear your voice?

It was a terrible way to start the show, but I thought that we had lost the connection. You know how I sometimes have that little glitch in my system where I can hear you, but then suddenly something happens, and we kind of lose the connection, and you can't hear me? I was convinced that that had happened during the intro, but I didn't want to interrupt you, so I let you go on.

And it turns out you heard that my flow was, you know, honestly, as Jay would say, I was having flow and you did not want to. It was possible to not have me do the.

whole top of the show over again you were going to pursue that possibility and you did and here we are it all worked out so good decision making you called an audible at the line it was an rpo run podcast option what was that joke you made the other day that killed me were we on the air

no i think that was a i think that was a possible name for a podcast if what we were talking about had been recorded and we put it on the air we would have called it a run podcast option i think

We're talking about you went with podcast and I'm really glad you did.

Yeah, because we were. Oh, because I think that was the day we did not do a no point conversion. So we're talking about making the decision later on in the day about whether or not we would have the ability and energy to do a no point conversion. And I said, let's do an RPO or yeah, a run podcast option. So there we are.

I love that name. And again, in this case, I imagine that you were like at the line of scrimmage. You saw what the defense was doing. In this case, the defense was IPDTL. It was shifting. It always is. They were like trying to blitz the A-gap. And so you basically, you know, you changed the play at the line. And you were like, do I run? Do I podcast? Do I let Luke keep talking? And you went with podcasts. And here we are. I think we're all better for it.

It's an option. So here's what I'm going to do. Since I've already kind of ruined the show and you're doing everything you can to put spackling over it and and clean it up let me i'm talking about two technical things really quickly

at the top here 30 seconds i have enough spackle for these next two technical topics start adding

water to your white powder stuff i used to be mixing it in a bucket right now everybody keeping up with my technical talk um add more water to your white powder stuff because here's two technical things so apparently we didn't lose the line but there was some sort of a weird glitch while you were talking that lasted about three seconds where suddenly your voice sped up like this and you're talking like fast and then it slowed down normally it must have just been a glitch in the internet uh we could fix it by you sending me your file and me doing a bunch of post-production i don't feel like doing that so i'd like this is why you're now making it this is why you're

framing out there within the context of the show so that you don't have to fix it people now know that i mean come on it's thanksgiving tip of the cap right tip of the cap this is exactly what i

would do if i were in your i just want people to know it wasn't you it wasn't your pod catcher it wasn't your pod machine it was a quick glitch and that's what you heard and now it's all baked into the show and it's hashtag content the other little bit of technical uh detail here also has to do with me getting out of work i will not be sending out a tbtl newsletter this friday it's a shortened week i i came into this week feeling strong and now it's wednesday and we're knocking on the door of a holiday and frankly i don't feel like crawling up into this um system this byzantine system uh that we use to send out the emails it will it will delay my thanksgiving until saturday if i

try that one like uh either mario or luigi i imagine you as a as a mario brother climbing up into a pipe and there's that sound that's a terrible impression of the sound i don't think humans can make the sound of when when mario goes you know the sound of going into the pipe isn't it kind of like that doesn't it go no that's the theme song of the underworld which is do do do do

yeah no i know that that's not what i was trying to do i was just doing three notes going ever higher i'm gonna find the pipe sound let me hear it again and now i'm now you're in my head about

it but it's like it's no i'm in your head correctly because that's not what it sounds like It's like, it's not that high-pitched, but it's the same note. It doesn't go from low to high.

Oh, I might be thinking of the sound of the flag when he pulls down the flag. I can find it here. The internet has everything.

That's the flag. I mean, honestly, this could be the show. And I mean, the good news is if we do this for the whole show, we won't have any listeners that we have to worry about. Yeah, that's a good point. The living or the day after, which would honestly take some pressure off.

You're right. There it is.

That sound, which is very hard to make with the hearing voice.

It also sounds really good. Listen to this recording. This is not my system. This is as it was posted. I mean, I can't complain. YouTuber Aaron Shallow posted this to YouTube, and I was able to find it immediately while recording a podcast. So I should not be complaining, but also listen to the sound quality. oh that sounds like me trying to play youtube sound i know okay also there's the sound of me

what in the heck fire happened to my mario drop can't find it this would be the perfect time for it's a me mario oh i don't remember i was playing that like i do yeah like it was going out of style a few weeks ago anyway i like to imagine you do what do they have last names mario and luigi what

We're wondering if maybe their last name is Mario because they're the Mario brothers. In the same way, you are not the Sammy brothers because you have a brother.

named sam so then luigi so mario's name is mario mario yeah that's kind of and i think that might

even been addressed in the live action film starring i think it probably was okay so i just

like to imagine you as a mario brother going into a pipe trying to put the newsletter first of all you have to go and you have to like run across a fire bridge and potentially go under like a dragon monster guy who's throwing on fire axes at you or whatever the heck's happening down there All of that to get the newsletter out And I'm glad you're not going to have to go through that this week Because I want to say something to you This seems to me like the most excited I've heard about you being for Thanksgiving in a while Like I get pretty psyched about Thanksgiving And I'm obviously like you enjoy it But we were talking before the show About kind of the content for today's program Which yes listeners we do plan some things out And you were saying Look I'm just in a very very get cozy Get Thanksgiving going mood And I love that I love that that's where you're at this year

Yeah well I don't mean to ruin the Narrative that you set up there I think the mood that I'm in right now is You know how you actually referenced this On the show the other day when I'm flying on an airplane And they're like Or I know I have an airplane trip coming up And I immediately start thinking about all the phases Like okay I'm going on vacation But first I've got to take the You know take the car to the airport Then the shuttle then and then you know the security you know and I start like I keep track of all these things that have to get done before I'm finally just arriving at the hotel room I think tomorrow like you know getting getting through today like these shortened weeks the thing about a holiday is it just means you have to do all the same amount of work in three days instead of five and so I'm just kind of like been checking things off checking things off checking things off and you and I are very close to that finish line now we got to do this show we're going to record a show for Friday today I hope it's OK for me to say that. And then and then once I'm finally done with that and then once I get the two shows posted for Thursday and Friday, then I can finally be done for about 24 hours.

And so that's what I'm looking forward to. So it's less that you're excited to be cozy and more that you're excited or at least focused on just being done with work, being done with this week. Yes. Which these three days have been kind of kind of busy. Yeah. Got it. OK. But I mean, you are like looking forward to tomorrow, right? Like, and again, you told me this the other day, but I've already forgotten. It's just the actual daytime stuff and dinnertime stuff is just you and Veeves with a possible appearance of some friends later on in the evening.

We have two other friends coming over. Another couple are coming over for Thanksgiving dinner. And I was open to the idea of inviting people to stop by our house after their Thanksgiving plans. But honestly, I don't know that I invited anybody except for you. And you're going to be, I guess, potentially with your family.

I will probably be playing charades. We have this, my mom, I'm sure, got it at a garage sale, but it's a charades game. I forget the exact name of the particular, but it's essentially a game of charades where you have these cards and they have things on them that you're trying to act out. But what's kind of fun about it is you have this, you think I would know what this is called because I often work around one of them, But the thing that a person in a movie right before the scene, when they call action and someone clacks, what's that called? There's a time code on it. It's a – anyway, you know what I'm talking about. The clapper, yeah.

I mean I think I – yeah, I don't know what the term is.

There is an official term for it and our friends who work in Hollywood and film and television probably are throwing their phones right now. But anyway, it's one of those things, right? It looks like one of those things. but you put all of the cards in the top of it there are little slots and then you have a timer and each like 10 seconds or something the timer moves something inside of the clapper device so that a card falls down so imagine i've got like four cards up and i'm dancing and doing my thing trying to get my teammates to guess and then maybe right it only counts if they guess it and i can pull the card out in time so there are like these many moments where someone will finally guess it And you reach for the card, and it, like, drops. And then, like, it's a whole other level of drama and fun. Now, the thing is, this device has been really broken for probably the last 10 years. Like, it barely works. It's like a thing, speaking of Mario Brothers, it's like blowing into your Nintendo cartridge. Like, this thing has been on its last legs forever. So it's so, like, delicate. You have to kind of set it up in just a certain way, and the cards don't want to stay up, and the timer doesn't want to work. But somehow we limp it along every Thanksgiving. And like so about the time when when I should have been showing up over at Walsh, Walsh and Dormit, I will instead be in Silverdale playing charades with my family.

I hope to God that you draw the Roy Donk. card because i think you've been practicing for that for two years now where be your nutcracker mom hey you want to talk about nutcrackers for a second i i asked genevieve if maybe we could become a nutcracker family this year not go to the nutcracker but actually like growing up um my family always had a bowl like around the holidays and like my i think my parents had one in our house and i think my grandparents had one too is very traditional to have that bowl of you know i guess nuts in the shell like what are usually in those i don't even know walnuts walnuts and a couple of others um and you know and we would have this metal um nutcracker not the traditional kind that looks like a little soldier but like the actual like kind of um utilitarian nutcracker and that was a big part of the holidays and um you know and then i became a young adult living by myself that's not on my high priority list of things to buy while i was buying my first set of silverware um and then we've just never had that and now here it is it's the holidays and i i think i passed um in the grocery store the other day a bag of like you know of nuts in the shell and i was like you know what this should be the year i want to i want to buy that bag of nuts and i want to buy a nutcracker i haven't made any uh moves on this yet but i think that the time is

ripe i'll tell you what is right around the corner if you do that pipe i'm talking tobacco pipe oh wow yeah because i feel like that's the next phase of of of life once you get the bowl of of nuts that are still like in their shells that that need and by the way we're not talking about cashews or pistachios rather like we're talking about it's got to be you know walnuts or something that's got a pretty sturdy outer portion to it but then after that it's like it's a it's nice like cherry wood pipe tobacco you know some werthers throw those in a in a bowl and leave them there for

one to seven years exactly to the point where when you go to like you don't even like them but it's the only candy at grandma's grandma's house and the couch is uh covered in plastic um and you uh you grab one of those things and you crinkle up on the couch real comfortably and then you go to get it out of the the wrapper but it's still stuck to the wrapper and so you're kind of eating some of that cellophane stuff but it's okay it's better than not eating i only had one friend growing up

who actually had that living room the no one uses this living room and the furniture is covered in in vinyl protectant and that was donald whitehouse who's also my worst influence friend he and todd staley who are older than me it's amazing that i'm here and not uh you know incarcerated for life had i stuck had i continued hanging out with those guys they were the ones i went and smoked weed on duck island with we would just do all kinds of you know vandalization of things bad kids but they did have Donald Whitehouse's house did actually have that living room where when you walked into it it was like hermetically sealed the entire place now this is interesting

I wonder if we're talking about different things because it's funny I you know I guess I'm feeling nostalgic because it's that time of the year and I was just reading a book last night and there was some scene where the narrator was describing the living room that he was in and this book takes place in like the mid 1960s and but it just sounded a little bit um it sounded like he was in the in in the living room of somebody who was probably lower middle middle class working class maybe uh of that era and described like the couch that was protected with some sort of plastic and it immediately transported me to my grandma clink clink's uh house that we would visit growing up now um that's grandma simsik but if you can't say simsik she answers to clink clink um but uh it wasn't like she had it wasn't like she had one room that was like kind of the nice room it was just like it was a very lived in space and it really did have the Werther's thing going on or something similar to that I think she did have the bowl of nuts but it was like she didn't have really nice stuff at all in fact I remember a plastic covering that she had over a part of her carpet that was almost like why do you have carpet if you're gonna have this plastic covering here And you could kind of peel it up and there were like the plastic spikes that would go into the carpet to keep it to keep it stable, you know. So it was because later on in life, when my family moved into a kind of a nicer, like kind of suburban kind of Burgundy Bay, Burgundy Bay kind of situation, then that's when my mom started to get into. We have nice stuff now. Don't sit on it. You know what I mean?

Which is slightly different. I think you're absolutely right. I think in the case of the White House family, it just was – it wasn't like they lived in a mansion. Basically what it was is there was no TV in the room where the plastic furniture was. And so everyone wanted to be in the room where the TV was because that was where sometimes you could see the Playboy channel on a certain weekend if it was being offered free. So it was like this was just a group of people who were just much more drawn to the television side of life than the sitting in the living room and chatting side of life. But I think you're –

You're right, and my guess would be that that whole kind of vinyl protective industry was generally aimed at people for whom buying new furniture was a big outlay. and if it was going to be something that was a substantial cost to your bottom line and a substantial portion of the money that you brought in in a given month or year or you were making payments on it um then the value of it in your mind is is really up there and someone comes along says well you've already paid you know for this couch now why don't we or these chairs even let's keep them nice and i have a my guess would be that that kind of sales pitch worked especially well on people for whom this was a big outlay compared to their income yeah and my my grandma

the one i'm talking about now grandma sim six you know she of course survived the the depression and that you saw a lot of her habits came from came from that right like she was she grew up in a poor family that went through the depression um you know what i'm thinking of now though and this is kind of obvious i'm sure people have said this before i'm surprised i haven't maybe i have But, man, thinking about this very particular place my grandmother stayed, I'm not even thinking about the house she lived in with my grandpa. But later on, she moved to an apartment, and that's the one I'm describing. And I can almost smell it. Like it was – it smelled like nothing. And it was a little bit of spice maybe from cooking because she would cook a lot. But it was just a – it was maybe a combination of that and the plastic covering things. And and whatever it was, it was the unique smell of that cozy, cozy apartment. And then I also now think of my my grandma and grandpa's house, grandma and grandpa Walsh. And they had this one cupboard, Luke. Oh, my God. And my point here is I wish there were photographs for smell. I wish I had a jar that I could open and smell this one thing that is just gone forever. You know, sometimes me and my sister would stay over at grandma and grandpa Walsh's house. And it was, of course, a special occasion. But then there was a special treat inside the special occasion. And that was when grandma would say we could go to the little, like, kitchen cupboard. It was like a tall kitchen cupboard from, you know, like as tall as a standing person. And you would open that up, and that's where the graham crackers were, Luke. And I don't know what else they kept in there. I think they kept all of their spices in there and then just other pantry items as well as the graham crackers. and you would open up that cupboard, Luke, and it smelled like nothing else. I would give, I wouldn't say anything, but I would give a lot just to get one big inhale, full lung inhale width of that cupboard because it is just like that is my happy place. That is my brain candy.

Okay, I have a lot of follow-up questions about this, but speaking of smell, we have to hit pause on that because I only have one minute and 40 seconds left to look at the COVID tests that I took because it says very clearly on the instructions, and I haven't looked at it yet, do not check it before 15 minutes, or that is to say you have to give it 15 minutes to work itself out. But you can't wait until more than 30 minutes to look at it. The window of time where it will actually accurately let you know what's going on is between 15 and 30, and we are now 28 minutes and 44 seconds since I started it. thankfully i'm surrounded by clocks andrew so i've been tracking this very closely so uh the the one minute version because that's how much time i now have left is uh i happened to a couple of weeks ago cross paths with someone who now it turns out has tested positive for covid i will leave their identity uh uh anonymous out of respect they are vaccinated um but it just seemed like out of an abundance of caution because i'm going up to hang with my family and a bunch of people i should probably just try to be careful also let's be honest becca bought the test for me so i was like okay but it is pretty complicated to take and i did all that before the show and now i am going to and this is real this is real imaginary radio i am going to look at this thing and find out if in fact i have covid or not i don't think i do i feel fine everything's fine But I'm just trying to be careful So let's just I am Okay I do not have COVID, Andrew

What music did you have dialed up If it was positive?

The Gabagool song ACDC, back in black

Yeah I'll tell you, I've had a few Let me just be honest I've had a few stressful moments with pregnancy tests in my day andrew so maybe this whole like uh how many lines are how many pink lines are there maybe this just brings back some very strong feelings from my teenage and early 20s years but uh no i'm happy to see

I hear that it is this Binax Now COVID-19 card made by Abbott Laboratories tells me that I do not have COVID. Now, I mean, it's not as official as like going to the doctor, but I feel pretty good about that.

Quick question, because I have not taken one of those. You didn't pee on it, did you? Was I not supposed to pee on it? I'm not sure.

Oh, my God. Okay.

I'm going to read the instructions again.

The instructions, Andrew, are so, like, I don't know. I'm just, I guess I'm very spoiled by, I'm spoiled by modern technology and how, like, now these days, if you buy something, a piece of electronics, it just walks you through everything pretty much, you know? You turn it on and it just says, click this. And then you click it and it goes, like, what's your, what's the Wi-Fi in here? And you tell it. And then it just, and then it, like, the robots take over, right? Yeah, the wizard.

It's just kind of like you get a new piece of equipment and it says, instruction number one, download the app. You download the app, you Bluetooth it, and then it's like, we got it from here. You know what? Take the rest of the night off.

Right. And so that's my – I guess I assumed that's how this test was going to work, but it was extreme – I mean, of course, they have to be because, like, they don't want to be giving out false results. but it's like so incredibly specific about how many droplets of this solution you exactly six droplets of the solution in in this one little reservoir and then swab exactly five large circles in one nostril and then it's like do the other nostril then in all red like 20 point font it's like um stop did you do the stop check did you swab both nostrils and i'm like yeah i've been following the drawing uh abbott labs but anyway yeah they're very like it's a very official thing but i did it very officially and uh officially i don't have code which is a relief um so

you know the makeout party is back on watch out burbanks um can i tell you something that lives in my head that isn't even my own experience it's something that genevieve told me about a long long time ago but it just seems like such a good life lesson well maybe because i still don't know if i follow it and i certainly don't think she does but apparently when she was i'm going to say in grade school there was some kind of little quiz type of activity she had to take and the instruction and the point of it was like you have to read the instructions carefully right and the first instructions was the first set of instructions uh was you have to read all the instructions before progressing and i think it was maybe even a draw like follow these directions and you'll be able to draw let's say a turkey or something right um but the first instruction was a good video by the way it probably would the first instruction was you know read all the instructions first then the second instruction might have been okay pick up your pencil and draw a circle like who knows what happens after this and you follow all the instructions and then the last instruction is don't do anything if you don't do anything then you've you've succeeded the point was not how to draw a turkey or what have you the point was do you know how to read directions and the first direction was read all of the directions before even beginning and of course Genevieve did not do

that I have heard about that like teachers giving that test out as a as a sort of you know social experiment or a way of teaching people to read all of the directions i would have never read all the directions myself yeah right um but yeah i'm not surprised to i'm not surprised to hear that jennifer didn't get through all of them i i still to this day yeah don't read through all of the directions i i mean i i'm not like i'm not one of those not to overly gender it but you know there's the sort of idea about guys that they just like if they get something from ikea they just like throw the directions out i'm also not that person because i have no flippant idea how to do it but as soon as i feel like i've kind of got the hang of it then i will start to in other words starting from zero i am going to read the directions because i need to start putting it together but once i've like used a certain kind of bolt or screw a few times then i start to think oh i see how this fits together and then i start kind of freelancing and then invariably i put something on backwards or upside down and then i think they lost a part and i'm furious And I'm composing an email in Swedish

You're already writing the email

And I'm just like I cannot effing believe Of all they must send out 800,000 of these shelving units A year and I get the one that they left out And then at some point I go back to the instructions Which may have been crumpled up Maybe thrown in a garbage can Straighten them out and realize Oh no that thing is actually backwards And if you switch it around Then it all makes sense and works together

It's under a piece of pizza That you're now reconsidering eating

I didn't do that yesterday Andrew But boy was I ever tempted Was that yesterday's show or was that Something we were taping for Later this week

I'm going to say something here and it's important that you listen to me Very closely Time doesn't exist I have no idea when that was Easy McConaughey

I have no idea when that was Now you're asking the right question

We cannot be trusted To try to record shows out of time Because this is all just one Long I think Cosmic gumbo Where we're just talking And if we like yesterday we recorded the Thanksgiving show Today after this we're going to record The Friday after Thanksgiving show And it's just like It's too confusing for our small brains Here's what I do know And I want you to listen to me very closely, Andrew It's time to take a break So let's do that

It's time to take a break? Sounds like somebody's still buying into the old paradigm

Sorry Let's go to a break Call me McConaughey It's hard to shake it off

You really leaned into it, I love it Alright, quick break and then back with more TBTL all right let's thank some donors of the day these are the wonderful generous people who we are very thankful for because their financial support is making the show possible thank you to Nathan Quick of Seattle, Washington. I don't know if Nathan goes by Nate ever, but Nate Quick is a pretty...

Yeah.

It's a pretty dope name,

I've got to be honest with you. Like the name a superhero would use when he's not in superhero mode.

Right. Hey, would it be too on the nose if Nate Quick was also the Flash?

That's what I was actually thinking. But wait, can I... This is the wrong time to do it, but I have to do it now. I'm so sorry, I'm ruining the show. But this is a thought I had the other day, and I don't know if this is like one of those cliche conversations that have been had by like stoned nerds in college forever or if this is actually an original thought. But I honestly, somebody made a reference.

Is he stoned and nerd as the same person?

Yeah. Well, I guess not. But like, you know, getting in their heads, like whatever. But like, why did Superman have to have an alter ego? Is this something that's like discussed in pop culture?

Why did he have to also be Clark Kent?

Yeah, what was the point of Clark Kent? Somebody mentioned Clark Kent the other day on the radio or something, and I was probably showering, and I just, like, my brain wandered. I'm like, what is the point of Clark Kent? Why can't he just be Superman all the time and just fly off to some place where nobody can, you know, bother him when he's not on duty?

Right. Because he's the strongest person on the planet. He has superpowers. It's like he doesn't have to be worried. Like, okay, so what? Y'all know I'm Superman.

Yeah.

Okay. Next question. And if you have a problem with that, I'll be in my Fortress of Solitude that you can't find.

Exactly, right. I just got a flat screen. There must be some advantage of him being able to walk as man. Or maybe it just goes into the emotional thing of him wanting to be accepted as a human because he came here as a baby. Maybe that's it.

I think it's more that.

Okay.

And I think it probably has to do with, of course, him showing up in a field in, was it Kansas? Mm-hmm. And and like his family, you know, the Kent family adopting him and taking him in and him obviously not knowing he was Superman at the time.

Right. That's what this is.

And then growing up and wanting, like you said, wanting to fit in and kind of this is, of course, a classic superhero trope, which is usually they're not stoked about whatever it is that makes them super. Yeah. You know, Bruce Banner does not want to Hulk out. Not at all. And so probably the Clark Kent thing is, in a way, Superman's desire to just be a quote-unquote normal person and not have this thing that makes him feel different and weird. Well, gee whiz, I hope Nate Quick is happy being a superhero. Uh-huh. Why does the Flash even need to pretend he's Nathan Quick from Seattle, Washington?

I don't know. He just wants to relate to us.

Flash, we're on to you. Joe Scott is in Kirkland, Washington. Joe Scott's also a fairly... That sounds like that could be a made-up name, Joe. That sounds like that could be a made-up name, Aquaman. Seralia Pollock is in Cedar Park, Texas. Thank you, Seralia. A.K.A. Shazam. Mm-hmm. Wasn't Shazam... They brought that back, or that's back in some form right now, but I loved Shazam when I was a kid. I don't know if I understood that it was kind of partially a comedy.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know much about Shazam, but my understanding is it's kind of like the D. Oh, I can already hear the emails clanking into my email chamber. That's how it works.

I got it. I think it keeps telling me to update my email software. And I'm like, no.

You do that thing where you bust out all of the bricks.

You go above where.

Who is the? I can't believe I'm forgetting a name. Who is... the guy that you have to beat in Mario Brothers like every time. Bowser? Is it Bowser? Bowser. But if you go like above Bowser, somebody can go to like Warped World. Sure, yeah. Back there, back in that area is where your email chamber is.

Exactly. It's very dank.

It's got a lot of emails. But I think

that Shazam is like, I don't know if, I can't say which one came first, but it's kind of like the DC equivalent of, what's the Ryan Reynolds Marvel character? Deadpool? Deadpool. Aren't they kind of similar like cheeky break the fourth wall talk directly to the reader or viewer uh i yes i'm

gonna say yes as i click on the wikipedia link for shazam um which is actually not super helpful um i yeah i got the sense that there was some kind of there was a a bit of there was more comedy woven into the shazam captain marvel also known as shazam is a fictional superhero uh based on comic book sales thank you this is really helpful god i didn't know this andrew people get really into these comics but they're just comic books luke they're they're not though andrew they're more than that which is why uh you have got oh i'd say roughly 75 pages about the character

shazam here on wikipedia but none of it especially none of it's helpful to me but it gets really

into comic sales in the 1930s so that kind of wins um anyway yeah i had this sense that shazam It was kind of their answer to Superman, but there was something about it. And I didn't know about the comic of Shazam, but what I knew is that there was some kind of Shazam TV show when I was a kid that I remember liking his outfit. He had a big kind of lightning bolt on his chest, and I just thought it was a cool look. I also, of course, loved The Greatest American Hero, which was full-on camp. And that was really the story of a guy who kind of got this ability to do super things, but he didn't really know how to control it. And so he was always flying into walls, and he was always, believe in it or not, he was walking on air, stuff like that.

I remember loving the beginning of that show, but I don't remember much past that.

Well, it had, I mean, the theme song is... Exactly. It's got to be way up there in the pantheon of greatest 1980s TV theme songs ever. uh jillian williamson is in calgary also known as calgary alberta home of the calgary stampede i believe it's a big uh kind of rodeo type event thing that happens out there in calgary jillian thank you for uh checking in from canada and helping us out then we got christopher hamlin in worcester massachusetts you nailed it i know you think i'm And I'm joking right now, Andrew, when I say, I know that we have a joke about Worcester, but I don't remember it.

It's just that you were surprised when you saw this word for the first time that it was pronounced Worcester, right?

But that's weird because our friend Adam Davidson, the noted podcaster and writer, is from Worcester. But maybe I just never saw it written. He would talk about growing up in Worcester, and I guess I just always thought it was W-O-O-S-T-R. Like the Ohio version. Exactly. Thank you, Christopher, for supporting us from Worcester. And then Paul Ortiz is in Roseville, California. But it smells great there. I've been starting to re-watch. Not re-watch. Catch up on Top Chef Portland. And they were – I wonder if the city of Portland, like, paid money for this so that this would be the challenge they made all the chefs do. But because Portland is known as the Rose City. Portland's got a lot of nicknames Bridgetown, the Rose City Stumptown which it's only referred to in TV shows called Stumptown where everyone's calling it Stumptown but for the quick fire challenge which is kind of like the first little whatever challenge they have these chefs do it was Portland is the Rose City so you have to cook a dish that involves the flavor of rose, roses and every single chef was like you know what roses taste like soap yeah they're gross yeah nobody wanted to do it which

made it kind of a good challenge did people lean towards like a very very light rosy flavored like

dessert of some sort well some people did that but then of course you can lose on that score because if you if you kind of like if you phone it in on the on the on the rose uh niss of the whole thing then they're gonna they're gonna ding you for that one so you've got to like have enough rows in there like that you're that you're basically trying to actually do the challenge the way they've designed it and you also have to not do so much that tastes like you took a bite out of uh something in your grandmother's soap dish right take it back to grandma town right

exactly definitely how about take it back to grandma town as a show title love it after you got done smelling the graham cracker closet that you then walked into her bathroom where i'm sure there were all kinds of rose scented things i feel like that's i feel like that has kind of that's not really the stuff of our generation so much like but it was very much like my mom was into that any grandmother i ever had it was like everyone wanted everything to smell like

roses for a while dove genevieve does not like i have pretty much pardon me i've pretty much carte blanche when it comes to buying soap that we use in the shower because i genevieve might use a body wash or something but mostly we are bar soap people um and actually what i've been buying well i don't have to get into that um but the one thing i'm not allowed to buy is um or that genevieve asks me not to buy is uh is dove because it just has too much of a grandma scent to her

you know the one uh that i was buying for a while because of television commercials from my youth until I realized I don't like this is Irish Spring. You remember those Irish Spring ads? Oh, yes. Where the water is like coming, is shooting out of the bar of soap.

Yes, and isn't that also the one where they take a slice out of it with a knife and it's the most satisfying shot in the world?

Maybe that also rings some sort of bell, but the ones I'm thinking of are where people were showering, but the bar of soap itself, because it was so fresh. You know, noted clean people, the Irish, head down to the Bowery in the late 1800s and you would just see a bunch of people who definitely should have a soap named after them. I speak as an Irish person. But like, it's such an odd kind of branding for it. But somehow in my mind, I was like, well, that seems like the best soap. Because we never had Irish spring. We weren't like, you know, we didn't have Irish spring money growing up. So when I became an adult and I could buy whatever soap I wanted, I just was doing it for years because of those commercials. And then one day I smelled and I was like, I don't like the smell of this.

So the commercial that you saw was people like under a heavy, like a really heavy stream of water.

I remember it being people outside bathing and somehow my memory, this could be totally made up. I felt like there was water shooting out of the bar of soap.

Okay. I don't remember water shooting out of a bar of soap.

Maybe it was coming from somewhere else. Maybe I've created a better version, let's all agree, of this commercial in my mind.

Here's a commercial from 1982. It is a fella. He is, at this point, just wearing a towel, but he's about to walk into a rustic outdoor shower area. All right.

Ah, the freshness of a spring morning reminds me of the freshness of my Irish spring soap. It's springtime in a bar.

In these green and white... There's the shot. Somebody just takes a knife and slices a little bit off so you can smell it better.

Trapes are two deodorants that leave you feeling clean and fresh a long, long time. Irish Spring. Now that's my kind of soap. And we like it too. Uh-oh. A Irish Spring leaves you feeling clean and fresh a long, long time.

Someone was caught with it. Oh, and then at the end, he dumped a bunch of water on himself. Like, he pulls a cord and a bunch of water comes pouring down. But I don't think that's what you're talking about.

But, you know, it actually sounded a lot like it, though. Maybe I've created this whole kind of, you know, counterfactual history. You know, there are entire YouTube channels that are dedicated to people just carving things in a satisfying way with knives, like cutting things up. That it's very like, yeah, soap's got to be high up on the list of just very satisfying to see somebody shave off a piece of soap with a knife.

Yes, it certainly is. I'm going to start. I think you've told me to do this before, but because it's Thanksgiving time and everybody's like kind of making their little tick tocks and insta talks about cooking. I've seen somebody who does that. I I have seen several people post things reminding us to to use a cheese grater on your cold, unmelted butter if you want it to melt faster. I think you might have even given me this tip before. Like, I don't think I did. It's really smart. You know how sometimes you go to make a piece of toast? I don't know. You don't really seem like a big toast guy to me. Oh, I love toast. Don't get me wrong.

I don't eat a lot of it, but I very much love toast. It was my main food group from age 12 to 20.

So you have the notion, I want some toast now. You didn't think about it a half hour in advance, so you didn't take the stick of butter out of the refrigerator and let it soften in time. so you're like chipping away at it and trying to get a pad of butter that you're going to end up trying to like scrape across your toast you're going to destroy the bread apart which is so unsatisfying right how about you use a cheese grater or maybe even a zester well a zester is probably too small alright sorry I got ahead of myself there sorry everybody

But use a cheese grater to make little, you know, nice little tiny little spirals of butter that you can put on your toast. That's a clever idea. I mean, I guess the downside is you've then got to wash the cheese grater, which I don't know if I feel more anxiety in the kitchen at any time than when I'm trying to clean a cheese grater. Yeah. Because I feel like I'm either destroying the sponge that I'm using or the brush, whatever cleaning device I'm using. I get really – I try to go with the grain. I try to, like, make sure I'm not, you know, going to sort of start actually shredding the thing I'm trying to clean the cheese grater with. But then you've got to get inside because that inside never gets clean. Yes. You've got to really get in. And then there's the one, I don't even know what you're trying to do, but you know how one side of, if you have, like, the kind of one that I grew up with, which was a cheese grater that was kind of like almost a pyramid of sorts, although it actually had four sides. Yes, yes. So whatever that's called. one of the sides is just like pinholes i is that i think that's like a that are coming out yeah so like one side is just is that is that a zester i think that's what i was gonna say i think that's

a zester although i also have a separate zester and that doesn't really look like that so i might

be off base you know it's funny there was also a i think it was dial dial soap their commercials were zestfully clean oh yeah the soap was called zest it was called zest you're never fully clean unless you're zest fully clean you're not fully clean unless you're zest fully clean

towel being extended yes right yes yes from the back the scariest thing to do in the kitchen i think talking about like you think you're gonna like cut yourself or bust your knuckles grating ginger i don't know why i have to do this so much but a lot of recipes call for like usually like a tablespoon of grated ginger and so i use the zester thing which is just kind of a straight bar you know thin almost like a well whatever it's a zester um and then you take the the ginger which of course is like by nature sort of stringy right and first you have to yeah first you have to peel it with that little paring knife which is never like kind of satisfying you're never getting all the nooks and crannies the way you want to then you got to grab it then you're zesting it and and and you're getting closer and closer to your knuckles right because because

ginger sawns it's like outer protective layer is very very um kind of like there's not much to it like it's just disappearing very rapidly into into the zester and you're getting ever closer to your

knuckles oh and then you but you don't want to waste it and you don't want to have a nub to

throw away scary i know maybe some gloves they must make gloves for that i wonder okay now we're

getting too far into this but you got me into zoodles right thank you so much to our donors of the day thanks for making this episode possible hello and welcome to top story all right zoodles you got me into zoodles right you used to zoodle things you would um take zucchini now you might have a fancier zoodler in fact i almost guarantee you do we got a very basic zoodler which is kind of a similar process which is you know you it's a little i mean it's a little plastic container thing with a razor device on the top and you kind of stick the zucchini on top of it long ways and you just keep twisting it and twisting it and twisting it, creating these strands of zoodles of noodle-like zucchini. But when you get near the end of the nub of the zucchini, ours came with a special little device with spikes on it that you can kind of put the zucchini butt into the spikes and that will protect your hand for the little last bit of it. I wonder if there's something like that for the ginger. Something that can grab onto the ginger when there's just a little bit of a nub

left. See, this sounds like a perfect thing to start searching for tonight after a few glasses of wine when you're getting into comfy mode. So like you've got all this TBTL stuff is put to bed. Now it's just going to be Thanksgiving festivities. There's nothing I love more than a good internet search for a product that I didn't even think I needed as of an hour ago.

I'm a very, I mean, I know I'm in the minority here I'm a very different internet shopper for you like I'm an internet shopper the way I'm assuming that everybody if you have any 70 year olds in your life and they do any internet shopping that's how I do it it's like has to be the middle of the day I go I get my wallet my credit card is sitting next to me okay I'm ready to do some online shopping now and I will carefully buy the things that I'm going to buy I'm not like a sipping wine chilling on the couch watching TV shopper I'm too nervous about it

I bought a raincoat at four this morning off of Instagram. Wow. Was that before or after you woke up? Or before or after you went to sleep, I should say. Somewhere between sleep and awake. No, I woke up, and I had to use the restroom. And I'm not proud of this, but sometimes I'll bring my phone with me, which we all know is bad for sleep. many reasons both hygienic and also sleep hygiene so i guess hygiene really just in both ways but i this instagram ad came up for this yellow raincoat like kind of like the raincoat you know that like maybe you'd wear as a kid i don't think i even ever had one but the classic paddington yellow raincoat and it just seemed kind of cool to me and i also thought i live in an area of the world where it rains a lot and this raincoat just seemed kind of like it just seemed cute might be the weird way to describe it since i'm a 45 year old middle-aged dad type but i just thought that's a cool looking raincoat and it could make it kind of fun actually like if i have to if i've got to go out in the rain and deal with it when it's getting dark at 4 15 in the afternoon maybe if i have a yellow raincoat that'll be fun so i was poking around this website but it was a british website that was selling it and i was like well this is not i don't want to deal with this because it's supply chain and it's going to be it's going to take eight months to get here and they probably don't even ship to portland and so then thankfully things in the bathroom wrapped up wasn't a big procedure in there but then i get back in bed and now i'm kind of like i'm half committed to this raincoat purchase and so uh then i i look and they said oh yeah we can have it uh to your house on friday well free shipping and then i was like all right you got me plus actually what had happened was i had seen the raincoat the the instagram ad was from the actual company that makes them it's the swedish company and it was really expensive and i was like well that's a silly amount of money to pay for a raincoat but then i internet searched for the raincoat and lots of other places sell the same raincoat but for like a hundred dollars cheaper then i was like well now now we're talking so anyway that is very different than how you search for things and

shop for things on the internet yeah yeah i'm too nervous same with like booking flights i just have this weird and now with the pandemic i mean i book flights so rarely now um right right when i was getting comfortable doing it but i just feel like when i first started booking flights online whatever that was 20 years ago it just sort of it was like cooked into my brain being unfamiliar with the process that everything was so permanent and like i would just recheck the dates and the times a million times to make sure i'm not messing anything up and it's like my mouse would hover like for sometimes hours before i finally hit the confirm button i was so nervous about it

i know you know this but i i as a person who avails themselves of this like all the time the good news is if you click i mean maybe it's different if you're using one of those like travel websites you know type of thing um which let me just say and i know sometimes we end up doing ads for these places i'm sure there are some good deals to be had but i will mention that what i usually do if i find something on a travel website that seems promising i almost always go to the hotel airline source material so in a way the travel websites are useful because they quickly show me here's how much everything costs but what my move then is to go to the actual place and just get that price because i think there's this rumor out there that the travel websites are going to somehow sell you a ticket on this airline for a hundred dollars less than the airlines charging and that's really not what's going on most of the time but anyway if you buy the stuff directly from let's say the airline and you make a mistake you can just call them and say i made a mistake and i've never had them i've never had them in fact i did this like a week ago i've never had them say no like it's just as long as you just call them and you go hey i messed up they always take it off oh i didn't know that although i do usually use

those sites and i do think things get complicated and we even ran into that on some of our road trip adventures remember like booking you booked a hotel room through one of those like deal sites

like continuously i don't think i did i didn't do it through a deal site if i remember right i just

did it wrong i'm pretty sure you do remember when we showed up in kansas and we had that whole and it was when we met up with uh not kansas i'm confusing my my states because we did not go

that far west um i was like did you go on a separate road trip you didn't tell me about

during our road trip where i'm sorry where did we meet up with listener kristin and her friends

they met us at the bus station oh yeah that was actually and that was in uh well missouri missouri

missouri missouri kansas city missouri so you're not oh kansas city that's what i was doing there oh i wish i could do this over i don't want to be around anymore sorry i've really easy carl i've had carl havoc on the brain a lot lately don't worry that was not actually a cry for help um uh but anyway that was the one time yeah remember i thought you were

referring to the delica trip where i also screwed up the reservations constantly right that was one where i was trying to get us because we were like on the greyhound i think and i was like trying to find us a hotel that seemed decent but that was that was affordable and then we ended up at that place that was kind of a little bit meh and there was all kinds of checking in problems. But to be clear, that's

And now it feels like Andrew lists times Luke messed up one part of a reservation.

Well, if it didn't happen so often, you wouldn't be able to list them.

I appreciate you making the damn reservations. That's not the point of this. But the point of this is, you know, I know that that one hotel, we just had a nightmare situation because they couldn't find it because we booked it through some other thing. And Genevieve recently had some flight issues where, you know, she had booked a flight through one of these third-party sites. But then when things got moved around on her, she couldn't contact the airline directly because, like, they just lose a certain amount of control over it. So I'm just saying that, I mean, almost every flight I ever booked probably, at least in the first part of me booking flights, first 10 years or so, was through, like, a Travelocity or something along those lines. And most of the time it was fine. But when it's not fine, there's some real communication issues between, like, the actual vendor and the third party.

And again, I mean, I just said it, but what I would highly recommend people just try as an experiment is if you find a deal on one of those sites, whether it's the hotel, the rental car or the flight, take down the information, go to the source, whatever airline it is, hotel, et cetera, put in the exact same information and see what you get. Because my experience, I can't I honestly can't think of a time where it was where it ended up ultimately being more expensive to just book it with the original source. I like there may be some exceptions I don't know about maybe there's you know Bill Shatner has some kind of special block of you know holiday in rooms that only he and Priceline are allowed to have but my experience is that usually what it really what those travel sites are really useful for is just helping me make a quick list of what all the prices of things are and then I go I go kind of do my my own thing. Hey, I wanted to quickly remember somebody named Lou Cutel, who passed away, unfortunately, recently. I saw this, I only know about this because of Pee Wee Herman's Twitter feed, which I'm not following, but somehow I'm seeing a lot of Paul Rubens' tweets now in my stream of information from Twitter. This guy, Larry Kutel, plays Amazing Larry. Now, remember, there's, I don't know, how well do you remember Pee-Wee's Big Adventure?

Well, I feel like if I say very well, then I'm going to set myself up or everybody else up for disappointment. But it was a movie that I loved growing up, and I had it on VHS. So I watched it a bunch. He ran the magic shop, right?

Well, see, this is the thing. Okay, this is part of the story. I didn't know that. you must have had like maybe you did you have uh the extended version or something because there's kind of an interesting story behind this i remember seeing the movie i think i probably saw it in a theater and then watching it many times after that on on tape and there's the scene where peewee's bike has gone miss i mean his bike is being missing is the kind of plot of the whole film but where he is in his basement and he's gotten together a bunch of his like friends and people that know him people from his life and he's kind of starting to lose it a little bit He's getting very mad And he's showing pictures And it's just like the comedy is so good He's just holding up like a headshot of himself Well let me just play you the tape here

Exhibit B Another photograph What's missing from this picture? It's just me Without my bike Is this something you can share With the rest of us Amazing Larry?

And Amazing Larry is a guy Looks like he's in about his 60s He has a rainbow mohawk And he's just been like He was just talking to somebody in the audience Is there something about Is this something you care to share with the rest of us Amazing Larry That I thought was one of the funniest things I'd ever heard I still think it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard

Yes, in fact I honestly think that I might have used that as a drop In mixtapes Because that was such a thing that me and my friends would say

I loved it so much So this is Paul Rubens, a.k.a. Peewee Herman Writing on Twitter says Lou Cutel the actor who played the amazing Larry in Pee-wee's Big Adventure passed away on Sunday during a career that spanned well over 50 years he acted in an extraordinary number of diverse movies and television shows and then he mentions that he was in a movie in 1965 called Frankenstein meets the space monster and there's like a clip of Larry Cutel from that film and this is Pee-wee still writing in yet another tweet towards the beginning of Pee-wee's Big Adventure There was a scene in Mario's magic shop that was cut from the finished movie where Lou, a.k.a. Amazing Larry, as the Amazing Larry, is working on a levitating toupee trick. So you somehow knew that Amazing Larry shows up in the magic shop, but I don't think I knew that because it was cut from the finished movie.

I want to check myself in case I might be wrecking.

myself because no there was i've heard now in reading up that doesn't i don't know okay here

here let me give you a little bit more details on this because i don't know i think when i first said amazing larry i think i just was wrong okay like i was picturing the proprietor of the magic shop and when you played that little clip of you have something you'd like to share with the rest of us um i was like oh yeah that that's it now is that the prop is that the proprietor i can't why did i say that word is that the guy who runs the magic store um and then i'm like no no no of course i've just been looking it up and it's a different guy and now i'm trying to rack my brain do i know that particular little bit about a toupee and it doesn't necessarily ring a bell but here's one more wrinkle if you don't mind the vhs tape i had of peewee's big adventure which of all the things that have left my life i'm kind of bummed about this i must have loaned it to somebody in college who never gave it back because I had a VHS copy of this thing that was cut weird so that in a couple of scenes you could see things you weren't supposed to see.

That must have been in this.

The scene where – but it wasn't like cut scenes. It was actually the way the frames were cropped. Like there's a scene where Pee Wee Herman is pulling a chain, a continual chain out of this little compartment on his bike and it keeps going Mary Poppins style, right? But the cassette, the VHS cassette tape I had of it was cropped slightly incorrectly so you could see the bottom of the screen. You could see that the chain was just pulling all the way through. Like it wasn't cropped properly so you could see the effect.

You could see – So the aspect ratio of the print that you were looking at showed basically things that were not supposed to really be in the original or in the final frame. Yep.

You could see the bottom of the compartment on the bike. You can see that the chain was just running all the way through it. And then there's another scene. It's a dream sequence scene, I believe, when Pee-wee Herman falls asleep in the car, in the convertible, with the guy who broke out of prison or is on the run from the law. The guy who cut the tag off the mattresses. If you'll recall, Pee-wee Herman kind of falls asleep, and then there's a surreal scene where all of these signs, it's kind of a black background, and all these road signs are kind of passing him on the left and the right. on my cassette tape you could see the tracks that those signs were on like the signs were on tracks that were moving right because the car's not moving the signs exactly and and i had this weird tape that and it was just like a store-bought tape it wasn't taped off of tv or anything and i don't have it anymore and i think that that was like i think that was something cool to have so there's a chance that that toupee scene was in my version but i i can't say for certain

Well, there also have been outtakes that have been released or deleted, scenes that didn't make it into the final theatrical version. So this amazing Larry trying to do a levitating toupee trick. I think that that footage actually exists out in the wider world now. But this is what I find really fascinating about this. So this is Paul Rubin's writing. So he's talking about the magic scene The levitating two-page trip getting cut From the final version of the movie And he says a little later When I'm unraveling in my basement And I yell at Lou Is this something you can share with the rest of us Amazing Larry The movie studio told Tim Burton and I That it would have to also be cut Because no one knew who Amazing Larry was Oh I assured them that it would It would stand alone as a joke It does That between him being busted for whispering during a very tense scene a middle-aged man with a rainbow mohawk and being named amazing the audience would laugh oh that's such a good story that's such a good story yes i mean you know me andrew you know the fire that that lights in my yes in the deepest most primal part of me some suit coming in and going first of all saying well we got to cut the levitating to patrick who knows for what reason time or some bs and then saying well then also you've got to lose amazing larry later because no one knows who amazing larry is them telling paul rubens and tim burton paul rubens who created the character and created this universe and tim burton who's a director and and person who knows from film somebody i don't know why i'm obsessed with the idea that they're in a suit but just somebody saying somebody being so hyper literal and so just kind of like um hey i've got some notes well since we lost amazing larry at the magic shop the audience isn't gonna like the audience needs to know amazing larry's backstory in fact and the more i think about it

i don't think i'm googling around now to see if that toupee scene is online anywhere i can't find it but um i don't think i knew about the toupee i think that that's why it's so funny i mean that is the joke like every

That he just bullet pointed It is, I would argue, better That this is the first time We see Amazing Larry The non-sequitur of it Makes it something that I have Repeated in my head And out loud, like I said at the top of the show For 35 years of my life And to think that somebody Was saying, we gotta take that out Because we don't have And I guess my sort of statement On that would be, to anyone who's trying to do anything creative when somebody who is not creative comes in and tries to tell you that it doesn't work because of some logical flaw that they the non-creative is seeing just ignore them because i feel like my life has been made better by this scene in peewee's big adventure my life has been made more happy by the existence of amazing larry and it almost didn't happen if they would have just you know been like whatever i mean i'm sure they cut a bunch of scenes out of this movie they had to and yeah the movie is is kind of absurd at times but i am so happy that paul rubens and and to whatever degree tim burton was part of this pushed back and said we're gonna leave

amazing larry in please it is such a good scene that movie is so good and i know we had this conversation not all that long ago on the show so i don't need to reiterate it but i but i will i cannot believe that that is burton's first movie like and i just confirmed that i'm like is that really his first movie it is it's like wow i did so the first feature length film like 1985 then beetlejuice then batman i can't believe batman is only his third then edward scissorhands um and it's just like that movie is so funny and so dark that basement scene is so dark and so scary i mean everybody remembers large marge but there are other just like dark ass scenes in that

movie uh well i mean even it's it's obviously like leavened with comedy but like when he gets picked up by the escaped killer yeah and he's not a killer cut it he's not a killer oh he's just a

match he didn't just a mattress defacer right okay but you you start off thinking he's probably

a killer or something but then you find out that all he did was cut the tags off like the it's there's an ominous like i just remember being a kid also a pretty sheltered kid and being like oh this is not gonna end well this is very ominous so yeah that is such a good movie actually i want to watch that again i bet you it holds up that might not be the worst thanksgiving

um you know after meal movie i guess you're going to be doing charades though yeah i'm

going to be very busy with charades uh andrew and you may be very busy having the full experience of being my text message friend andrew because i'm happy to tell you that google message now shows iMessage reactions as emojis. Have you heard about this?

No. So, oh, so my phone. I'm grabbing my phone as we speak. Do I need to update my phone right now?

Probably. The latest update to Google Messages prepares for a new way to handle the annoying iMessage reaction messages often seen in mixed group chats. Well, first of all, this is written from the perspective of somebody who doesn't have an iPhone. somebody named Kyle Bradshaw because it's not annoying when me a friend of yours who happens to have an iPhone loves something funny that you wrote about the Browns and is that annoying of me just because your system doesn't interpret it as a heart but just shows you Luke loved an image is it you're asking me my opinion of it well yeah I'm saying this is written from this Kyle Bradshaw says a new way to handle the annoying iMessage reaction messages has it been annoying to you because i think you're the only person in our text chain who doesn't have an iphone no that's

not true stew bot for sure because stew bot and i can text directly to each other and we can do that reaction thing to each other you can do the you can do the google version yeah i don't use it but i've noticed that that is the option when i'm when i'm texting somebody i think my friend steven also has a has an android it's funny i can name the people who have androids because the the color of the bubbles are slightly different and it has other like reaction options and again I don't usually go in for that but it is I mean listen I want to choose my words carefully here I'm not saying I'm annoyed by you or anybody on the chain when you use it like it's fine but yes like technologically it is kind of a pain because somebody will post a picture and it might even be somebody posted a couple of pictures like one person posted one thing and somebody posted something else and I won't know I'll just get like Sammy liked a picture Luke laughed at a picture Andrew emphasized a picture or Andy emphasized a picture I'm like I don't know what picture you're talking about and what's going on here. So it's not great. I just sent you a text message. Would you say this summarizes

your feelings? Is this something you could share with the rest of us, Amazing Larry?

Could you react? I just sent you a text message that says, could you react to this? By the way, just to continue

my theory that this person who wrote the piece is definitely a...

you know, some kind of non-iPhone user, surely every Android fan has at least one friend with an iPhone. Really? I bet you it's more than one friend. I'm also coming at this from the pro-iPhone standpoint. Surely every Android fan has at least one friend with an iPhone who insists on using reactions, even though you don't use iMessage. And then they go on to explain, in those instances you'll receive lengthy messages along these lines, so-and-so liked an image, so-and-so emphasized, we're on our way. Let's see here, I just reacted. to your text message, Andrew.

I just got a text message that says, Luke loved, hey, can you react to this? But let me try this. So you got the bad outcome? Well, just the usual.

This is the song I had ready in case I had COVID. I bet you if you update. I'm going to do this right now. Whatever you're working with, you'll get there. Which, again, I know what you're talking about. Like, I can sympathize. is it ever since i learned the difference between sympathize and empathize i haven't gotten any better at using them but i'm racked with self-doubt i can i think sympathize in this case yeah anyway i i can see how it kind of sucked for you and stew when you know there's messages flying around and and to be honest with you that the the reaction thing in in iphone where you press down for the five people that don't know what i'm talking about someone sends a text and maybe you just don't have a particularly important response that you want to actually write out you just appreciate that it happened or you don't like that it happened or you want to emphasize it you just hold your thumb down on the actual text that the other person sent on your phone and then you can just assign it a heart or a thumbs down or a thumbs up or whatever and it's a very easy way to sort of respond to something without actually having to put in much effort but if you're on that chain and you're like one of a shorter list of people who don't have the iPhone and you're just getting all of those and you don't even know

what thing it's attached to, that would be annoying. I'm trying to figure out, by the way, I'm updating this now. It's installing. I don't know if I have to do a restart. I don't think so. I see that this app needed an update seven days ago. I don't have automatic updates on. So every now and then I'll open this and I'll be like, literally, I probably updated all of my apps about a week ago, like right before this. And I now have 50 apps that are begging me to update them it's just like it's constant just constant but i don't like to have it do do it i'm with you

i don't like to just like let it be a free-for-all now why that happened with ways too like i was trying to figure out how long it's gonna take me to get up to my i'm stopping by my sister hannah's house before uh we we head on i head on up to my folks and i was trying to figure out how long it was going to take and i was trying to say well if i leave at this time and then and then it started prompting me hey you only let ways track your location when you're using it but it'd be better because we can send you like you know updates and if you turn on always and i really didn't want to do that because i don't like the phone just at all times tracking me but then i thought i don't know what am i worried about it's like i don't want it tracking me if i do some crime and ways is annoying in that a lot of times it just like gets confused as to where i am so i went ahead and let it just basically constantly figure out where i'm at at all times which felt kind of gross to me but it also seemed more convenient yeah i get emails about

once a month i think from google saying here's where you've been this month like it's like here's your google maps and it'll like it's weird it just shows you the highlights of where you've been now i just sent you a text message would you like to react to it in some way uh i just chose some random emojis to text you i don't know why you're giggling like a school boy over there well is this

new though that you can send me no i can always been able to send me emojis yeah i just i like

thumbs down i like eggplants you tell me and i like rainwater i don't know what's so funny yeah

no i mean are you gonna make your face are you gonna make your famous eggplant rainwater casserole for thanksgiving tomorrow it still says think about throwing some peaches in there it says

uh luke disliked it so i still didn't get the reaction let me ask you one more question here because this is where things get a little bit more complicated i think we have our show pick

by the way a lot from you and then me thumbsing it down read this story to me again from start to

finish no but no is it android messenger they're talking about or google messenger because the one that comes with my phone is like the android like the samsung i think um and i don't use that one because you can't there's no way to text from your desktop or laptop computer so i downloaded a third party app which is technically the google not the android or not the not the samsung but the google app and that lets me um you know have more uh whatever i can i can use it on my computer

which is this talking about this is the beta update to google messages version 10.

Do any of those words mean anything? That should be it.

Yeah, Google. That should be what I'm using. I don't know, man. I'll try restarting my phone and sending it some more emoji.

It appears, this was an update as of a couple days ago, it appears Google has already slowly begun rolling out messages' ability to interpret iMessage reactions to its own reactions. But, importantly, the fallback messages do not appear in the message history. Da-da-da-da-da. It sounds like this is on the horizon, and in some certain cases, it's available to people, but you may have to be in the beta test. you're probably just not on the short list of people that have access to it currently but my guess is that you will at some point if you choose to

yeah you're right you said beta give me the version number again sorry everybody 10.7 my version and this is the good part of the show is google text messages 10.5.284 so that is why no I got to get up to 10.7 thank you for sharing that with us amazing Larry I'm glad to know.

Is this something you can share with the rest of us amazing, Larry?

That is exciting to know it's on the horizon, though. Yeah, it is.

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, an email or V-mail before we launch out into that beautiful, cozy Thanksgiving break.

Yeah, I have a voicemail here for you. I have a couple actually I'm sorry I'm laughing Because I got distracted there Somebody a listener just posted A screen grab Of everybody's favorite Chef Whom we were talking about on yesterday's show Who may or may not have screwed over A whole bunch of Seattleites on Thanksgiving

I don't think that that's like I think that's a knowable thing

Apparently he's really upset about Yelp for some reason he wrote yeah I

Saw that yesterday Andrew and out of Trying to respect your wishes of not Escalating this I chose to skip because As we were chatting about this guy I Was scrolling through his Twitter Yesterday dude has got some pretty Strong takes and also does not I don't Think really understand how he's coming

Off online yeah it's interesting he's He's using from some very strong language eat blank forever yelp blank you oh that felt nice to say um and yeah apparently it looks like he has an issue here with people being able to use yelp to talk about how shitty the service at his restaurant maybe is this what's going on i mean here's the thing i actually don't think

he's totally wrong that yelp is in a certain way and i say this you know with a sister and brother-in-law who also own a restaurant yelp is definitely kind of how do i put it it it really stinks if you are running a business as best as you can like let's just say a restaurant in this case and somebody comes in who just happens to be dealing with whatever they're dealing with and they decide to write a terrible yelp review it's very hard as we've learned even from listeners i think um christina in texas her husband is a lawyer and they were dealing with this it's a bummer place to be if you if somebody decides to just start kind of defaming you on Yelp and your business and you didn't do anything wrong but what's different about like say what happened to Christina and what's sometimes happened to my sister and her husband is that this guy from Otto very much did do a bad job last year at Thanksgiving and so if people are going on yelp and saying hey that wasn't cool that seems appropriate to me i thought i could

have sworn that christina's version of events totally went counter to what your family's version of events was i thought that was the whole point of that voicemail although i'm blanking on the

details now i thought it was because i had said something the the origin i think of that or at least what prompted her to check in was i was under the impression that there was some kind of professional like there was a thing you could do to pay yelp to um have more a kind of control over what the comments looked like and so initially what i was what i was saying which i think turned out to be inaccurate based on what christina said was that yelp is running a protection racket because they create this thing which is yelp and then they sell you a pro version where you can actually kind of go in and maybe take posts down or deprioritize them if you'll pay them money right kind of like heck of a you know laundromat you got here be a real shame if something happened to it and i think what christina was clarifying was that doesn't exist because her husband had been through something and he's an actual lawyer right and he they couldn't get that and they couldn't

get those down and there was no way that was my memory yeah no you're right you're right so it did go somewhat counter thanks i you're absolutely right i just couldn't quite remember that but yeah, I don't know. I don't think this

guy has the right to be angry about people writing not great Yelp reviews when he's appears to have

done some not great things. And here's the thing. Like, I mean, there might be the occasional rare situation where you get a whole bunch of people to make up a bunch of lies about a restaurant and it's a bad service or whatever. But for the most part with Yelp, like the truth will out like you You can, you know, people tell on themselves like you can go to a restaurant's website and see, oh, it's mostly good reviews. And there's one person who came in on a bad day. I've been that person at a Euro shop and I was astounded at how bad the service was and they served me the wrong thing. And I couldn't believe I was the only person writing this bad review. And then everybody loved the shop. And then I went back like a year later and it was so good and became my favorite Euro shop. And I corrected my thing like I had a bad day there. They probably had somebody filling in. And I think we talked about that on the show That goes way back to my Wallingford days But I just sort of And I've heard about other things too But if somebody's a crank on Twitter And wants to complain about one bad thing That's fine But when there are a whole bunch of people From different walks of life All saying this restaurant You know is serving spiders and their chicken Like it's probably not That was a bad example But you know what I mean Like I just sort of feel like Well it is supposed to be the wisdom of the crowds And when this guy has a million Here it is Thanksgiving again. He's got a million Yelp reviews, including one from me and Vives that says, like, we had a terrible experience and basically we did not get our food nor an apology. Like, you can't be mad at Yelp, dude. Like, God damn. Like, I just spent yesterday saying, listen, I'm not going to be mad forever, like, whatever. Bygones be bygones. But, like, he's still playing the victim. He's still playing the victim. And, again, it's Vives and me. It was Thanksgiving for two people during a pandemic. It wasn't the end of the world. But, like, Thanksgiving is very important to some people. Like, that's a holiday. You ruined people's holidays during a dark time when they needed it the most because you overestimated the service you could do. Fine. You effed up. I'm not saying you're an evil person, but you cannot play victim here. Jeez Louise. I'm all worked up on a holiday.

The day before a holiday. What are we talking about? You've got about 20 hours, 24 hours to get out of your system.

20 more, 20 hours of rage. All right, here we go. Let me pull out of this funk here for a second. We got a voicemail. This is, and I hope this doesn't put us in the wrong place, too. You were talking about some doctor-related stuff the other day, Luke, and Anna just wanted to weigh in on this as a gentle, just, I guess a little gentle thing to add to the conversation.

Do I need to quickly give the context of what the doctor stuff was? Does that matter? Well. I haven't heard the voicemail. Yeah.

Do you think the voicemail explains it? I think the voicemail will make it clear enough. And I hope you're in an okay place to hear this, Luke.

Hi, guys. This is Anne in Seattle, and I heard Luke's chiropractor joke from a week back. And just wanted to let you guys know, if Ben's a chiropractor, it's not what it's cracked up to be. Power out.

There you go. You heard me checking voicemails before the show today, Luke. And I don't think you heard the voicemail itself, but you heard me laughing at something. And this is the voicemail that I've been dying to share with you all day.

Hey, Luke and Andrew, this is listener Sarah calling in from Hampton, Illinois. And I was listening to today's episode where Luke referred to how his dad would use endearing but awkward terms in text. and I'm struggling with a situation in my life where I don't know how to address my dad or if I should just let it go. My dad is in his early 70s and my kids are teenagers and so he you know tries to be the cool grandpa or cool dad to me and he gets real excited when he gets something like a good deal on something or if we're talking about a cool thing to buy for the kids he'll send me a picture of it because he's real excited and he wants to share it immediately so he'll send me a picture of something that he's excited about and he will say who's your daddy with the cool guy emoji little guy with sunglasses and i i just internally cringe and die a little every time i see these texts and uh i just let it go because maybe it's not worth addressing but it is so uncomfortable and uh me and my husband just laugh about it and i don't know what to do maybe i should

just let it go any advice i appreciate it power out well let me put it this way like that is so

rough who is my daddy and what does he do are you ready to sit down with your dad to explain the nuances of why that is tonally off like that's not a conversation anybody probably

wants to have i think i think just enjoy it and write it out and just enjoy it for what it is right if if he starts with who's your zaddy then it's no better then it's time to talk about it

but i think no i think that just goes down as one of those charming things and i'm probably not gonna ever you know my dad used babe yesterday like i don't i just it's not worth getting into and of course you one can tell what the intent is and the intent the intent in both of these cases is just love and relatability, and if it's one click off, it's probably not the end of the world.

Right, exactly, especially as we now do... Oh, my goodness, my pot was up. I was going to ask you if you wanted to go out with the Greatest American Hero theme song, Luke. I have the full version here. That's what we were talking about before, right?

Yeah, we were. I love that. I love that song so much. So that would be a fun way to wrap things up here on this Wednesday. Hey, thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back here tomorrow with a brand new episode that we recorded yesterday. So look forward to that. It's a fun little just kind of, I don't know, get you in the mood for Thanksgiving episode. Perfect for listening to while you're getting your big feast ready or while you're driving to wherever you're going, things like that. So please do join us for that. Until then, have a great rest of your Wednesday. Stay safe. Take care of yourselves. Try to avoid the traffic. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

Believe it or not, I'm walking on air I never thought I could feel so free High and away, on a wing and a prayer Who could it be? Believe it or not, it's just me Just like the light of a new day It hit me from out of the blue Breaking me out of the spell I was in Making all of my wishes come true Believe it or not, I'm walking on air I never thought I could feel so free Crying away on a wing and a prayer Who could it be? Believe it or not, it's just me This is too good to be true

Look at me Falling for you

Power out.