Muse

Here he comes. Here comes John Wayne. I'm not gonna cry about my pa. I'm gonna build an airport. Put my name on it. Why, Michael? So you can fly away from your feelings. You can keep them bottled up, but they will come out, Michael. Sometimes in the most unexpected... Hey, where the f*** are my hard-boiled eggs? TBTL!

i know i come on strong all right i radiate power i can't help them the employees at trader joe's

heaven sent they are saints they were made in a lab the manners and when they say how are you

i act i'm like i'm not well and they're like we have biscottis trees they're all around us but who gives a shit uh 56 pounds of beef that corresponds to i don't know what five or six year old kid. What podcast are you talking about? All right. Hello there, world. And welcome to a Monday edition of TBTL. I can't believe you're still on the air. The show that just might be too beautiful to live. I'm your host, Luke Burbank. I'm an activist and house party enthusiast. Very excited to bring you a special edition of TBTL Night Cheese.

Do you know what time it is? I'm sound asleep.

I heard you singing Night Cheese.

This is one of the few times a year where we actually record the show in the evening time. This is

special. This is

special. Not to give too much away, but let's just say these shows tend to get pretty sexy.

What a fun, sexy time for you.

And what is more sexy than me talking about Sky Jinx and my frustration at, well, actually, let me go back. Let me say this right here at the top of the show. the reason that we're doing tbtl night cheese edition is because as andrew mentioned earlier today in the show lit the little short 20 minute show that was recorded that was in your feed i'm doing some uh side projects this week i think i got up at about 4 30 today and as we sit here under the cover of the sexy sexy night it's i don't know more than 12 hours later and i am running on fumes so i want to apologize for any mistakes that i make any things i say that don't make a lot of sense it's because i am very exhausted that actually could make it for a fun show though i was gonna say is as i was flying up here last night something happened that represented a massive and fundamental change for me as a person as a human being

Wait a minute! Who are you?

And I'm excited to tell you all about it. Some degree of that person, that new person that I am, now hates Starbucks because of something they've done to me. A real double-cross. How dare you? That I found out about this morning, so we'll get into that. And, again, if you heard the earlier sort of mini-show that Andrew recorded today, the topic of Oreos came up, as it often does now on the program, and the topic of JoJo's came up. The Trader Joe's version of Oreos.

There's a crazy rumor going around that you folks like milk and cookies.

And we're going to do a little JoJo's taste testing with Genevieve coming up here in just a few on the program. We'll do all that with the help of this young man. Longest running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is, well, he is going to be leaned upon heavily this episode. Before we started recording, he said, yeah, I can tell you're getting tired. and he was not wrong thank god he has been practicing his vocal exercises your voice is like a combination of fergie and jesus he is andrew walsh and he's joining me right now from just across this table hello my friend and thank you in advance for carrying me through this episode

oh absolutely one set of footprints luke that's my motto let me ask you although i feel like if

you walked along the beach first i could step in your footprint yeah that's true because your feet are very large, and no one would be the wiser. In fact, maybe that's what we could

do, just to fool people. Maybe that's what Jesus was doing. I mean, I don't want to get all

religious here on a TBTL night cheese. What if Jesus was just sneaking around? What if, like, John the Baptist just had huge-ass water skis, and then Jesus

Or there was, like, fake cloth prints that you can use, like a Sasquatch, if you want to make it look like a Sasquatch was there. I can see John the Baptist using those.

I just saw a news article the other day about these couple of guys in the UK who started Crop Circles? They just started making them themselves? Yeah, they...

forget what had happened but they they were at a pub drinking as one does and they got the idea for some reason to go out and kind of just make some designs in this i don't know cornfield or whatever and uh they started doing this for fun for themselves and then they decided at some point to make the designs in a field where there was a vantage point where you could actually see it like they were doing it for a while in such a way that no one could even see it they couldn't even see they could which is raises real questions about well what's going on for them they pour I'm stiff at that pub they must have But they decided one day to do it or one Night probably to do it in a field where you could Actually go up a different hill and See it and they did and by The next day there was like 50 news stories about it and People weighing in on the aliens That had arrived this is modern day or This is going back no this is going back 20

30 years this is the origin Of yes wait are you talking about a Jag or the Jag wait Oh so you're saying this is the origin of the big phenomenon of crop circles. This wasn't somebody saying, hey, crop circles are a thing and we're going to make our own. I believe these two,

Doug Bauer and Dave Chorley, first created a representation of flying saucer nests in a wheat field in Wiltshire, England in 1976.

76.

They could not have foreseen that their work would become a cultural phenomenon.

I didn't realize that crop circles were such kind of a new phenomenon. on i figured this went back to like the early 1900s or something well if you were listening to

coast to coast with george nori i'm sure that they've found some that the aztecs found or something but uh all of the kind of uh more reliable i guess reporting on it just has these two dudes again doug bauer and dave chorley doug and dave classic doug and dave doug and dave getting up to their old hijinks uh they uh yeah they were just kind of probably drunk one night But let's see over a drunk over a drink one evening in 1976, a bower suggested to Chorley, let's go over there and make it look like a flying saucer has landed.

So that was their intent. OK, right.

So they were trying to since then crop circles have been reported worldwide in a multitude of crops in southern England, yada, yada, yada. Anyway, I don't know why that story. I wonder if there's if we're somehow near the anniversary of it happening or one of the guys passed away. For some reason, that story, did you see a reason, a news hook for it?

Not that I can think of, certainly, no. I thought you were pointing at your computer. Oh, no, no, I'm looking at my computer because you're boring me and I just wanted to play some solitary. No, I was actually looking for the show sheet because I wanted to change subjects here, but I'm not sure if I'm stepping on your show sheet by bringing up the Starbucks thing. Because I wanted to make a guess about what Starbucks has finally done to put you off of their product. All right. Take a guess. Did they sell your favorite basketball team to another city?

It's so weird that you bring that up because this morning I was on a jog, and I jogged past Howard Schultz, Andrew, and I had a whole speech ready for it. No. Right, right. It is not. You are incorrect, my friend. Oh. That it's the sale. They did that many years ago, or I should say Howard Schultz. I don't want to hold that against the good people of Starbucks. This morning, I got up and I was driving over to this side gig that I'm doing that I've probably signed various non-disclosures around. So I'll not put the D in NDA. I'll not disclose a thing I've signed an agreement to non. But I was heading over to where the thing was happening, and I wanted to get a cup of coffee because I will say this about this side project. very serious about the covid protocols and in a good way i knew that when i got to the location we were going to be filming i was going to take not just a rapid test but a pcr test and wait in my car for the results of the rapid test i think the pcr comes back tomorrow but i knew i'd have some time in the car so i wanted to have a cup of coffee are those tests getting better by the way

the pcrs are they still just like are they really mining for gold up they gave me the option of

self-swabbing oh and i said yes indeed i will self-swab thank you careful your palms will get hairy i know the contours of these here nostrils and uh-huh um so uh so anyway i knew i was going to be in the car waiting for the results of the test before i could go in and start working so i just had in my mind i wanted a cup of coffee for that part of the waiting uh so i i put into ways where's the nearest um starbucks to me and it turned out the closest one was a uh like a starbucks mobile truck parked in front of the Burke Museum on the University of Washington campus and I happened to be driving down 45th at the time and a lot of the Starbucks in the university area don't actually have drive-thrus they're like walk-up you know storefronts so I thought well this is good this

one will be easy to deal with so i pull onto the uw campus which i haven't been on in a while and just being on there was such so nostalgic for me getting on like steven's way it'd be like if

you went back to kent state yeah yeah see i drive i just drove through the campus here recently like ways i was i was eating a subway sandwich and then i had to pick up genevieve on campus so i went through the campus in a way i never do and i saw all these kids and it was an interesting drive to see college life again but i had no personal connection to it at all you know but you i can imagine just like you know me i i get high on nostalgia i can imagine what that was like i mean

and i was only i i went like a block onto the campus but even that just seeing ways going turn right on steven's way like don't tell me about steven's way yeah i know about steven's way i was on steven's way before you were invented ways before you were twinkle in some app developer's eye as they downed soylent and coated away into the night so anyway i went to this uh this truck And I walked up to it And I asked if I could please have a medium coffee And then I said And can I have a Splenda And the person in the truck said We don't have Splenda And I was like, okay And they said We're phasing out Splenda as a company We're not going to have Splenda anymore

Wow Now what are they replacing it with though? Because I think we're going to have Genevieve Jump in here a little bit later Because it's after hours, like you said And so Genevieve's home from work right now And I wanted to get her take on some stuff But now Genevieve and you were the two Splenda people in my life, like hardcore Splenda people. And Genevieve has switched to a different sugar substitute now. Do you know about this?

I think last time I was here, I saw the – I don't know if it was the apparatus or the packages. I feel like you mentioned something, but I didn't get a full report, which I –

Now, we still have Splenda packets for when you're here and other Splenda curious people. bit more or that's how i define myself by the way maybe devotees would be i'm poly splendorous

is that a show title poly splendorous splenda is um but i mean i did claim that tonight was going

to be a fun sexy time and i think yeah what a fun sexy time for you step in that direction we're getting there um well i am afraid that i can't continue this conversation any further and i have much regret about bringing it up because i can't i don't use sweetener so i can't remember what Genevieve is using now, but it's some sort of a sugar substitute that you can also kind of like bake with, etc. And I think that it has, when she's here later... We'll find out

during the Great JoJo Taste-a-thon.

I think what she likes is that it acts more like regular sugar. In other words, you use the same amount. In other words, a teaspoon of sugar or a teaspoon of this stuff, which whatever it is. Right. Splenda is

super duper sweetened so that a little bit of Splenda is like a hundred times sweeter than that amount of Sugar, which is part of what throws me off if I am putting sugar at Thanksgiving. My parents never have Splenda. Monk fruit. Monk fruit.

That's what it is. Sorry. It's monk fruit sugar, I believe.

That's the sugar that manages to solve so many cases, even though it's got its quirks.

You know, Genevieve compares me to Monk all the time. She even made me a custom Monk t-shirt for my birthday. That's a high compliment. That says I'm with Monk and I love it. But does that make me Dulé Hill? What I didn't realize, which one is that? Is that his first? He's the sidekick. Oh, the guy. Oh, okay, gotcha. Not one of his nurses. You know what? I've never watched Monk.

I just know Dulé Hill was also in it.

I always knew that Monk was overly fastidious and OCD and all these things. I didn't know that he also has an aversion to dairy like I do. Not like a physical one, but he just thinks dairy is really gross. And apparently in an episode he had to make the choice of either walking up three stairs on a ladder or drink milk. and he couldn't figure out which was more terrifying for him. But anyway, yeah, so my question for you is, if they replaced Splenda with something like maybe monk fruit, which you haven't tried yet or something, are you at least open to trying something new?

Sure. And in fact, today I had to have Stevia in there, which I dislike greatly. You do. Yeah, and then what I noticed was that the criticism of Starbucks coffee is that they burn the coffee. And I've never really noticed that. Now, maybe it was because this was a truck. It was a mobile truck, right? So it was two people working there. It was the – it felt like it was pretty far to the edge of the Starbucks experience.

But it also sort of sounds cute. I like that they're doing this. Oh, yeah.

I mean it was – yeah, everything about it was fine other than the fact that they burned the coffee and they didn't have my beloved Splenda. But, yeah, if I were getting something else and they – if I was getting some more involved coffee that they do make all the time, it's probably – lots of people were making use of it as they walked up onto the campus. So it was conveniently located. But, yeah, I noticed that the coffee was burned more than normal, maybe because the stevia kind of was adding to the acrid flavor. I'm not sure. But I finally got that, the criticism of Starbucks that many people have leveled. But... But as far as trying monk fruit, sure. I mean, I'm open to anything. What I really need to do is just at some point convert to drinking black coffee. I'm very close. In fact, the other day I had – I think we were doing the show. I had a coffee and I had forgotten to put my Splenda in it. So as we were talking, I was just sipping on this black coffee. Was that at home? Yeah, I was at my house. See, it was broadcast, right?

I'm not just saying this to suck up to our buddy Barry. I'm telling you, I was about to say, if you are going to try to make the transition to going without sweetener, I think having really good quality beans.

All the coffee lovers of the world. I think you're right.

Like broadcast is really going to help you. I think you're right. And you can probably even dial in maybe what kind of beans you like.

I think you're right because I got about three sips in and I was like, you know what? I don't even miss that this doesn't have anything in it. I mean, I missed it a little bit, but I could tell that if I would have just finished that cup and then the next time done the same thing, I could have probably formed a habit. Yeah, I just I'm frustrated that Starbucks is if this is true. And I also don't know because it's possible that this young person working in this mobile Starbucks is not getting all of the information from the, you know, the main source. Maybe they're eliminating it from these trucks. Maybe they're eliminating it from college campuses.

I mean, could this be college campuses have a sweetener problem? I think we all know that. Well, it's cancel culture for you.

You can't have any kind of sweetener on the average American. I mean, these kids are so coddled, just brainwashed, so coddled. I mean, critical Splenda theory.

Is that a show title? That's a show title.

They teach these kids to hate Splenda. So anyway, that made me think, well, I'm never going to Starbucks because the reason that i go to starbucks is because i know that they have splendor yeah i've i've complained you know for too long on the show about fancy coffee places and how those ones it's much more likely that they don't have splendor uh but now that my i mean what's really going to happen is i will soon be getting my coffee from am pm exclusively or broadcast if i'm at home god too much good Splenda that's what Toomgest stands for

There is an entire Reddit conversation Going on here I'm Trying to see what is It's on the subreddit Of Starbucks and this Is from five months Ago okay Splenda Discontinued question Mark posted by golf Mike tango oh great we

Have a terrible history On this show of people

Named golf man and

Golf Mike by the it Says hey cucks no two points if you get a golf man reference on this show yeah you've earned your stripes if you remember

if you go back to the day god that guy was i mean he was one of the first toxic trolls and really that was um that was kind of a crossover from when you and i were working at uh on daytime radio at cairo right and i kind of crossed over anyway just terrible man anyway i've been having an odd tasting drip coffee the past few days and the cashier finally told me that they are quote no longer carrying splenda is that becoming a more specific decision or company-wide any thoughts as to why so well i'm glad i started this because that's just somebody asking the question but it is out there in the universe st louis trib we'll see here's the thing

in 2016 the st louis or excuse me the salt lake tribune it just said sl trib and so for some reason i took that to be st louis tribune the salt lake city tribune said as of uh 2016 starbucks to begin serving stevia not splenda uh starting in 2016 yeah well so are they are they just now running out of the supply wow did it take them did it take them five years to get rid of all the splenda that they had like uh you know in the pantry this is interesting so this subreddit of

just you know our starbucks or whatever uh if you're somebody who actually works in the company you get a little like a little badge and so this is somebody who is a barista that says again five months ago a barista weighing in here says company-wide it keeps getting zeroed out on our orders and now we have a supervisor weighing in here a starbucks supervisor if you can believe it splenda is temporarily discontinued or unavailable throughout the summer uh there are a lot of beverage components that starbucks put a pause on us being able to order right now i do wonder if this is supply chain shit again once your locations run out of splenda that's it until whenever starbucks allows us to start ordering it again well you know what i think you better get

getting into this new world coffee order i am going to become one of those people who just

carries around a little ziploc bag of their own sweetener do it too you know what no you're not going to carry around a ziploc bag of that you're going to get yourself a cute little satchel probably give me something you're going to get drunk and you're going to go on amazon when you're done with this why don't we get drunk and buy something that's the song you're You're going to find yourself some sort of a little, like, little carrying thing.

God, if only there was a little bullet type of cylinder that... that I could put white powder in, just have it at my disposal at any time.

Is that a cocaine thing?

Yeah, like a little spoon. They sell these, like, there's all kinds of, like, things that are sold ostensibly to keep snuff in, although I feel like there's very few people that are doing snuff anymore, but these things that are, you know, I think designed probably for keeping your cocaine in.

Yes, I was looking for something. I can't tell you what it was, but it was not drug-related. No, but it was Genevieve's. I was looking for a little something I'm picking up for Genevieve, So I was in an area of the internet where I am not often in, which is Etsy, because I was looking for something that was a little bit more kind of handmade or cutesy. Is that what Etsy's branding is? So anyway, and I was looking for – okay, I'm going to whisper, because you need to know this when I want to – I was looking for little spoons for Genevieve's new guava sugar thing. She's got a cute little container for it, and she said, I need a little spoon. So I'm looking for little spoons. But as you say, when you start Googling, then they think you're looking for something else. So I started seeing other things.

And there was a little spoon road is paved with Bolivian marching powder, my friend.

And there are all these like they they were showing clearly marijuana bowls like pipes, but they called them something else. And like I'm 20. I remember going into like head shops in high school, not for any drug related purpose. But that's where I would get my tie dye and my hippie pullover ponchos and like all of my incense and my Donovan records. Right. Like Quonset hut for the Akron Canton heads out there. So I was going into this place all the time. So I was I was familiar with this idea of renaming drug paraphernalia, something that seems more legal from long before I ever tried any kind of a drug. But I just saw that the other day, like you must not be able to sell like marijuana bowls on Etsy. So they have some silly name for it, like Round Gentleman's Pipe or whatever. I don't even know what they were calling it.

Well, if I do become a person who's carrying around a little tiny satchel or container or Ziploc bag of my own sweetener, it'll only be one part of New Luke, Andrew, because, as I said at the top of the show, I became a different person last night on my flight up here, okay?

Oh, this isn't even the Starbucks. No. So that made you kind of a different person because you got to find a new coffee sitch.

Right. But this is where I really the the the rebirth of Luke. I'm emerging from some sort of metamorphosis. OK. And it's and I noticed it last night. I was flying up here from Portland and I I was it was weird because I I was taking a late night flight or, you know, somewhat late. I think the flight was like eight fifty or something. and i i looked at the seating arrangement and there was many empty seats on the flight and including the kind of primo coach seats the ones that are in the front row of coach and i kind of had my pick and my experience with when that is happening is it means that i'll probably get moved up to first class if it's a short flight and there's not that many other people on the plane because of all the travel that i do and my little status and i looked at the wait list for first class, and there was like 15 names on it, and I wasn't even one of the 15. I thought, that is so strange. But something like this has happened before, and I called the phone number for the airline, and I said, can you explain why it is that I'm not even in the top 15 people waiting for an upgrade when there's like 20 people on this flight, and I am in the highest category of this airline? And the person on the phone said, yeah, just sometimes there's a lot of people on the flight who all have status. And I was like, okay, that doesn't totally check out, but whatever. so when that's happened previously so when it happened last night i thought well that's just what's happening so i show up at the airport and i i'm like there's some time i'm waiting the flight the the gate people are not busy so i walk over i go hey do you know what's going on with this and she looks at she goes oh you should be on the wait list for first class i'm so sorry you're like she puts me on and she goes there's one seat left in first class uh if no one buys it between now and whenever like you should probably get it i don't know so i was like cool so i go and i sit they load the plane and they still haven't figured out if I'm going to get to be in first class or not. And I'm sitting in the front row of coach and I'm sitting on the window and it's like I'm totally comfortable. I'm like, you know, looking at tick tock on my phone or whatever, but I, my eyes, I'm laser beaming seat to a, which is the seat that I saw on her chart that is in first class and where I should be moved. If no one takes it, if nobody comes in, like buys a first class ticket 10 minutes before the flight, which would never happen. And I'm sitting there and I'm now becoming as more and more people get on as the plane is more and more loaded and I'm watching the flight attendant in the front I say like I'm thinking to myself why are they not coming and inviting me up into first class like what do they think is going to happen like it's this is that seat is mine and I'm sitting here I'm three rows of

away from it and that is rightfully my seat this is why i sacrifice uh so much in my life all this travel so that i can have this little status so i can go be in that seat meanwhile i'm in a very comfortable seat and i'm on the window which is my preference this first class seat is on the aisle and i'm going around and around and i'm instead of just relaxing and getting ready to take off on this flight i'm totally bound up over if the person's going to come and get me and move me and i'm thinking where are my bags because my bags are in the overhead that i'm at so that means when i go to first class the bags are going to be behind me and i'm just i'm not i'm so stressed out sitting there about what's going to happen with this seat and at some point something inside me just gives and i go what are you doing here you're totally comfortable right now this is a 20 minute flight they don't even serve like also it's sunday i'm not going to have a drink but even if i like don't even serve alcohol on in first class of this flight the flight attendants never even get up on the flight. Why would I even get up and move to a seat that's two inches wider than this very comfortable seat that I'm in? Because why? Because I can, because they asked me to, because I'm obsessed with it. And I realized when they come over here and ask me or say, Hey, Mr. Burbank, you're being upgraded to first class. I'm just going to say, no, I'm fine here. And I decided that I was actually going to turn down first class, which is something I've never done in my life and i sat there and i made this decision and i realized that like i had really turned a corner and with just getting obsessed with something that i think is owed to me even if it's not actually going to be more comfortable or matter and that was exactly when someone came in and sat down into a somebody who had apparently bought a ticket in or or had shifted to the flight and had more status than me so it ended up being that the seat was taken anyway none of this mattered but I promised you Andrew I was going to turn it down if they came over to me

but you were going to turn it down by saying about time I don't even want it anymore right is that what you're going to say

I had written that down on a piece of paper and I was going to hold it up no I was going to make it kind of a thing I was going to stand up and face the back of the plane and say I know you all saw what happened which is they came over and offered me first class but I'm a man of the people yes and I'd like to stay here no it is you're going to stand up and say

are there any orphans on the plane who would like a first class seat because i father christmas father christmas lucals

no it ended up being totally moot but i swear to god i was fully emotionally prepared to say no thanks when they came over and that you know felt like a different approach to life i don't know how long it'll last but i i really did hit a point where i was like this does not matter in this moment you need to calm down and i did i didn't know where you were going with this story

when you first started telling it and i gotta say and i mean clearly you were getting to that point so i guess it's not a coincidence but i was sort of thinking like yeah this is the kind of thing that i try to avoid now i'm not saying that i am always good at it you know me like part of the reason why i am the way i am is because i i can get obsessed like we always give the example of like you're standing in a line and like i when i'm standing in a long line that isn't like a very clear line i get so much anxiety about somebody getting ahead of me you know i'm not just talking at the grocery store or something i just mean like in a more high pressure situation whatever that means like this idea of just like oh i shouldn't be you know whenever i try to upgrade my experience it causes me so much anxiety about not getting it that i tend to just not do that but it's not a good thing it's not because i'm above it it's because i'm very uncomfortable in the scenario that you're talking about right like will i get it will i not and again i'm not trying to say that i'm better because i'm not i'm just saying that like it's the kind of thing that i avoid so while you were describing that i was thinking like god this just sounds so miserable this just sounds miserable hey listen though i've also been in some pretty shitty airplane seats and that's also miserable you know what i mean like you say they're going to try to keep this attitude yeah but also i think it's pretty human that if you were in a middle seat between you know you and two people your size or whatever so there's not tons of room to move around like yeah you're going to want to get in that first class seat i mean we're all just human but also finding those moments where you're like hey i'm in the window and especially for a 20 minute flight like it's so rare that i've even taken god that's such a short flight you know what i mean that's definitely

doable so i'm trying to find this quote from marcus aurelius that i heard about the other day that has uh here it is i swear to god andrew this i know i was kind of making a joke out of my life changing or me changing as a person but this is been this has been resonating with me the last week or two this is what marker marcus aurelius said about anxiety today i escaped anxiety or no i discarded it because it was within me in my own perceptions not outside and i've been thinking about that a lot i've been thinking about my anxiety as like a lunchbox that i'm just Thank you. carrying around you know what i mean like i think i'm anxious because alaska airlines forgot to put me on the list of who's getting upgraded to seat 2a but it's like no the anxiety i'm what i have the potential to do is to discard it because it's with me i'm bringing it along you know i mean

certainly there are things yeah there's something like i would say like if i were going in for another hand surgery or something tomorrow i'd be very very anxious about that and i would try to yeah i would try to keep that in mind that this is in my control are you disagreeing with marcus aurelius well i'm just saying like one of us is kind of smart ain't you marco um but marco wrongo no but you know what i mean there are some things where you're anxious and you should remember that you should try to minimize that and have some control over it but the situation you're talking about is very much self-created anxiety right but i mean i would also say i'm not in the position of

you know i didn't go through what you went through with your hand um and the experience ended up fine right because i guess if you were going hardcore with this theory let's say that i'll just put it back on me let's and i'm hoping this isn't the case but let's say that i were to uh

have a really bad surgery sure exactly that's what you're gonna say if i were to have you

finished my sentence if i were to need if i were gonna have if i had a life-threatening butt situation uh-huh no if i got a really bad medical diagnosis i'm trying to think of the thing that is most justified in creating anxiety probably something that felt a threat to our to our life would be really high on the list or the life of someone we love of course but like i guess if you were going to be hardcore with this you would say okay i can still choose to be anxious or not anxious about that i'm not saying i would successfully put this lunchbox of anxiety down but i guess i guess why this spoke to me was this idea that anxiety is something that i have with me that's my my own perception of things it's my own reaction to the stimuli of the world it's not something that the world necessarily places on me that i have no i'm just talking about myself now i'm not telling people how to live but i was thinking about this on the plane and i was like i'm anxious about this seat which is not again something that alaska airlines did to me as much as something i'm carrying around doing to myself and i decided to just kind of like discard that anxiety for a minute and i mean again that was right about the time when someone was sitting in the seat anyway so it was none of this really ever got to play out but even just that simple act of being like i'm not gonna go sit up there i don't have to be obsessed and then i just went back to like enjoying my tiktok viewing now when we got to seattle there were some problems which was we landed and oh we got to go to break here we landed the airplane pulled in and then the um what do you call the is the gate i guess you know the thing that connects to the plane yeah

the thing that goes out on the tarmac like the big the worm the worm yeah i'm talking about the worm

the worm broke two inches from being connected to the plane yeah and we had to wait about an

hour and a half for the worm so you end up being in that seat for two hours for the computer which

is why marcus aurelius was wrong yeah one of the reasons marco wrong go um no but it was that's

kind of a nightmare oh to have it at the end of your trip it was rough i felt worse for the people

who were trying to make connecting flights oh god i was there you know what i switched over to listening to uh that podcast the rumor that our friend sam dingman is doing and so i was i was fine you know what i mean i didn't have to connect i just had to go to my hotel i was just listening to an interesting podcast i was i was at that point pretty chill about it but boy oh boy there were some people that were getting hot because to be all of the way at the end of your journey and then to see that thing going and then it stops and i was because i was still on the window in coach i could see that it was not quite pressed up against the plane and they had to get someone from the port of seattle to come which is really who runs the airport yeah yeah they didn't have to come from like the waterways yeah but they somebody who wasn't like doing the joystick of that thing had to come and then they couldn't fix it and then i could just see a growing contingent of people in the that part of it because there were just those little narrow windows that are in the accordion section of it and i could just see more people and more people on phones and i was like this is not good i don't know what they rebooted the computer eventually they got somebody

there who knew what they were plugged it and plugged it back yeah have you tried unplugging

it anyway they finally got it over and then we all got off the plane but thankfully i was in a totally zen state because i had learned how to discard my anxiety by then so i rolled with it

you don't have to i will we were talking about anxiety before i had a thought that we're not going to get to the bottom of now obviously i don't know we're not going to solve anxiety ask your friend marcus if he's so smart but i do wonder this is such a terrible way to toss a break but i just do wonder what is the evolutionary imperative of human anxiety like Oh, I have theories. I mean... You would think that, okay, well, you want to be like a certain amount of maybe nervousness or caution in the wild will give you heightened senses so that you can protect yourself from from prey or danger like that makes sense to me. But the idea of I have to give a speech tomorrow, you know, worrying about something in the future that is not in your personal environment in that moment.

What is the why, you know, you would think that it would there would be a point of diminishing returns on anxiety as a survival strategy. Yeah. So the person who is standing on the Serengeti and tended to get a little worried about saber tooth tigers or the threat of saber tooth tigers or the threat of not having enough food, they might survive longer because they're planning ahead a little bit thinking of the future.

Yeah, I guess.

But then there you're like, you're right. Then there's a person who's paralyzed because they're worried about not having any food in two years.

Yeah.

And that seems like that would actually not help you in the natural selection process.

Like it's him ringing it like the Woody Allen of Cro-Magnon man, like ringing his hand.

Right. Like you would think that there would because you're right. Like the simplest form of anxiety, you can see why it would help us, you know, back in the olden times. But then there's the highly evolved form that we have now. I actually think and I know we need to go to break and I'm also like I'm at a point of tired where this is probably like if I were to have had like five drinks like that's where I'm at. So you can't no one hold anything I'm going to say against me because I'm I'm basically legally drunk now just from tiredness.

But I'm going to say, please don't get us canceled.

But I've found it to be tremendously relieving to think about myself as an anxious person of late. And by that I mean I just do a lot of weird stuff And a lot of self-destructive stuff And a lot of just in my own head At times, you know, speaking of actually drinking We'll probably have more drinks than is advisable I do all kinds of things And I can't ever put my finger on why I do these things Or why it is I seek out certain stimuli, etc And I think it's because I'm anxious And because when I'm doing a lot of those things It quiets that It makes me feel less anxious Which is like an obvious diagnosis But I don't think I've thought of myself in those terms because I am not like a Woody Allen in most of my life. I'm kind of a bro. I'm kind of I'm pretty gregarious. I feel Diane Wiest that more of how I don't speak, Andrew. Haven't you seen the emails? Don't speak. No, but like I think that I have thought I'm this just kind of pretty comfortable and relatively comfortable in my skin, relatively comfortable going out in front of people or doing things. that might make other people feel nervous i've i felt probably some certain amount of pride around the fact that like i'm not some i'm not some person who's paralyzed by anxiety i'm just kind of a doer yeah i think i really am a very anxious person and if basically if i can if i if i address the fact that i am an anxious person it explains a lot of other shit it doesn't mean i need to do all the other shit but at least it gives a reason for it because otherwise it makes no sense you can start working on it yeah it's a different kind of like i'm diagnosing probably what the thing is which is anxiety why do i feel kind of off a lot of the time and when i'm doing all kinds of things and it could be even jogging it doesn't have to all be self-destructive but throughout the day i am doing a bunch of things at all times to not feel a certain way that's just an underlying kind of condition for me and i think that condition is actually anxiety but i haven't really thought about it that way a lot in my life i've just thought it's i don't know what i've thought it is but knowing that or thinking that's what it is feels like okay well that gives me some tools yeah to to maybe uh deal with it so um i guess that's probably as good a time as any to take a quick break and then eat some cookies so we'll do that quick break and then the great jojo's taste test when we return i've been talking on the first part of the show about how i'm a changed person but some things about me are unchanged including my appreciation for the tbtl donors of the day that's i don't care what happens to me i will never ever stop feeling appreciative i was going to get a double negative territory. Thank you to our donors of the day is what I'm trying to say. Also, thanks to Genevieve for popping in. Thank you for helping us out with this upcoming JoJo's cookie challenge. Happy to help.

Would you be interested in helping us by supporting TBTL? I feel like I do support TBTL. I think as I was forming that question, I was regretting it.

I was trying to do a thing where...

I would actually like to give a little less.

Is that an option? I was trying to mute you with my mind as you were saying that, Andrew. Between lifestyle, in-kind donations just by virtue. of your creativity Genevieve I feel like you give the show if anything too much and you're going to be asked to give even more because there's a pronouncer later on in these donors that is going to call your what are you doing Duolingo? Yeah I'm doing

French Duolingo. Yes good we're going to need it

coming up here in a minute. First though we're going to thank Abony Holmes Alexander in Bowie Maryland of course these donors of the day are supporting TBTL financially making today's episode possible special TBTL night cheese edition where Luke finally gets real about his anxiety. Johnny Kim is in Honolulu, Hawaii. See you there in a few weeks, Johnny. Did you hear, Veeves, that we're all going to be in the greater Hawaii area at the same time, but just on different islands? Oh, that's funny. The tri-Hawaii area. Andrew, right. Andrew carefully scheduled you guys to be on a different island than me and Becca.

Oh, I didn't know where you were going.

Yeah, I readjusted some plans once I heard what Luke's playing. You guys are going to Molokai now, sorry.

Oh boy, that's a tiny one

My question to you This puts you in an impossible position I asked Andrew this on the air And it's moot because we're not going to the same island But had we all been on the same island Would it have been fun to hang out Or would it have felt like work, life, balance

Do you think that every time you and I hang out Outside of the podcast That I'm somehow like That it's work for me?

I write it all off on my taxes

That's exactly what I was going to say I didn't even know that was an option

Legally, not officially Johnny, Kim, and Honolulu Thank you for supporting the program Also thanks to Lindsay Malvo Excuse me, or Mavalo In Carrollton, Texas Thanks, Lindsay Lindsay's been sticking with the show for many a year

I'm surprised you have not made it to Carrollton, Texas yet I feel like more and more you're in Texas these days

I may have been to a Buc-ee's in Carrollton, Texas Or I went to some cryogenic facility there oh uh i uh i was very proud casually throwing i was very proud cryogenic around you said cryogenic on the show lit today i did the little mini show that you did you said it great and then you got cocky yeah you called it chirogenic because i i can't yeah i'm trying to learn how to say

cryogenics and aesthetics right two very tough words for me um but if i say them right in a row My brain just can't handle it.

I can't say apothecary.

Oh, there you did it, though.

I struggle with annihilate. Really? Yeah.

As a concept or as a word?

As a word.

Thank you to Rachel Marchetti, who's in Fair Oaks, Pennsylvania. Thanks also to Shandor Witcher in Philadelphia, PA, really getting that Pennsylvania feel in the thank yous today. And then Julie Bion in, I don't know how you pronounce this, Genevieve. Can you see on Andrew's computer? That's pretty far away. I don't know. V-E-Y-R-E hyphen M-O-N-T-O-N in Oulala, France.

I guess Vermonton.

That's what I was going to say, but it sounded really good.

It sounds good, doesn't it? Yeah.

Thank you, Julie. And thank you, Vise, for that pronouncer in Vermonton.

That's my best guess. Like, honestly, the pronouncer parts that you do with Duolingo are my worst. That's my worst segments.

How far along the journey are you with the learning?

I'm pretty far. I've been doing it for, it's kind of like one of those things where you don't, it's like alcohol. It's like, you know, alcohol recovery. You don't want to miss a day. And so I've done it for 422 consecutive days.

Do you get a coin for that?

Yes.

Oui, oui. I get a franc. I'm getting my 400-day, Frank.

And I'm pretty good. I've probably done about a third of the whole French course. And this week I'm learning about how to say I was born and things were born and things died.

So do you feel like you could have a conversation if you were in France?

I mean, within some very limited contexts, sure.

And this is me literally being an idiot, not pretending to be an idiot. Is there a big difference between the kind of French you're learning and the kind of French they speak in Canada? I assume not. Oh, don't you think French, like Quebecois?

I bet I would really struggle with Quebecois French. Which is interesting. I would probably struggle with any colloquial French.

I struggle with Canadian.

English Canadian. Canadian English, I should say.

Oh, want to go out in a boat, in a boat? What?

I'm confused. That is interesting because, I mean, is it okay for me to say this? I think we've said it on the show before. You started this project when we were not sure who the next president was going to be. It was just sort of a security blanket action. Actually, a way of dealing with your anxiety, I think.

A way of handling my anxiety.

Have you heard what Marcus Aurelius says on anxiety? We're well into a conversation on anxiety already today. Ah. Yes.

Today and... every day but that was actually that's a very positive response to that you know to sort of say well i'm going to take this bad feeling i have and channel it towards something that feels productive and that might actually come in handy etc yeah i mean it was always just sort of

a it was not a real plan but it was like a way of like yeah like andrew said like managing my anxiety in a semi-productive way well and based on a lot of the machinations at the state

legislative level in a lot of places. Don't stop. Yeah, exactly. Just roll right through until you can speak French for all of us in this room. French seems like

the bad choice now because we went as soon as Biden got into office. What did he do? He went and pissed off France.

Damn submarine deal.

That's a really good point.

Thank you so much to all of our donors of the day for making today's special episode of TBTL possible. Thanks. We wouldn't be here without you. hello and welcome to top story all right andrew can you refresh my memory a little bit on on how we ended up with this jojo's taste test about to happen we were talking about yannis whose last

name i'm still not great at saying anton how do you say it on a cupo i think there i was going

to try to make a joke about the french town we just mentioned and i'd already forgotten

that's how we ended I couldn't remember the origins of us even talking about Oreos on the show but yes of course that was it Giannis just learned the famous basketball player just learned that you're supposed to dunk your Oreos in milk because he grew up in Greece and he did not have access to Oreos like he does now that he's a rich and famous NBA star

I don't know if you've heard that tape Veeves it is so endearing

I've only heard Andrew's sort of recap of it but it sounds really cute

it's adorable

Ironically, and I'm not just saying this as a little plug, but Genevieve, you and I were also talking about the kind of origin of Hydrox and Oreo on After These Messages recently, which I know that we've talked about that on the show before.

Because Hydrox was first, right?

Hydrox was first, yeah. And there's this commercial from the 19, I want to say 70s, right, where there's just like this desperate guy dressed up as a Hydrox and you just keep saying, just say the name. It's Hydrox. It's Hydrox. I'll actually see if I can dial that up for our audience here because it is an amazing example of just reactionary marketing. This guy is just – and then literally two men carry him off and put him back in the cookie box like a mad man.

It's driven him completely over the edge that people don't remember the name of the cookie. And the implication is that what they do remember is Oreos, which Oreo – as I said to Andrew, Oreo did one thing way better than Hydrax, which was name their cookie. Yes.

something other than Hydrox. Oh, one sounds like an industrial floor cleaner. Exactly. And one sounds kind of whimsical and fun.

I'm sorry that we're so off topic here, but just really quickly, this is the 1988 commercial supposedly, although that seems late for me for Hydrox cookies. You see a big box of Hydrox cookies and then this guy who's just dressed up in kind of like a very as if he was dressed up like a Hydrox for Halloween, sort of his head sticking out of the cookie comes out of

the packaging. I'm a Hydrox cookie! Hydrox! Hydrox! Some kids have trouble remembering my name. I don't understand why. I mean, you like a creamy center? Here's a creamy center. Thick, delicious, creamy, creamy. And you like a dark, crunchy chocolate cookie? Well, here it is. But you've got to know my name. Hydrox, Hydrox, don't forget, Hydrox. Remember, Hydrox.

He literally gets carried off by these two. But like, remember my name, remember my name. Attica, Attica, look into your heart. So anyway, we've been talking about Oreos quite a bit. And then I think you had that on your mind, Genevieve. And you were walking home from work the other day, and there's a Trader Joe's between – I'm not a Trader Joe's guy, but there's a Trader Joe's between your work and our house. So you'll stop in there every now and then. I think you like the Trader Joe's experience. I love Trader Joe's. I do too. And you came home with a box of JoJo's, which is the Trader Joe's version of Oreos.

And of all the Trader Joe's shopping I've done over the years, I've never tried the JoJo's.

And you didn't know that it was a thing, right? Or did you? Because I feel like there's a whole cult of people out there.

Well, you played a voicemail on the show Lit today that was the perfect daddy, Jake, in Chicago, saying those JoJo's. Oh, he was talking about the Walgreens ones, yeah. What are those ones called? Long receipts? Have you tried our disappointing customer service?

So anyway, but you brought home the JoJo's. You're like, yeah, you know, I was at Trader Joe's, so they didn't have regular Oreos, so I'll try these. And I was like, oh, yeah, no, there's a whole thing. So, did I build you up a little bit? Because you said that you were not impressed with your experience of eating JoJo's.

I have not really been that impressed. I feel like they fall short of the Oreo experience on virtually every metric.

Would you care to expand on that?

Yeah. So, can I get one out? Yeah, please.

So, we have a box here. And also, we have some milk glasses here. It's also a short milk glass.

I'm 42 at night as we do this. I haven't eaten enough today. I could easily just unhinge my jaw and lower an entire sleeve of JoJo's down my gullet. But I won't.

And by the way, so we have some milk, Luke. I don't know if – Genevieve's a skim milk. Oh, no, you got 2% milk. Whoa, look at you.

I've been drinking 1% milk, and they didn't have it at Target, which is where I went milk shopping. I was also looking for your cleaning solution. I didn't find it. Oh, thank you, Genevieve. Because it was one of those tiny Targets.

Cleaning solution for me.

So you normally go nonfat, though?

I normally go 1%. It's a little better tasting than skim. I'll drink any kind of milk, really.

I'm putting almond milk in my glass. Now, what's that about, Andrew? You know, I just don't drink a lot of milk, but I do like cereal from time to time. And I don't know, just the idea of milk is kind of gross to me. I mean, I'll drink it in cereal, I'll have it in cereal, but if I could replace it with almond milk, why not?

Well, I'm with you on that. You know, I don't eat meat and stuff like that, but – or generally anyway. And I've been kind of like, oh, milk seems weird to me. And then I realized I eat about two pounds of cheese a day. So what am I doing? Like if I'm going to eat massive amounts of milk product, why am I so weirded out by milk?

But I don't think – like being weirded out by milk is just – is not something people should have to interrogate or defend. Like I am a big milk drinker. I come from a family of just like over the top. we always had like two full gallons of milk in like in one in the house and like two in the outside fridge and because like the the chant the thought of running out of milk was like so terrible and so i've just always been a milk drinker and i've remained an adult milk drinker like i'll drink a glass of milk i know that's very weird for many adults but i also get why it's like sort of viscerally off-putting or could be and it's we're honestly you know we aren't we aren't really made like there's the reason so many people are lactose intolerant is that we're not cows we're not really made it's not really for us yeah you know you're really talking me

into the almond milk yeah although i'm not an almond either so i don't know where that leaves

i'm gonna go with i'm gonna take a little shot wait hold on actually luke i have something here for you what if i put some muscle milk in your glass thanks brock would you be interested in

dipping your jojo into some only if you're gonna give me um a back rub that i didn't ask for but That actually feels pretty good at about 6 in the morning.

Out of all the things I miss in life, Brock Heward's spontaneous shoulder rubs while at work is one of my favorites.

Now, see, the thing, Andrew, about you going with the almond milk is that you have two variables now.

It's already a little bit, yeah.

You have the off-brand or the alternate to the Oreo, and then you have the alternate to what we think of as milk, typically. So your opinion on this actually has no validity.

No, I was going to dip it in apple cider, but you recommended it against that. No, exactly. I think it's really strange for me. And I also have not had an Oreo. Oh, you know when I last had Oreos? It wasn't all that long ago, I guess. It was when I was working at KCRW. The engineers there would always have – you wouldn't like this, Luke. They were always looking for the weirdest, newest flash-in-the-pan flavors of Oreos, you know, like the special releases or whatever. Like Flamin' Hot Cheeto Oreos. Right. So sometimes I would go back to their little cubbyhole and just emotionally eat their supply down. But I haven't had an Oreo probably in, you know, five years or so.

Wow, really? I was at a lake house thing this summer with some of our friends. And somebody, you know, as is very typical at a lake thing like that, people bring a lot of junk food. And somebody brought a big plastic boxes of Oreos.

Oh, yeah, like a Costco.

Yeah. And not oversized, but just like the regular size. But it's like a plastic sleeve that like peels off the top. Do you know what I'm describing? Yes. And so I definitely availed myself of those Oreos. So that was only like a couple months ago.

I'm not capable of consuming one Oreo. I was trying to make sure I didn't step on like Frito-Lay's trademarked phrase about, you know, no one can eat just one. But yeah, like if I if I start eating Oreos or anything like that, I'm just going to stop when, you know, I just pass out. Once you sleeve, you can't leave.

Classic Oreo tagline, I believe.

That is what they say.

So what we have here in front of us is a failure to communicate. And we also have in front of us a few of these JoJo's in our respective glasses of milk. Do you want to talk about what the issues are?

JoJo's are already a thing. Like, if you were at the store, Vives, and for some reason we were texting about it, which would be kind of odd, and you said, I'm grabbing some JoJo's, I would immediately think you were getting potato, delicious potato wedges, which I grew up calling JoJo potatoes.

I was just talking with some other Pacific Northwestern the other day, and we were reflecting on the fact that outside of—

Is that our totally regional thing? It's totally regional, yeah.

Although I've heard it before. I don't know if we said that growing up.

It's not in my region. I think we might have—

I'm trying to remember what we would have called those growing up. Because they're big, chunky, wedgie potatoes, right?

Yeah, they're like potato wedges. Like, imagine a potato is cut into eight long sections and huge fries. If you were to go into, like, the deli at the grocery store when I was a kid, those would be called JoJo potatoes. But if that's just a Seattle thing, they're the lowest form of French fry to me. Oh, God, yeah. So cakey, right? Yeah. But so, anyway, I guess it would make sense that they would name these JoJo's because they probably in – where's Trader Joe's based out of? That I don't know.

I'm California, right?

It seems pretty hippy-dippy. All right, so what's the plan here?

Well, can I just explain why I don't like... I mean, and to be clear, when I say I don't like these, that does not stop me from going to town on them every night. I know, we have like half a box here. Yeah, it's not like I ate one and was like, I don't care for it and threw the box out. Like, no, I'm just eating them a little bit slower than I would eat a box of Oreos. Like, fractionally slower.

Right, and a little bit more complain-y.

And more complain-y. But here's my problem with them. So a couple problems. Just looking at it, it looks okay. And I actually think they almost are – it's a thicker pad of cream than a normal Oreo.

Not quite a double stuff.

But more than a regular Oreo. But if you look at the cookie, the cookie is not as dark as an Oreo cookie. It's like a browner cookie, which is like that's not intrinsically bad. But then if you eat the cookie, it's, like, more mealy than – like, an Oreo has a real nice crisp – I mean, unless you let it sit out and it gets kind of stale, which some people like. But the cookie here just starts out kind of mealy-er and, like, the crumb is less satisfying.

And I noticed that – so you're doing the thing where you're splitting it apart and kind of scraping off it.

Well, that's another thing I want to talk about. So I don't like the cookie as much. The cream is way inferior, in my opinion. It is both less sweet and also more rubbery. And something that I like about taking an Oreo apart is if you do it correctly, you know, if you do it carefully, most of the time an Oreo will come apart with all the cream on one side. Yes, clean. I've yet to split a JoJo that came apart clean.

Oh, yeah, look at me. And you know me. I'm the cleanest of them all. Yeah, and so they just look messy on the inside. It is a mess in there.

So if you want to have just a plain chocolate cookie experience, you're out of luck. Right.

You're going to get some amount of cream regardless.

Yeah.

Well, I've already eaten about half of mine because I am famished. And I will be honest with you. It tasted great. But that's like asking, you know, a guy who's been crawling through the desert how the water is in the brackish pond that he's found.

I'm going to start by just – I'm going to go total – I'm not going to use the phrase that I know you would use here, Luke. But I'm going to eat this without dipping it and without splitting it, my first one. Just like a straightforward out of the box.

I'm going to say that I tried. I've already eaten it without milk. And I actually found it to be closer to an Oreo than I was expecting. Maybe than what I heard you describing, Vise. But again, I'm really hungry. It's 7 o'clock at night.

Also, when did you last have an Oreo?

That's a great question. Maybe.

I almost bought. I should have. I was so close to buying a little box of Oreos.

A Pepsi challenge.

A Pepsi challenge so that we could have both at this taste test. But then I don't know why I didn't. I didn't know if that was like in your game. And then I was like, if I do that, I'm going to have both a box of Oreos and a box of JoJo's. And I'm really starting to put that holiday weight on already. And I don't need to be having two boxes of sandwich cookies in the house.

I will tell you this. I just ate that cookie. And you are right. There's a softer quality to all of it. The cookie is less crisp. Yeah. And the cream is less firm. I don't dislike it but it's definitely a difference

I also feel like the cookie is a little more bitter

Oh interesting

The aftertaste for me And also Shout out to the listeners who hipped me to the sticking a fork In the middle Can I have another Jojo Just to continue my test I guess there's another one on the plate Oh my gosh I could really eat all these I did the move Of putting my fork in the middle It actually really worked you can get a good uh dip on it you can get fully submerged in milk i will tell you the jojo was fine i took a sip of milk afterwards sublime yeah there's something about having a cookie or like one of these things where then the sip of milk you have afterwards is almost better than the cookie it's like it's an excuse to make yourself thirsty and then drink delicious milk there's nothing like

it i agree and i that's a big part of like any there are certain foods not just and for me it's I drink milk anyway, but, like, there are certain foods that I really don't even like to order if we don't have milk in the house. But they're weird foods, like things you wouldn't think, like Chinese food. Really? Yeah. And pizza to some degree.

Oh, see, that's too much of a milk party. Can I ask you this? We have a long...

My parents' marriage, which, you know, has survived four decades and many children, has been almost torn asunder multiple times over the question of what do you drink with ice cream, water or milk? Coffee. My dad – ooh, actually, coffee is not a bad answer.

Not a bad answer. If you're ever at a restaurant and you're having a fancy dessert, you're going to get coffee with it.

But when we're at, you know, when I was at my parents' house as a kid, and now I forget who was on which side of this, I feel like my mom thought that milk was too much milk with the ice cream, and my dad liked it. My mom was very strongly, no, you have a glass of cold water.

I will say that when I'm, if I'm ever in an ice cream parlor, you know how you would go and get like an ice cream cone, and it was so exciting because you got to have little tastes, like little samples, and then you pick your flavor and you have your thing. There is something about having an ice cream cone that makes me, especially in the summer, that makes me so thirsty for a little cup of water. And I really like it if they have the little paper cones or the Dixie cup.

Like at Baskin-Robbins, they would have that. And it was so weird how, as a kid, I had the same experience. You eat the ice cream, you're very thirsty, you ask for water. It's always the smallest cup. Why was it somehow the industry standard that we're going to give you a shot of water with this ice cream?

I'm realizing now that as I think about it, when I have ice cream at home, like if I just get it from a pint of ice cream, I don't have a beverage with it.

Doesn't it make you thirsty, though? No, ice cream doesn't make me thirsty. Not really.

It does for me. Anything, you know, that's kind of sweet and creamy like that. Well, I, again, I thought those were pretty good. Not quite as good as Oreos, but still pretty darn good. I do like this fork trick.

I'm into the fork trick.

I do want to point out to you. How was your almond milk situation, Andrew?

It's fine. It's good. But, you know, the almond milk, it's shelf-stable, so it doesn't usually come cold. And so I put this in the fridge just before we started recording today. So it's not quite as cold as you'd want. I feel like cookies and milk, the milk could be very, very cold. But it's good. It is unsweetened almond milk.

Yeah, you've got to get the vanilla flavoring, which makes it taste more like vanilla.

Oh, it's funny, yeah, because this actually has a sweetness to it, even though it claims to be unsweetened, I feel like.

interesting because i've noticed that with like almond milk the vanilla flavored almond milk tastes more like what i think milk you know from a cow i'll try that i figured it would be even

sweeter it's i don't know something i'll say about the jojo having just done the fork trick the cookie is better as a whole it does not serve it doesn't right it's not well served by being divided like an oreo yes and twisted apart it's better off as a as a stand as a whole unit

And since this is the first time, I mentioned that I would, you know, shame eat Oreos.

It's more delicious than the sum of its parts. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. But I just realized that sitting here with a glass of milk and a JoJo, in this case, or like an Oreo, I have not had this experience in years and years and years. And I realized what my move is, is to not, I don't like using the fork because I like to dip as far down as I can, but leaving a little bit for my fingers not to touch the milk. And then I pop the whole thing in my mouth. And I like the difference in consistency. Yeah, the contrast in consistency. But I realize that I think I'm doing something that got me in trouble before. The origin of hot dog stories was me overanalyzing hot dogs. And I think I just crossed the Rubicon here with this. So I'll shut up now.

Well, when we were talking about this previously, I believe I said, why do I get so worried about putting my fingers in the milk? Because my fingers are just made out of me. Yes. And if that's not a low point for the show, I don't know what it is.

That is a high point. Are you kidding me?

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.

Veeves, would you grace us with your presence for the last few minutes of the show here as we do the emails and V-mails?

Yeah, if you'll pass me that milk because I need a read. And nothing's better for broadcasting, as I understand it, than a very milky throat.

That's how all the greats get ready for their air shift. That's exactly right. Kid Craddock, Bubba the Love Sponge, Cousin Brucie, all of the greats, everyone that I used to see at a morning show boot camp. Uh-huh. Is that because it's organic? Is that why it's extra creamy? Or have I just not had 2% milk in a long time?

It might be that you haven't had 2%. I don't know what you've been buying. If you ever, sometimes, this is my favorite thing, sometimes a recipe calls for whole milk. So I'll buy like about twice as much as I need, just in case I need it for the recipe. But actually, it's so I can drink the whole milk.

That's like me with white wine-based recipes. I don't drink a lot of white wine. I don't buy a lot of white wine. But if there's something that calls for it, I'll get it. And then I'll be like, some for me, some for the risotto. Exactly. And I just feel like, well, I had to buy this.

Yeah, I do that with whiskey because once you open the bottle, you have to do it. Isn't that the Lucio Blue?

That's what Lucio Blue says, yeah.

Exactly. You'll want to.

to go bad so um hey while we're um sitting here talking about oreos and jojos and the fork trick we had a listener call in who experimented with that herself take a listen well you guys have

done it i have a container of cookies in front of me and i'm gonna try the fork trick We have gluten-free candy cane JoJo's, which are the Trader Joe versions of Oreos.

You said that I was messing with the experiment by having almond milk.

Where's the people can like different things song? Activate, activate, activate.

I've just put the fork times in the middle. And to answer Luke's question, it'll work with the regular stuff. You just have to press it. And I'm dunking it in my milk.

And I'm really excited to see what this is going to be like here. All right. I'm going to test it.

This is the most excited I've ever been for a reveal on this show. I think we're brave. You know what? I think we're brave for just you let it breathe. Yeah, you do. No, I am on tenterhooks.

All right. I could have let it soak a little bit longer, but it was getting stuck. And my grandpa likes to say, hot diggity dog. As I like to say, hot damn. That's good. Power out.

I love that. I don't know what that listener's name is, but thank you for taking us on that journey.

To that listener, if you wouldn't mind just sampling different foods and recording yourself doing it. Exactly. That could be a regular segment on the show is just that listener tries things and tells us if they're hot damn or not damn.

Exactly. In fact, I was just sending myself a note. I'm pretty sure that as my grandpa likes to say hot damn or no, what is hot diggity dog or as I say hot damn, I have a feeling that that could be a drop that could come back from time to time. I don't have another voicemail here, but I just remembered that I need to talk to Genevieve about something that I wanted to mention when you first joined us. And this is legit. Is it okay if I'm here for this? You can be here for this. But Genevieve, will you make me the happiest man in the world and not listen to this episode? I know that you listen to the episodes that you're on. As you've told me before, you said, I don't listen to the TBTLs unless I'm on them. Why can't I listen?

I've been sitting here for most of it and I heard I was also in the other room for the

first part. Could you, but I whispered something. Okay, here's the deal. It's your choice but I made a mistake. I forgot. Did you talk about Christmas presents? I talked, I revealed a Christmas gift. Okay. So you could just skip to your part if you want to know. That's the only part you like anyway. That's the only part I like. You didn't miss anything for the first 40 minutes.

I can wait until after Christmas. Okay, okay.

Sounds good. Or just skip past that part. Jump to the 40 minute mark. Or spoil Christmas. I mean it's your gift like if you want to know. I like to be surprised. Yeah, I thought you did. So anyway, I'm sorry about that.

No, no, I'm glad you told me. Okay, that's what we got. I would have been really disappointed if I listened and it got spoiled. Yeah.

Let's just say if you see a giant bow in the mail, like a bow the size that would only fit on a car or something, that's unrelated to what we were talking about on the show.

The thought of Andrew buying a car with our joint, unless Andrew has secret money, which raises a whole host of other questions.

That would also be problematic for you, I believe.

But, yeah, unless you just, like, really hit the big number on pull tabs. That is a big pull tab. That's quite a big pull tab. That takes several people to pull it back. I do not want you buying.

I like the idea of a pull tab that is relative in size to the bow that's on Alexis. You can only win Alexis if you have a pull tab that's equally oversized.

Hire the financial.

It takes three men to pull the tab back.

Right, right, right. All right. What do you guys want to go out with?

It truly was a December to remember.

What music should we go out with today?

Is there anything cookie-related or JoJo's?

Oh, JoJo's jacket. Isn't that an album by...

Yeah, that's a Malchemist song. Yeah.

Okay.

Well, yeah, I don't think it's Pavement. I think it's Stephen Malchemist.

It is Malchemist. Yeah, and it's the song. It's the one that you play all the time because it doesn't have a line you like about...

Well, yeah, it has carcass.

Right, exactly. Okay, we play this at least once a year anyway.

Well, it's the season. Exactly. All right. Let's do that. Genevieve, thank you so much for fixing this thing up and for also coming by and talking about it. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate you. Andrew, thank you as well. Thanks to everybody for listening. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. Again, you're going to see a no point. conversion first in the stream and then you're going to hear a normal TBTL at night and then on Wednesday, this is very exciting, a crossover of TBTL and after these messages, which is going to be very, very fun. I'm excited for it. So, anyway, thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, have a great Monday and please remember no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. I can't believe you didn't ask me about my cat.

Oh!

I'm just kidding. I love you, Luke. Get off the floor. I've got a bald head My name is Joe Brenner And I am a famous movie star Perhaps you saw me in Westworld I acted like a robot in Cowboy It was my best role I cannot deny I felt right home deep inside That electronic conscience

You don't know what a jag-off is. A jag-off is the guy who takes a parking chair. You don't know what a parking chair is. Listen, you and I are going to have to come down in Pittsburgh, Annette. We'll take you down to the creek. You can go fishing if it's nice. If it snows and it's a little slippy, we can go sled riding. You can stay at our house. I'll get out my sweeper and red up for the ends. It'll be a good time, Annette. We'll see you soon. Power out. Power out.