Muse

Yesterday, I put my bins out on the driveway. Garbage recycling and yard waste. And now I wait on Garbage Day. Anxiety like a cold wave washes over me. Did they come or not? I cannot see. Oh, garbage day is hard on me. Why do they pass me by and then lie and say they came? Until I see a truck, I'm just stuck on garbage day. 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.

Chips and dips, chips and dips. I love chips and dips. Guess what? It's illegal. It's literally illegal. Am I a hero? I really can't say. But yes, as my grandpa likes to say, hot diggity dog, as I like to say, hot damn. That's good. All right.

Hello. Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. I'll say, I'll say, what's up, dog? My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

I think this guy's sense of humor never developed past junior high school.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it looks like it's actually...

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

Maybe going to be a nice day, which we are due for, as it has been frigid around here for the last week or so. We're at episode 3663 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. We have lots to talk about on this Friday, including the breaking news that the board at Twitter, wouldn't it be weird if that's how we said it, Twitter, it'd be a whole different social media platform if we called it Twitter instead of Twitter. The board at Twitter has just voted in the last, I don't know, few minutes To create what they're calling a poison pill rule So that Elon Musk cannot hostily purchase Twitter for $43 billion I know what you guys are thinking Hey, it's the guy from Twitter That's what you're thinking right now We will talk about what's going on with that Also, if you are ready to hear the cutest sound maybe ever made we will play it for you it's the sound of a sleepy porcupine it's like my heart is trying to hug my brain porcupine or porcupine porcupine seems overly formal but it's probably more accurate than porcupine anyway you know who I can talk this over with my dear friend and the longest running cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships speaking of adorable little animals

This guy is a four-and-a-half-foot-tall pile of awesomeness.

He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining us right now from the Sweet Cream District of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. What did we say? I already forgot. What do the Canadians call weed whackers or weed eaters? Whipper snippers? Whipper snipper, right, which I want to, well, first step would be try to remember that, then employ it in daily use. I just got a text message, like, as the show was starting, at a text message from someone, I don't know, So somebody from a 401 area code. Is that from around here, Luke? I don't think so, right? 401. 401.

I don't even recognize that. I'm going to put it into the Google area code.

Okay, this text message came from Rhode Island. Exactly. But it's a flyer that came in the mail for a Shindarwa brand whippersnipper. But in the flyer, by the way, you can say 15% off all of the units. They're just called units. They avoid the Canadian-American divide, as far as what to call them. Weed eaters, weed whackers, edgers, trimmers. Forget about it. Whippersnipper, don't worry about it. It's merely a unit. Should I start calling my whippersnipper a unit? No. Okay, good. That's what I have at the top of the show. What do you got? I'm a glasses guy, Andrew. Hey, did you mention on the show yesterday that you had that eye doctor appointment? I know we talked off-air about it. Okay.

I mentioned on the show in reference to the fact that I'm feeling every bit of my 45 years on this planet. Yeah. And it was exasperated.

by the fact that i had to go to the optometrist yesterday because i have uh been noticing that when i'm trying to read things close up like particularly my cell phone i have to move it i have to hold it basically at arm's length from my eyes um and i've always very much prided myself on two things being able to drink coffee and then go to sleep one of the ultimate cool guy moves and two being able to having really really good eyesight and well that is that's not the case anymore I have I am farsighted now and I have some amount of I don't know what you'd call it basically I got a prescription for for some glasses because I now need to wear glasses to

see things so these are like readers but I mean I think read when people say readers those are just generic magnified lenses that aren't prescription based is that correct yeah they're

not readers though there's something called hold on i can find the email from a warby parker explaining exactly what i'm doing here um anti-fatigue is this is the power of my prescription is called anti-fatigue i could use some of that um and uh it was i'll tell you this i i went to I like the aesthetic of Warby Parker, so I figured, like, they actually have an optometrist at the Warby Parker at the mall, so I figured, you know, I'll get my eyes checked, they'll probably have some frames that I like, and so I went out there, but then it was weird because they had, you know, you've heard about the staffing shortage, that does not apply to the Warby Parker at the Washington Square Mall in Portland. there were like conservatively 25 employees with no customers to talk to so they were just following me around and it was i wanted to be like leave me alone with these frames please too much service it was way too much service which again that's not usually the case in most instances these days but it was like i just wanted to wander around the store and pick up different frames at my leisure and try them on and put them back and i just had like a team of people following me including so the optometrist or the eye doctor i should say who helped me she was very nice very professional she had a little like thing in the back you know office in the back of the store but then they also had like an optometrist who was out in the front of the store whose job it was when you picked out the glasses you liked he then came up to you and made you put the glasses on and then made you look around at things and then drew on the lens where your eyes were going to be yeah you ever had this this is a thing yeah that's a thing because they need to

know something about i can't remember it's not focal point but it's something on along the lines of that because if you're buying them online you need to get those numbers yourself and my optometrist didn't give me those numbers and they they there are online tutorials of how you can actually do the measuring with a ruler yourself i can feel we have some optometrists uh in the audience and i always get emails um from people concerned about just generally warby parker and any kind of um i mean i'm a i've used warby parker for a long time i have not followed these people's advice but i do sometimes hear from people in the industry saying you know these aren't the um you shouldn't mess around with your eyes and i don't trust the people at warby parker as as much as i trust the doctors but i've never gone into the so when you said you had a doctor's appointment It was at the Warby Parker Your first exam was Within the walls of a WP

Exactly They have a couple of brick and mortar Shops here in Portland And yeah so I went to the mall and then In the back of the Warby Parker there is like an Optometrist office and she was of course A doctor of optometry Very professional that was all legit And then the guy that helped me the optometrist Who was figuring out where my eyes Were going to look he also was super professional He had 30 years of experience which he mentioned to me but it was just so many people waiting for me to decide what lens what frames i wanted again it was like the rare instance of too much service i just wanted everyone to leave me that alone i need some

time alone with these i'm picturing you you know those um little magnet and steel shaving games

that we had as kids i don't think i had one tim cast you put the beard or the mustache on the

dude yeah and the and the shavings kind of follow your magnet around under the plastic i'm picturing you kind of wandering literally what it was like at the worby park and all these shavings are just following you around can we help you sir can we help you sir can we help you sir i know and i had

this one guy again he was very nice and very professional but i don't know if they're on commission i would be shocked if they're on commission i think they were just trying to do a good job but it was like i i was trying to find the words to say alexi leave me the hell alone

dude because he was just like my shadow well they want you it's a glasses store they want you to feel seen maybe you felt a little bit too seen yeah love it um i think this guy

You were never developed past junior high school. Hey, that was solid, solid material. And I was trying to explain to this guy, I was trying to give him something to do because he was so on me. So he was like, what are you looking for? I go, well, I have a really round face. Somebody told me this years ago, and actually I think it was pretty good advice, which is because I have a round face, I need to pick glasses that are not round because it accentuates the round. I mean, maybe somebody wants to have a cherubic face. I'm not one of those people. i'd like to de cherub my face a little bit if possible and so i was like i need something kind of square kind of blocky something that offsets the roundness of my face and so then he said oh over there with the pink background that's where a lot of those glasses are and i walked over there and there were none of those kinds of glasses there i was like you're in this store all day long how do you not know that the area you just pointed me to has almost zero of the kind of uh you know, chunky, blocky glasses that I want to try to de-cherub my face.

That's not the service you get at Lowe's, I told you. You walk in. I was back at Lowe's yesterday. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to interrupt your story, but I guess to keep the needles moving, again, I walk into Lowe's. I'm so impressed with Lowe's. By the way, last week, one day I was leaving Lowe's, and I think it might have even been the first time I was in there, having been going to Home Depot. No, wrong one, wrong song, because I am definitely not a Home Depot person. I am a Lowe's person. All right, don't be so literal. Lowe's doesn't have a catchy song. But it's related to this because I was so impressed with the customer service at Lowe's and then I was leaving one day with a cart full of stuff and there was a woman at the door and I was like, oh, are you checking receipts here? Because apparently I go to Costco once and suddenly I think everybody's going to check my receipts at the door. And she said, no, no, but do you have time to take a poll or a quick survey? And I was like, no, no, I don't. Sorry. I smiled and she smiled back. And then I immediately regretted it. I was like, I should have taken the survey because I'm hot to trot on this place. And I'm very impressed with everybody who works here. And I would like to tell them that yesterday I went there. I needed something, something specific, Luke. I was very nervous about this. I'm not joking. I have a closet that just like your kind of standard closet here in the basement, just around the corner from my studio where I keep all of my hanging clothes, right? All of my shirts and pants and keep my shoes in there and stuff too. And it's one of those closets where it's just got a simple bar hanging across it. But there's an area where there could be a shelf on top to, let's say, keep my baseball caps, right? But that shelf isn't there. but there's, I see that I could slide one in easily because it's got some wood around the frame of the closet that it could rest on top of. So I measure it quickly with a tape measure. I'm like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to go get a, find a piece of wood at Lowe's and see if they'll cut it down to spec to me or for me. And, uh, and I do that. It was 22 wide, 22 inches wide. And then at first it looked like it was 37 inches long. And then I'm like, wait, wait, don't, Don't do this too sloppily, Walsh. I was in a hurry. This was an idea that came upon me quickly, and I wanted to strike while the iron was hot. And so I go back in with the tape measure. I'm like, it's more like 36 and three quarters, I think. And then, okay, that's good. Those are the numbers I write down. I go to Home Depot. I find the special. I'm sorry, Lowe's. Jesus, Walsh. I go to Lowe's, and I find the place where it's specifically shelving wood, like different thicknesses of shelving wood, a little bit more expensive than I expected. um and i'm like wow they really do have everything so i pull this thing down it's where doers get more done and i'm like but now i gotta find somebody to cut this down for me so i find out the routine turns out you gotta pay for it first then you take it what oh oh you don't have to pay for them to cut it though no you pay for it first then you do so i guess i guess that eliminates you just having people cut up wood that still is in the property of the lows and then changing your

mind take you back to that big old saw that's on the like weird on the wall system yeah i hadn't seen that before i'd seen them use table saws in there before but that must be going back years and years and years now because yeah they have it's got a vacuum hooked up to it i was very impressed with this guy he was like he kept measuring it he was like measuring it four times and cutting once which i really appreciated but luke i was sweating it so hard because i was thinking all right i said i think 36 and three quarters but i'm like but that's a it's got to be internal not what do they call it the in and out measurements or external it's not i'm not saying it right but if you have something that needs to slide into 36 and three quarters you need it to be shaved off a tiny bit so that it will actually fit in there right i was can't be exactly that length or then it won't yes and and i'm watching him and i in my head i was like i think i made the adjustment for that at home when i was writing these numbers down but i wasn't 100 sure and i kept thinking i should have should have put more wiggle room in there and he's taking a long time to measure it and I was going bananas in my head Thinking, should I interrupt him right now? Like, he's been measuring this thing for, like, a minute and a half, two minutes now. Longer than I thought it was going to be. And there was plenty of time for me to go up and say, hey, you know what? I'm rethinking this. Just shave it on the more inside of that measurement as opposed to the outside because it's got to slide into a closet. And I keep thinking that. Should I interrupt him? I'm like, nope. Just let him do his job. Let him do his job. He makes the cuts. It takes longer than I thought. I take it home. I'm driving home. I'm already saying to myself, listen, you're going to have to bring this back and cut it some more. I just be emotionally prepared for that. This is going to be a two trips to Lowe's kind of day. I'll bet you I screwed this up. I brought the piece of wood home. At first, I couldn't even get it in the closet just because the dimensions of the closet. Like, it's, you know, it's got a doorway and then it widens out once you go into there. And it's got a bunch of duct work coming down. By the way, I found Home Depot theme song for one hour. It has three million views. What is the Lowe's theme song? Do they even have one? I don't think they have one. That's the problem. Let me find it. Well, let's just see here. Lowe's theme song. Here, they have something here. What is this? I got something on my end here. Wait. Oh, shit. That's not my computer. That's yours. That's mine. That's what the internet says the Lowe's theme song is, too. I feel like I just got trolled, and I think it's hilarious, actually. Somebody has put on YouTube the Lowe's logo And they list it as the Lowe's theme song But it's, of course, the Home Depot theme song Wait a second, two different people have done this Is there a chance that the Lowe's and Home Depot song are basically the same? There's one called Lowe's theme song fixed Okay, let's see what that is Okay, this sounds right Okay, so anyway, I'm in Lowe's. Hashtag Lowe's gang.

It would have been, that's literally on this YouTube page. It would have been so much funnier if Lowe's theme song Fixed was also the Home Depot song. Or if it was Game of Thrones theme song sung by cats. The ultimate trolling. Anyway, I'm sorry, so you have your shelving, you're driving home, you're freaking out. I'm freaking out, then I come home and I'm like, oh, forget about that quarter of an inch or whatever. This isn't even going to fit in the closet. Maybe that's why this thing wasn't in here originally. I can't explain it. And even if the dimensions were right, given the very, there's a couple of pieces of ductwork hanging low in the closet. And just by getting this thing through the doorway, there wasn't a way to maneuver it up above the ledge that it was supposed to sit on. I kind of had a panicky moment because I really, I know it sounds nuts, but I really need this shelf. Like there are, this shelf is going to solve a lot of problems for me, Luke. I'm not joking. Like, I need the shelves in this room to hold books, but in order for it to hold books, I got to get rid of all this other stuff, and I didn't know. And I made a decision. I really didn't want my baseball caps on display anywhere. No offense to people who display their baseball caps. First of all, mine are not collector's items, and they get kind of grungy kind of early on. And secondly, like, I just don't want to be a guy who displays my baseball caps. Like, my baseball caps aren't, like, an extension of my personality, if that makes any sense. So I really wanted to put them behind a closed door. lot is riding on this um that is an interesting phenomenon i hadn't really thought of it you said that but there is a whole thing with the displaying of the baseball caps as if they're also decorative which is fine i think you know i'm really not judging other people but like that's just not my thing you know what i mean like i i actually am thinking of some some friends who you know they kind of collect these hats well actually you have some kind of nice hats and you you pick out like kind of retro recreations from some, you know, like not even minor league teams, but independent league teams from back in the day. Stuff I got from Ebbets. Yeah, and that stuff is arty. Like, I understand it. Like, it's just not my thing, and it's not how I regard my hat. So anyway. When people come over, you're not trying to show off that you have a Modesto nuts hat. Exactly, which I don't, actually. I have their divisional rivals, the Giants. The Quakes? The San Jose Giants. But the Quakes, I believe, are also in that division, huh? anyway um let's see how can i power out of this thing i've really dug myself i've really climbed up a big hill andrew i'm on pins and needles actually i'm on pins and needles about two things one did the shelf fit and you have to go to the bathroom no i also want to hear about your charleston chew experience oh have okay yeah well uh i can is that gonna spoil the video no no i did not i did not i got obsessed with other things yesterday i have some time i'm i am getting so much advice and correct and corrections about charleston shoe from my assumptions about it like i'm actually going to put it together in the newsletter this week every because i'm still building up to trying some charleston shoes but in the past 24 hours i have learned so much i'm

getting out of anything we've ever talked about i am getting so much advice from people about charleston shoes including from our video editor at american public

So I sent him a note saying, I think I'm going to do this in a couple of weeks. And he's saying that I really shouldn't. Anyway, sign up for the newsletter to find out why. But back to the shelf thing, what I ended up having to do, I had a moment of freak out that I'm like, well, just first of all, dude, just take all your clothes out of here. And then I'm like, still not working. Then I'm like, okay, try taking this, the actual pole that the hangers hang on. So I totally emptied the closet and then said, this is it, Andrew. Spatial reasoning is one of the few things you pride yourself on.

Yeah, you were bragging on that yesterday. Make it so.

Make it so, I said to myself. So I took off my coat.

In the words of William Shatner.

Famously. In the words of Baby Yoda, make it so. And I did it. I figured it out. That's it. I can't figure out a more clever way to power out of that story. But I finagled. I managled. and I got it up there and again actually I could use it as a show pic today but ironically it'll be a picture of my baseball hats which I don't want anybody to see but sure I could use that and I got it in there and god it felt so good I cleared a bunch of things off my shelf it gave me a place to put all these bags that have just been like littered on my floor it just felt like such a small weird little thing just unlocked a big part of the unpacking and moving in experience

And did everything kind of go the way that you hoped it would, with the hats being there and then the other stuff hanging? Like, did you just find yourself just kind of staring at the closet when it was all done, just with a sense of satisfaction? Well, sort of.

Okay, quick coda. I mean, I'm a little bit disappointed in myself on one thing. So, this was my first, I'll call it shelf-building experience. Although, I think calling this shelf-building, calling this woodworking, might strain credulity a tiny bit. If I cared more, I would have painted it white, but I also am not going to get that thing back out of there. So it's just kind of – it looks like plywood. When you open up the closet at eye level, you're seeing the cross-section of plywood, which isn't, like, the best look. Wait, it's not actually plywood, though, right? No, it is. It's oak plywood, I think, or it's beach plywood, I think. Yeah, it's good enough. Yeah, again, maybe – I think almost all the stuff that was labeled as shelving was plywood. But I can explain if it's cut a certain way, it's kind of got a finished edge. But the way I got it in there, the finished edge is buried or I think it's on the wrong sides or something or I think it's on the sides. Anyway, so it doesn't look great. You know, it looks like, you know, I look like somebody in college or something just making it work, which is fine. Like, I'm the only one who's ever going to open that closet. But the other thing that kind of drives me nuts is, and this wasn't my fault, but having the shelving there above the hanger pole, if this makes sense, it makes it difficult to put the hangers on the pole. There's not a lot of clearance there, whoever installed the actual woodwork around this thing. And then thirdly, I will say, and this is totally on me. This is the learning experience. I measured as far as depth of this thing is concerned. I measured it for to take up the full rectangle that it that it could because it didn't occur to me that, oh, I should probably have this set back a little bit. The shelf does not need to come all the way up to the door jam, you know, which is a little bit intrusive. It actually does cheat out a little bit more space, but it's a it's got a little bit of a claustrophobic feel. You open up the closet and the shelf is like kind of right there. It doesn't like get in the way the door closes and everything. It's just kind of like it's a it's a little bit much. But those are the those are the learning the things that those are the improvement opportunities, as Eric needs to say that you're growing edge.

But, you know, what's I've just grown something. Whoa, that's not weird. I've just had some personal growth. That also sounds weird. i've had some swelling andrew in my um personal growth department which is i when you said plywood shelves i just imagine like a sheet of plywood like you know the kind of standard i think it's maybe four by six or four by eight sheet of plywood that's you know growing up my dad would build a lot of things he used a lot of plywood for his sign business that's what i think of as being plywood but you're absolutely right plywood is also the standard for shelving and i mean i I just thought that the only thing that was plywood were those big sheets of plywood that we're all familiar with.

Oh, yeah, where you can see the plywood on even the broad sides of it as well. This is kind of – I just sent you a photo. I'll make this the show pic today. You can see my closets a little bit. I mean, I don't know. It's a little personal, I guess. But you can see. You know, it's fine. It's fine. I don't know if we want to get an on-air reaction to a shelf. I feel like –

What do you guys talk about on your podcast? Yeah, sometimes one of the guys sends the other guy a picture of a shelf and he reacts.

Yeah, I know. People say, how do you find things to talk about? The answer is we don't. We do this instead. All right. Listen, let's take a break because I'm.

I am dying for this photo of this shelf to come in, but it's taking a minute. So let's take a break. We'll let that happen. I'll let it wash over me. And then when we come back, we'll give a full report. And we'll thank the donors. We'll thank the people that are paying for this coming up here on 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.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These wonderful, generous folks Are keeping the show going Are helping fund Shelf Talk People like Lisa, Moylan, and Potts In the pronunciation Or as some say, pronunciation The irony of me mispronouncing the pronunciation Is not lost on me In the kind of part where Lisa could put the pronunciation of her name in She wrote, nope Up to you to remember. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. All caps. Lisa, it's a trap. How'd I do, Lisa? Lisa is in South King County, Washington. It's post. Lisa says, when I meet a 10 in the wild, I am delighted beyond compare. Having an international network to lean on when things are dark and celebrate when things are joyous makes me feel very, I'm on top of the world. Leo, Titanic voice. we don't have that it's not a drop that we do right is that a hamilton reference

um no i don't think so i've never seen that movie so i mean i've seen that i've seen images of that scene a million times i assume they're at their front of the boat type of deal but uh i don't think i've ever actually heard it if that makes sense i've i've told this story many times

on the show but you know the the the guy who his claim to fame was uh he was he worked with an ex wife of mine uh as an artist they taught it like an art program and his one of his claims to fame was that he had named the bedazzler and the bedazzler too this rings a bell the bedazzler

meaning that the arts and crafts thing that bedazzles yeah the thing where you like you

basically put like you know like sparkly things on your jeans or whatever yeah okay so one of his weird stories was that he had named the bedazzler and then the people that made the bedazzler had had sold so many you know um units that we call bedazzlers now yeah wait are you talking about a weed whacker or a bedazzler so many whippersnippers he hadn't he had come up with the name bedazzler and it had sold so many bedazzlers that then the people came back to him and said barry we are bringing out another bedazzler and we need your genius advice on what to name it because the first one was such a success and the story goes that he made them he goes and i made him sweat for two weeks and then i went back to that meeting with him and i just wrote it down on a piece of paper and i folded it and i slid it across the table and when they opened it it said bedazzler two and they sold 12 million was he making fun of himself or i this guy was so i i mean so hilariously unself-aware but his his other his other lie that was i mean maybe he did name the bedazzler and the bedazzler two but the thing that he also claimed to have done which was provably false was that he had painted the artwork that leo dicaprio's character is supposedly painting in titanic and the reason that that's provably false is because it's it's well known that james cameron actually did that he actually painted the paintings interesting did he name

gallagher too i should ask him that my friend john who's an artist actually does have um he he's high school friends with and i think i've mentioned this on the show before he's high school friends with the guy um carter i can't think of his last name who created um damn it what's the show tell me about your mother um how i met your mother how i met your mother because back in college long before that show existed or just before that show existed john was telling me about the slap fights that he and carter invented in high school which ends up i guess becoming a big plot point in that tv show no slap bets maybe slap bets i haven't seen the show my apologies i haven't either but there's some big thing in that that's called a slap bet and that is actually something that john was telling me about that he and carter used to do in high school and then it became popular because of this tv show and also this is my point if i have one john also had a lot of art on that tv show which i think is cool yeah like he paint he created art and then they put it in

the background yeah just in the background of a coffee shop or what have you there was i was talking to um w kamau bell recently about his cosby documentary and one of the things that he talks about in the documentary that hadn't occurred to me as a white person was that the art that the cosby's had in their home was from no to notable black artists and that for him that was a really like this this the like sort of black excellence of that was really You

important to him as a kid and to a lot of black folks to see that represented kind of in the background of the cosby show which was like that show was really happening on two levels there was the white america uh experience which was like this show is funny when he does these things and rudy is cute and then there was the like just the way that it was an extremely obviously important cultural thing for for black americans yeah yep anyway uh the guy barry said that he painted all

the art on the background of the cosby show too but john did that i'm quite sure john did that

they were finger at least it continues thank you to all of the tens for being my people all the time thank you to luke and andrew for sharing your lives and shelving tips with us every day how did she know how did she know that that was going to come up today i am marginally informed of important events from your amazing reporting, and I appreciate it. Marginally informed is being generous, Lisa, but we will take it. Thank you for making me almost pee my pants from laughter when I'm stuck on the five and for making me feel okay about shame-eating a McChicken. Hopefully these are on different days, Lisa writes. Thank you for being a power for good and for helping cure global loneliness. We got each other and we laughed together. and to misappropriate a lyric by jimmy hendrix tbtl tens are bold as love cheers to another cycle around the sun which i clearly mark by the tbtl on nmtt ampersand glta we'll never know what that

means i don't i can't figure it out in reference i got i got top men working on it yep thank you

Lisa, we really appreciate you and appreciate the support. Maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dattle.

Will you look at this? It's our friend Bobby Pape in Albany, New York. You know, I lived in New York for a fair amount of time, and I was always mispronouncing Albany. I was calling it Albany.

Really? That's where you have your steamed hams? Yeah.

That's a Utica family. Ah, gotcha. it's albany new york where bobby is hailing from hi friendos you may know me from my years of palling around on the stens page and at this show has everything i'm excited to announce that i've launched a new podcast about the ridiculous things we encounter as part of our jobs from horrible bosses to impossible expectations we're diving into the sometimes hilarious and sometimes detrimental stories of work gone awry it's called other duties as a sign that's great our first guest that's a really good name um uh our first guests are none other than the one and only phyllis p fletch fletcher and a friend for legal reasons we will simply refer to as will the pilot holy shit i want to listen to that episode yeah that the first interview on the record From the head of the pilots union For Alaska Airlines

How did we not land this interview Luke I'll talk to you about that off air

If we were doing talk radio again Andrew We'd have a real in It's P. Fletch and someone who will just go by Will the pilot We've also got industry experts in the mix Like long time 10 and HR consultant Andrea Ballard and others Once you finish the entire Archive of TBTL Robert, appreciate you Go check out the pilot episode of Other Duties As Assigned OtherDuties.biz That's right .biz Everybody go check out Bobby's podcast OtherDuties.biz

Hey, good news, Luke I was not able to land Will the pilot But for next week, maybe on Wednesday I was able to get Won't the pilot Thank you so much for laughing at that I was ready for the dead, cold, stone silence.

That's so great. Won't the pilot.

Can that be a show title? Or should the show title be Will the Pilot and Won't the Pilot? I don't know.

It's a real will they, won't they, fly me where I'm trying to go situation right now. Anyway, Bobby, thank you for the support. We really appreciate you, man. Thank you for all of your help over the years in so many different ways with this program. hello and welcome to top story oh i forgot to mention andrew that yesterday when i was getting my eyes checked of course i have this giant injury on my forehead right and i was going back and forth between like put a band-aid over or don't and it's healed enough now that i'm just going out in the world sans bandage because i feel like the band-aid is almost more like i don't know if upsetting

is the right word but it's like you know it could be anything behind that bandage or it could just be kind of obviously i banged my head into something and it's it's in the process of healing yeah and so i i decided to just like go out in the world sans bandage but of course this poor optometrist is like doing all kinds of eye tests and things where she's getting very close to my head and also just like staring right at this whole thing and at some point i said we're all thinking about it i have a head wound she laughed she goes i was gonna ask you about it she goes that's actually pretty pretty awesome she goes i wish i had a scar like that really look at that i think you probably don't but i appreciate the feedback hey you know i i'm glad that you brought

this back up because i realized i kind of hijacked your story we never got to like the point of like now you i mean it's warby parker so did you walk away with glasses or no because you know their

prescription so i mean i walked away with an order for glasses and andrew i used my hsa debit card

Nice. I almost, I cannot tell you how many times I've been in a situation like that and I pull out my credit card and Genevieve says, don't you have an HSA card? I'm like, oh my God, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I was shocked that I was able to locate my HSA debit card and that it had money on it and that I used it for the appropriate. I mean, are they able to, is it some list of kinds of businesses where you can scan that thing? Or could I take that to Arby's? Like, how does it know if I have a prescription for Arby's?

I do have a... Oh, my God. Did you just do it? Am I going to eat Arby's today? God damn. I'm pretty far up north here now. It used to be kind of quite a drive. Yeah.

Oh, you know what? I don't want to give away too much about your location, but the Arby's of my youth was in more or less an area near you, an area not parked at the Sweet Meats District.

Yeah, sure.

And now it's a hotel that I've stayed at.

Oh, interesting. Oh, cool.

But it used to be – I remember you and I went to that Arby's.

Oh, is that the one we went to? Okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I'm remembering.

Yep, yep, yep. But that Arby's is no longer – it's now a – it's some Marriott property.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, but there is that one, I think. Is the other one in – it's not Shoreline. Is it Edmonds? I don't know. There's an Arby's. But, man, you've planted the idea. Now I might have to take care of that.

But my question is that I was – this is how sketchy – I mean, by the way, it's also my money, right? like i put the money on this hsa card the whole deal right is that you don't get taxed on it is that kind of the that's the scoop right yeah yeah and that's what the advantage is and it's for you know medical things or you know the eye doctor or whatever or diapers you can buy like stuff for i think you know babies with it is there some kind of but i mean is there a chip like does it know

that you're at the arby's versus the warby's my oh you're right you can really play in that middle ground there i my assumption is that everything is subject to review and you could be rolling the dice if you're buying a bunch of stuff at maybe a bartell's drugstore bartell drugstore um and maybe you throw an extra thing in your cart you might get away with it by the way this is all an assumption luke i have no basis for any of this other than what i guess but my guess is the systems also probably have certain you know keywords and flags built in so if you were to use it like roast beef would probably or just arby's exactly exactly because

of course i'm looking at that like i've had so many years where like it's the day that that money is going to expire for whatever reason or somehow it's like you got to use it or lose it and like you know in the days of being married to carrie it'd be like she'd be like going out and just buying all manner of like you know medical supply anything we might need like just to like burn through that money that was i guess going to go away or something or weirdly which is funny because

i don't think that's that's supposed to maybe that's maybe that's not the hsa maybe you know what there are two there's like flex and there's hsas i get those confused but yeah i think there's something called flex spending which is similar then there's hsas that you can invest in and you know roll over from year to year it's a good investment i was just so proud that i had the

physical card that i called health partners our awesome insurance andrew which covers i'd say about zero of everything but it's consistent that's what's cool and but i was so proud that i had this card and that it worked and i took it in and i was able to pay for my my eye care with

it i just felt like a grown-up for one yeah yeah no it's a it's a good thing actually i was talking to somebody and i can't remember her name and she was awesome but like three like a while back like three or four years ago i remember it was like open enrollment time at 8 p.m and i was trying And I'm really, really, really dumb with this stuff, as people probably know after my explanation of how I think HSAs and flex spending work. I could be totally wrong about all of that. But I remember having a question about this HSA thing and whether or not I should invest in it and, like, what would happen, you know, if I don't use it or whatever. And I somehow got a hold of somebody in the APMH. HR department which is there was a time when I thought that you needed some sort of magic some sort of just magic I have trouble navigating this company which has you know offices in LA which they had me in the LA office for a while things have evened out now but it took me a long time to navigate some of these inside APM things and I got somebody on the phone in HR who was just ecstatic to talk about HSAs and how much she loves them and what a great I think I talked to that same person she is so helpful yes so so helpful and so enthusiastic and also just like picked up the phone i remember it started off awkwardly because i said like oh you you you picked up the phone she's like yeah i pick up the phone i can't i'm sorry i can't shout out her name i'm sure she doesn't listen to tbtl but um she's not that nice but anyway yeah so i i'm kind of on the hsa train now it sounds like a pretty good investment i think i called that same person when

i was in la shooting this danny trejo tv story and there was some issue with the insurance and carrie was like can you try to work this out and i'm like i will try but i'm standing in a parking lot outside of trejo's tacos and if you put me at a computer i wouldn't know what to do let alone out here just in the world yeah and i like called some random number and it routed me to that person and she completely hooked the whole thing up that's awesome boy we should really know this person's name i'm feeling worse and worse about this uh yeah um well again you're you're right she's not listening so at least there's that um have you been following this whole elon musk twitter

situation well just for the past couple of days i mean i had heard something about him buying some stock a while back but like i didn't really pay much attention to that but then i did start paying attention with i don't know if it was yesterday or the day before where the news came out about like uh the hostile takeover plan and how he wanted to um you know uh buy up all shares for 54.20 i think which was like another 420 joke we think um oh really remember he needed he did another 420 thing a while back with something regarding tesla or something just seems like the type of yeah i mean he's just a troll but anyway so i've been following it a little bit

on twitter are all billionaires emotionally stunted at age 13 so um i'm not really helping

the audience who hasn't uh been read up on this so i'll hand things back over to you well the new

news today is that the um twitter board has passed this poison pill plan it's a lot of peas dude where it's basically like if elon musk were to try to take over the company they would flood the market with more twitter stock so to keep diluting his share so he could never get enough to um to sort of just like hostily take over twitter it's just such a weird it's so weird to me that he wants to own twitter like it's such a kind of like it's like right out of a bond

villain kind of move and it's also just and it's it plays into that like kind of this like far right um when i say like far right but actually people sitting in congress those types of far right people who are just kind of like oh twitter is uh you know stunting free speech meet me on parlor and we need to we need to take twitter back to reinstate free speech in this country which really, really underscores a lack of understanding of free speech.

Right when you said that, my brain started trying to compose a funny tweet about Elon Musk buying Parler. Like, you want to know how Twitter, like what Twitter's standing is versus Parler. Nobody is trying to buy Parler. Right. Nobody's fighting over buying Parler. But yeah, it's so strange that he's like, people need to, they need a service that's maximally, maximally free speech is what he's saying. Like, as if like you can really say just about anything on Twitter, as long as it's not openly hostile to people or demonstrably false in a way that will drive people to certain behaviors. Like, I don't feel like Twitter is exactly a, you know, they're not they're not stifling free speech other than not letting like Trump on there. Like, what is the free speech that Elon Musk thinks is being tamped down on Twitter?

I'm sure I'm sure it is kind of related to like the Trumpiness and that type of thing. Right. The fact that there the fact that there are now some guidelines when it comes to, like, you know, the vaccine, I want to call it the vaccine debate because that gives it too much credit. But the lies and rumors being spread about vaccines, you know, like that stuff, the social media platforms had to start, like, regulating that in some way. And the second you start saying, hey, you can't use this private platform to spread misinformation that is demonstrably harmful to the global community, suddenly that's tamping down free speech.

Yeah, it just – again, it doesn't seem like – to me, it doesn't seem like Twitter is being overly sort of careful with the speech they allow. There's being like any normal, you know, I would say company. And in fact, they probably let some shit go on there that they shouldn't. Yeah, but the idea that like the problem with Twitter is not enough free speech is just very weird to me. Also, is this?

strange i mean i'll never see a billion dollars in my life but 43 billion also seemed low to me i don't know what twitter is worth i don't know what it should be worth but 43 billion for some

reason struck me as low oh not not me that seems like a really yeah i'm not just saying i mean 43 billion dollars where people can spread fart jokes and 180 characters or less like i don't know that's a lot of money man um do you know what tesla is worth no but i mean it's it's got to be pretty successful we're seeing tesla's like all over the place these days right 17 trillion

jesus live that's the valuation of tesla and he owns i think like 17 of that so in order to get the money to buy twitter if they were going to let him he was going to have to potentially like one of the things he could have done was sell four percent actually i guess it wouldn't be four percent it would he would go from owning 17 of tesla to owning 14 of tesla in in reducing his his stake from from 17 to 14 it would free up for like enough billions of dollars that then he could

go buy twitter well you know first of all i i don't know much about this stuff but i feel like he's just a troll right like he just even doing this he's getting the headlines that he craves And it's almost like, you know, how you might get an adrenaline rush if you can be the tweet of the day, which I assume we'll be doing some tweet of the days later. But you have a successful tweet of the week. But, you know, he's getting the headlines. He's getting the dopamine. Everybody's talking about him. And he gets to be this. He gets to talk about hostile takeovers, which how sexy is that? By the way, that was my other point. my whole life when somebody said hostile takeover the own literally the only thing i could have told you about it is it's something that somebody tried to do on cheers once it was like the bar it was in like the later stages of cheers when and i don't really know the cheers arc all that well i am almost tempted to get genevieve in here see if she remembers because she was a big cheers head i think um i think it was probably the bar which doesn't make sense because the bar would why would that have ever been traded public yeah but there was so maybe that was the joke i just remember being a kid you don't really know how the world works and there was this rich pompous guy with a british accent i think on cheers does this ring a bell to you luke i don't think you watch

much cheers either right yes his name was robin i think yeah his name was robin okay yeah yeah yeah

thank you oh great you're my fact checking cuz um and so yeah and robin i thought was trying to do a hostile takeover of the bar and i remember just being like confused about that and then you know you never really suss it out and then eventually you're an adult oh wait i think genevieve heard herself genevieve just barge in the room shaking her head saying you got to be kidding with this can we will you allow here genevieve i'll give you some headphones here this is unplanned i'm giving you some headphone level there genevieve swing that mic she came in she barging in this

is a first i love it i can't i sit now near enough to hear andrew um doing the show and This will not stand

And Genevieve you are all You're living out the listener fantasy Of being able in real time To correct our bullshit

I just got a note from somebody Who said Actually a little Ford promo For my music for your weekend coming up Somebody sent in a song with Genevieve's name in it And they said Please also get the real Genevieve on the show more So I guess we found out how to do that

yeah okay what what talk some mess about a tv show that i know a lot about okay so when rebecca when diane chambers left the show you know when her character left the show and shelly long left the show they they bring in a new uh female lead um and that's kirstie alley as uh rebecca and um she is like sam at this point i think like out of in in whatever distress over his relationship ending he sells the bar and like tries to just sort of do something else but then kind of comes back like the beginning of the season with rebecca he comes back and's like actually i wish i hadn't sold the bar i want to i want to be the owner of cheers again but at this point he sold it to some sort of like and this was the 80s right so he sold it to some sort of like he sold it to ivan boski some sort of like mega corp right cheers incorporated that owns like a million bars and the person who is sort of like now managing the bar but doesn't really own it she just works for the corporation is Rebecca so she's nominal she's his boss but she's not so much the owner of the bar as she is just like the the kind of corporate overseer of the bar and over the years this financial arrangement evolves and changes and I think Sam eventually gets the bar back but at any rate she that's his relationship to her when they meet she's this sort of like hard charging 80s

shoulder pad lady who who answers to corporate overlords who love and and she's and her her

character and they they really like get into this a lot is like she's very she's just a sort of slavishly devoted to the corporate culture and she like you know is really ambitious actually one of the sad and this happens a lot in tv sitcoms i think and it bugs me a lot is when they take a woman whose character begins as a really strong and maybe like it's it's played for laughs that she's so corporate and whatever but then they turn that person into just like a drooling idiot over the course of the of her character which is supposed to be a good arc for her character right that she's not such a like so she's not such a ball buster she stopped being

such a bitch like the office right kind of a similar thing with that with pam no not pam the

um oh with yes with with michael's i do think that they rebecca uh how'd michael's uh girlfriend

yeah michael's girlfriend was like jan jan yeah yeah exactly but i think rebecca how is the

definitely like the the archetype of that trajectory but anyway so you were talking about robin colcord at a certain point the the corporation that owns cheers the lillian corporation i just looked at thank you changes hands or appoints a new director so he somehow I don't I don't remember the the mechanism but somehow this British businessman becomes the her boss and he she's not only so she not only like is very into him as her boss but she's also very romantically attracted to him he's her perfect guy right he's British he's fancy he's a corporate dude and that's how we get Robin Colcord having having a role on the show.

I see. And what happens is he kind of, he woos her romantically to get access to private information. It says, this is from the plot summary of the episode Cry Hard, 1990. Norm concludes, remember Norm? He was also on Cheers. Look how far Cheers has come, by the way. It looks like Norm concludes that Robin is going to attempt a hostile takeover of the Lillian Corporation, information for which he obtained using Rebecca's access to the company without her knowledge. I see. So he was kind of playing Rebecca. Now, this is also where we get into what territory, Genevieve? Money belt. The other thing that I've been obsessed with my whole life because of Cheers, a money belt. Yeah. At some point.

Robin Colcord hides money belts a lot.

And then at some point he tells the gang, like, I've hit a money belt in some, like, location, and they tear that place apart. And now you and I cannot stay at a hotel, move into a new apartment, leave an old apartment without me saying, we gotta find the money belt. And I don't even know what a money belt is.

As far as I know, money belt was not a thing outside of this Cheers universe.

But I'm obsessed with it. Supposedly, you wear a money belt if you're traveling so that you don't get pickpocketed, right? Oh, is that what a money belt is?

you wear it that's what a common usage of it is but but the just the way it's um sort of depicted in this show is it's like it's more like just stacks and stacks of cash that are sort of like uh fitted it's a macguffin it's a macguffin but it's sort of they're fitted into like a a flat sort of container that is then can be taped up underneath a desk drawer or something

got it thus creating an arc for a whole episode of them tearing a place apart looking for the loot

If you don't mind, and I apologize for this if you do It was a 1993 episode Called It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Bar Robin returns to cheers Destitute, he has renounced his previous Greedy ways, gave away $6 million And he had hidden in Rebecca's desk drawer and has decided To live a life of poverty, that's right They find the money belt I believe taped underneath

That's where he takes it from When he absconds or whatever with whatever he kind of like he kind of like runs away after i think getting i don't remember the ins and outs but i think he like has to sort of flee with his with his riches but then he like it says he comes back and he says in sort of an offhand way like oh i hid money belts all over the place or something and so the bar thinks like oh maybe there's another

one yeah that's right and here it is they're trying to find the other money belt okay yep

there it is okay anyway you're welcome thank you can you just can you stick around for one more a minute i know you have a real job that is very important to the state of washington and the overall higher education landscape but have you ever heard a sleepy porcupine no there were these three porcupines i'm having a really hard time saying that word i feel like i grew up saying porcupine which is really not what it is like it's like a pig or something yeah rolly coaster Porcupine, but it's porcupine But that feels overly formal There were these four porcupines That were saved

they were basically got almost burned up in this lake tahoe wildfire called the caldor fire oh yeah and they like apparently the california porcupine is is pretty there's not a lot of them and and they're they're sort of not studied very often because they're very shy they mostly hang out in trees and just like people don't know a lot about them but you had these four porcupines named p1 p2 p3 and p4 who were really harmed in this in this fire like had their quills burned off and had their little feet burned and all this stuff. Well, they went to this recovery place called Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care. And the news this week is that they're being re-released. They're all healed up. So they're turning them back out into nature. But this is the set when they have to clean P3's cage and they have to wake P3 up because he's sleeping. It was early in the morning. This is what it sounds like when a porcupine does not want you making them wake up in the morning.

he does a little shake here

that is the sound of a sleepy porcupine wake up so cute um i'm glad they got i'm glad they recovered i know i know they were really they were really burned up from that fire so anyway um the uh lake tahoe wildlife care place has an instagram page where they're just documenting these check this out when the noises that porcupines make when the mom is nursing the baby they sing a song to each other like the baby starts singing a song and the mom starts singing a song or making a noise that's kind of like um sort of uh what would you call it uh it's sort of a back and forth thing i guess It's a part of the feeding process. So I just thought you would enjoy that as a lover of nature and animals.

Yes. I don't really know anything about porcupines either. I guess they're probably pretty hard to catch a glimpse of, but that's amazing.

So you don't have audio of them singing while they're nursing? I don't.

I just read about it in this article, actually.

You know, I think I'm looking at this up now. The bummer is it was a Randy Newman song that they were singing.

This is a stupid question, but are porcupines, what kind of animal are they? Are they like marsupials?

Or are they a rodent or something? Are they a rodent? I wonder. Actually, you know what's really funny? Where I saw this article was in the San Francisco Chronicle, written by Ashley Harrell, who you may know.

Yes.

The noted journalist and good friend of Van's.

Yes, I do know her. Yeah, we went to Vegas together.

She writes really, really good stuff for the Chronicle. Every good story I see in the Chronicle is an Ashley Harrell piece, actually.

Wow.

They're rodents, by the way.

Porcupines are rodents. I'm just looking this up here. I guess possums are marsupials

And possums make a terrible sound It's horrible It sounds like Fran Drescher laughing

Do you guys think it's weird that there haven't been more Or maybe I'm just forgetting one But there are no Famous cartoon characters That are porcupines It seems ripe for it You have Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, etc You guys are familiar with cartoons Doesn't it seem like there should be a famous Pepe Le Pew A skunk, exactly the canceled Pepe Le Pew.

He deserves to be canceled.

Andrew's least favorite trope would be Pepe Le Pew holding a boombox over his head. Not taking no for an answer.

That would actually be an amazing t-shirt. I'm surprised nobody.

That'd actually be a de-escalation for Pepe Le Pew.

Yeah, you're right. I know, right? Right, yeah. Anyway, let's get on this. Let's make some classic porcupine characters. Get them out there.

Yeah, it sounds like Mr. Banana Grabber, the rights to that are still up for grabs.

Yeah. All right, thanks, Veeves. Appreciate you, Veeves.

Thanks for letting me barge in.

No, I appreciate it. Anytime, honestly, no pressure. I don't want to put this emotional labor on you, but now that you're within earshot, it would be a real service to the listeners. Occasionally correct the record.

Okay.

We still got to find the money belt in this place.

Yeah, right.

okay now i want to order some arby's and watch the mr banana grabber

i have been dipping back into a little arrested development kind of as just kind of late at night i can't figure out what i want to listen to type of deal or i'm sorry i can't figure out i'm looking at my music for your weekend and getting a little distracted here um speaking of are you ready for me to launch into some music for your weekend yeah buddy i already kind of mentioned what this is i want to give credit though this is from uh listener lindsey who says do you know this song by lucius uh you've mentioned other songs before that are called genevieve but this one is a jam and lucius is or are question mark awesome i've never heard of the band lucius i don't know anything about this other than the fact that lindsey sent it in and that it was posted to YouTube on the official Luscious site. back in 2020. So I'm going to say that this song is just a couple of years old and it's called Genevieve and yeah, it is a jam. Take a listen to this.

We'll be right back. And all you had to do was shut your mouth Jeremy Jeremy Pretty cool, huh?

Yeah, that is good. I'm looking this band up. It's interesting because it looks like there are sort of two co-lead singers of the band, these two women. and it looks like their kind of performance style is that they always wear identical outfits and have identical hair. I like that. Yeah, it's like a very performance art as well. Yeah, I love that. And that sounds really good. I need to check out more Luscious. Or Lucius, I don't know. Oh, Lucius. Is it Luscious or Lucius?

Oh, that's a good point. Is that how you would even spell Luscious? Ask Veeves. That's what they said on Ask Veeves. are you sure that's what they said on ask no you're right that's that's not how you i'm i've been saying it wrong the whole time it's lucious how do i don't know how to spell luscious how

how have we gone this far on the show without making the connection that's what they said on ask beaves that's so that's such a good spoof uh i would like to recommend the new kurt vile album say the word or excuse me the album is watch my moves and the song that i wanted to play off of the album is say the word i think this is just uh out maybe even this week i was reading about it in pitchfork and you know i love this guy yeah um i was thinking about this when i was uh addy and i went and saw the war on drugs here in portland and i i always forget that kurt vile was part of that band in fact i think he might have even been like the lead singer of the war on drugs at some point and i thought it was interesting because like if you had a band and kurt vile was your lead singer and then he left i would just assume well that's kind of it for the band but they they clearly found a path forward um and you know are playing stadium shows all over

america but anyway like genesis think about genesis you had peter gabriel peter gabriel leaves well that should be it no ladies and gentlemen let me introduce you to my friend

phil collins the point is andrew when i'm long gone i would love for you to i think of myself

as the peter gabriel of this podcast oh wait shit i thought i was going to tell you when i'm long I'm going, you can continue this show. I'll be the Phil Collins. Do you want to be the Peter Gabriel? The one problem with my analogy is I wasn't here for the start. That's where my analogy breaks down a tiny bit.

So could you play a little bit of this? This has kind of a long instrumental kind of intro, but I like this song. It's called Say the Word from the new Kurt Weill record.

One, two, three, fall.

Thank you.

guitar solo Come and go and fly away Words to this This song, how can I sing to sing When every time I grow into a man

All right, that's probably all Spotify will allow to happen. Let's Kurt Weill say the word. That's beautiful. I love that. I always say some version of this when the topic of Kurt Weill comes up, but I want whatever nonchalance that guy has, I want it. Because I'm so shallant Like In the way that he just seems to just kind of be Very comfortable in his own skin Also his real name is Kurt Weill Which is

If you were a kid you would not like that You would assume that Kurt Weill was like Some like Like rock and roll hair metal Tongue sticking out thing

Like opening for guar Right exactly Also if people made fun of you As a kid at least you would know they had Decent vocabularies Yeah that's true It's not like if your last name is Kurt Fart Right If you're a kid and you're like ooh Pretty vile I'd be like well I guess you did okay On the SATs Smart kids are the worst bullies in some ways Yeah so That's what I would recommend That whole album is real good by the way The listener's suggestion this week Is from listener Kate in Chicago Kate wants to have us play the song serotonin by the performer girl in red luke long time listening first time music recommender the instant i heard this song i thought this is meant for tbtl i didn't know anything about girl in red but the way the upbeat popness of the music contrasts with the serious topic of the lyrics really blew me away uh by the way the lyrics include i'm running low on serotonin chemical imbalances got me twisting things and by the time she sings about intrusive thoughts i thought this could be in the regular rotation as outro music for particularly navel gazing shows uh you're gonna have to be more specific kate because every show that we do is

pretty navel gazy it's one quick thing about my shelf the way it um love the show love the tens

hope to see all in person soon signed listener kate in chicago she says also she is a giant pretzel giant pretzel enthusiast oh wait hold on like she's big into pretzels or she likes giant

pretzels. Or she's a giant who loves pretzels. I'd read that book or I'd write that book, The Giant Who Loves Pretzels in Chicago. So we are going to go

out with Girl in Red doing the song Serotonin here on TBTL, which brings us to the end of this broadcast week. Thank you, everyone, for hanging out with us. We'll be back here on Monday with more Imaginary Radio for you. Until then, have a great weekend, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. I was trying to do the letters, but I couldn't remember. Arby's is like 15 minutes away, by the way.

Too far.

I'm running low on serotonin. Chemical imbalance got me twisting things. Stabilized with medicine. There's no depth to these feelings. Dig deep. Can't hide from the corners of my mind. I'm terrified of what's inside. I got intrusive thoughts, like cutting my hands off, like jumping in front of a bus, like how do I make the stop when it feels like my therapist hates me? Please don't let me go crazy. Put me in a field with daisies. Might not work, but I'll take a maybe. I've been breaking daily, but only me can save me. So I'm capitulating, crying like a fucking baby. I don't want to be Ciccala. I don't want to be Ciccala.

Hi, resident. Oh, hello, Fraser. I was just thinking about how you mentioned that you used to use hidden money belts as financial security. Well, it just so happens that I have some valuables that I'd like to hide. But where? So, I'd like to pick your brain if I could. I know that you favoured the underside of desk drawers, but I thought you might throw out some more ideas.

pretend that you're the old robin uh uh fraser would you just hold on for a minute i have another

call coming in hello oh yeah hey uh robin listen uh yeah i found some sort of a uh money belt and i assume it's yours here yeah i don't cause any problems in case it's not so uh okay i get it why don't you tell me where you hid yours and i'll tell you if that's where i found this one

Well, Cliff, I must admit that I had a penchant for hiding them in duct work. You know, that way they'd be easy to get to and impervious to damage. Oh, great, great, great. Oh, well, I guess this isn't yours.

Pleasure. Oh, Robert, hi. Oh, that's okay.

Okay, um, duct work, you say.

Goodbye. It's in the ducts. We're rich, we're rich. Who's that?

Your friends there, tearing apart your place of work, looking for one of my money books. Power out.