Muse

How many hot dogs do you eat in a day, Tim?

I'd rather not answer that. Thank you, though.

Did you eat hot dogs today?

Not exactly. And why are you bringing this up?

Well, you have mustard on your shirt, and frankly, your burps reek of hot dogs. I had a hot dog bowl earlier today. Yes, I did. And what is a hot dog bowl?

It's like a burrito bowl, but it's chopped up hot dogs in a big old bread bowl.

So like a much larger, less healthy hot dog?

Can I go? I'm starving. TBTL! Sometimes you just gotta, you know, grit your teeth and look life right in the face and you say, stop it, you know? Please stop, please. Why are you doing this to me? I haven't even done anything to you. Please stop. I wish I could help you here, but I just don't want to.

How did these buff dudes escape my radar? I thought I knew about every single buff dude. This is what happens when an inside joke gets into the water supply. All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL. The show just might be too beautiful to live.

Hey, where's the freaking gabagoo?

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host coming to you once again from the tropical paradise of the island of Oahu. Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful. Where it really is just beautiful. It's as advertised. If you've seen the postcards, if you've watched such films as South Pacific, you know that it is really quite something out here. Can I just change everything about my life and stay here, not come home, not return to Portland, Oregon, the 503? The answer, sadly, is not yes. Yes, this will be the final day here. But we are going to have such a time, my friends, here on episode 3,651 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. For many, many years now, Conan O'Brien... You want showmanship? You got it! ...has been getting trolled by Paul Rudd with this bit where Paul Rudd acts like he is going to play a clip from whatever film or television project he is promoting. And then he plays this clip from a kind of bizarre film called Mac and Me from the 80s. It's kind of like an off-brand E.T. or something. And Kona O'Brien doesn't have a TV show anymore. He does have a podcast, though. And Paul Rudd decided to play the same joke on him on the podcast. I cannot believe he just told that joke. And it was really funny. Part of the humor is, of course, it's an audio medium. And he's playing a visual joke. but the audio itself is quite delightful, so we will play that coming up. Also, pickleball is now not only the fastest-growing sport in America, it is the official sport of the state of Washington. I mean, I figured he had to be in sport, but he wasn't in sport. So we will talk about that, time permitting. And, of course, we'll do some e-mails and V-mails, all with this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is joining us for the third time now from the Sweet Cream District of Seattle, Washington. He is Andrew Walsh. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I feel like I owe you maybe an apology at the very least, an explanation. But before we get into it, you know that I'm not like irked at you or anything, right? I'm not mad at you right now. We're all good. I didn't think you were mad at me. Because I'm not.

Did something happen that I miss it? Did you send me a subtle signal that you're mad at me and I missed it?

I did 100% accidentally send you a subtle signal that I'm mad at you and you missed it. I'm glad you missed it because it was an accident. I'm not mad at you and I'm not irked at you. But we were texting earlier this morning and I was running around. I'm mad at you, Dad. I made a scheduling mistake this morning and so I had to push the show back. We were texting back and forth. and i sent you the final text which said thank you period thank you period and now it could have only been worse if it had said thanks period or maybe okay period or i guess k period would really be the but you don't just send a short text with a period because that means like i'm out I'm curt and I'm irked But that's not the case Luke I was just driving in my car And I was using text to speech

Those are two of my favorite characters From the sound of music I'm irked and I'm incorrigible Aren't those Camaro Kev's brothers I'll look it up

I was using a speech to text to text with you and I'm so used to saying the punctuation out loud when you're when I'm driving and if I need to send you a text I'll say hey Luke comma I need to dial up a little late today period I made a mistake period so anyway I'm just used to doing that and I'm driving and you're like okay no problem about the late startup and I say thank you period and usually my car says they'll read the the machine will read the um the text back to me and says this is what i'm going to send to luke burbank is this okay and usually i say yes but apparently when you have a short message like thank you period the car doesn't double check with you it's like oh that's a simple message i can just send it on i can send that along without double checking with andrew and so i realized my mistake that i was sending you an irritated sounding text message But my car sent it anyway I'm not mad at you, the period was erroneous

Thank you for clarifying I would have maybe looked back at it I didn't even realize you had responded to my response I would have maybe Well, you know what? Thanks, period I can't remember if this came up Like last week or not But I'm particularly In work emails Particularly as it relates to Livewire, the radio show that I work on um because as the host uh the stuff that i say in these emails it carries a certain amount of weight i guess you know if we're talking about a way of doing something or how how we should interview someone or a scheduling thing and i try to be really aware of that i try to just make sure that i don't seem like i'm big dogging anyone or sort of dictating how it will be or should be so i want to always kind of include in if i'm saying this this piece of audio doesn't necessarily work for me or this this joke idea may not be in my mind to my mind the strongest way we could do this but i want to be very careful with how i say that to my colleagues and so i will just always end with a question mark so it doesn't read like i'm saying this is the case it's me going this joke for me seemed like it might be a little bit too similar to this other one question mark right like i want my whole tone to just be like hey this is what i think but i'm open to talking about it and i'm open to being outvoted and i'm just giving you my opinion but what i will realize is that i will send paragraphs and paragraphs of emails to my co-workers and every sentence ends in a question mark right i'm just kind of like always going i mean it could be this but i'm also not trying to say that we like have to do that but if we could it would probably be sort of like maybe the way to go it's just like 11 sentences in a row that end with a question mark for me which it's sort of like the email version of vocal fry or something.

I think you're absolutely right about that. Or not vocal fry so much as like the uptick at the end.

Yes.

exactly. Yeah, You got to go just once, just once. You just got to go hard the opposite way and then return to your question mark system. Like just one day, just write this joke is hacky period. Fix it. Period. L. Oh, even hearing you say that, Right. that's rough. You know,

I didn't like saying that about me, about me saying that to my co-workers is like no that oof ouch well you know i mean that would be abusive don't don't do that no i wouldn't i mean i honestly not even because i'm a nice person but because i'm so concerned about what everybody else thinks of me that you know what i mean like it's it's it's more the idea that the folks i work with would would think what boy boy lucas that's really rude like them having that thought is so threatening to me that i'm ending everything with a question mark right right to make sure that never happens but i will say this there of course there has been the occasional time it hasn't happened in a long time thankfully where i am a little bit triggered and i do sort of like just send a message that doesn't end in a question mark and it's not even i'm i would never say fix it period but it'll just be a little bit more direct it will literally just involve a period instead of a question mark and my guess is that it is noted because it's so it's like i've i've set this weird thing up where if i do anything other than like i also use more emojis than anyone i work with there's like a 45 year old middle-aged dad type it's probably tonally kind of strange like i also realized that i use emojis now in emails with people in a professional setting that i may know well or may not know well like and then every once in a while i think i wonder if that was just weird to them when the guy from cbs sunday morning who they're interacting with over some professional thing had like four of the emoji where the guy has stars for eyes what kind of message am i sending

when i do that you said you use them a lot for like for an older person i guess relatively speaking but i actually wonder if we've come around on that i wonder if it's

more older people or our generation that use I don't know I'm just wondering aloud here because I think of like you know the text messages that I'll get from my dad or or stepmom or whatever like they have more like flair in them you know whether it's the stickers or the emoji or whatever than any text I get from any of my friends but I don't know if that's because like I'm not a big emoji guy myself and I Genevieve isn't either so I of course I don't think we're setting the tone for these text messages like we're in a lot of various text chains with our friends and we rarely use emoji so i don't know who's using emoji but i feel like it might be actually

older people not younger i don't know i i think you're probably right i think it was the kind of thing that seemed youthful to me and therefore i didn't really mess with the emojis and then basically for me it's technology driven which is as soon as it became very easy on the iphone to do it and i started doing it it became just a default for me like i rarely send a text to becca that doesn't have an emoji in it and it's just it's it's just an additional form of language for me now yeah and and it very much like the question mark it very much serves the purpose of just kind of subtly signaling i am everything's okay i guess you know what i mean because like like if i say something and it feels like it might be five percent on the line but then i throw in the guy in sunglasses emoji it's like it's impossible it seems to me like it's impossible to be mad and also send the guy in sunglasses emoji like those two things can't happen at the same time and so

or you can just be a master of anger to pull that off like that would they remade american psycho

it would just be christian bale's character sending emojis that are seem very friendly but he's but he's doing unspeakable things behind the scenes like no but you know it's like i feel like i can say almost anything in a message and and what it really i'm not even kidding this is just about my own kind of self-centeredness i don't have to sit around worrying if my tone seemed too severe in a text message or even because i also include emojis in emails a lot i don't have to worry about i don't sit around worrying if my tone was too whatever if i throw in a couple of sunglasses dude emojis because i just feel like it lets everyone know i'm not taking any of this overly seriously fix it period is that a show title fix it period can you are you do we have the technology can we put an emoji in the show title i don't think we can on the website i think i can't what if you what if what if the show title is fix it period sunglasses guy emoji

the word sunglasses guy emoji can i put it in parentheses how much time whatever you want my

friend hey i have a question for you i mean andrew i don't know if the parentheses would be the strongest approach to how we want to do that for the show pick title thing um i have something i

want to ask you about which yeah i don't i don't think i run the risk of of of bumming you out with this it's just a question because i think there's something that really fascinates me about a big difference in the personalities of people like me and the personalities of people like you and Genevieve and I think that the personalities of people like you and Genevieve are I hope more in the mainstream here and that I'm the outlier but you are in Hawaii right now and yes you are when

are you leaving Hawaii this afternoon this afternoon 350 local time that's what I thought

I knew it was like later today I had a feeling that was the case and when we were talking earlier And I felt bad. Again, it was my mistake that pushed the show back a little bit later than intended. So, again, I appreciate your grace with that, Luke. Thank you, period. Sure. Period. K. Period. Sunglasses emoji. No, but when we were dialing up, I said, hey, you know, do you have to catch a flight? Is there a specific time you need to be out? You're like, no, but I'd like to enjoy this day as much as possible before I get on my flight. So that's where that's where the difference between us comes in. I don't think I'm the type of person who when I'm on a vacation or a trip like you're on that I start counting down too early to the end of vacation. I don't start bemoaning the end of vacation too early, which is a trap I think you can fall into. But I will say on the day that I'm leaving, I have no interest in lounging about. You know what I mean? Like for me, there's not going to be a pool day and then I'm going to come in and clean up from the pool and then get on a plane. Like I just and I think it's me. There's something broken in me. If I'm traveling later on the day, then basically I'm just focused on that. I can't just like sit outside, like grab one hour of beach time or something and consider that enjoyable. For me, I would just be sitting on the beach looking at my clock the whole time, looking at my watch. And you're surrounded by clocks, I believe, out there.

Uh-huh.

As you know. And bells. Well, it's funny because I have a version of that, which is.

If I've been kicked out of my hotel room, I can no longer enjoy what's going on. Yes. So that's the biggie. So I asked for a late checkout, and I got a late checkout until 1 p.m., but I'm actually going to later see if they'll extend it to 2 p.m. Because that, to me, is the perfect crime. Because at 2 p.m., we need to start leaving for the airport anyway. So that means That the stuff could be all packed up Here and kind of ready to go but we could Be lounging by the pool Or go down to the beach or whatever And know that we can Come back to the room and get our stuff and go To the airport like that works in my mind as a Thing if everything Is packed up and with the bell person Then I can't relax yeah like there's something about Not being able to go back to the hotel room That tells me that the vacation is over yep so i will as of right now i will be able to relax and enjoy myself up until 1 p.m i

would like to extend that up until 2 p.m if possible right exactly like i can think of right now like a time that genitive and i uh we're in costa rica because we're very fancy and

international we're an international and you keep secrets that's right we were wrapping up our stay

at a resort called secrets but i'm not allowed to say that because it's a secret um anyway our

flight was i got a lot of secrets i prefer to keep clandestine uh terrible disturbing secrets

i can't remember why when i was moving i kept i just had that drop that you play all the time of mo saying that's a catchy title it jumps out of you like a rat in your underwear drawer for some reason i had that drop terrific title it jumps out at you like a rat in your underwear drawer that's close um i had that in my head on a loop this weekend for some reason but probably

because underwear drawers you're probably putting clothes into you know what that might have actually that might have been it yeah your underwear drawer and you probably just thought oh that's you know

reminds me of that yeah but um anyway this is not a great story with a great power out so i'll just power through it really quickly when we were leaving secrets um for some reason viz and i had to be out of our room at a certain time but we had a significant amount of time before the um little uh van would take us to the airport or whatever and so i remember sitting in this little coffee shop that we we had not spent any time in this coffee shop and it's like it's like on the resort it's just like there's two tables in there you can get like a croissant and a cup of coffee basically there's not a it's not like that cozy of a place but we're just sitting there and we're playing genevieve's favorite vacation game rummy cube i don't know if you've ever played that we don't know it's played with little tiles and you need to you know it's kind of like a version of rummy where you got to make suits or whatever and runs and whatever um but uh it's like a tile version of a card game anyway we're playing that game and we're having a fine time but i just have this memory of it of like that was our last like maybe even like two hours or something on vacation was just like sitting in this like coffee shop without really any personality playing this game that i enjoy but just like waiting for a van you know and like if everything about that scenario was exactly the same except we were going to go to dinner later and then we're going to go swimming and then go to sleep in our room like i probably would have had a very enjoyable time there but the fact that we were doing this activity while waiting for a van just made it seem like

such dead time to me well if left to her own devices would genevieve have still been down at the sacred jacuzzi uh right up until leaving like we're the fact that you were sitting in that in that coffee shop all packed up was that because of your influence no i don't think so because

Because Genevieve, you know, like Genevieve and I, especially when we're on vacation, if we have if we want to do different things, like we'll just do different things, especially because Genevieve cherishes beach time and sun time so, so much. And, you know, coming back to Seattle, you know, we only go on vacation when it's winter in Seattle. So she she will be happy to go out to the beach by herself or the pool by herself. She doesn't need me to do that. And she wouldn't and I wouldn't influence her. And I couldn't influence her to do otherwise. for some reason in this case i think it was because we were out of our room and like you said all of our bags were packed and everything she wasn't wearing you know she wasn't wearing a bathing suit that she was then going to wear on the plane it was just like vacation was over

but we were still in paradise this raises the question what is the perfect crime what is the perfect like time to leave a vacation because if it's too early in the morning it kind of ruins the night before because you got that on your mind yeah but if it's too late in the afternoon you got this dead time you're kicked out of the hotel that's kind of a thing what do you think probably like what like i would say 1 p.m oh my god that's exactly what i was gonna say i thought

you were gonna make fun of me though because i'm a late sleeper like i will waste my day and and that's why i'm not a very efficient vacationer because i just spend most of my time sleeping anyway but um for me like if you want to have fun the night before knowing that you don't have to actually be doing anything. You don't have to

actually have to be out of bed and motivated before like 10 would be nice doesn't mean you're definitely going to be in bed until 10 but just to have that um just to have that option that flexibility and then you can start kind of you know packing your last belongings up i'm also a big packer the night before especially in this scenario and then you head to the airport tons of time and then you your flights at one that sounds ideal to me again for me it's all about

the hotel checkout time so that's also generally the checkout time most places 11 maybe noon so that just means there's something about like i've already said this being kicked out of the hotel that really bothers me or also leaving a bunch of time on the clock like if you have a 7 a.m flight you could have been in the hotel room like again i just want it to be the hotel is saying you have to leave and i'm saying you know what i am leaving because i got to go to my flight like the more aligned those two events are the better as far as i'm concerned that's the that's i think 1 p.m

is the perfect time yeah that sounds good i'm thinking of an extreme example we had leaving hawaii several years ago now we had to be out of our room pretty early like i think maybe even before noon um or maybe is that normal i guess checkouts usually before noon right 11 11 or noon depending on the place probably so and then we had a red-eye flight so we had like oh no no more than eight hours we had tons of time so and we're in hawaii again it's kind of like you're you're surrounded by paradise but if you're not in beach mode like what do you do with that time and in this case i don't know what genevieve would have done but i was pretty adamant that like i'm not going to the beach if i can't clean up before i get on this red eye flight or whatever so veves and i went to a movie i think i said it just did i just say that like the drop who wants a movie um we went a movie you know and you're in hawaii you're like why would you go to a movie but it's like well what else is there to do so we went to a movie and then we had like a very like the most the most middle brow lunch at some sort of like like you know just pubby place that wasn't even like might have even been like a chain pub or something like that and then we like we're just like doing anything to kill time oh we went to a um there was like a an arcade an arcade for children in an indoor like video arcade with some skee-ball and video games and stuff where you literally won tickets and you could get prizes we were just moving as you know when we're moving

apartments like a lollipop ring or one of those finger torture devices i can tell you what we got

we got a little bag of marbles because we just gave those to goodwill we got um i think several of those little uh army guys with the uh parachute parachute i loved those as a kid um and i think maybe a little pack of a mini pack of crayons i can't remember what our entire hall was but we spent i think like over an hour there um so yeah that that oh we went to a luke we went to a sugar museum there was like a time there was like a tiny well sure i guess because hawaii right like the the sugar cane and all of that was it a sugar museum or a paper museum i think it was a sugar museum like this quaint little museum like we were just doing and genevieve loved that by the way i

actually sounds that actually sounds totally fascinating to me particularly considering the history of like sugarcane and all that that sort of crop and industry out here yeah so anyway that

that was like the longest day that we just had and again we're in hawaii but just doing all these just weird weird things waiting for midnight to roll around oh so it really was okay thank you

i'm glad you clarified so you when you say red eye you mean midnight like you got on the plane or 11 p.m you got on the plane late and you're flying overnight might have been 11 but yeah it

was pretty late yeah because then we end it at the airport kind of getting a little bit tight on

some sort of blue cocktails i remember that well i have noticed and i if i could think of the specific example this would be a much more interesting observation for me but why start now people seem to the the term red eye seems to have kind of there's been some sort of uh i don't know mission creep with it to where i've heard people refer to any flight at night as the red eye oh we're gonna take a red eye and it's like they're leaving at 5 p.m. it's like it's not a red eye unless you're flying overnight like you you get to the place you're going and it's morning time because of course that's why red eyes are so devastating if you're like me and you can't sleep on a plane because you're just your whole clock is really really messed up from that if you left at five and you got in at 11 that's not a red eye i think i remember like you overheard didn't

you overhear a couple of older women having that conversation in an airport like a year ago and that's what it kind of irritated you maybe that's what i'm thinking yeah i just but then i feel like

i heard it again and yeah somebody was telling you some story and they kept using the term red eye and it became clear to me that this was not an overnight flight this was the flight that was at night yeah right and it was like that is definitely actually you know no i don't know it doesn't matter i was gonna say i think i was starting to remember that was maybe a producer that i was working with for the tv project which i also was especially confused by because you know Everybody associated with these TV stories We all just travel incessantly, so you'd think if anyone would be really clear on the terminology, it'd be somebody who is a traveling producer for CBS television. But anyway, for some reason it matters to me, Andrew, that you're using Red Eye correctly, and I'm very happy. It's an Andrew W. Wednesday. You got the win on that. What I'd really like to know, though, Andrew, is how was your first ever Costco hot dog?

I can eat a hot dog pretty quickly, but that's just out of gluttony and enjoyment.

You sent me a picture yesterday from Costco. I believe your first trip ever to Costco and certainly your first trip ever to the food court at Costco is a picture of a hot dog and a slice of pizza. Tell me all about it. Spare no detail.

It was a trip. So Genevieve signed us up for Costco a couple of weeks ago. She already had made her maiden voyage without me. I had not been there. I knew that I was, you know, I had a membership card essentially waiting for me or they had my name on file. So I had to at some point go to Costco and, you know, kind of get my, I guess, get my photo taken, which I hadn't even calculated for that, and get my little Costco card. And I was really there, though, to eat lunch because you had mentioned something about a Costco hot dog or something yesterday during the show. I was super hungry and my brain just latched on to that. I was like, yes, that's what I'm going to do today. So the Costco is about 20 minutes from where I live. And yet I'd never I'd never even been in this part of town before. I had no idea what to expect. I did know people have always told me that you can get to the food court at I think generally any Costco without being a member. And I didn't know exactly what that looked like. I always kind of pictured it like, you know how I think you do know, Luke, because it's our favorite part of bowling alleys. a bowling alley will often have a lounge that has a separate door and it's always like the ninth frame or what is it would be the 11th frame or whatever yeah um and uh i kind of always called like splits with a z yes god i love i love bowling alley bars so goddamn much um especially the ones with pull tabs but anyway i kind of pictured it like that like maybe there's a special little side door that you go into for the food court but i show up and there's just two big doors i think most people know this like most people know the cost of experience but one says enter in huge red letters and the other one says exit so i go towards the entrance and there's a guy there checking cards um and he's like no if you want to uh if you want to get your card you have to go to the membership desk so you go through the exit door or he sort of gestured towards the exit door but i wasn't sure like am am i supposed to go in through the outdoor as uh

led zeppelin's famous album put it um or as as prince once said in raspberry beret oh really

didn't realize that um so i'm uh so you know me like i am so scared of breaking rules like this happened to me several times at costco yesterday i was apologizing to people i kept on saying i'm

new here sorry i don't know they might they might as well have had a severe tire damage situation on the exit, like walking over, you're just going to puncture your feet on whatever those terrifying metal hooks are. Right.

So this one guy who's nice enough kind of at the entrance, he says, okay, you want to go to membership? It's around the corner in the exit area. And I'm like, okay. And so I'm like, does that mean I go through the exit? Oh, man. I need to speed this up. This story is going to take forever if I'm still at the exit entrance situation. But anyway, so all these people are coming out. But not only Not only do I not want to break the rules But it's also just like a bunch of people With giant carts are coming out to the exit It's like that stress dream I had one time Where I was carrying an oversized Inflatable raft At a water park and the entire crowd Was moving against me and I was trying to get through The crowd with this raft It felt a little bit like that And I also don't want to break the rules So I'm trying to make eye contact with one of the guys Who's checking receipts At the exit And I'm sort of hesitating I'm kind of standing, I'm sort of taking a step, and then he kind of looks at me, he's like, come on, come on, let's go, and so I'm like, oh, okay, so I hurried up past him through the exit, everything went fine, the person at the, you know, membership counter was as nice as nice could be, she was an older woman, she was making conversation with me while she walked me through the process, she was excited to hear that I'd never set foot in a Costco before, I said, I'm here to have lunch, and she said, well, there's a couple of ways that people can do that, She said you can just wander around and have a whole bunch of samples A lot of people like to do that Or you can go to the food court And I said I think I'll just go to the food court today Thank you I didn't want it to be a working lunch So I go to the food court And they have these kiosks where you can order your food And then you get it at this counter And I noticed something interesting Which is you can get a slice of pizza Yeah.

or you can get a hot dog with a soda. You can't get a hot dog without a soda, and you can't get a pizza with a soda attached to it. You can order them separately, I assume, as a combo. But my deal was, well, I'm really hungry. This is like 2 o'clock in the afternoon now or something. I haven't eaten all day. I'm like, well, one hot dog's not going to do it. I want two hot dogs, but I can't order two hot dogs, so I'll get two sodas, and then I'll really feel bad. I'll be like, you know what I mean? like when they give you when they give you too much cutlery when you get take out food about eating a hot dog and so i'm like well i don't so what i did was i got myself a hot dog and a piece of pizza and um because the pizza doesn't come with a drink so that just made the most sense to me i was bouncing around in there i honestly i mean i don't think anybody was paying attention to me but i honestly if i felt like i couldn't figure anything out the way the food court is arranged is befuddling like straws are in one part of it the lids for the cups are in a completely different part there's one janky station with condiments in it there and then the and then the place where you get your soda and you fill up your cup is a different place as well like i'm just like walking around in circles there isn't enough seating so i asked this woman who's sitting at a table by herself but she's like not eating she's like she's sitting on the bench of the table but her back is to the table while she taps on her phone or whatever so i say can i just sit here and eat and she said yeah i think she said yeah that's okay she was wearing a mask and i couldn't really hear her answer so i just took it as a yes so i set my food down and uh and i tucked in and i will say the hot dog one hot dog would have been enough it's a big hot dog too much bun i will say that right now it's almost like a hoagie roll kind of hot dog but oh no you know what i mean Too much I'm a no on that dog Yeah exactly I'm a no on that dog And then the pizza which We got that Costco pizza I don't want to say anything bad about the food at Costco People love it And when we got those pizzas for our TBTL live at sea show And they were Costco pizzas I remember Loving it so much This slice that I got yesterday I gotta say A little bit too brown I think it sat under the heat lamp A little bit too long like the pepperoni on it was a little bit a little bit too crispy and really greasy man i ate the hot dogs first

and then i picked up the pizza in the photo that pizza did not look very appetizing you got my back

on that yeah and i don't yeah listen i'm not saying i'm never gonna have costco pizza again because oh let me tell you this by costco standards i ordered two meals right i ordered the hot dog combo and a piece of pizza it was under four dollars like wow again i know i know most of our listeners probably know that most people have gone to costco i haven't and i know that everybody talks about the deals that's the whole point the deals the deals the deals the food court blah blah blah i know but i didn't realize that i was eating this food which was too much food luke it was i think 390 or something like that are you telling me that the i mean you

think i would know this because we've actually talked about this a lot on the show because of the leaked back and forth between i don't know if it was jim senegal or if it was the actual like founder of costco um basically sort of joking but not joking that if they change the price of the hot dog and soda combo he was going to i believe commit physical violence to whichever executive was proposing it we read that some some i don't know when it was a year or two ago so you think i would know this but i don't in other words the hot dog and soda combination has to be in the dollar 50 range or something i guess so yeah in order for it to be like four dollars because you also got a piece of pizza or maybe it's two dollars and the pizza slice is two dollars by itself or whatever that is meant to shockingly shockingly low prices yeah like i had sticker

shock but it was the opposite of sticker shock like i like i've never had that kind of sticker shock before where i felt like it was a mistake that i wasn't that i wasn't paying a ticker shock

wait no they're both s's it doesn't work dang it i'm gonna make a funny joke there um i did buy some i bet you has to do with though they're in the back there's a special there's a special part of costco you have to go through a beaded curtain uh-huh right um you have to know the password uh i wonder also if it just has to do with like anything the freshness like if you get that pizza a slice of that pizza right when they pulled a new pizza out of the oven i bet you that's pretty good it probably tastes kind of like the pizza we had at the event but yours looked like it had been kind of on the heat under the heat lamp yeah a little bit too long kind of thing it

had been and this is i had this thought again not to get into my um uncomfortable relationship with eating but like you know i was a couple of bites into that piece of pizza and i had the literal thought like at the front of my mind i don't need to eat the rest of this pizza i just ate a whole hot dog. have some root beer left i'm full and this pizza is not that great i've had a couple of bites of it i can just throw it away i don't have to eat it but of course i dismissed that i'm like no you will eat this entire piece of pizza and you will walk around bloated the rest of the day and so that's what i did i didn't i had a lot to do yesterday so i told myself like don't waste too much time at costco but i wanted to just get a peek of the wonderland right i just wanted to i wanted to see i wanted to see what everybody had been talking about so now i'm in the food court so now to get back into the regular part of Costco I have to now exit through the exit door which felt more natural although I was walking out I had no receipt and I had bought nothing so I felt like a criminal I thought somebody was going to stop me and ask me what I was doing I go back into Costco I flash my brand new card not a bad photo of me on the card by the way nice way better way better than my DMV photo I get a giant cart I don't even know why I asked Genevieve do you need me to pick anything up she's like no just fill the car with gas while you're there but no I don't need anything so i'm like all right but i'll take a card in case i just want to impulse buy at costco

um like seven sonicare toothbrushes hermetically sealed together so the very first thing i see

when i walk in is something that i had never experienced before but i'm sure you know people are familiar with this idea of there's like a kiosk that has a bunch of cardboard sheets in it that are i don't know eight and a half by 11 or something but they're cardboard and they have mariners logos on it and i get close and i see costco is selling mariners tickets and what i can do is i can take this cardboard card to the um cash register and then they'll give me some sort of voucher and then i will take that voucher home and i will pick the game that i want to go to and so i was like this is really weird so i took a photo of this kiosk and i sent it to this to my text chain of friends and i said this place is really weird i don't get it and then i'm wandering around and camaro kev is like oh i might go to costco and pick up some of those tickets and i'm like oh shit you got me all right so i turned my cart back around i bought i bought a bunch of mariners tickets terrace level mariners tickets at a really good price i put those in my giant cart now i'm walking around with a giant cart with two small pieces of cardboard in it that um aren't even really what i'm buying specific games the way it works is because that's why i was worried about but no what it is is you buy you take the piece of cardboard you take it to the cash register they ring you up somebody literally does go into a back room they say wait here i felt like i was at a casino i haven't been at a lot of casinos um and then they're like wait here somebody is bringing you your your vouchers and then i waited there for a little bit and somebody who i had not seen before comes out of some room and says here are your two envelopes and then you go online and like basically i have these two envelopes that are basically like they now allow me to go online and buy tickets for whatever game i want that is available and

was it was it was it um notably cheaper yeah it really was it was i don't know how much terrace

level tickets usually are but they're like it was it's basically comes down to 30 bucks a ticket which is a really good price i think for for marina i would love it if because it's costco

it's you get to the stadium and it's just a giant seat just like these are the costco seats are just so much bigger than normal seats it's like who needs all of this what if i show up and everything's

kind of normal i don't even really know what terrace level means by the way i think you have like a picnic table or something i don't even know if it's a good view of the game so maybe these tickets weren't that cheap because it's a crappy section it says terrace so you think it's nice but that doesn't necessarily mean anything but what if i show up and it's like kind of like you know normal seats or whatever but then the first pitch is thrown and it's a giant baseball it's just like oh you're at the costco game oh you went to the costco one and the batter just

has a huge baseball the pitcher just is throwing three baseballs that are shrink-wrapped together but the thing is andrew average out the price you're getting such a deal on those baseballs i've made i mean that's really like and you've noticed this now because you've been there but That's the thing where the – like Costco really messes with my mind because I'm not a person who spends a ton of time trying to suss out the best deals. But when I walk into a Costco and I didn't go in thinking, oh, I want to get a Sonicare toothbrush, right? But then there's like four of them and it's like I know it's going to be $800. But per Sonicare, like per toothbrush, it's actually, you know, individually they're way cheaper than they would cost me if I walked into like a Walgreens. And that, for some reason, really psychologically does a number on me. I'm very prone to that kind of that sort of thing. Something I don't necessarily want that buying three of it is actually way more money than I would ever want to spend on this product. But if I do the math, I'm getting each of the thing cheaper.

But that's a product also that should last for a while. So that's where you have to, you know. know hit up your friends and be like all right i have two sonic hares to sell which is really i mean that is that is why i ended up getting the mariners tickets because i at first i was like i don't get this place it's weird and kamarakev's like oh those tickets look good and i'm like i'll i'll get you some and so i got me some too and then maybe we'll probably all go to the game together or something do you want me to get you some too luke we can make a we can make a day back yeah i don't mind actually but um okay so i'll end the story here so i'm just like wandering around i'm taking photos of like huge packs of batteries and texting it around to this text chain that's going on it's like our wordle text chain has morphed into andrew's first day at costco text chain i'm like oh my battery daddy would love these batteries but i'm not buying anything just wandering around with this giant cart with two pieces of cardboard with a mariners logo on them um and then i'm like well we don't really need anything i'm wasting time i was like you know what i'm running low on jim beam so i go make my way back to the booze aisle and then at this time i'm i'm i call genevieve on the phone and we're just like chatting she's walking me through costco remotely and i'm like i guess i'm gonna get this big bottle of jim beam it's like a handle right it's like i don't know how much is in a handle of booze but it's the kind of big bottle that actually has a handle on it so i throw that in my as much as you can handle right exactly how much is in there so i throw that in my cart and then the beer is right there too so i'm like all right i'll get some miller light but they didn't have miller light they only have coors light which here's the secret i like coors light quite quite a bit unfortunately i believe that company supports causes that i don't like so much so i try not to buy too much coors light but there i was they only had 36 packs so that was it that was my order i'm pushing this giant grocery cart with like a gallon of whiskey a 36 pack of coars light and two uh two claims of vouchers for mariners tickets in my grocery cart and i go through the line and then i'm again completely befuddled pizza grease dribbling down down your beard and i'm thinking the whole time not only do i have to go through the cash register line i have to show my receipt to somebody probably the same guy who kind of yelled at me to get out of the way and come on through before and i have to like walk past him with all this stuff and have him check it off so i go through the line i'm very confused she's like behind plexiglass the cashier is and um she's like holding the zapper gun at me and i don't know what she's doing then i realize oh she needs to see my card so she can zap my card and then she rings me up she and another co-worker like another co-worker from a different line come over and start reading about the mariners tickets off of these pieces of cardboard apparently they'd never seen them before either like they ring them up but then they're like i can't hear their conversation but they're just kind of mumbling to each other i don't know if they're thinking like this is a good deal for mariners tickets or maybe they're saying we sell mariners tickets this place is weird i have no idea what their conversation was

then they tell me to stand aside somebody from the back will bring you some vouchers they do that and then i'm pushing my giant cart through the exit again and there's my guy the guy who kind said before come on let's get through here and i show him my receipt and he makes a comment i'm wearing my tacoma rainier's hat which everybody thinks is a celebration of rainier beer because it's got the rainier logo on it but really it's a baseball cap but anyway you're more of a coors light man exactly the politics because of the politics right so i'm pushing my cart through and he turns out to be incredibly friendly he's like he looks down at my beer and he looks down on my head he's like but you got a rainier's hat on and i'm like oh yeah and i'm like you need to see my receipt i'm sorry this is my first time here and then he like stops he does not care about any line forming behind me he was like the nicest guy in the world he's like wait what this is your first time in any costco and i'm like yeah i don't he's like you're not doing this right he's like looking down at my cart he's like you gotta you can't spend less than a hundred dollars here what are you doing like you don't have enough stuff let me tell you how this is gonna go and then he starts telling me that the next time I come here how full my cart has to be and he's just like he is like a member of a club who is so excited to have a new member in the club and I gotta say it's kind of cute it was really cute it baby he literally slapped me on my back on the way out on my back not my backside on my back on the way out and it actually was it was really cute he's a really really nice guy so thus ends my um oh and then I got in a line to get gas I guess that was the other weird thing i didn't realize that you get into a line it felt here we are with another kind of you know i don't know if you call it a fuel crisis but we have extraordinarily high gas prices because of global events that are going on violent global events and i'm in a line to get gas

and i'm just like wow this is this what the 70s felt like you're just like in your car in a gas line in your car with your handle of whiskey and your weird representation of possible mariner's tickets i feel like life Life is full of so many – I mean, this is probably just how it worked being on planet Earth because things don't ever stay quite the same. But I just seem – I can't think of a good example, but it's just like – I just feel like I have a lot of those moments these days where I'm just like, if you had told me 10 years ago this was going to be how this was going to unfold, whatever it was. whether it's you know my like so livewire decided to change how we get paid we're using some new service called gusto and it's like app based and i'm like i don't want to do all of my financial stuff on this phone app but it won't like let me just use a like basically wanting to use a website to do something officially means i'm an old i'm like i want to be on my computer doing this because first of all it's my financial information and also it's like the screen is bigger i can see everything better like and it just keeps trying to make me go to the app and then it's like well it was just a whole thing and then i was just i was about to send a very strongly non-question mark email is this really a thing that we need to do period which also makes no sense because that's a question that i'm posing but i'm going to write a question with a period like did we are we getting that much of a better deal from gusto that i have to now spend an afternoon jumping and then it was like the other problem is well i'm my email i don't i want to say something but if i do it will more or less give away my email let's just say my real email it's just my real email is a confusing thing because the service that i use sometimes ends with one ending and sometimes ends with a different ending believe it or not because i'm kind of got legacy i grandfathered into the early part of this kind of email address and they've actually changed over time but they let you keep your old one if you want but i think sometimes emails show up from me in a different format if that makes any sense and what it means is a lot of times if like so someone at livewire signed me up to at least have a login for this of some kind but it was the other version of my email so of course i'm spending i'm sending all these like emails to the help desk and trying to figure out why it's not working and it's because of this other sort of like quirky thing so i just i'm now you know at the age where i don't want to deal with anything like that ever like i just pay me in cash like honestly just pay me in costco hot dogs please i will go and we'll get get my payment and that's fine i don't want to sign up for any more phone

app things where i now am tracking my financial health yeah or like a food card system in college like i never understood our food card system it's like well you put a whole bunch of money on this car but it doesn't represent dollars it represents food bucks and then those food bucks are translated to something like i could never really tell how much was on my food card you know what i mean like well i'm sure it's different now this was this was the 90s kids but um i'm sure it's just probably You have $35 on your food card Like that makes more sense But it wasn't like that It's kind of like when you go to What's my favorite laundromat in Hollywood It's a laundry wood Like when you go to laundry wood in LA And it's like you can't just put quarters Or a credit card into the machines You have to go to a different machine And get one of their cards And then load that card up with a certain amount of money That will never end up being used You'll always end up being used

You'll never run it down to zero

You can't because of the way that they charge and the money you can put in there.

I know. What a racket. Yeah. Okay. We got to take a break, Andrew. Honestly, I would just talk about Costco and my annoyance at having a new payroll system. I could do this for hours with you, but we're almost an hour into the show. We have not taken our first break, so let's do that right now, and then we'll be back with more at TBTL.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Everybody razzle-dazzle. Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the fine, wonderful folks who are dazzling us with their donation of dough, and it's how we can do this. Five days a week, we want to start by thanking Laura Gosling in Accra, Ghana. Now, this has a pronouncer, but Andrew, I feel like I know how to say Accra because of Ophabia Quist-Arcton from NPR. Because she would be in, well, she would travel around Africa, but anytime she was in Accra, she would say it very distinctively and very memorably to me.

Well, it's so funny because I actually put, okay, so the pronouncer in there that is kind of like the radio style pronouncer, I put in there. And the note from Laura says, greetings from Accra, Ghana.

on the second syllable and when i first read that i was like have i been saying ghana wrong this whole time is it gonna yeah it's it's no that's not right i'm like oh that must be accra so i'm like let me just do the thing i mean i used to do this all the time it has been years since i did this i went you called the tim hortons in accra i know i went to how do you say the name of your town i went to npr and i typed in accra and the first thing that came up was a story by Quist-Arcton, and that's how I learned Accra. But it wasn't her who said it. It was somebody she was interviewing, some author. But I was like, yep, it's Accra. But I did exactly that. But the other

one, I believe Ophabia was maybe still is living in Dakar. Yeah, Dakar. And so that would be the other one. Yeah. Ophabia, Quist-Arcton, Dakar. Yes, yes. I feel like that's real. Sylvia Pujoli, which you really need more than, and by the way, Sylvia and Ophabia are spectacular reporters. But I I think more than being a spectacular reporter on NPR, you just have to really sell some part of how you end the stories. So memorably that eventually that becomes kind of the signature move. Yes.

I don't know. This isn't really the same thing. By the way, I'm also thinking, who's the reporter who covered France for a long time, but she had an American Southern accent? Oh, Eleanor Beardsley. Yes. I just love the voices. Totally over this shit.

I love the voices. That's what I hear that in her sign up. Eleanor Bairds Lee, Paris. I love it. I love it so much.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to get into that. I don't want people to think that we're like othering the NPR voices because sometimes, you know, there have been jokes for a long time about like the names people have at NPR and it kind of, I don't know, kind of rubs me the wrong way sometimes. It's like, yeah, they have a diverse workforce. Like that's not. I don't even know.

But it's always white people who have the kooky names. Like, that's why I don't see that as coded because it's like I don't see people making fun of someone, you know, named Ophabia Quist-Arcton. It's more like Kai Rizdahl. Really? That's a name?

But I do love the distinct voices on public radio for sure. I remember doing projects for my TV class. I think it was a journalism TV class in college. And my friend Schwa, Brian, but we called him Schwa Would often be my, like, fake newsman Like, if I was doing a story and I needed somebody to be the reporter, to be the stand-up I would have him, I would use him And as the semester went on, I just urged him to, like, leave a longer and longer pause Between his name and signing off And I can't remember exactly what it was Let's just say it was weird, the sign-off was in, like, for Kent State News i'm brian sworek and i would just have him longer and longer on those pauses would you then submit that as your project yeah yeah that was it great yeah exactly that's great that's that's a really

that's like uh what were you talking about yesterday something where it was like it was getting frustrating to you because it was something was oh it was your seat going down your chair it reminded me of in um i think you should leave has this ever happened to you the hole in your toilet just getting smaller and smaller until it's just a joke fart toilet

isn't that the very very very first episode of that show i think that's the first sketch of the

first episode probably is that tim robinson talking about a hot dog bowl it is that was

detroiter's tape you heard at the beginning yep got it okay well back to laura gosling who's in

accra ghana greetings from accra ghana accent on the second syllable where at the time of this writing i have lived for precisely three days wow laura must be a pretty big uh pretty big adjustment tbtl got me through our 10 and a half hour flight with cats under our seats forced checking of my carry-on luggage and a seatmate who was not my husband encroaching into my space sky jinx indeed laura writes tbtl provides such a sense of normalcy for me when i am overseas i I love having my friendos in my ears in a new place. Nothing to pitch, but please keep us deployed U.S. government workers, especially those who are in the thick of it with Ukraine right now, in your thoughts. Any one of us could be rapidly evacuating due to unforeseen consequences like a coup, an invasion or a civil war. Yes, Laura, we will be thinking about all of the people who are in various places on behalf of the U.S. and deal with all kinds of stuff that I can't even imagine. It's almost harder than podcasting from Hawaii, Andrew.

I mean, it's a pretty tight race there. I wonder what the Costcos are like in Accra.

Do they have – I mean, is Costco a uniquely United States operation?

You know, I kind of said that, you know, I guess that was the basis of that joke, if you would even call that. joke but um let me see yeah like where are they based you want to have another show where i just tell you about all of the locations of costco's like i did with uh boston market yes oh my gosh

i was craving boston market for days after that conversation and i and it's gone on you know that

thirst has gone unslaked because i can't find one not to um basically repeat the or plagiarize myself which used to be an accusation against jonah lair but um i kind of accidentally found myself doing that same bit again yesterday and after these messages because we were talking about commercials where people talk quickly and I came across a commercial for um CC's pizza which isn't something that I was familiar with I don't think and so on the show we started looking up where CC's pizzas are do you know where CC's pizzas are I have seen them like you do I know what region of the country they're in I just wasn't sure if you were familiar with I think they're a pizza bar like a pizza um yes and it's it's like cici exactly right yeah so we started going through where all of those are they're not they're not in any of the they're not in oregon washington or california they're more in the um eastern states um all right laura thank you for your

donation this is very interesting andrew laura's name is laura gosling gosling like a baby goose

and now i'm gonna say maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready Ready, go! Everybody rattle, dattle.

We also want to thank Joe Lamb.

Huh.

I didn't even group in Lamb. Lamb.

Two adorable, soft animals.

The gosling will lie down with the lamb. I don't mean that easy, everyone. I didn't mean that literally. But we do have Joe Lamb to thank. He's our second dazzling donor today. He's in Phoenix, Arizona. Joe says, I don't have my own custom message So feel free to use this time to actually get to the top story That you have been promoting for the last three days Oh, Joe That is one of the sickest burns Anyone's ever laid on us with a dazzling donor message Because you are so You couldn't be more right Now, I mean, maybe this is less about Joe's brilliance and more about the fact that we're always always pushing back too far on a top story that we should have been getting to three shows before or whatever maybe this is just like this seems amazing that joe called this so hard i know but maybe it's because we just do this every day and

i don't realize it yeah i know i gotta say i do pick these things i don't just go in order i kind of like pull these and um and and choose them for the day kind of curate them a little bit and i i was gonna grab and i was like wait we don't have any stories to oh pickleball yep pickleball

Ah, you set me up. You button-hooked me, Staubach. I see. Okay, gotcha. Well, well-played, Joe, and also well-played, Andrew. Joe wraps it up by saying thanks, as always, for the quality hashtag content. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. Here's the problem, Andrew. I want to talk about this Paul Rudd thing so much more than pickleball.

Oh, I did. Okay, no, that's funny. That makes Joe's thing even more perfect is that pickleball will go on to day three then.

Yes, so tomorrow, somebody quickly write your dazzling donor message about the fact that we'll probably have to push pickleball by yet another day. So I kind of set this up at the beginning of the show And I think regular listeners of our program Are also likely to know the whole story Of this like Paul Rudd, Conan O'Brien thing Where Paul Rudd has been Just doing this recurring joke on Conan For all these years And of playing this clip from this kind of Very trash, not trashy But just kind of low quality movie called Mac and Me Instead of the clip that he says he's going to play And it had to get sort of increasingly in complicated over the years for Paul Rudd to pull this off because Conan O'Brien of course starts to know that it's coming that he's going to say here's my clip from whatever and then he plays the other thing well Paul Rudd was on Conan O'Brien's podcast recently and you know Kona has this podcast called Conan O'Brien needs a friend I have I've fallen slightly out of step with it but it is a really good podcast I would highly recommend it to folks when you're done with your TBTL once you eat all your tbtls then you can have your dessert aka conan's good podcast but so paul rudd comes on the podcast and basically does this again to conan but does it so masterfully that he i mean he is again he has probably done this seven or eight times to conan on the television show so you would have to imagine if you're conan o'brien and paul rudd ever at any time ever says hey let me play this for you you're i mean you have to assume it's this clip

from mac and me where it's a kid who is like in a wheelchair going over a cliff into a um like a lake or something and then this mac i think is the alien like head very very unconvincing very bad like 80s special effect yeah rubber like head goes up kind of like a with these wide eyes like oh boy or something like it's just it's such a bad just such a bad piece of filmmaking but if If you're Conan O'Brien, it would seem impossible for Paul Rudd to be able to get Conan O'Brien on this anymore. It just seems like it couldn't happen, and yet it did. Take a listen to this. It's a little bit long, this tape, but it's very delightful, and I think it really does kind of pay off.

I like to be around people. I like to work. I like to do things. I've been working on this thing that has been really fun, actually, really kind of exciting, also because it's my own thing, which has been kind of great.

You want to elaborate on that?

Well, I wrote with a friend of mine named Dan Etheridge. He and I have been working on this, like a series of, it's like four episodes, but it's like a narrative, like for Audible, you know, like a series. That's been really kind of great because I don't normally get the opportunity to work on my own things like that. I'm usually a hired gun. Right, right. But it's been fun, and I've been working on it and recording it with my friends, which has been great. Adam Scott is in it. Oh, great. And Ken Marino, who I think you know, and Celia Weston, who I actually did a play with many years ago.

Ken Marino of the other two, obviously, he plays the manager. He is so goddamn funny. Oh, he's hilarious. I mean, that's a fantastic show. I love that show, but he always makes me laugh consistently. Oh, he's great.

Part of that kind of that state collective. We've worked together a bunch. and um but it's been it's been cool there it's it's about this guy named ken croft who has uh this has hung his own shingle as being kind of a publicist um that a low rent publicist and he uh it's kind of really at the end of his rope things have just not gone well in his life And he stumbles into this craft store. This sounds strange, but there's a woman that's working there from New Orleans who's been displaced ever since Katrina, which is – Years and years ago, but she's still displaced. But she's still – she's through and through New Orleans and a very positive person. And he's smitten with her immediately because she's wearing a sweatshirt that just says, Beignet done that.

and the specificity of this fake podcast he's describing is so brilliant like just again remember he's making this up on the spot why do you why do you assume on the spot why do you assume well i mean i how about this he probably had a loose idea of what he wanted to talk about but i doubt that this was 11 pages of script that he committed to memory like i bet you he wanted to get in the beignet that's what i mean yeah i'll bet you that had been rattling that i think is probably that was probably you know a key component to this but i just mean so much of the others just the way he's talking the way he's delivering it and i'm sure i'm sure a fair amount of this is being kind of made up on the fly to give it that yeah you know verisimilitude it's you kind of you

see this it's very sweet but funny in this kind of relationship between these two people and i actually brought we've recorded it if you want to play a little bit of it sure uh and it's with celia weston who's playing we did a play years ago called last night of ballyhoo and i think and this is where uh she is playing uh gladys who's the woman that's working in this store i'm playing ken uh even though it's not ken marino who is in the show he plays carl but uh this is between ken croft and gladys and this is from our podcast or audible

oh for christ's sake why why you can't do this on a podcast there he goes wheelchair you can't do that on a podcast that's way i didn't see it coming right well you can't do that on a podcast yeah it's a visual joke i know i swear to god how could i well that was i don't know it's never it's an audio medium i know would it work that way i don't know is there was there any truth to anything you said in the setup No. No! Jesus. None of that was true. The joke continues.

Questlove from The Roots, who's been, of course, watching this, you know, over time, you know, because he's a late night TV guy himself, and I think is a Conan fan, maybe. He said.

something like this is the funniest he said like this is the biggest smile i've had this week he goes and i won an oscar three days ago because he did you know that i mean okay we're not going back there andrew we are not going back to a will smith chris rock conversation except to say quest love's oscar acceptance speech was so just beautiful and and moving and powerful and everything that anyone could ever hope for in an oscars acceptance speech and that was i believe the award that chris rock was giving out the the fact that quest love was able to take the stage after that event and somehow block out the just complete and total shocking nature of what had just gone down and then from his heart talk about you know um inclusion and the message behind the film that he had made and all the stuff they talked about it's mind-blowing to me because i had forgotten that he was receiving the award that chris rock was actually announcing yeah i

saw that a lot of people were really bummed out about that aspect of it that that moment was so

overshadowed and a lot i mean i thought his speech was so well done and moving that it made me kind of in the moment forget so i actually interesting i sort of didn't associate it with it didn't get overshadowed for me for whatever bizarre reason um but but yeah i mean that's another kind of bummer in this is that the guy won an oscar and gave an amazing speech and you know we're still talking about some of that other stuff but um i uh i found a like a like a web article that was like all the times that paul rudd has done this to conan because i was trying to remember like is this like two times three times again i think it's like six or seven times and it is amazing the various the lengths that he's had to go to to do it like the very last one was on conan's last week on tbs and the only way they could kind of spring it on him was bill hater was actually the guest so paul rudd does like a he basically walks on stage um like kind of unannounced or unplanned and then starts riffing with bill hater about like the worst snl sketch oh right yeah we played that That they ever did. And so it's also so funny because, again, it's like so specific, this ridiculous sketch they're describing. And then they go to play the clip, and it's the Mac and me. And it really – it seems like it actually got Conan. But, I mean, that was the like – that was how involved it had to get towards the end for it to in any way kind of like head fake him. And actually, that tape is pretty funny. I want to just play a little bit right here.

I knew it. You have a tell. I didn't know Okay, what is my tell? I didn't know that you're going to play Game of Cats there I was going to mention Game of Cats earlier I thought you were going to play Mac and me there But I don't think That's Paul Rudd's joke I don't think You usually Say, I have a little piece of tape I'm going to play it for you here There was just something about I can't explain it, Luke You and I have just been doing this for a long time There was something about your dismount or whatever you would call that moment where you said, and I have a little piece of tape. I'm going to play it for you here. I'm like, that's not, you would have told me before the show. We talked about, there was just something about that. I promise you, I'm not just putting this, putting you on here. There was something about that that my spidey sense was up. That is amazing. I'm not trying to take the fun out of it.

No way. I find that impressive. that you well because i wondered if you were expecting me to cat roll you instead of the real

tape i didn't expect you to cat roll me there for some reason i thought you were setting up just to play the um the mac and me tape so you did sort of get me there like i said i knew it when you we have a little bit of a delay on the line i think when i said when i said i knew it i think i said that before i even heard that it was the game of cats i just knew you were going to be playing something there which i assumed was going to be the was not the real thing i was a little bit wrong there but i could tell you're up to something but that is one thing that that is something that really does and again i don't want to take all of the fun out of this and it's better to believe i want to believe is that what they said on the x-files or i do believe i want to believe i think i want to believe i do they should change it to that show would have been successful if they had changed it to, I do believe. I do believe there are aliens. Original slogan for the X-Files.

I say. I don't even know what that voice is. Boy, what day is it? Sir, it's alien day. I do believe there are aliens.

What?

What universe have we entered with that bit I just did?

That whole thing you said was the original log line for that show. They had all these posters. You can still find some of them. They're collector's items where they have the UFO.

There's one at that last blockbuster in Bend, Oregon.

All of that text is over top of the UFO. Oh, I was going to say, you know, I do believe this podcast prank was well executed. And I do want to believe that it really did get Conan. But it's just hard for me to turn off my no fun Nick part of my brain. Because I'm always like, yeah, but how did it? Like, I know that the type of podcast that you and I produce could not be more different than the type of podcast that Conan produces as far as, you know, probably the amount of people who work on his show and the way you could get some tape to a producer who's maybe going to fire. Because you know that Paul Rudd isn't firing that tape himself. If this was you and I.

I could actually play you. Do it. I'm not catrolling you here. Yeah, okay. There's more of this Paul Rudd tape that I just paused it. But then Conan does refer to the producer and kind of there's a little slight explanation of the whatever, the kind of how it went down.

You had me completely fooled, honestly, because I didn't think. Did you think I was going to carry that? I didn't know. I was really tempted to.

But I thought it was more devious. I thought it was more devious if I play the actual take. You win either way because here I am at the edge of my seat.

you can't do that on a podcast no of course not you can't it no it won't it such a waste i think all she even says is eric yeah yeah eric yeah oh trust me i know the clip pretty well having watched it 160 000 times well an audience roared its approval and i grew increasingly angry i thought it was worth the attempt to just see how it goes on it how is it you know what i have you know we're gonna find out from the listeners please tell us uh you just heard the mac and me clip totally take me by surprise honestly i swear on my life take me by surprise because i did not think that could happen on a podcast i don't think it can work on a podcast but you have to tell me maybe it does work jesus i looked over i looked at my producer adam and he nodded like no we have it and i thought well that's weird they didn't tell me and then i see the beginning of the mac and me clip i didn't even realize yeah there's a computer there's a computer screen played it yeah i didn't think they were going to play it well how could it work at all if i couldn't even see it oh i'd hear eric and i'd know and i know that goddamn music you're a terrible person it took me a long time to realize that but you really are so i'm really glad you played that and i'm really glad they

addressed that right so i i do think yeah like so he obviously slipped it to the producer and i think that's the only way it could work was paul rudd didn't show up and say you know i've got a clip to play because that would send Conan's antenna. I mean, my guess is that is the last time that could ever happen and Conan be taken by surprise. You know what I mean? Like, that seems like the final chapter. Yeah,

or unless the medium changes again or something. Or like... Yo, go ahead.

Go ahead. Oh, just like... No, I'm not going to say that, Andrew. I don't want it on me. I was going to say or like the untimely passing of Paul Rudd where he actually... has that played for conan andrew it's about committing to the bit look into it i'm beeping

the whole thing um i wanted to make one comment here it's not super fun or funny so uh i felt like it would be a good way to end the segment that we're having so much fun and fun with fun and funniness with um but it's astounding to me how different a podcast sounds and i'm not even just talking about the audio quality but how many times have we seen these same exact two gentlemen on tv talking and you can immediately tell i mean first of all the sound quality is different in an audio studio versus a you know a sound stage with a live audience obviously there's going to be those types of cues but even the way they talk i feel like they're in a podcast space and they can kind of trust their podcast listeners to kind of know who some of these people are who are a little bit more famous in the alt comedy scene maybe i'm wrong about that i mean conan does go out of his way to explain who ken marino is but um there just seems something like there's something about the conversation the actual conversation between these two comes off differently when they're talking

into microphones instead of cameras yes i totally picked that up too when i was i mean basically and i think that i don't think you're imagining that andrew because i think i've never been on a like a tv talk show like the likes of conan but you know i i for a fact i know for a fact that that you know you will talk to a producer before you go out there you'll talk about the stories that you want to tell you'll kind of rehearse them a little bit and you know there's a bunch of cameras and lights and people in the audience and it must just up the energy to where you would never just kind of be like and this is It's got Celia Weston, who I was in a play with some years ago. Like just the kind of the sort of low keyness of Paul Rudd's speaking voice is notably different than what happens when they're on TV. You're just not in the podcast form. You don't have to be just like radiating energy every single second. Yeah. Or at any point, if you're us, even for one second.

I had some energy for about five minutes earlier in today's podcast. Go back. Listen.

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

All righty. Emails, V-mails. Yes, I know we're running short on time, so let's just play one voicemail today, and then let's see if we can squeeze some in tomorrow as well, because we have a hot and happening voicemail line these days, Luke, and I love it. So see if we can squeeze some in tomorrow along with the Blur's days.

But for now, things that are hot and happening, were you tempted at all to get the chicken bake at Costco? Do they still have those?

They do. It looked pretty cheese forward to me. And I don't know what is in there. It's like a from my view of it, it looked like it's almost like a jalapeno popper with chicken instead of jalapeno. Is that how you would describe it? Oh, it is big. See, I didn't I didn't have eyes on a real one. I just saw a picture. I think it's like the size of a burrito.

but it's got some kind of like I misread that flaky outer I could also be again this is really two people that you now know more about Costco than I know about well I know where the I know where the whiskey is right okay see that's one thing I don't know about Costco um that's interesting too I you're saying we should wrap it up and I'm like but another thing about Costco it's interesting to hear you talk about buying whiskey at Costco because that is that's sort of really the closing of the loop on the vast sums of money that costco spent changing the state law in washington so that you could buy liquor at a place that's not a liquor store because up until a few years ago you could only buy hard alcohol at a designated state-run liquor store and costco and some of the other grocery interests just spent untold sums of money so that they could change the law So that they could sell booze at Costco And it worked You just bought some booze at Costco So they're lobbying I mean I don't think it's sinister per se But it's just funny to hear you say Yeah I got some whiskey there

Yes you know I completely forgot Because I moved here from New Hampshire Where you can only get booze There's even stricter there You can only get it at state run liquor stores there Here you can only get it at designated liquor stores But they could be privately run But I forgot that that was a huge thing that they ended up changing and they taxed it considerably because I remember I was drinking a specific whiskey at the time. Basil Hayden was my drink back in the day. It's a pretty good whiskey. More expensive than Jim Beam, obviously, but it wasn't prohibitively expensive back then, but when the taxes came, I remember me and my friend Roden were like, whoa, guess we're not drinking our favorite whiskey that much anymore because for some reason that particular brand skyrocketed in price. Yeah. Anyway, I did see a French, you know, it's funny. Like I saw a Kirkland. I'm such a snob, right? I'm walking through the wine section and I see like Kirkland brand wine. And I'm like, well, who would who would serve Kirkland brand wine? Like that's a real snobby thing. I'm not proud of that thought. But I just immediately had this. I imagine this this dinner party where I pull out my Kirkland brand wine and I apologize for it or something. But then I looked at it. It was actually legit French wine. I don't know if it was good or not, but it wasn't even from an American vineyard. It was actually from a region in France. It wasn't Beaujolais. I can't remember what it was, but I was like, huh, this is one of those things where the wine probably is pretty good. It's just the snobbery of wine and seeing the Kirkland label on it that you would avoid it.

You know, if you're going to call your Kirkland brand jeans Kirkland jeans, they have to be from a specific region of Kirkland. Yeah, they have to be from Jean. Otherwise you can't call them Kirkland brand jeans Exactly

Okay, I'm going to play a quick voicemail And then I'm going to let you go out to the beach For a small window of time before you get on your plane Don't think about it too much I was talking on the show the other day About how one of my favorite jobs When I was new in the radio business And I was still a college student at this time One of my jobs was taking Hours and hours and hours Of reel-to-reel Audio news stories going back to the 70s at Kent State and digitizing it. And we were doing that because the tape was starting to go bad, and we wanted to make sure that we were preserving this for generations to come. So how did we do that? Well, we didn't have huge hard drives back in the day. So I was burning it onto CDs. And of course, it wasn't long after I left. This was back at WKSU. I think I accidentally said K-U-O-W when I told you this story the first time. But this was in Ohio. And it wasn't even long after I left Ohio that I think CDs started to become another medium where we're like, is this going to last very long? What was I doing spending all of my time archiving onto CDs, which is already antiquated?

but this is how much i'll never be a shingy style futurist because when i first saw a cd i was like that's it we did it that's how we will now listen to high quality right audio for the rest of our lives there will never be anything that will replace it and i think that with every single piece of technology right exactly just like how my brain is just so simple that's why your wedding album is on minidisc anyway you and me and like seven radio producers who listen to the show

get why that was such a perfect joke so anyway i would and we're talking about dat tape in that conversation as well which i shouldn't say dat tape i guess that's like saying pin number right digital audio tape dat dat cassettes anyway um uh we got a listener here who is doing something similar today and making me feel a little bit better about my efforts back in the early early

early 2000s and late 90s hey this is ryan in tennessee i live in gala 10 now um which is outside of nashville but i was just listening to andrew talking about archiving ko w stuff onto cds and i wanted to throw in the mix that i've uh been doing an internship because i'm doing my Library and Information Studies graduate program, and I got an internship, and we're partnered with the Nashville Public Radio, and I've been digitizing a lot of their old news stories, so I've been archiving stuff from digital audio tapes, so that, and from CDs, and it just made me think of you because you were the guy creating the CDs. I mean, not literally, not at Nashville's radio station but i'm just saying you didn't those got made and then they got kind of thrown into a cabinet or whatever but now i'm archiving them and they're going on to the american archive of public broadcasting website with metadata so that they can maybe find them again and reuse them um or at least be able to find them and you know listen to them themselves but i just wanted to say they're not going to total waste but one thing that has happened with the cds is that the burn CDs a lot of them are corrupted so they're not really working but at least they're getting a second life now through me so it's been cool to listen

it sounds like the phone line kind of breaks up at the end so I'll cut it there but that is fascinating that does make me feel a little bit better although it doesn't sound great if the CDs aren't working well like for me if the tape was like a little bit damaged you could sort of force your way through it you know what I mean if it got warbly or whatever with CDs that's a little bit tougher

well somebody named that cd beck weezer live mp3 but then it has an easter egg in the middle of it that's sort of somebody else's joke that i saw on twitter somebody said like i forget what they were referencing they were basically talking about something that was mysterious to them but then they were like it was reminding them of like in the 90s when you would like kazaa a file it would always have like the weirdest title like beck weezer live you know oceanside and then you would So maybe it was Weezer, maybe it was Beck, maybe it was just somebody's best guess at some bootleg thing that they were now uploading to Kazaha, and it would crash half the time or have some weird glitch in the middle of it. I do think that's actually pretty cool for those folks in Nashville who did a story in the 80s or 90s or whenever it was, that then ended up on one of those CD, what do you call it, spindle or something. that for the ones that aren't corrupted anyway that those are actually being saved somewhere I'm glad that there are people in the world like that listener who are dedicating their time and efforts to the preservation of stuff like that because lord knows if it were up to me that would just that spindle would just still be sitting on John Curley's desk and for

what it's worth I think even though Ryan is based out of Tennessee I think he was saying that he's working with actual NPR so it sounds like national stories too that so that's really cool And also a great way to subtly big dog me I get it Your career is going much faster and better than mine I get it right Well who isn't than ours I mean honestly No but congratulations that sounds cool

Alright I say we call that a show So I can you know Try to steal an hour of And you're right Andrew The biggest journey for me here is going to be Not allowing the fact That I have to go get on an airplane later ruin my fun time.

Especially since I have now, I feel like I've salted it for you, too, which I didn't mean to do at first.

They do have a Costco in Honolulu. If you need to kill some time. I don't know if it's like really technically in Honolulu or it's on the outskirts, but I mean, I could go to that. I could just kill a couple hours at that Costco. You know, I don't have a membership, and I mean, I tend to spend money on a lot of things that are, you know, sometimes good financial decisions, sometimes not great financial decisions. What is a Costco membership, 50 bucks or something?

I don't know, but they have this thing where Genevieve got the more robust kind of membership. But they tell you that if you don't end up using that membership to its full advantages, they'll give you the excess money back at the end of the year, if that makes sense, and knock you down to whatever the cheaper membership is. So they seem – and other people have told me that as well. So they seem like – they do – even though it's still not really my vibe, I'm still the guy who likes to go to the grocery store to buy the stuff I'm making for dinner that night. You know it does seem From what I can tell like a pretty good organization So I appreciate that Hey man they made it possible for me To get a handle of whiskey On a random Tuesday at a Costco What's not to love

Wow Andrew the TV Just turned itself on

Here in the hotel room That was scary That's weird do you think it has to do with checkout or something Did it take it to like the welcome screen

It's 9am here in Hawaii that was terrifying I'm just sitting alone in this hotel room where that thing just chimed on the thing I was going to say is I wish that I had a reason to I just living alone in an apartment I just don't need things on the scale of how Costco sells them so I cannot justify getting a Costco membership even though I really do I love being in a Costco I find it just very fun and relaxing for whatever we're probably my consumerist tendencies and my addiction to consumerism. But there is no there's just no justifiable reason for me to join Costco. So I'm going to now live vicariously through you and Veeves on this one.

I honestly think I'm going to use it mostly as a food court because, I mean, it's true. Even though we have a little bit more room here and we're not in an apartment anymore, we're still only two people like we just don't need. Like I saw my brand of hot dogs there, which I think are Hemplers. I think they're the ones who make the Seattle Mariner dogs. And they're actually branded as such And I saw the packs there, I was like, ooh, I like those hot dogs And then I picked them up, I'm like, but that's too many hot dogs I mean, a six pack of hot dogs is plenty for me and Genevieve That'll last us a couple of hours

Well, if you're making a hot dog bowl, Andrew Yeah, exactly

Like a bread bowl with little pieces of hot dogs It all comes together

Alright, well, thank you everyone for listening today We are going to be back here tomorrow I will be back in Portland. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Andrew, even though the flight gets in really, really late Portland time.

Would you call it a red-eye?

It's almost, because it lands after 12 a.m. in Portland, but only just after. So I don't think it can be called a red-eye, technically. But we will see you tomorrow with more of this imaginary radio. Until then, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves, stay safe, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

God damn it, that was one of the nicest episodes of TVTL I have heard in a long time. Thank you.

Power out.