Muse

Hawaii is beautiful. It is beautiful. You are able to sit at the beach and be happy in the sun. You can have pineapples and watermelons, too, mangoes, and coconuts are what you can eat, too. Those are what you can do there. And sometimes you can visit Hawaii.

T-T-T-T-B-T-L Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is?

It's Friday. Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. You know, I think about this. What about this internet thing? Do you know anything about that?

Sure. What the hell is that exactly?

Okay, I think you've said Targets. Is this correct?

What? No.

Great. I've made the change. Your wife's new legal name is Targis. Targis.

Stay patient, people. Stay patient. This is going to be worth it, I promise. Maybe not. Maybe not. But it's worth it to me.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

Hey, where's the freaking gabagoo?

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon. We made it, y'all, to a Friday.

Jalapeno!

The final Friday before we enter TVTL Winter Games territory next week. So I am, as we like to say on the show, very excited to slide down that dinosaur and into a little holiday times. Before that, though, we have the important business of episode 3,500 and 78 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

We had some truly excellent top stories yesterday that we truly did not get to. So we are going to. These are not going to hold for two weeks. Okay, there is a shelf life on these, and we're definitely going to get to the story about the waitress in Arkansas who was tipped a large amount of money, but then it turned into a whole disaster.

This is why I can't have nice things.

Also, Taylor Swift is being sued for allegedly infringing someone's copyright with her song, Shake It Off. I'm singing! I'm in a store and I'm singing! we've got both audio files and we will play them side by side um just so you the tbtl listener can can can render your judgment and your verdict on this whole thing and then um excuse me what we went to the sun it's going to be very hot going to be very uncomfortable for everybody we there's a nasa has a probe that is flying through the sun right now i read this press release from nasa like two times trying to just understand how that's possible sorry i'm still battling this um cold sort of thing uh today so my voice is a little jacked up I was going to take some daytime cold medicine, but that stuff makes me even weirder than normal, which is pretty weird. So because of my dedication to the craft, I am drug free this morning. But that means my voice is not great and I'm going to be a little sniffly. Anyway, thankfully, we've got this feller to do the heavy lifting on the show today. He's the longest running co-bro of the program, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ship. Please welcome God's one and only voice of comedy, Andrew Walsh, who's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke.

You know how sometimes a commercial will introduce a concept that just is really perfect, and I feel like it describes something that goes well beyond the commercial message. I'm thinking of things here like hangry, the Snickers term hangry. I feel like that was a word that our culture could have used earlier. Also, nose blindness. I believe the air freshener talks about nose blindness. Glade or something? Yeah. And I think about nose blindness all the time. Like, does my house really stink? But I don't notice because I live here. You talking about medicine there and the feeling it gives you. I always think of the, I think it's for DayQuil or one of the DayQuil.

products and what do they show the competition being like luke oh maybe i'm thinking of a

different commercial i thought you were going to there's one where it's a cartoon and the guy's

head becomes a balloon that's exactly what i'm thinking of yes good okay exactly what i was because when i take a day quill or any kind of a this was definitely a a long run for a short slide sorry but no it wasn't i think about that because that's what i was picturing when i was saying and when you were saying it that's what i was picturing and that's why i don't usually take those daytime medicines either when i need it because i feel like my head is a balloon that is floating off

of my body and i have to reach up and grab it yeah i i just i don't have a a lot of experience with that stuff i think if maybe if i took it more regularly and luckily i don't get sick a whole lot but if i took it more regularly maybe i would kind of be used to that feeling but i find it to be more unpleasant than the experience of having kind of a stuffy nose oh yeah and i don't

think that you should be like saying i should take it more regularly like building up a tolerance to that is good in fact don't people make never mind i'm i'm in over my head here i don't know isn't there an ingredient didn't people used to like kind of stockpile the day quills because then an ingredient there would allow you to make meth yeah um am i right about that uh you're right

about it it's not just a quill it's it's it's all kinds of um cold medicine and other some other things that have if i guess at what the exact chemical is i want to say acetaminophen but i

don't know that to be the case i don't think so because isn't that an aspirin thing there's

something in yeah there's something in that that you can that's why pharmacies would actually limit how many bottles of various things that you could buy because there was something that you could kind of separate out from the rest of it and compile it and eventually have something that was, I guess, meth or some kind of drug. Is it pseudoephrin?

That name doesn't... Oh, pseudo...

Yeah, it's...

Am I saying that incorrectly? Because I'm reading it here and the name doesn't ring a bell. I thought it would be more familiar, but I think maybe I'm mispronouncing it. Anyway.

Is it pseudoephedrine?

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe, yeah. I don't know. I'm probably saying it wrong.

I think this is good that we don't know how to make meth.

Or you and I are just like, I don't know. I saw it on TV once. There's guys, they were in a trailer. I don't know. One of them was wearing underwear. Who's on trial here? Yeah, actually, I was thinking about, I don't know why I'm just doing this. I think I'm nervous. You said Andrew has to do the heavy lifting, and I really had nothing to say at the beginning of the show.

I love that we're 3,578 episodes into this bullshit, and you can still get nervous about it. That is charming.

I was just like, I got nothing. I really felt like I got nothing. I got nothing at the top of the show. Let me say this really quickly. I did like your comment yesterday. I felt like I was underappreciated when we were talking, when I mistakenly thought I might have accidentally bought a Coke spoon off of Etsy for Genevieve for Christmas. And we were looking at the comments underneath and you said, I don't think it's a Coke spoon. Most of these comments are very nice from kind of crafty people saying things like, I love my little spoon. You don't have any comments that say, where's Mark with my shit? Which I thought was a very good joke in retrospect.

Thank you. i appreciate uh you honoring that um uh speaking of this bit of a cold that i'm dealing with so uh we did live wire last night at revolution hall it was a really really fun time the guests were incredible the crowd was wonderful as well nice to see some tens there but i had to sneeze pretty much from when i i was i i was sneezing about every four minutes when i was at home yesterday getting ready for the show so post tbtl before going to rev hall where we did the show just because of this cold and i was like i don't know how i'm gonna get through this show because it's in this day and age i mean we talked about yesterday i don't think sneezing is actually associated particularly with covid or omicron or whatever but it's just well it's kind of a weird look on stage for the host to be sneezing and i thought i'm gonna have to be like that cartoon character who's like oh oh and then like puts the finger under the nose i was like i'm gonna be doing this all night it didn't get quite that bad but i was stifling a sneeze for about two hours on stage last night oh that is rough so anyone who was there and thought my performance was subpar i just want you to know i was working through a lot i also kind of think my body is potentially doing that thing where it's because this week has been pretty busy for me in fact the last few weeks have been pretty busy and after today uh you know we're on vacation again i stress uh I will stress that we're putting brand new content out for the next two weeks, and they're really good shows. We've been recording them, and they have actually been really fun. The listeners have sent in some amazing games that we have been playing. But I think because I'm kind of almost at the finish line of this part of the year, my body is like, keep it together, keep it together. But it's like cracks are starting to show. I'm a little worried that I'm going to finish the last winter game with you this afternoon and then turn this microphone off. and then just collapse into, like, Nathan Lane from the NyQuil commercial.

Another NyQuil reference. In fact, I want to take this to another analogy, if you'll follow me on this one. I remember being a little kid. This is one of those jokes that stuck with me because I feel like maybe I didn't fully get it or I felt like I didn't fully get it when I read it. And it turns out it's just not that good of a joke. But it was in Archie Comics, of which I read many as a kid, of course. and um archie well that that comic strip taught me the word jalopy i didn't know what a jalopy was until i and i don't think i've seen that word again since that's a really good point is that a word is that endemic to the archie verse right exactly but um i remember learning that a jalopy meant an old dilapidated car because that's what archie would drive was his jalopy and there was some joke that they wanted to wash the car or something, but they couldn't wash it because the car was only held together at this point by the dirt, and so they couldn't wash Archie's Jalabi. That's a pretty good joke, actually. And I'm just wondering if that's kind of where you, like, maybe it is the stress that is holding you together. Like, when you're done with everything, maybe you will just fall apart. You need the dirt, a.k.a. the stress.

Oh, that's interesting. That might be the case. Also, what I don't understand, this is such an uninteresting place to take this conversation but like i have been like i have a lot going on specifically today we're we're doing this going to a live wire end of end of year uh kind of quick celebration brunch we're recording some winter games i'm trying to get these two cbs stories one about something called the vera project in seattle and the other about the cold swimming um i'm trying to get those written today so that they can kind of be in the editor's hands the next two weeks because i'm very like protective of this two weeks of vacation but here's the thing if i would just give up on monday being a vacation day we could do winter games that day you and i i could write these pieces like in my sweats on the couch here you know under a blanket like if i were just it's like by me being so obsessed with monday like waking up and having no one needs anything from me on monday it means that this week has been sheer hell no i understand if i just like let the if i just if i just let the pressure release go if i just was like i'm gonna work monday then it's like this whole week would be so different and

it would be way easier yeah because i mean i guess the obvious thing is here you're not traveling on monday you are going to be taking some holiday travels but like monday is just a vacation day at home for you but you're just so protective of your vacation day at home and i understand that like there is there is um something that it just hangs over your head you know like um for me and Again, I love doing it. I'm not getting paid to record Spotless episodes with Hannah every couple of weeks, but we do it because we want to, because we love to. But I will say that we usually record on Saturdays and on those Saturdays, like those Saturdays where I know we have to record Spotless in the afternoon. And it's the afternoon, by the way. I'm not waking up at 6 a.m. to like, you know, to have to like do a hard show. It's just like wake up, have some breakfast, chill out and then do a show at noon. But it hangs over my head all day Friday.

Right. And I guess because generally in my life, I have a real difficulty with turning down work because it all feels like if I say no, I was talking about this. This sounds like a shameless name drop, but I was talking about this with Paul F. Tompkins last night in the green room because I was talking about I was asking him how it's been in the pandemic and and and just working and kind of what's been going on. And we got on the subject of of like kind of always just feeling really lucky to get to do this stuff for a job and how that also kind of creates this sense that if you say no to anything, nobody's ever going to ask you to do any of it again, which isn't really what happens most of the time. And I think I would say I've put in enough time on this that, like, if I said to CBS, yeah, I'm going to pass on that story, they wouldn't be like, well, he's off the list, you know, but that's how it feels to me internally. So because I'm so bad at having boundaries for like basically 48 weeks out of the year, there are four weeks, the TVTL Winter Games and the TVTL Summer Games, where I have carved that out and I have said to the world of my work stuff, this is when I'm on vacation. And it has come to represent like so – because we also – you and I, we don't really – this sounds – I mean this is incredible. This is insufferable what I'm doing.

You said you and me. You're dragging me into this. Think about what you're going to say I don't know what it is But just think about The implications Listeners get your emails ready

Andrew at tbtl.net Now I want to start by saying We are incredibly lucky That this is our job This is such a fun job And hundreds of thousands of people Would line up to get To have this be the thing They have to do every day To make a living So that I want to be very clear about that We're very fortunate But also like We don't ever take Three day weekends We don't We never Like maybe we'll do We... well we usually here's what we do you email me at some point on like a thursday and go oh shit did you realize monday's a national holiday where most people are not going to work and then we go what should we do and go well let's just do a short show and then we just do a regular length show that's just kind of what happens and again we're this is lucky that this is our job but it's like we just don't we don't take that much time off from this show um anyway so somehow this two weeks has just become almost like a religious thing for me where i to the point where i got into it with our producer anthony in san francisco because he was like we were going back and forth about how are we going to write this cold water piece and we were talking about my vacation time and it involved me going on this diatribe in front of our cameraman at dinner i mean we're all friends so it wasn't like i was on the set yelling but i was like let me just explain my life to you there are about five or six organizations or things where i am unfortunately the central factor in the thing happening and at any one time all those things really need more of my attention than i'm giving them and so these two weeks represent the the two weeks where that's not happening for me and that is why it is sacred anyway and then everyone just kind of um said okay calm down there burbs but um anyway i guess all i'm trying to say is uh i'm gonna fall apart today at about five because um because i won't have any more work or dust holding me together

and yeah yeah that's a solid joke for archie yeah you think so i mean it did again comparatively yeah i mean i think i was young i was just like wait but why dust isn't sticky like it just didn't seem to make a lot of sense for me but i think that's why i remember it so this this bolsters my argument that the best jokes are the ones that sort of don't make sense because they last the

longest and young minds it feels like it's a cousin of one of my favorite jokes from the simpsons which is when the uh flanders house is destroyed the flanders house is destroyed and the town comes together and rebuilds it but they don't know how to build houses it's so genius because it starts off as sort of heartwarming and then as ned is walking around the house it's like just realizing how like i think a poo says this is the house that love built love and some concrete or something i forget the exact line but and and like one of the rooms that ned goes in it just gets smaller and smaller it's like an optical illusion like to where it's like by the end it's like it's just three inches large like and homer's like peeking through this tiny window that's like like an optical illusion but anyway the fland uh the rod and todd's room i think bart worked on and there's a poster that they don't like because they're you know church kids and they want to take it down and Bart says I wouldn't move that that's a load-bearing poster which is very funny to me and is kind of related to the the dust holding the car together no I mean I would say that

you know Archie walked so that the Simpsons could run um that reminds me of a joke that a listener had to a listener and a friend had to write in to explain to me the other day because it went directly over my head I didn't even know it was a joke I don't even do you remember we got a voicemail from listener marissa in maryland about the art installation we played this i think on wednesday show when jen oh no she had to um she she's oh the one where they where they were pranking

her i thought it was about my criticism of can i say one thing i heard a lot of people's feelings with my barbara kruger comments because she's a very important feminist artist and so a lot of listeners particularly women i think felt like i was not creative somebody actually asked me could you create space for the fact that barbara kruger was an important feminist um voice so i will create some space for that also i think shop till you drop she came up with that in the 80s so i'm going to give her a pass on that so can we just we put that to bed sorry anyway back to uh what

marissa was saying well i'm not ready to let that one go but um i was gonna say so marissa was talking about um she's volunteered to be in an art installation where you were just supposed to sleep And maybe talk about your dreams or something But then she showed up to do this And it turns out that The artist also was like Playing some sort of terrible noise Through speakers during the Sleep experiment thing And that was part of the art experience But apparently when Marissa was telling the story Did you catch this? She said something like I like to sleep because that's where I'm a Viking

Yeah, I did hear that Did we stop and question that? I don't remember it all that well okay but she said something else that i also was well here's what happened she said something casually that i might have missed her but it left it had me googling something and then that's why i kind of let the viking thing go by because i was on a different project i believe she said she went to brandeis and i think she said go judges and i was like is the brandeis mascot a judge it's not actually do you have that voice yeah let's just say listen because i'm i'm on i'm

I want something here, too, that I want to come back to. I'm sorry. Hey, dummies.

It's Marissa in Maryland.

like 100 years ago when I was an undergraduate at Brandeis University. Go judges.

Go, yeah. Go judges. Sounds like judges, but you looked it up. Brandeis University. Go judges.

Well, Brandeis was a judge, right? Louis Brandeis. Oh, okay. Louis Brandeis.

Okay. I didn't know that.

Is it named for him? But then I Googled. You're the one who Googled it. And it didn't. It wasn't the judges. It was, I Googled Brandeis mascot, and this, I just, it's Ollie the owl, Which kind of would make sense because owls are wise They know how many licks it takes To get to the middle of a Tootsie Roll We all know that if Any animal is a judge it's the owl 100% so maybe was Judge just it's Ollie the owl is the name Of the Brandeis mascot but maybe Is

I got it here I got it here You didn't google hard enough The Brandeis judges This is I found a website called En.wikipedia.org That says the Brandeis judges is the name given to intercollegiate sports teams of Brandeis University. Of course. They compete in the NCAA's Division III. Of course, that would make sense because... Hey, Gorgle, what's...

Because, of course, the University of Washington, they're called the Huskies. Their mascot is an actual Husky, at least for the football games, named, like, Sun Dodger. So Ollie the Owl is, like, you know, the owl, the mascot that's probably running around and entertaining the crowd at a judge's athletic event.

It says here that the team colors are blue and white and their mascots are the judge and Ollie the owl. So sometimes there's also a judge. The judge, the jury, and the executioner. Those would be pretty ominous mascots. Well, let's go back to this voicemail for a second because I want to hear Marissa mention this thing about Vikings.

We have like a little art museum on campus. And there was an installation there where you were supposed to sign up, if you wanted, to volunteer to take a nap, like, inside this installation and, like, record your dreams or whatever as part of a dream, whatever. So I was like, sleep is where I'm a Viking. This is what I'm going to do for the art world.

Okay, so I, you know, maybe just focusing on other things, I totally let that phrase pass. Sleep is where I'm a Viking. And you don't know the origin of that either Because I know it now But somebody had to email in to tell me Can I guess? Yep

I am Well, I mean, I just took it to mean You know, to be a Viking is to be very powerful And to be very, you know, fearsome and all of that So anything that you were a Viking at Would just be like, that's kind of your thing You're very good at it You're very intense about it And so it was comedic that it was applied to something like napping. But what's the real answer?

Oh, boy, sleep. That's where I'm a Viking.

That's the answer. It was just a line from The Simpsons.

And is that Ralphie Wiggum? Wait, no, I think it's Martin Prince, right? Or is that Ralph Wiggum? Ralph Wiggum. Wow. That's interesting. Boy, I've got to watch that show again. I'm losing my touch. Because, you know what? When you were playing that, I was envisioning Martin. But, yeah, that also is definitely, like, it's very Ralph-y. That is great. What else do I have? Sleep is where I'm a Viking.

Here are my other Ralph drops here.

This is my sandbox. I'm not allowed to go in the deep end. That's where I saw the leprechaun. He told me to burn things.

We got this.

I sent my walkie.

I don't even know why I have that.

I'm learning.

Oh, man, I wanted to play that. The one that I don't have that I thought I had, but maybe we did. Maybe it's just a drop from real life where I've been saying it my entire life. But me fail English. That's impossible. That's probably my favorite Ralph Wiggum line.

Do you think that one person wrote like the voice like Ralph? Did you think Ralph Wiggum was one person's kind of like assignment for The Simpsons writers? Or you think it was just like once the character was established, everyone would kind of like come up with their rest. If only I knew someone here in Portland who was once the executive producer of The Simpsons for many years, who I could literally text right now. I'm speaking of Bill Oakley. But, yeah, because I feel like Ralph gets some of the absolute best lines on that show.

Yeah, it sounds like the type of thing that probably at some point somebody gave him that voice and maybe kind of owned that. And then, I mean, once you reach season 72, it probably becomes more just like everybody's pitching in.

He calls him Super Nintendo Chalmers one time. It's so great. I got it. I am at YouTube with my cursor hovering over greatest Ralph Wiggum moments, but I don't feel like we need to do that to the listeners today. But I'll just that'll be.

Part of my vacation, part of my staycation, Andrew. Hey, do you think staycation is another one of those words that got invented by the advertising industry?

That's interesting. I don't associate it with a campaign necessarily, or not a campaign that created it. I'm sure campaigns have leaned into it. That just feels like a, what do you call it when you combine two words? Portmanteau. Portmanteau. Egg sandwich.

One other thing. Louis or Louis Brandeis his middle name was Dembits D-E-M-B-I-T-Z which would be a slick rap name yeah well it was a precursor to D's Nuts

I believe right

when you look at it it really looks like it's proto D's Nuts Dembits Dembits alright I think it's time for a break let's do that we'll come back and do these top stories oh and we do have music for your weekend as well because it's Friday So stay with us here on TBTL. All right, let's thank some donors of the day. These are the truly wonderful folks who are making today's show possible with their financial support. Leo Alley in Washington, D.C. Thank you, Leo. Appreciate it. Jeremiah Cleveland. Wow. These two sound like they would have been politicians in the early 1900s. It's the great debate between Leo Alley and Jeremiah Cleveland. Those are some cool, cool names. Thanks, Jeremiah. In Brooklyn, New York. Julie Higgins is here in Portland, Oregon. I feel a real kinship with anyone who I see is in Portland, And I wonder, have I played video poker next to them at my father's place? Probably not.

Julie's probably a classy type. Yeah. First of all, Julie's not hanging out at your, what was I think, pits of despair. That's not what I meant. Hives of scum and villainy. Right. Exactly. But I think that if she were sitting next to you, she'd probably say hi. Yeah.

That's the rule that we've established with the tens is if you see us, if you see something, say something. Really just so we know to be on better behavior If you're a listener

You gotta let me know That's the rule No undercover listeners If you're a cop or a listener

You have to tell me man You gotta tell me man Julie Higgins, thank you Sharon Haggerty in Tacoma, Washington Thank you for your support Sharon We really appreciate it Also William Burton In Worthington, Ohio

I always forget William Did William used to be in Minnesota? I don't know. That's a good question. I think I'm confusing my Burtons. Anyway, thank you, William Burton of Worthington, Ohio. We are not Worthington.

I was going in a Cal Worthington direction. Worthington forward in federal way, the only way, open until midnight every day. Oh, I thought I was a baseball player. I got a surprising amount of traction one day when I tweeted out a picture of Cal Worthington, and I said, this is the biopic we really need. I could see, like, Johnny Knoxville or somebody in a really interesting biopic about West Coast massive, you know, car lot owner Cal Worthington. And that was not a thing that you were aware of, obviously, in Ohio.

No, I don't know anything about Cal Worthington, and honestly, I don't know much about Johnny Knoxville.

Well, you know that Johnny Knoxville was in Jackass.

Yes, I do know that, but I've never seen any of those. Like, I don't really know that. I saw a trailer for the last Jackass movie, and that's the most Jackass I've ever seen in my life. Did you see the last Jackass movie? I didn't. You were a Jackass guy, right?

I have to admit, I know that you're not a big sort of prank person, but the inner bro in me or something just finds it endlessly funny when those guys are just whomping on each other. they did this one stunt where they just had a like a huge like a hand so something was shaped like a human hand but just imagine it's like the size of a doorway or something it's just massive and they put it on a huge spring so it was like a giving a huge high five but it was the size of your body and they would they would crank it back and then when the various crew jackass guys would show up and walk through the door they would release this hand and it would just it would just womp them and i don't know why it was so funny or they're like sitting around in their tighty-whities throwing a beanbag at each other's nether regions and the anticipation is so intense and then when they when it hits i don't know why i don't understand like from an evolutionary standpoint why does that delight me so much how did that keep my ancestors alive it should have killed them anyone who was like

Thank you.

enjoying whatever the caveman version of that was, would, I assume, not be able to reproduce.

I also think this is a little bit to the side, this is a lot to the side of what you're saying, but I like you talking about getting whomped by something because I have this, it's just a seed of a theory that I might be working on right now, although it's kind of come up in the past, which is certain acts of violence can seem lesser depending on the verb that you use. And I'm thinking all the way back to when Cat Williams, the comedian went a little berserk in Seattle yes this is the week of this I believe this is the first week I was on the air for my night show and so we did we went we leaned really heavily into the Cat Williams coverage on the Andrew Walsh show below those many years ago and I remember I just kept saying because he you know he went off on somebody in the audience and he hit them in the head with a microphone and that sounds really bad but when you switch it to bonk which was the verb that i chose and i just kept saying so he bonks somebody on the head with a microphone it definitely seems less violent right like in one case you have you know an abuse of of power dynamics and violence and another way you have a comedian bonking somebody on the head yeah you know this is a hand that whomped somebody it's not a hand that assaulted somebody and you know created uh damage to their body in some way you know didn't he also try to buy a fairy he well he He he made some noise about it. Cat Williams didn't have the follow through there. It came back again, though, after his little rampage in Seattle, he ended up staying up here for a while, I think, because he got into some legal trouble. So then he was staying in a hotel for a while, kind of long term, talking about maybe buying a ferry, which he never did. But then remember, didn't he get in trouble down in your world sports bar? Oh, yeah. But then he went down to California and he got into some trouble. He like stole some eight. Him and his friend stole some ATVs in like Yolo County. And I had already painted myself in this corner of being a Cat Williams defender. And I was like, they didn't steal them. They borrowed them. Yolo County. Like, that's where you steal. Like, ATV should be free in Yolo County, right? It's Yolo County. Like, that's the whole thing. If you're in Yolo and you see an ATV and the keys are in it, you can take it.

Yeah, legally. That's, I love that you had unintentionally positioned yourself as the Cat Williams defender. I had nothing, man. Those hours were so long I loved that show I thought you and Nick were really great Honestly, like you were always Extra hard on yourself, but I mean you guys did a really Good show, and that Cat Williams story was fascinating because he got in trouble also At the World, what was it called, the World Sports Bar Which is down by Art Marble 21, it's always It is now

That is Art Marble Yeah, I think so

That thing has just cycled through So many, I remember when I moved back to seattle from new york also we need to thank judy fetzer by the way oh yeah judy we would never forget you almost tried to work fetzer into that but then i i just decided that discretion was the better part of valor um but i do thank you for the donation judy and thanks to all of our donors of the day for their support we really really thank you for that um i remember i moved back from new york very impulsively of course i was living in new york I was doing the show The Bryant Park Project I just hit this wall of missing Addy Not liking that they were not letting me talk about my armpits And honestly just probably getting all of it too fast Going from being a real behind the scenes person To they're like you're the star now You are the host of the show, co-host of the show And in my mind I was like Yeah they're just giving out NPR shows to anyone who wants them And I'll just leave in a huff rudely And they'll just give me another one at some point I think somewhere in my mind, I thought that was, I love that I started this show by saying, I feel like every job I get offered is the last one. And then I'm also telling a story of how I like walked away from the opportunity of a lifetime. But I just was like, screw it. And so I moved back to Seattle. I didn't own a car because I'd been living in New York. and i flew to the airport npr was renting me a car as part of my severance like and i drove the car to an auto dealership in seattle and i bought the original space car and i was like i'm buying like i landed in two hours later i was the owner of a space car which tells you about my impulse control and then i got in that space car and i drove it to the world sports bar where kevin and

Anita were watching a fight it was it was called World Sports Bar or what I'm probably messing that I actually think it was I actually think World Sports Bar is a better name than what it was at the time it was something that was supposed to I think indicate you could watch like the soccer

there and stuff and it used to be the Browns Bar too right anyway I just that place lives in my mind because I just remember that night of it just being kind of a whirlwind like I the reason that the rental car is relevant.

Is because they had rented the car for a month But I had talked to the rental place And they said if you bring it back today We'll just refund you the money So it was like basically NPR was going to reimburse me For a month of car rental So I took that to be $1,000 off The price of a car that I was going to buy So I couldn't afford not to Impulse buy that Audi Two hours after landing in Seattle

For my new life In some ways you and I are very different people It was World Sports Grill So you were very very close But, yeah, G-R-I-L-L-E, of course, because why wouldn't you complicate it before you transition into Art Marble 21? I still can't even say it. Art Marble 21. Man, we used to watch a lot of Browns games there. I watched some with you, too. Just a terrible place to watch a Browns game. Just so strange. Makes you appreciate the Westie, even though they're a little overambitious with their cuisine. Yeah, but the service is great.

Hello and welcome to Top Story. Walmart used to have this rule that if you were a major, I think if you did a lot of business with Walmart, somebody from your company had to live within an hour of the Walmart headquarters. So if you need to be summoned for some important meeting, you could get there. So it's just got these very, very affluent communities and developments and things that are the like CEOs of a company that sells a shitload of something at Walmart. um and then because the walton family lives there they have like this incredible art museum called crystal bridges they also have a frank lloyd wright house that was disassembled and driven to arkansas and reassembled anyway a lot going on in bentonville including this story where a guy named ryan brant and his friends uh were doing this thing that i guess they do where they get together and they agree that they're all gonna they're gonna go get dinner and they're all gonna to tip $100. And even some people who don't go to the dinner agree to tip $100. And this is kind of their thing to, I guess, boost the local economy and also show their thanks to people that work maybe at a restaurant that they go to pretty regularly. So they were at this place called Oven and Tap in Bentonville. And a server, I'm sorry, Ryan Brant is actually the name of the server uh who was getting the tip the guy was named grant wise who was doing the tipping they tipped in a very kind of public presentation they tipped this server four thousand four hundred dollars it was somebody filmed it it went sort of viral it ended up on the local news whatever but then later it turned out that um there was a rumor that the restaurant was telling the server that she needed to actually tip out like everyone in the house so they weren't going to give her all of the tip they were going to only release to her the amount of the tip that like they weren't going to give her all the money and then trust her to go spread it around they were like you're getting a smaller portion of this because we need to give the bus boy some of it we need to give everyone in the restaurant a bit of it and so she was disappointed by that but i think she abided by it but then the local media called to do some big interview with her about her getting her four thousand four hundred dollar tip and she told them well actually they're keeping like two grand of it or something to give to everyone else so then the media printed that story and so then she got fired for telling the media that the restaurant was withholding her

tips so then the dude who did the tipping called the restaurant and withdrew his tip oh my god because he was pissed that this server who he liked and had served him on a regular basis was not going to get all the money. So then the restaurant had to hire a PR firm, which is who's talking to the Washington Post, trying to explain that they were eventually going to actually, they decided they were going to give the server all of the money, but now it was too late because she'd been fired. So it just turned into a complete and total debacle. The part that I thought you would take interest in, Andrew, is this kind of public tipping presentation that they did. So this is Jonathan Edwards writing in the Washington Post. Ryan Brandt, again, the server, who I misidentified early, stood next to one of the more than 30 diners she'd just waited on as the man made an announcement. We are tipping, Grant Wise hollered so the entire party could hear. A total of $4,400. Cheers erupted from the table. Brant, 35, buried her face in her hands and sobbed as Wise put his hands on her shoulders.

It was a beautiful moment, and one I'll never forget, Wise wrote in an online post. I have a feeling that you would not be, you're not maybe a fan of this form of tipping, of leaving a large tip. Literally standing up in the restaurant and yelling, we're leaving a tip of this amount. I literally don't even get it.

Honestly, I don't even get the appeal of that, because if you're doing that, it almost feels like it's a prank show or something. Right. Right. Isn't the beauty of doing something like that, doing it quietly and surprising the person? I mean, that's that's why I would do something like that. Like you would leave it and you would walk away and you would just know quietly and you would get the pleasure of sort of imagining what that moment is like. And I'm not trying to be Pollyannaish here about it. I mean, honestly, isn't that a more fun way of doing it by standing up in grandstanding? Are you that unselfaware that you don't realize that you're taking it away? Also, just a quick note, you mentioned that this restaurant then hired a PR firm to handle this. You know they've now spent out more than $4,000 on this thing. That is amazing to think about. Anyway, but, yeah, no, that's really galling.

That's really weird. This guy, well, would you be shocked to know that this guy is the president and co-founder of a company that helps real estate agents effectively advertise on Facebook? Okay, yeah. That's what he does for his work. I mean, you know, real estate agents got to advertise, but that seems like the kind of job that this particular fellow would have. He he and his wife wanted to share their experience. They like this place oven and tap. Also, not your favorite naming convention for restaurants, Andrew.

Well, you know, what's interesting is I always think of the places that are something and something is being more like kind of little little bit foo foo. Is that a word? you know whatever like kind of a moneyed ballard restaurant in an old yes building that you know is brick and used to be a dive bar but now now it's called you know the ladle and crock or whatever but there's something about what is this one called oven and tap see this one this is when something that is kind of on the the fancier end eventually becomes normalized and then it's just like a yes a low market chain restaurant that's in malls in like north olmstead ohio sorry i'm from north homestead i can say that um you know what i mean this sounds like i'm sure you walk in

there and it's like the ram right and it's like the things they're describing you know it would be like leather and smoke which you know it started out being that which would be like some real fancy like deconstructed food presentation your basic nightmare andrew and then it's just getting more and more utilitarian like it's like table and water what well we have tables and you can get water if you ask for it like it's it's getting less and less kind of interesting anyway they liked oven and tap and they wanted to share their experience with some of his clients so they chose the restaurant for a seating in the $100 dinner club whose participants agree to each tip $100 at establishments across town others who didn't eat at oven and tap that night added to the tip with donations so this was sort of this again it's it's sort of well-intentioned and if it puts 4,000 bucks in the pocket of somebody who's working Really hard and and probably not making You know enough money I think It's a positive but it's so Public and you're right it's like If you're the really The way to do this is to leave it Quietly and then you walk out and You let someone have that experience and you don't Film them by the way because that's no people do on TikTok that's gross This is literally a trend on TikTok you Leave a huge tip but then you hide outside The restaurant and you film the Servers reaction when they pick up The this huge tip

um i have so many things to say here i'm having trouble kind of narrowing them down because i just thought of a story i want to tell you from my own life that is i didn't realize until later that you and i had the same exact experience about a year apart and we couldn't have handled it differently and i want to tell you the story but i want you to know i don't want to i'm not trying to weaponize it i say it hesitantly because i didn't realize it until later but um one quick note on this you say the intention was good but honestly if they had not made a big deal about this tip it would have gone through like yes he would have gotten it the restaurant would have known the restaurant would have asked her to to tip out or forced her to tip out whatever it is i think that's probably fair anyway it really depends on what the restaurant you know with tipping it depends on what the restaurant's um policies are and i don't know and so i'm not going to judge on that i'm sure people who work in the industry might have very different views on that but let's just assume that that was the fair policy there you tip out um but then it's not already a story because you weren't filming it and therefore the media doesn't do some follow-up with her you know what i mean like it just doesn't like it doesn't blow up if you had done that quietly you would have done a nice thing but instead you just got your name splashed all over the place as somebody who tried to be generous but then you couldn't because the the bad management um i want to quickly tell you the story though i mentioned you Yeah.

the show the other day in fact i watched uh today's hey dummies video on the newsletter if you want to see what my haircut looked like before i got one and then after i got one when really i didn't need one at all i had talked to you um on monday that i felt like such an adult when i booked my uh haircut appointment like five weeks in advance i wanted to just kind of keep it like maybe get on a regular schedule with my haircuts and this is the first time i did that and it turns out my hair doesn't grow enough in five weeks but i had focused so much on the scheduling of it um And the excitement that I had this on the schedule that it wasn't until the morning of the haircut that I looked up in the mirror and realized, oh, I don't need a haircut yet, but it's the holidays. I know it's, you know, barbershops have, you know, they're they still have very they're instituting a lot of precautions around covid. So not every chair is filled. And I just know that I just didn't want to cancel my appointment on the off chance that I'd really be screwing my barber over during what would usually be a really busy time where she'd be making money and getting tips or whatever. So I go and I'm going on vacation. So I figure I'll just go and tell her I don't need much of a cut. So I go in and I'm thinking about how I'm going to start this conversation with her. It's only the second time I'm meeting her. So she might sort of remember me, but I don't even think she really did at first. but I'm waiting for my haircut and then she calls me over to the chair and I said to her okay so this is a little bit awkward but I don't even know that I need a haircut and I watched her face kind of fall for a moment and I realized in this moment that she thinks I'm about to bail on her in person sort of and and you know she could have filled the slot and that's not what I'm doing my whole point is I'm showing up because I do not want to screw you over and so she's like oh and I'm like no no no no I'm gonna get a haircut today You're going to you're going to cut my hair in some way. But just so you know, like, I really probably should have gone seven weeks, not five. I'm not that far off from what I should look like. And I said, here's my photo of what I look like. You know, I keep a photo on my phone of just like this is what I look like when I leave a barbershop. Oh, that's an interesting approach. Yeah, I've had this photo on my phone for a couple of years. I had more hair than already. I should probably update that. And she's like, oh, yeah, I see that. She's like, yeah, we can clean this up a little bit. And she's cutting my hair. and she said oh and do you want me to charge you like less you want me to just charge you for a cleanup and I'm like you charge me with whatever you think is fair and she kind of keeps coming back she keeps asking me if she want if I want her to charge less and like I'm not gonna be like yes I think you should charge me less I couldn't do that and so and I was remembering that you had a whole thing where this was something you really wanted out of a barber one time right like you realize you didn't need much of a cut and you wanted them to charge you less for just a cleanup instead of a cut and and you were bummed that they didn't and i'm kind of like you charge me you should overcharge me for for walking in here and scaring you like that um but anyway she did end up charging me like just for the cleanup so she ended up like saving me enough money that i

was able to tip well more than i usually would but still kind of paid less than i would have if i had paid full price and tip if that makes sense so everybody sort of came out ahead she got a really big tip the company got paid for a quick cleanup and you know and i don't feel guilty how did you announce the tip to the room i said attention everyone attention i have a podcast i'll be telling everybody see this is is this not irony i'm saying like oh come the whole thing is you just do it suddenly and you walk away and then you get a podcast and you talk about what a great tipper

you are no it's a dip you were making a different point and i i know exactly what you're talking about because i go to that same place and actually i don't know what the rudy's policy is because we talk about our haircuts a lot on the show i know well we're old men man it's just it's happening it's this the weather my bursitis that's pretty much what we've got but like the other the previous place i used to go it was one of these things where there was something that was there was like a buzz cut that's like 15 bucks and then there was like a short cut a shorter haircut which is what i would get and then there was a longer haircut and there's all these different pricing levels sometimes i would just go in and just say i just want the literally like my side burns and then like the back of my neck kind of cleaned up and so they would do it and sometimes a person would say i just charged you for a whatever like a trim or something and then i would always just be like sweet they're just getting a bigger tip you know because they've yeah they've saved me some money i'll spend the same amount of money that i was going to spend but more of it goes to you and it kind of and then sometimes they don't and i mean it's it's sort of fine either way but i feel like if if you were savvy as the person cutting the hair you would realize that if you if you kind of it was like when i worked at dick's drive-in and i didn't really know how much stuff was i would just guess low no one ever got mad at me for undercharging them for their their hamburger like you'd i mean it's i guess it's sort of stealing money from the business potentially but it's like if you're if all you did was trim the side of my hair on the back of my neck and you decide to be nice to me and go yeah i'm just charging you for a uh whatever the little

lower priced one you probably just stand to benefit from that in terms of the tip being larger yeah yeah i overall though i do like the i like this system i did book another appointment in advance i just added a couple of weeks to it and so we'll kind of we'll nail down the perfect timing but i think i'm just gonna i like the stability of just like it's on the books i you know and again these things are movable if something big comes up but other than that like it's on the books and it's kind of nice going to the to the same person you know like eventually Like, again, I don't think I walked in the door and she was like, oh, my boy Andrew's here. Sit down. You know, like she didn't really probably remember me. But over time she will. And it'll just cut down on those awkward conversations. And I make them awkward, but kind of like trying to explain how I want my haircut. And then I always just take out the some barbers do not want to see a photo, by the way. I sometimes have offered like, you want to see a photo? I don't know if it's a pride thing or not, but I've been told before. No, no, no. Don't worry about it. We'll figure this out. I don't know why you would want less information

As the person cutting the hair Like if someone was going Can you record something for me And here's exactly what I'd like it to sound like I'd be like cool now I know what we're doing But I now know What the clipper guard Is that I like It's a number four So I'm kind of like I've over the years picked up Just a slight amount Of the terminology So that I can kind of go in And say uh yeah i want and like the number four clipper and then about a half an inch off the top and i try to kind of like be as specific as i can so that i can sort of get the outcome that i'm going for but i i can't think of one time that i've gotten a haircut and it's ever actually looked okay on the day that i got it cut it always seems weird it always seems like they cut too much off and then like two days later it seems fine i guess i just get used to it but that's not a criticism of people that cut hair i just i like if i have something that i feel like i want to try to look my best at i will not get my hair cut on that day yeah no that's do it like a week before because i need some time to deal with whatever the situation is yeah i think i think most people

i think most people well maybe not i think a lot of short cuts are like that though short haircuts

are like that hey um i want to play this for you really quick this taylor swift song and then also this uh song by a band called 3lw which i really think andrew i could see you really digging this 3lw song yeah because i feel like you've been in kind of a 90s hip-hop listening phase who was the person that you were into it turned out to be a real housewife or something oh boy that was yeah

that was like a a like kind of a neo soul song from the 90s i'm already blanking on her name does a few weeks ago and i can't remember things um so the the people who wrote a song called um

players gonna play have sued taylor swift a guy named sean hall i think sean hall might be big sean is that possible it's possible let me look at big sean's um and nathan butler writers of the 2001 song players gonna play by the r&b group 3lw a judge is a federal judge is allowing the case to go forward taylor swift's people were asking the judge to throw the case out it's copyright infringement um but the judge uh decided for some kind of a specific and technical legal reason to allow the case to go forward and it has to do with something that a prior judge had ruled on and so it's not the judge siding with the people suing taylor swift it's just the judge saying this one other technical point does not necessarily allow for this case to be thrown out So they're saying that their song, Players Gone Play, was Taylor Swift's inspiration for Shake It Off. So let me play you a little bit of this.

By the way, just really quickly, who did you say this Sean is? I thought maybe it was Big Sean. What's the name? Sean Hall? No, Sean Michael Leonard Anderson is Big Sean.

Oh, okay. So this is the song that they're saying inspired a Taylor Swift. Here we go.

What people say to do But I, I do mind What you believe is true You are the only one Getting all my love Cause what they do Ain't nothing new Players, they gon' play And haters, they gon' hate Ballers, they gon' ball

Shot cards, they gon' call

Does this scan with your lived experience? Yeah, I mean, logically, it all makes sense. Yeah.

I miss the songs where there was just a guy in the background going, you got this? Yeah, it's very supportive.

I'm kind of like that for you. Yeah, well. Until I turn my back on you and leave you dangling. Yeah, exactly. When we started, you were like that, but things have gotten very tense.

I'm a bad man.

I like that I muted my mic And then I unmuted it to cop And then I remuted it It was a good timing So that part, the players gonna play part Is what they're saying Inspired Shake It Off And that Taylor Swift Is violating their copyright With this song Not this part, it's coming up The part that they say was stolen

Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. I shake it off, I shake it off. I never miss a beat.

Are you hearing it? Do you hear? Well, the lyrics clearly, right? Well, the question is, can you say, because what she says is the player's going to play, play, play, play, play, and the hater's going to hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. And then after that, she doesn't say baller's going to ball. She doesn't do any of the other stuff. She doesn't know what the heck the ballers are going to do. She has almost no lived experience with ballers, balling. I mean, musically, like, here's the other one again.

I don't mind what people say to do, but I do mind what you believe is true, you are the only one.

Sorry, I should have edited this more tightly. But you're getting to hear a lot of 3LWs, so there's that.

Yeah, we're going to get sued.

Here we go.

I don't know.

Taylor, your silence on ballers is deafening. Silence is violence, Taylor. You need to call her out. Here's the deal. Generally speaking, I don't hear it all that much. But generally speaking, my bias is towards allowing musicians to take inspiration from various things and continuing a musical tradition, even whether or not they consciously realize it. Now, I don't think I'm necessarily, you know what I mean? I think there are a lot of people who know a lot more about music and the music industry and make their money off it who would disagree with me. And I would totally hear them out. I'm just going from gut here. but generally speaking as we've talked about these stories over time i just sort of feel like i don't know i mean i guess if you parse and you have a judge who's like trying to figure out a a certain beat it's just like it gets so weird where it's kind of like yeah it seems to me that music is a lot of kind of borrowing and and not even specifically sampling but just like being inspired by and then changing it and and then certain things just become sort of a a common language a musical language both lyrically and with the music itself this time you got to admit though it gets like do you want to throw yourself out there as defending the the super rich super white artist you know what i mean who's you know making a lot more bank than probably these producers who you know have written hits but nowhere near the level of taylor swift because nobody's near the level of taylor swift like it's a little bit of an uh of of a maybe a maybe a trickier game there but i gotta stick with how i generally feel about this stuff which is i don't i don't hear that i don't think that i don't think that they need to make money off of taylor swift song or do that thing where they get a writing credit i just right that stuff always

makes me uncomfortable it feels to me like they the the folks who brought the lawsuit were looking just to settle they basically probably wanted the label to say like we'll give you a million dollars to go away because it's going to cost us a million dollars to litigate it which is i was actually heard this story originally on like the marketplace morning report and that's what the Reporter was saying is these things are very Frequently settled because they're just expensive And a hassle to litigate but Taylor Swift because she has a lot of resources And her label has a lot of resources Might fight it just on principle so people Are less likely to come after her what I really it would be

funny if Jake... I'm about to say a bunch of things that you will not follow, Andrew, but I'm going to say them anyway, because maybe one of the listeners will get the reference. It would be hilarious if Jake Gyllenhaal was funding this, a la Peter Thiel funding the Hulk Hogan lawsuit against Gawker. Oh, yeah. Because... Did you get that? Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Oh, of course.

I mean, we talked about that. I mean, that was huge. The whole Gawker thing with the Hulk Hogan thing. Yeah. Are you following the Gyllenhaal thing? Oh, no. I'm sorry. I'm not following the Gyllenhaal

thing you can fill me in on that um uh so taylor swift released an album a couple weeks ago and there was a song and a video about the hat that that the the um maybe there was a part about a hat but i didn't i listened to the song one time but it was it was people pieced together taylor swift fans swifties i think pieced together that she had written a song that was very likely about the actor Jake Gyllenhaal and their time together and their breakup and for about three or four days it just it sent hundreds of thousands of people after Jake Gyllenhaal like people who love Taylor Swift and were upset that she felt like uh he did not treat her properly in the relationship and um I mean I don't know how many I don't know again I'm worn out from getting angry Emails from people this week but it struck me That Jake John Hall Was alleged to have dated Taylor Swift And basically decided he wasn't didn't Want to date her anymore and that was enough to Generate a song which then sent Millions of Swifties After him it wasn't like the allegation Was he cheated on her or was Evil to her in Some way it was just that he Basically like she was mad because He said their age difference was Too extreme for him and it wasn't going to Work in the relationship and then he dated someone Who was younger at a different point So that appeared to be the crux of the issue And anyway If it were that Jake Gyllenhaal was funding This lawsuit to try to somehow take Taylor Swift down a peg that would remind Me of the Peter Thiel situation

Yes you know the I said Hat but it was actually a scarf that came Out of this whole thing because in This song you know before The Gyllenhaal stuff came out I think because This was like a you know this is part of her red Thing and she re-released this song which Got it on the radar again and this idea Of he never returned the scarf So then it became this thing I knew it because somebody famous Not Donna Summer Is Donna Summer still with us? Some very famous musician Fine, killing Donna Summer I'll put it in the jar, Dan-O I think that some famous people Were like, Jake, return the scarf So that's how I Knew about the item of clothing

Donna Summer Passed away in 2012 In Naples, Florida So you did not prematurely End her life Or describe her as not living anymore Here's what I really think Taylor Swift should be on trial for And that is the rap section Of Shake It Off I love the song Shake It Off I would just like to say I think it is a banger Until you get to this part Hey hey hey Don't do it You've been getting down and out About the liars And the dirty, dirty cheats of the world You could have been getting down To this sick beat

Jesus Christ

My best man brought his new girlfriend She's like, oh my God I'm just gonna shake into the fella over there With the hella good hair Won't you come on over, baby We can shake, shake, shake I'm the president of rap music And I need to work with you right away

That is so bad It's just so cringy I mean, I know that you talk a lot about You'll like a pavement song But then they'll go on some, you know, noise bender that you don't like But like, I can't think of any song Because I really like that song too, or I liked it But I can't think of any song that I like so much That has a part in it that I hate so much Like, you just playing that Like, I can't hear that without talking over it Because it's so painful It's like watching an embarrassing movie You know, like you're watching It's like cringey to me It's almost like cringe comedy, it's so bad

I know, and I mean Taylor Swift has been very successful and I guess At this point you know Nobody probably Puts Taylor in a corner I doubt That I doubt that anyone Says hey Taylor this is an amazingly Good song but this rap where you're Saying the fella over there with the hella good Hair like we we need to Protect you from yourself on this we Take this out but I guess no one gets No one tells her that and so yeah I Think you're right this might be the best song That has the worst element, the best song with the worst part of it or in it because it's just so good and then it goes into that and it's so cringy. I mean, it really feels like something from the 80s when there's just, we've got to, you know, get to music for your...

weekend and wrap things up here but i grew up listening to a certain amount of christian rap music of course famously there was some of it that my dad thought had a quote defiant beat but there was a band called dc talk and dc talk was they were i can't remember if they started off as kind of like a band and then they like a band that played sort of typical music and then they got into rap or went the other way i know that they had a big phase where they were rappers And then I think they might have gotten into Sort of playing quasi grunge I mean they were just reflecting whatever Style of music Was going on in the culture But they were doing the Christian version of it And it's really interesting because These DC talk Some kind of media tour And by the way DC talk stood for decent Christian talk

Oh I don't know if I remember that part I remember DC talk I don't know if I knew that

I think Hey Gorgle I believe that's what DC Talk was But anyway There's some like outtake Of them Doing media in the 80s And I'm trying to see If I could just find it really quick And it's just so cringy Because it's these two It's these two very very Handsome you know sort of matinee Or teen idol looking white dudes Who are rapping And then there is an African American member And just the sort of obliviousness of these two white guys who are kind of trying to be, quote, unquote, you know, I don't know what, like, I think sort of culturally appropriate what they feel is sort of black culture or something. But it's just so clearly not their lived experience. It's just it's really hilarious what kind of what boomerangs back onto TikTok because it's huge. This DC talk media avail from the night or maybe the early 90s or something that's been making the rounds. All right. Speaking of decent Christian talk, let's do some music for your weekend, my friend. What song would you like to play for the listeners?

Well, I'm going to do a late roster move here, Luke. I was going to play some PDUSA after buzzing all day yesterday after the concert on Wednesday evening, but I'm switching things around here. You mentioned Big Sean. Now, I might be totally misreading the situation, but I remember, and this is, I don't know. Maybe I'm too high on my own supply here But there was a time in the mid-2000s Mid to late 2000s Where I was like I was really scouring the I was listening to a lot of new music You wouldn't have recognized me I was like always on the music blogs And I swear there was a big Sean song out That I was in love with And it was on either I don't know if it was his own Is it I Don't F With You? No, it was before that It was I don't know if it was on his mixtape Or somebody else's mixtape I'm looking here It looks like it came out in 2009, so it's not like that old, but it's called Getcha Some, and it's got a line in here, and it goes through my head all the time where he says, I'm fresh, fresh, I'm wrapped in plastic, and I always thought that is very, very fresh. Does this ring a bell to you? I think this is an underappreciated early Big Sean song. I could be wrong. Maybe everybody knows it and loves it. Take a listen to this.

I'm going to be honest with you, Andrew. I'm looking up Big Sean. I expected him to be bigger.

Like you had Big Pun Maybe it's an ironic name You had Biggie Smalls Yeah, no, he's just I mean, but out of people named Sean It's all relative, Luke I mean, he's actually extremely fit for being named Big Sean He should be called Fit Sean All right, take a listen to this This is called Getcha Some by Big Sean Uh-huh

Uh-huh

Shit Uh, you want my shoes?

Uh-huh Uh-huh

You want my shirt? Uh-huh My jewels too? I stumbled on a radio edit here,

So I guess I don't have to clean it up Although it does It doesn't quite hit as hard With the cleaned up With the cleaned up edit But There you go Dude that is catchy Right? That is really catchy Oh that's right You know Kanye is on this i think i had this off of oh i'm not surprised wasn't he signed to kanye's label or something i think so and i'll bet you kanye probably my uh now that i i'll bet you this was off of a kanye mixtape or something before it was polished oh that would make sense yeah

probably something like that i keep seeing these clips you know kanye had that concert the free larry hoover concert down in la and it's like i think you can watch it for free or i think you can watch it on like amazon prime or something so when i'm on the line searching around on the internet it keeps showing it to me clips of him and it looks really good actually oh really i just well it's just he has written so many good songs and all you know there's this wasn't all donned it out well they're not i think i think it's amazon whoever is cutting these promos is wisely low-keying probably the parts where it didn't work like you know i i don't i haven't seen any reviews of it but they're but they're very wisely just using these very cool like steadicam shots of somebody who's clearly like up there with kanye kind of following him around so it's sort of his pov on this huge stage i will say these stages that he's having built are pretty fascinating like visually they are they do get your attention you know he had obviously the one in chicago that was based on like i think his house that he lived there maybe it was his mom's house um you know that he was like sitting on the porch and everything that was kind of they brought in all that dirt i think it was in soldier field or something anyway it's like it's just him up there doing like runaway or whatever they're picking songs that like i'm just like god damn it i love this music like it's so good yeah almost i keep like thinking i might actually watch that on my vacation which i don't know it feels like just the just the maga stuff it's just so hard for me now with him you know yeah well I don't want to like buy into it at all that yeah

no I mean that is obviously really tough and also like he's he's struggling and I don't know yeah it's we always go down you and I go down the same path with this guy he used to be when when he was making the music that we liked back when he was younger and in that era he was still making a lot of he was still making a lot of mistakes you know even calling out Taylor and doing all this really dumb shit but then in his music he would be reflective about it right and he yes think about and he'd need he oh my gosh he knew he was problematic and he was working it out in the in the songs and it was interesting to see somebody self-aware and it's you know and I know that he's despicable to a lot of people and I understand that but I also think that his despicable qualities do come from him being broken and sick in some ways and so and that bums me out because I think also he's a musical genius and I know a lot of our listeners don't don't go down

this path with us but i no i think it's yeah i i i think we're watching somebody who's dealing with mental health issues in a very very public you know space he's doing that i think at that larry hoover free larry hoover concert he he did run away and i think he he said i forgot but like inserted kim kardashian's name into the song and you know that song is basically about how like i am i am like you know i'm i messed up and i'm broken and you need to get away from me And he's, like, putting her name in the song Kind of, like, saying, you know In this very public way I'm messed up, you should probably get away from me, you know Which is just, like, emotionally so intense To even think about that stuff Just playing out in that way So this is going to be an interesting pivot My music for your weekend is from, like, the 1980s It's a Billy Squire Christmas song Christmas is the time to say I love you This just came on some kooky Christmas algorithm I was listening to the other day. And I was like, I don't know. This kind of slaps for me. Are you familiar with Billy Squire? I am not.

Isn't he like kind of like a – I'm probably wrong about this, but I always kind of put him in kind of the – I don't know. Is crotch rock the right term? It is now. I don't know if I am actually using that correctly because I think that is maybe kind of a genre. But like I always like Billy Squire, I will put in with I'm blanking on the names, but like, you know, like a ZZ Top or a one bourbon, one scotch and one beer, whoever that guy is. Oh, George Thorogood, like a George Thorogood. I don't think I'm right, but I sort of group Billy Squire into that shit.

I had seen the name Billy Squire around, but I had confused him with there was another guy who had a similar name that was from more like the 70s, I think, who did. i forget the song eve of destruction is there somebody with a similar who did eve of destruction and i could be totally wrong i thought that there was like their name was similar to billy squire

well that's fine because i that that's not um let's see here eve of destruction sorry i'm looking who did it uh oh uh is that barry mcguire oh really hmm yeah it looks like it's yeah me neither Barry McGuire

well anyway I had seen the name Billy Squire but I never really couldn't tell you a song that he did then I heard this and then I

did a little research i guess he was kind of he in the 80s in the early 80s he had like a bunch of hit songs none of which i recognize the names of but i guess he was kind of stadium he was sort of like known to be like a stadium rock guy like he just wrote a lot of these songs that people could like sing slash yell along to in stadiums okay um but surprisingly i didn't recognize any of them this song though i do think is kind of good um and i'm always up for a new christmas song to introduce into the catalog and maybe the listeners are unfamiliar so um can you uh play this song for me, Billy Squire, Christmas is the time to say I love you.

There's a touch of magic in the air From grown-up to minor No one could be finer Time's too hard, but no one seems to care Christmas, even all the world is watching Santa guys, it's raining up through the dark From rooftop to chimney From Harlem to chimney And they will find their way into your heart Christmas is a time to say I love you

Share the joy of your heart A little Billy Squire for you I gotta spend my vacation figuring out who it is I'm always thinking of

That's not him Well that name is, you said it's a similar name And you got Billy Squire here And the other guy's name is Barry McGuire I mean they rhyme

Maybe that was all it was I was hoping it would be more satisfying than that Like, there was something like Don Squires or something.

I'm trying to turn this into a George Thurgood song now.

Well, you know, it doesn't not sound like it. The guitar lick.

Never mind. I had something I lost. It was like one jingle mint, one ornament, one cheer. I'm just trying to cut this all out. Let's move on. I had something in my head, and then immediately I lost it. And I don't even know if it was, it's like a dream slipping through your fingers. I don't even know what it was or if it was funny, but let's just move on. Let's get to our listener suggestion. Can we just get just that stretch to the winter games?

I know. It's like, no, just don't call time out. Just let the clock run. Stay in bounds. You've got to stay in bounds, sir.

I want to give one more promotion for the winter games coming up, though, because no joke you and i have had a blast recording these so far and i said this to you off air and i don't want the listeners to think i'm just saying it uh like honestly i think this is the of the winter games and summer games i feel like this time is the most dialed in for us as far as actually like these shows are just really good i always enjoy doing it it's not bullshit but like they just seem like a good balance this year of playing these games and talking and some you know what i mean sometimes letting our leash go long and sometimes you know sticking to the quizzes but i just want to promote monday show because i do think there's a segment of our audience that kind of misses like the the daily updates part of tbtl right which i understand that you know um but on monday i'm just gonna say that we play a game submitted by listener mike called close but no seagal that's all you need to know that is monday show and if that doesn't get

you to click i don't know what will and can i throw out one more forward pro for that yes one word oh in points yes oh in points are coming up later in the week will change your life all right our listener suggestion is from listener sarah hey guys i'd love to hear anything from casey musgrave's christmas album a very casey christmas uh my favorite is her her duet with willie nelson a willie nice christmas i mean just based on the wordplay we got to do that yes the the they have a lyric in there may we all stay higher than the angel on top of the tree resonates when it comes to how i generally prefer to handle christmas with my mother and father-in-law or father-in-law bonus they're long time divorced so it's two separate events to get through so that's what we're gonna play let's play a willy nice christmas casey musgraves and willy nelson that's gonna bring us to the end of this week thanks everyone for hanging out with us like andrew said these winter games really are pretty fun this year so we hope you'll come back monday for those. And stick around through the couple of weeks. We'll see you on the other side of all of that. Until then, have a great weekend. Stay safe. Have happy holidays. Take care of yourselves and each other. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

on the road again Here's to finding your own little peace on earth And I hope you have a really, really, really really nice Christmas If you're in looking back for Waikiki I hope you have a really, really, really, really nice Christmas And may we all stay Higher than the angel on the top of the tree

Don't get caught up In the hustle and the bustle This time of year Ain't supposed to be so stressful Here's two easy silent nights And finding your own paradise With whatever family you might call your own

And I hope you have a really, really, really, really nice Christmas And may it be a lot more green than blue

Yeah, I hope you have a really, really, really nice Christmas

There's no singing in the North Pole Yes, there is! No, it's not We sing all the time No, it's not Especially when we make toys Power out Let's go.