Muse

Hi.

Hi.

Where's Stevie?

Um, I don't know, but she will be back in 15 minutes.

What are you doing?

I'm checking the mail. Did you know that you can still get mail?

Yes, I know about mail.

No, but I'm talking about, like, mail mail. Like a little man in a uniform with his satchel full of letters traveling door to door.

Um, that's a mailman. And he comes to your house, you pay him, and he gives you your stuff.

i think it's free delivery i don't think

how far into the 15 minutes do you think we are

the faces may not look familiar but the voices this zany radio team have developed a unique

style of frolicking on the airway basically i just like coming in and having fun yeah it's a

great way to make a living do you have any music carl have the internet radio i love internet radio

you've come to the right place because i have that where am i right now i don't even remember who are you who's that handsome hunk of a clam holding those flowers are those for me oh i can't stay mad at you goldie oh my god man we are seeing some we ain't never seen before

All right. Hello. Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

I'm so excited about this show.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Spontaneity comes from an invisible idea that is there before the creation begins.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is getting extremely not dry. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. We may have, like, dangerous levels of rain and wind here today. So hopefully everybody will make it through in one piece. Hopefully everybody will make it through episode 3666 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Which is where we have arrived today on 420. Happy 420 to all who celebrate. Deadass you high, huh? I, you know I will say this Weed is not really my thing I actually think it's probably much better for you Than if you drink too much alcohol I'm pro the idea of weed I wish I liked it more I don't know if 420 Eve should be a thing And that's what I was seeing yesterday on the internet A lot of people talking about it being 420 Eve It's actually 419 But we're all getting you know we're hanging our stockings with care because tomorrow is 4 20 i don't know if i can fully go there tell you where i can go i can go in for the nicholas cage redemption project he is doing all of this media for this new film the unbearable weight of massive talent and it's just been this great kind of chance to really rethink at least how i was thinking about nicholas cage uh so i want to talk about that coming up oh and we have an update on the situation at t-mobile park in seattle regarding louis louis and macklemore can you can you verify can you give me some 411 so we'll talk about that too plus emails and vmails and this guy the longest running cobro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships capturing their grace and power he is joining us right now from the sweet cream district of seattle washington He is Andrew Walsh. Good morning, my friend.

Hey, man, that clip you played of Michael Christmas, I've never heard it in the clear before. He sounds good. He sounds very good. Deadass you high, huh? Yeah, I didn't... Sometimes you hear that in the song, and it just makes sense, but then you just hear that little clip, and you're like, wow. I have access to all of the different broken-down components of that album. Yeah, for the remix.

So I've got all the instrumental stuff, and I've got the Michael Christmas in the clear.

Deadass you high, huh? Mm-hmm. I remember that Do you know what that I don't want to Is this going to be hurtful Towards you Do you know why I was quoting that On the show Do you remember the conversation Around that Well I know Oh did I Did I try to use dead ass It was the time that you Tweeted something And you included the word dead ass And then somebody made fun of you For it online And it hurt your feelings And I was kind of like I hurt my feelings

No cap

And I just said You know I only kind of And I think I said Well I kind of know it From the context of like one song that I like a lot, and so I was quoting that song. Deadass You High. And there you go. It's a Michael Christmas song. I can't remember which song it is, but it's off of Baggy Eyes 2. I can tell you that much. There's only such a good song on there. So good.

Did you celebrate 420 Eve? Is that new? Am I just finding out about this? It just seems so internet-y. I mean, I know it's actually

weed-y, but it's somehow the combination of internet-y and weed-y. We have all these new holidays now, right? By the way, I'm coming in hot as if I was spending a lot of time thinking about that. I mean, people can do whatever they want, but I didn't grow up with a sibling day either, but last week or two weeks ago, everybody was like, happy sibling day. I'm like, okay, good. Look, it's sweet

too. My sister Hannah is really good about keeping in touch and updating us on things and wishing everyone happy birthday. She's like the glue that holds our family together so she's like happy siblings day and sent around these cute pictures and stuff but i every year until it's siblings day i forget that a thing

called siblings day exists here's the reason why i am going to be um pretty chill about this whole thing whether it's whether it's new holidays like sibling day or um or this 420 thing or the the may the 4th be with you which i hate one of your personal things well that's just me because in my personal hang-up about how it kind of buries the significance of May 4th in Kent, Ohio, a day that I grew up with. That's what that's all about. Which is silly. I mean, no, it's not silly. It's anything but silly, but just my personal experience was May 4th was a thing that was marked, and it was a somber day on the campus of Kent State, and of course, I knew about it before I was a Kent State student. May 4th used to signify something very different, and now it's like, another Star Wars joke, and I'm like, alright. Okay, it's taken me a while to roll with it, But I'm notoriously laid back, almost too laid back about these things. But here's the deal, Luke.

These aren't the droids you're looking for.

It was only 20 days ago that you and I were kind of breathing a collective sigh of relief that the April Fool's Day boom has sort of ebbed. If I can mix metaphors there. Deadass. and so like I hated that so much more when suddenly like everybody was getting back into April Fool's Day and all of the internet stuff that went along with that like that has really kind of Homer Simpson back into the bushes and so if people want to celebrate their 420 stuff by tweeting about it or whatever it doesn't really bother me as much as the hey there's a bunch of fake information out here today and you've got to like tiptoe through it right I I've been mulling

this over this just came up actually on liveware the other day the question of if april fools is really over or not and we were talking about it because of the pandemic and stuff but i feel like after that after you and i talked about it then i like i saw one or two things i saw this one on tiktok where it was a fairly elaborate deal except i didn't really get the point of it so this guy is like playing with his kid who let's say the kid is like three and the kid is in a full on spider-man outfit and he asks so he's got the kid who's like three and then maybe a kid who's like six or seven and they're playing the dad is like on the floor playing with the kids and he asked the mom to go grab them some water and so then the mom like leaves and then he sends the kid in the spider-man outfit into a bedroom with the older kid and then they bring out this doll that's dressed up in the exact same spider-man outfit and then when the mom comes back upstairs he just pretends that he accidentally threw the kid over the banister from the second floor of the house down to the hardwood floor in the kitchen and the mom is horrified runs downstairs and i mean i don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you had to call an ambulance it's as you might imagine it's deeply unnerving and very terrifying and this mom is just running downstairs thinking her kid has been gravely injured and then she rips the spider-man mask off and it's this you know dummy or whatever this doll and the dad is laughing his ass off and the

mom is rightfully pissed i hate myself for laughing i love it we found the one prank you

think is funny and it involves pranking pranking like your kid got hurt no no no you really yeah

no you especially with kids and i i i would not do that prank myself i'm sorry i'm just laughing at the ridiculousness i mean whenever you see like somebody throw like a bad dummy off of something it's just like it's inherently funny to me like i just wished he would have done something with i

mean here's what clearly the way this prank came about was that they noticed that the key noticed the kid was about the size of whatever this doll was and that if the kid was dressed like spider-man you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between him and the doll in a spider-man outfit but i wish there was i wish he would have done something that would not have caused the mother to have to go through 12 seconds of her life thinking her child was really hurt. Yeah, no, I agree with that. That sort of adrenaline release is so, as a parent, it's just like so scary. I was then, I spent the rest of the night trying to think of a better prank involving this thing of the Spider-Man outfit and the similar sizes of the child and the doll. That just would have been funny, but not like scared the mom so bad. But I guess, you know, if you're just like.

Like, I couldn't come up with anything better. But that's, I feel like, the level of prank that I'm seeing on TikTok.

Yeah. Well, the thing is, like, for me, what I didn't like about the prankiness was just, like, it wasn't about interpersonal pranks. Like, nobody was pranking me in my real life. It was just, like, the wide-scale corporate, like, every corporate, hey, Frito-Lay, we're releasing a sock-flavored chip. Oh, it's April Fool's. Like, it's not even funny. It's not clever. Like, it's just like the fact that every company had to get on board with it. Otherwise, they weren't maximizing their social leverage or whatever the shit. And like, that was the stuff that kind of irritated me because like you kind of couldn't avoid it. I guess I'm sorry that I keep laughing and just picturing somebody throwing that dummy over the railing. But I understand that would be very traumatic for the prank E. but interpersonal pranks like when you know your partner or your sibling or whoever and you want to have uh you want to have little pranks within your relationship i i wouldn't judge anybody on that

you said before the show that you had a couple of questions for me here at the top of the program have you ticked through your list of oh no the quest i'm sorry

the questions i had for you were before the show and we've cleared those there were some planning things for um i thought you had a couple of specific things you wanted to get into

when we were recording this for the program.

There was one thing that I mentioned when we were setting up here, which is that I made a terrible mistake last night, a terrible, terrible mistake that has cost me upwards of $5.50. And I don't know how I'm going to recover that. And let's just hope that Genevieve doesn't hear this episode. I very rarely... First of all, I'm still sort of scared of online shopping. Like, I've come a long way. I've made a huge mistake. I've come a long way and I realize it's 2022, but like when I first started buying anything online, like I would double, triple check everything a million times. And I was just like, oh, hover over the purchase button, you know, um, I've, I've, I've become more comfortable with it. Not to the degree of you, of course, who I think you are, I think has an hour gone by when you've been awake and you haven't purchased something online. Like that's your main mode of commerce. I can't think of an hour that's happened during my waking time. And sometimes, by the way, not to dismiss the things that you're buying when you're sleeping as well. It's just not quite as frequent. But anyway, and we've talked on the show before, and I don't know if you still do this, but one of your little pleasures in life sometimes would be to have a glass of wine or two and do some e-commerce. And I'm not exactly like that. But yesterday I was bopping around the house doing something that was both kind of like more labor intensive than it should be, but something that I kind of wanted to do. I don't think we've talked about this on the show. I could be wrong, but as Vives and I are moving into our new house or have moved into our new house, but still continue to unpack a few boxes here and there. One of the things that I got Genevieve to agree to this time was that I was going to unpack all the boxes and of books, I should say, and arrange them by genre around the house. We have, you know, various bookshelves around the house. I have bookshelves kind of built into my walls here in my studio. So I wanted to put some books in here and like Genevieve's dream as as a like a true reader and lover of books has always been to have things kind of scattershot like she always liked the idea of being in somebody's house and just like grabbing a book and it could be a book of poetry right next to a book of Elmore Leonard pulp fiction style stories you know and I of course you know me I like things to be in order and I also get a kick out of collections you know so like if we have a whole bunch of like let's just say michael chabon like i like putting those all together not not seeing uh one michael chabon book here and knowing that there's another michael chabon book somewhere else in the house like the game of memory um i don't even know why this matters i barely know how to read but i just like things to be in order and so i said veves when we move in this time can i can can i unpack the books and do it my way and have little sections around the house of genre and she said yes my love you can do that she said exactly like that And so that's been a fun project that I've been dragging out because then it's kind of a pain in the ass. Right. And I keep on unpacking books.

I'm like, oh, I thought I had that section done. And where are all these books going to go? And I'm running out of room on this shelf for the science fiction section. And do I have to rearrange my plan? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's also kind of a fun thing for me to do. My brain works in that way. And it's a way for me to kind of enjoy our physical media. You know, we don't have a lot of that anymore.

And I guess basically you want to be if you're like, I'm in the mood for Elmore Leonard. You want to go to the Elmore Leonard section as opposed to the or I'm in a mood for, you know, Michael Chabon. So that way things are grouped together by the kind of book it is.

Yeah. And it's it's almost less about I hate it.

I mean, it partially is like, hey, I know where my Walter Mosley section is like, that's a big one for me. So I've been trying to kind of buy a copy of all of his easy Rollins books. I've never owned a complete collection of mid-level mystery novels. So I was like, maybe I'll get all the all the easy Rollins books by Walter Mosley. Anyway, it's fun for me to kind of say, hey, look, these are all the Walter Mosley books all in one place. It's not even about like, hey, oh, shoot, I'm looking for the little yellow dog. Where is that? It's not with the others. because, you know, that's a more rare occurrence. It's more like my brain just feels nice and settled when things are all kind of grouped together. It's just a nice look. Let's close the things that close. Exactly. And so I've been doing that, but it's a process, and it's a fun process. And you have a couple of beers, and you set things out, and then you're like, ooh, I found another Vonnegut, thrown Vonnegut. So far I've not mentioned one female author, and I feel terrible about that. i'm just going to whatever is whatever i'm looking at on my walls here anyway uh have i told you my

vonnegut story um no i didn't know kurt vonnegut was still alive and then one day i was oh yeah in the olden days in new york when the npr bureau was on second avenue and it was this very kind of it was a quite underwhelming physical space but i was working out of that office and i just came in and there was no front desk person either for some reason so you'd always have these famous people coming to be on like fresh air but they're using those studios and so i just walk in from using the bathroom and there's kurt vonnegut and i had to stifle my desire to say to him i didn't

know you were alive yeah that's which i never say that to anybody no no that's actually something they say to um the clint eastwood character who famously has no name in the um man without a name movies it's like is it a fistful of dollars or a few dollars more five easy no that's charl i was about to say is five easy pieces is charles bronson right um five easy pieces i'm not sure about i've heard of that but i don't know what it is but um yeah then you have the good the bad and the ugly there's like a trilogy and in one of them uh everybody keeps on going up to the man with no name and saying i thought you were dead and he says i'm going to shoot the next person who says that to me and i believe he ends up paying off on that anyway um yes so you have

no feel don't say that you do not you do not believe that female authors have anything of

value to offer we have we have a lot of uh zadie smith we have a lot of jane smiley we have um well the fact that you now have to list them i quit i quit i'm just done i'm not i'm not responsible with a microphone so here's where this is all going like i said i don't do a lot of online shopping i certainly don't do a lot of online shopping while tipsy um but that is where i found myself last night as i was putting away the foundation series by um isaac asimov in the sci-fi section of course and we don't have like fan we we don't have like fancy versions of the the foundation series it's a trilogy um but they're all the same and that's one thing i love when you have like a group of books that were all like kind of released by the same publishing house around the same time so the binding looks alike and you know because like some of these things get released and re-released a million times and like i have a bunch of vonnegut books but very few of them are sort of bound in the same way i'm sorry i have a bunch of jane smiley books and very few of them are bound in the same way right because we just got them whenever we got them i honestly don't think i've read a jane smiley book in my life if i'm being honest with you um and uh and so i was kind of proud that we have this like 1970s era collection of foundation books that we didn't even buy all at the same time we just got them at garage sales i think the publishing imprint was avon which i don't think is related to the more famous avon i could be

wrong about that i was gonna say uh did you open your own business selling these books and you

create a downline if you sell enough of them you get a pink car wait no that's not right um but uh anyway they're like some 70s era and they're just like they're just paperbacks right but they're i like the fact that they all kind of look alike except the third one which is called what foundation and elements or something i can't remember the name of the third book um but it's real ratty it's missing the back cover the spine is so kind of broken up and and uh the paper is flaking off of it that you can't even read and i'm like it would be nice to have all three of these books in relatively good condition and all of the same kind of imprint right and so i'm like i'll bet you i can find this cheap on ebay so i go on ebay i never buy shit off of ebay but i knew i couldn't at first i went to like these other bookseller sites i sometimes go to like thrifty books and other places where you can support independent booksellers but um uh they didn't have the exact the exact imprint i was looking for right the exact style of this book i'm like i'll bet you i'll find it on ebay so i go on ebay and very quickly i find it there it is the kind of iconic cover that the um the one that i'm looking for to kind of complete our collection or replace our collection and without thinking too much about it i Stop.

I hit buy on this thing, and then, again, I never buy things off of eBay, but it remembered my information from whenever the last time was, but then it says, how do you want to pay? And I start to put in my credit card number. I'm like, no, you know what? This thing is already synced up to my PayPal account. Let's just do it via PayPal. So I got into this quick gray area when it left eBay, went into PayPal, said, do you approve this? I said, yes. And then the next thing you know, bingo, bango, boingo, as our friend Kevin might say, suddenly it's like, your book is being shipped now. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wasn't there supposed to be like a last page where I update my address and everything? I haven't used eBay in forever, and I just moved. And all of a sudden it's like, your book is being shipped to not even my last address, Luke, my address two houses ago. Suddenly this book is being shipped to my old Wallingford address. That's how often I use eBay. I'm like, where was the last step where I get to confirm my address? It just didn't exist. So then I'm panicking. I'm like, okay, I'll just go on eBay and see if I can send a note to the seller. And then I look a little bit more closely. And this is, you know, again, it's somebody who probably is an independent bookseller. And I'm like looking for the instructions. How can I write to this person to tell them that my address has changed and just hope for the best? And then I see that they have a place on their eBay page where it says, the books we sell may not look like the ones that are pictured we sell too many versions of various books so we just so i'm like wait a second not only did i buy this book and it's being shipped to the wrong address like the very wrong address because it won't automatically forward right i'm still in a grace period with the u.s postal service right now where if something goes to my old apartment it'll get forwarded but not two houses ago they're not that cool um and then Secondly, I'm like, wait a second, you're telling me that I specifically bought this book based on the picture of it on your profile and this isn't it. So I had to and I'm looking for the message. Did I can I read this to you?

I sent them a message saying you don't know for a fact that it is not the right image. You just know that there's a potential that it's not the right image.

And I'm guessing it won't be. I'm guessing that because there are the Internet is littered with so many different versions of this book. And this one that I have, again, while not fancy or expensive, like, again, it was under $5 before tax and shipping. But my guess is it's going to be one of these other ones here. I found the email that I sent. I wrote, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I accidentally submitted the incorrect shipping address, but also I wanted to make sure that the copy I purchased is the Avon edition of the book as pictured in the listing photo. If not, can you cancel my order? If it is the correct edition, can you please send to? And now I'm going to read to you my exact address. and then I wrote thank you in all caps three four five sweet cream lane what is the book called it's called foundation and empires the third one sorry sci-fi heads out there you've probably already sent your emails in but I did write thank you in all caps with an exclamation point and then just signed it A so I'm both like very appreciative but also pretty chill you know the lowercase A there as I want to do so anyway what do you think the chances are that i will ever even see this book and if i do that it'll be the right uh version how much was the book oh after um tax it was five dollars and fifty cents

so i mean it's not a big deal i realize right well no no no i'm just to me it's like i'm trying to figure out the economics of this like how do these people i mean i guess five dollars here it's sort of the tbtl model you know we have people donating five bucks a month it adds up but like just trying to figure out the economic model of having all these books and then sending them out and they're charging five bucks and and that that includes shipping yeah in fact i think

it was like free shipping it was just tax that bumped it over five so i have the same questions about that i mean i guess again there's just like a a flood of these not a flood but you know there's a lot of these classic books that have just been published and republished and republished so my guess is my guess is it will my here's my speculation they won't see the email they won't return it they'll ship the book and i won't get it but it doesn't matter because it wasn't the write one anyway that's how i guess this will play out well yeah because it's too it's the

first wallingford place y'all lived in right yeah exactly and so those people yeah that's a i mean that's that's it's a long long time ago for for an item also that's not overly expensive i'd be shocked because there's no forwarding information right so yeah i'm almost feeling

bad now because it's like you're right like they're charging 550 for this book it's like almost nothing like in i don't i don't understand how the economics i see the item price was 4.99 five fifty with tax so you're right i don't want to whoever's selling this i don't want to put them through like oh i've got to check this email i'm sure they have a system where the uh address is automatically kind of sucked into their shipping program or whatever now they got to like you know get this email manually change it i don't want them to do that i'll just buy another copy i have well why don't you go to um i mean could you go to a brick and mortar bookstore somewhere twice told tales or one of those type of joints in seattle and see

if you could find a copy yeah i love doing that the chance of finding this exact version though is where you know i mean you might land on that but my um my experience is you usually don't which is why i have a million different uh versions of the uh easy rollins um easy rollins series by the way that i bought it from a place called discover books it was among the first of its kind to harness the potential of the used book market to redistribute used books to local communities i like local communities and on a national scale we offer some of the lowest prices available

online they have a lot of five-star reviews i am as you might imagine andrew terrible with this because i have ordered so many things through the mail and i have often been traveling when i do it So, like, if you go into my, like, Amazon history, there are hotels that I stayed in, like, two nights in New York, but I needed a thing, you know? And so it was, like, I have sent things to, like, completely the wrong state before just because for whatever reason it's defaulting. It's defaulting back to the old one, yeah. But it's weird because you think it would default back to, like, Bellingham or something, but it'll sometimes default to the funkiest place. So I've now become very careful at triple-checking where the thing is going. Now, on the other hand, I got this whole other situation going on. You want to talk about online purchases. And I will mention I don't think this was the result of alcohol consumption. But I saw this very cool, I guess you could say it's somewhere between a valet and a briefcase, like a really cool leather case that I could use to put my computer in and some other, you know, the cord for the computer, my cell phone, and some other things. So a really stylish carrying case that I could use. And I saw this on Instagram. and it's i was in a mood and it spoke to me and i ordered it and it has been it was like over a hundred dollars it has been months they're supposedly hand sewing this thing or whatever but it's like i don't know i may never get this thing and at one point at what point i wonder do i like cut bait or just ask them to give me my money back or something because when i bought it i didn't realize i was on a four-month waiting list to get this silly thing mailed to me are

they keeping you updated like do you know where you are you could just write to inquire like

an eta they sent me one update right when i hit like buy they i got an email allegedly from the uh like ceo saying thank you for uh you know whatever buying something with us and immediately trying to sell me something else they're like right now we're having a flash sale on a leather case for your iphone that could go really great with this or whatever and then after that i've never heard from them again and i'm like dang they got like 150 of my bucks you should check

in with them i think yeah i don't know what about this thing and again i am very careful about this checkout process because i am paranoid about sending things to the wrong place like i do not understand how and i'm looking on ebay now it looks like you can no longer attach a paypal account to an ebay account but uh if you had done it a long time ago it'll still like kind of honor that original linkage so maybe that's why it maybe that's why it was it wasn't kludgy i want to say kludgy in fact it was too slick like it took me out of ebay it took me to paypal the way it should log in okay this is every but it never stopped to say everything looked good here hit the big green flashing button it was just like zoinks it's on the way i'm like wait no too fast slow down

i found this thing i found the email from them the company's called grams 28 and after i purchased this thing they said sent me an email we've received your order now we'll roll up our sleeves and our team will get to work once your order is processed we'll send you a shipping notification email well um it's uh it's still we're still waiting for this thing to happen but you should just send them a note don't you think maybe or it'll just be a fun surprise someday when you get this thing in the mail and i'll be very excited about it the thing that the thing that happens now is we have this um system here at the apartment building called luxor it's the same one i had at the other apartment building where when a package gets delivered um you get an update in your phone and then you get a like what do you call that a qr code or something and you can scan it and then it opens a specific locker where your package is and sometimes i have something kind of that i'm excited about getting that's on the way that's as i like to say a little sunshine in my pocket which like i would say this valet thing that i ordered would qualify as like just something that i'm excited to get it's technically a leather folio but then what will happen is i get an update from Luxor and I'm like, ooh, cool, something fun came and then I go downstairs and it's just another book that I need to read. Oh yeah, more

work. Right, and I'm

very lucky to have this job, I'm very lucky to have the job at Livewire. There are way worse things to have happen in the world than free books show up at your apartment that you get to read, but I'll have this one expectation.

Like, ooh, maybe I'm, like, I've got those glasses coming from Warby Parker. And, like, for whatever reason, I'm looking forward to that. Because, well, A, I would like to be able to see more clearly. And, B, I'm curious how it's, I've never tried on the actual pair of glasses that I purchased, you know. I tried on a different version. So I'll go downstairs, like, ooh, what's it going to be? What did Santa bring me? And then it's just, like, work.

Yeah. That's why publishers or the publicists should always put a little, sprinkle a little candy in with those books, right? That's right. Of course, getting a book is a fun thing.

anyway but no it is a very fun thing although you know there's a paper shortage so more and more we are there people like publishers are not sending out review copies of these books that i'm reading for livewire interviews um because of this paper shortage they claim there

are there are so many useless forests all over this globe just cut them down make more paper what the hell what's as long as you're not making books for women writers and you know what the It's millennials. That's your basic point, right? They're too lazy. Wait, are we still making fun of millennials? What are we making fun of now as olds? Gen Zers, millennials. They're too lazy to cut them.

We're going with Generation Alpha.

Is that a thing?

That's a thing I just learned about. I got this TV story airing this weekend about the kid that makes 25 mil on YouTube. Yeah, yeah. And his generation is called Generation Alpha.

I see, because where do you go after Zed, right? Yeah, back to the top. I guess so just back to the top I'll bet you they'll be called something else as they come more of age and there will be a more defining event or a more defining um I don't know characteristic I'm sure of that generation for now they're just alpha though until something

until they have to go win a war and they become the second greatest generation

I wonder if I can become an honorary generation beta because I sort of feel like I sort of feel like I've been training my whole life for that.

Let's do this. Let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, I want to talk Nick Cage. I want to talk Mariners. And I want to thank some dazzling donors who are keeping the show going. So we will do all of that coming right on 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.

Let's thank some dazzling donors who are making today's episode possible with their dazzling donation of dough each month. Also, a great time to remind you all that TBTelathon 13, Let the Fun Begin, is going to be happening live from Denver, Colorado, at the end of May, May 23rd through 27th. We're going to be streaming the shows. We're going to be doing live virtual events. And then we're going to do an in-person hangout on Friday night, the 27th. If you happen to be anywhere in the mountain time zone, come say hi to us, please. Today, we've got to start by thanking PJ Lynn, who's in Rome, Georgia. Hey, Andrew and Luke, it's PJ out in rural Georgia. I don't have anything sarcastic or funny to offer this year. Just my heartfelt gratitude amidst a lot of dark and chaotic times. You guys are a flash of podcast light. keep it burning and come out to the east coast for a tbtl event sometime maybe atlanta thanks pod bros let's see rome georgia i'm trying to think of what i i think maybe i could i sort of combine rome and athens in my mind athens is where famously the b52s are from right and rem probably even more famously but the b52s did a song called rome if you want to rome around the world that's

interesting so i i don't know that i have any kind of connection point other than pj to rome georgia and it's a and it is a strong one and i'm sure nobody ever says like hey when in rome i'll bet you nobody passing through ever makes that joke um but uh yeah so that's funny so rome in your head which of course spelled differently for the song uh but you've connected the b-52s to rome

because of that song i think in my mind somewhere but it looks like there's actually a lot going on what's happening rome georgia i'm at the um met the hospitality association's website the thing is andrew and i don't want to get um scandalous with our message uh of thanks to pj but the now the pineapple that is the international sign of hospitality and has been for many years it has also lately been adopted as a sign of a uh let's just say maybe a non-monogamous lifestyle among folks who are in relationships but choose to you know live their lives in what we might consider a less than traditional fashion but the nobody told the rome georgia tourism website yet that that pineapple has kind of been co-opted at this point so it's the icon for the hospitality association but i feel like there are going to be some people heading to rome georgia for a totally different experience than the city of Rome, Georgia. Well, I think, first of all, I don't think that the pineapple only means that now. I would disagree. I would kind of disagree with it because I think, first of all, I don't even know. And I could be wrong about this. And I will. Maybe I'll do some poking around after the show. Maybe I'll look around after the show and see if I can prove myself wrong here. But I think that the pineapple thing, as far as being a part of like the swinger lifestyle, I think that goes back probably to the 70s. I don't think it's necessarily a newer thing. i think it's something that just came on our radar recently i could be wrong about that also i think there's something about it being like positioned in a certain way right like an upside down pineapple

or something well the one on the rome website is upside down that's so intriguing you're joking though right yeah i'm joking i was like okay all right i feel like i i'm not uh you you could be very right like the pineapple thing as it relates to swinging could have been around forever the difference now is the internet has caught on to it and so you'll see lots of like references on the internet whether it's in twitter or or tick tock or wherever where people are like you know making kind of jokes about how they're hanging up there like they're camping and they're hanging up their little string of like pineapple lights and it's kind of you know they're letting everyone know kind of what's up so i just feel like it's maybe i'm just more conscious of it

you know what i'm seeing here this is this is funny i'm now i'm on the athens georgia hospitality website you know what they have as a symbol they have a pineapple with a ghost they have an eggplant a big purple eggplant that is two peaches and then a couple of peaches interesting

pj thank you very much for your support um hope you're doing well out there in rural georgia and glad that we were able to provide you some some entertainment and companionship thanks for keeping

the show going maestro maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go

we've also got to thank stacy mollyette in spanaway washington stacy says i started listening when the pandemic started whoa stacy newbie welcome welcome to the party uh i started listening when the pandemic started i finished in the dark and needed something a little lighter to listen to i think i was hooked that first week andrew brought up something about how to cut an onion without cutting the onion's head or butt off or something can i be i had a very similar

about that i don't i i had to fill in head or butt because i think the original dazzling donor message said um uh talk about how to cut an onion without cutting the onions or something and it didn't say what it just said cutting the onions blank off or something and i think there's a typo but i was just using my own memory of that conversation and i think it was when i was explaining how i how i dice onions and a trick i learned was i cut it down the middle so that after you cut uh the onion in half you still have a little tuft of hair uh on both halves of the

onion if that makes sense right so cut the onion because there's like the basically you want to have the onion attached or you want to have it still held together when you're chopping it so that you can make some vertical cuts and then maybe some horizontal cuts and then and then another series of cuts and it just suddenly it's diced exactly if you think of an onion as having

a little head and a little butt you should cut it so that both halves still have a little head and a little butt not so that one side has a head and one side has a butt right because then it's easier to work with so i think that's what stacy is talking about i'm not entirely sure and i run the risk of offending by putting words in the mouth of a brand new listener who's only been listening for two and two years and some odd months i want to mention if you hang an onion

by its butt outside of your rv you're just you're gonna let people know something yeah you're gonna know something that's the spanaway website it's an onion hanging by its butt i don't know what

it means i can't tell if that's a crying emoji or a squirting emoji so we should just probably move

on whoa okay stacy says i had a very similar thought that week i guess about onions uh and so i think we were meant to be imaginary friends we certainly were stacy i'm glad that um i'm glad that andrew talking about that onion was was the the catalyst the touch that is amazing when you

think about it like really that's what that's what stuck with you and again i'm i'm not saying that to tease because i'm the same way i was a listener of this podcast before uh before i was ever a part of this podcast and like i can remember exactly where i was when i heard jen kind of tearing up about the home alone movies you know like it's those it's those moments that

just stand out to you we generate so much content each week and i didn't say good content but i just mean technically you know we keep the needle moving for a kind of a long time it's always shocking to me what the random thing is that we will have uttered that

somebody for whatever reason connects to or remembers it's never the stuff that I think is going to be the you know oh this will be great when we have this funny take on this that or the other it's always something that's much more of an aside or like me trying to say Bubbles Burbank's government name which is Meowgly or which our friend Lynn Pham decided to send a super cut

oh I saw listen to this no I didn't listen to it I saw the um I saw the email come in let me see if

i can find it here i'm having a little bit of uh oh here we go okay so uh i realized by the way i was wrong about this yesterday i think i might have said meowgli was the was the name of the kid from lion king but of course that's simba i think it's a mowgli reference from the jungle book yeah yeah exactly i looked that up meowgli meowgli mowgli mowgli mowgli mowgli mowgli mowgli see that it's probably me trying to say this cat that i have adopted say the cat's real name or the the name that the family gave it that could be that touch point for someone andrew that could

be what brings them into the fold or even us talking about this now now i'm getting all in my head about this is this the moment it's what were we talking about deja vu the other day like are we kind of like are we are we incepting ourselves right now maybe so we'll never know

until next year when someone emails in as a Dazzling Donor and explains it was when Luke played the supercut of him trying to say a cat's name that things really started to connect. So anyway, thanks to both of our Dazzling Donors, PJ and Stacey, today for making this episode possible. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Something really interesting has been going on, I feel, Andrew, with Nick Cage because i feel like he reached his kind of nadir point you know i don't know a year or two ago where it was just sort of like he just seemed like such a joke of an actor and would just you know he was buying castles and buying dinosaur bones and defaulting on you know castle payments and like making tons of movies often with kind of ridiculous scenes in them and kind of making his way into the tabloids to like getting married and then trying to annul it three hours later in vegas he just was like just seemed like a person who was kind of all over the map and it felt like the the funny thing was to kind of roast nicholas cage for you know like this thing the not the bees scene from wicker man and then something strange started happening about two or three months ago kind of in the run-up to this new movie that he's in where he plays nicholas cage i just started seeing these great amas with him on reddit and seeing him just he was just he's just doing a ton of interviews and he is so much more self-aware and thoughtful than i would have realized based on the character caricaturization of nicholas cage that i feel like we've seen over the last few years like i guess the point is as uh this headline from a profile in the new york times yesterday written by sarah Delisle says Nicolas Cage is in on the Nicolas Cage jokes and she sits down and she like talks to him and the guy is very much a student of film history he is also has really interesting meaningful things to say about the kinds of performances that he's done and I noticed this even in some previous profiles written about him in the last month or two where it appears that the period of time where Nicolas Cage has been acting in a non-naturalistic way in this way that has a lot of us kind of making fun of him it has all been extremely intentional and i don't mean that like i mean i really believe that like i forget the exact it was this other profile i read profile that i read i forget the exact thing that he said but he said something that that really stuck with me about or that really brought the idea home to me that he was going into some of these movies literally saying can i act mostly with my face because i think this would be an interesting choice for this reason or the other like whereas i think i was assuming that nicholas cage was descending into madness it would appear that he's actually just been kind of trying different things to keep himself interested everyone who works with him says he shows up totally prepared there

was a story about the first read-through of this new movie and everybody was on zoom and like nicholas cage shows up on zoom he's wearing a pink leather jacket and sunglasses and he's the only person who is as we say off book he's the only person who has the entire movie his lines memorized everyone else is reading you know out of the script he was and he's just described as like a thoughtful guy to work with hyper prepared and again just not as much of a kook as i've

been thinking it was all these years yeah you know i think a turning point for me was maybe about five years ago i'm trying to figure out when i found the actual video that i want to talk about here and i'm going to guess this was about Thank you. five years ago that this was posted although i was talking about the kids in the hall with somebody the other day and i mentioned that they had released kind of a newish project about five years ago and it turns out that was in 2010 um so i think my uh my ability to mark time has has uh has proven itself unhelpful at best but um there is this gq video where nicholas cage is just sitting in front i don't even think you ever hear from the interviewer but he's just sitting in front of like a plain backdrop and he's breaking down his most iconic characters for folks who want to find this just nicholas cage breaks down his most iconic characters it's about a 20 minute video and i'm a big fan of um i'm a big fan of it but i always call it moonlighting what is the um moonstruck moonstruck i love the movie moonstruck uh which of course he's in and i think he talks about moonstruck in that and he even talks about some of his like wacky performances in fact i I want to see if I can skip to the part where he talks about his role in is it face off where he plays. It starts off with him pretending to be a priest, I think. And he does like just one of the most classic. You'll see the scene of him in any kind of Nicolas Cage matchup of him, like acting like an absolute lunatic as he's dressed up as this priest. But like you said, everything actually does have a reason with him. I'm not going to say he's not an oddball. dude's an oddball he's a legit oddball but that doesn't necessarily conflict with the idea that he also takes his acting really seriously and yeah a lot of the stuff he does has roots in other performances that he enjoyed throughout the exact history of cinema and do you mind i'm just gonna i hope i haven't listened to this in a couple of years but i'm gonna skip to the face off part here and hear what he has to say about his role in face off if you don't mind luke no I'd love to hear this. Take a listen to this. Face Off.

Face Off was really the direct result of another movie I made called Vampire's Kiss, which I considered my laboratory. And in that movie, I really wanted to find a way to express, again, my kind of German expressionistic dreams, a.k.a. like Alan Nosferatu or Calgary where these actors were doing these extraordinary faces and body language that was not necessarily natural but expressionistic. That's my favorite movie I made by the way. And I knew that I had to find a vehicle that would allow me to do that where there was some mechanism of truth or reality in that the character was losing his mind. So his behavior, his body language, his facial expressions were also the result of a man who was having a nervous breakdown so therefore i could become very stylistic so a lot of the the the body language and facial expressions went into face off but but john woo who is also you know very operatic and musical extraordinary filmmaker he showed me his movie bullet in the head i knew once i saw that movie where i could go in terms of style and in terms of right up against the edge

i'm gonna stop it there i mean i do think the whole thing is interesting um yeah and the thing is like face off is a i mean i am not a john woo fan and i am not a fan of watching things for camp value i saw face off in la and some little like coffee shop turned into a cinema place where nerds would get together and kind of watch campy movies and we were invited by a by a friend it might have even been a tbtl listener i don't think so but anyway um and like that's not for me like to go see a movie that is actually bad and throw popcorn at it and make fun of it like i didn't enjoy it i don't enjoy face off i don't enjoy his performance in face off but it's not just i'm just gonna be really weird like he's he's reaching for things that's exactly i'm so glad

you found that tape good needle drop my friend because like that's exactly the kind of thing that i didn't realize until a few months ago i just thought that he was losing his mind and that he was just kind of like has was becoming more and more weird and it was coming through in these characters and that he just had lost touch with things and it would appear that he's extremely in touch with things and all of that stuff is i mean again it doesn't all work uh there was a review of one of his films mentioned in this times piece left behind which um christy lemire was writing about it on roger ebert.com and she said looking distractingly rubbery with a helmet of fake dark hair he seems to have been photoshopped into the film this film by the way got a zero percent on rotten tomatoes so it's not like it's all working but there's some intention behind it that i didn't really realize and again the more that i like see him uh this this ama thread that he did on reddit recently was really was just great i mean he just seems like he's very thoughtful seems like he's very um like i said a real student of cinema and just kept giving answers about and again i don't have him right at my fingertips but just the memification of his performances and things and everything he said I was just kind of like wow this is a person who is not the kook that I thought they were when we were talking about him buying dinosaur bones or a Muslim

liam in new orleans and i will say this too veves and i um were at the theater a couple of months ago i can't remember what we were seeing um but we saw that we we saw the trailer for this new nicholas cage movie that's very meta and um what is it called the unbearable weight of massive talent or i got unbearable weight of massive talent yeah oh i think i got it um uh w when i threw massive in there at the placeholder i figured i'd go back later and correct it uh in post um but anyway the trailer looks really good and again i'm not somebody who goes in for camp and it just it just looks like a good funny movie i haven't seen that trailer now in a couple of months so i can't remember exactly what was in it that really uh drew our attention but viz and i were just like oh yeah like you know that you know that feeling when you're in the movie theater with your partner and then you see a trailer you just look at each other you're like all right put that on the calendar we're going to be seeing that one yeah and speaking of by the Wait, did you see everything everywhere all at once?

No, we didn't actually get around to it last weekend, but I'll tell you, if this weather continues, maybe this weekend. Have you seen it yet?

Yeah, we went to see it on Monday. Kind of a similar situation. We were going to go see it over the weekend, but the weather held up over the weekend, and now I'm such a nerd about the yard. I have all this weeding to do. You've got whippers to snipper. Yes, and I was like, I can't. Oh, Luke, I've got a new lawnmower. Luke, I've got a new lawnmower. Why didn't I tell you that? I don't know why I'm doing that voice or what that voice is, but yeah, we went.

It's a callback to an earlier cinematic principle that we're deciding to represent on this edition of the show, and I respect that.

But yeah, we went with an electric lawnmower, but a battery-powered electric lawnmower. As I was kind of doing more research, I was like, part of me was like, well, lawnmowers have to be gas-powered because that's how it was growing up. But I was hearing from listeners who were like, no, you should just get electric. and all the commercials for any kind of power equipment now when you're watching a Mariners game is electric. Like, nobody's going back to, you know, combustion. Like, it's just another thing you have to do is you have to fill up the can of the gas station, bring it back, store gas in your garage. Like, why do that? And so Genevieve, who is just, I mean, I know she was on the show talking about, she's thriving. We got to do a regular segment with her talking about her Craigslist finds and sells and everything um she i said you know what veves i think i said i wanted a gas-powered lawnmower but i'm really thinking more we should keep an eye out for a good deal and maybe an electric powered one with a battery two hours later she's like like this one and she sends me a text it's being sold on ebay by somebody who bought it but never used it still in the box it was like somebody who was like richer and like bought two of these things then decided they only wanted one because they were hiring a landscaping crew to do the rest or something. I don't understand the story. I don't get rich people. But anyway, these things are like almost $500 or something, and we got it for $200. And it was like, you know, picked it. Genevieve picked it up at somebody's house. Now are they shipping it to your old house? Yeah, well, Genevieve picked it up, dropped it off in Wallingford. I got to go pick it up later. And, like, it was Genevieve, you know, brought it back here, and, like, it's literally still, it was still all in its original packaging and everything. and apparently it didn't really come with the charger but Genevieve just said and she's such a bully she said well um and the charger's in the box right and the woman's like no no we're not selling the charger the charger is still useful because we have two of these things and Genevieve says well I'm not buying this thing without the charger so the woman's like fine ten dollars more this charger is more than ten dollars but that's the thing like people just want to get rid of things you know like oh yeah today I'm once you somebody's coming over to buy the old electric lawnmower the plug-in one and like we're selling it for whatever like a hundred bucks or whatever but frankly i'll give him 70 if he just takes it off the property god i hope they're not a listener

because now they're already on to you that's a hundred percent my uh you know negotiating tactic with anything like that you're buying secondhand which i mean i don't think this is and i don't think this is sketchy but it's just like you know once you're there you're standing in their driveway and let's say that you're selling a lawnmower for $100. If it's the difference between that lawnmower being gone for $100 or $80, you're taking $80 for it. What are you going to send the person away so that someone else will come and pay $100 later? Right, right. It's just negotiating. You can always get folks to go down a little bit once you're physically there. Now, if you telegraph early, like my trick back in the day when I purchased all of my cars exclusively through the little nickel or other want ads would be to show up with let's say the car was 1400 show up with you know 1200 cash and just be like i got 1200 cash right here

and i'd never had anyone say no yeah exactly like because you just want to and and you you mentioned you don't know if it's sketchy i don't think it's sketchy i think it's just it's negotiating and we don't negotiate that much anymore at least i don't and i'm super comfortable with it either honestly um but leverage is leverage i'm gonna tell a personal story here that i wasn't trying to bring up on the show but um i'm compelled to and i think you'd be interested in hearing about this luke you actually know a lot of the background about some of these sticking points that we're coming across with our former landlords we thought we had a certain agreement with him the guy that we're dealing with there um as far as us leaving on a certain schedule and he seems to think that because we're breaking our lease uh we have to pay more than what we understood we were supposed to pay um that's the that's the ins and outs of it but you know he sent the original email kind of indicating this new what we consider to be kind of a new mindset as far as what he thinks we owe him um and then Genevieve wrote back she's been handling all this she's better at negotiating she just wrote nope it was our understanding of this this this and this and she even mentioned like we thought we were doing this on good faith in the same way that we you know weren't given any kind of rent break or a new place to live when our bathroom was unfunctional for a week like she said i thought we were all just sort of like kind of being buds about this and they kind of went back and forth a couple of times and then he ends up but genevieve's always professional right she's a professional writer you read the that email over

the like line to me and i was struck by how well written it was because my advice was torch the place just go completely nuclear that was what i was advising you to do you just threaten an absolute scorched earth policy but with the letter that genevieve wrote i thought was

extremely well well constructed yeah and if you think about it i mean that's what genevieve does when i say she's a professional writer she's a professional writer but she's a writer of not novels but of like business correspondence and stuff like that she knows how to strike a tone and and hold a line without without going over a line or whatever you know and she was just like really professional what i loved was then his final one i think they went back and forth like three or four times in the course of a long morning and then his final one is like he's the one who kind of gets emotional he mentions how disappointed he's like oh i'm just disappointed i'm disappointed that you thought that we were just going to take the hit on this and he said how he was disappointed in us a couple of times it's like and then we didn't respond to that for like two weeks until we had to meet to give the keys back for the inspection i just love that i love genevieve just being very professional and then like finally letting letting him be the one who's like bringing up like disappointment like what are you talking about you're disappointed in us sorry dad and then just like letting him hang with that it felt that felt kind of good But all of that is to say in this last letter that he sent where he was disappointed on us, he was mentioning this is getting into a lot of personal finance details here that maybe I should be more circumspect about. But he's the last time we negotiated our our rental contract, because unlike other places I've lived, you sign a contract for like a year or a year and a half. And then after that, it just naturally rolled into month to month, like every other place I've ever rented in my entire life. And that is many, many places. But with this guy, every time the contract was starting to come to an end, he would frantically text or call and say, hey, did you guys know that the contract is coming to an end? We need to renegotiate. And we're just like, OK, well, that's your job. We don't have to reach out to you about that. And and so he wanted to renegotiate every time. Well, because Genevieve is a good negotiator and I think I might have done it the last time we said, hey, listen, it's a pandemic and we haven't received any raises. we would like to stay here but we we're not in a position to pay an increase in rent and so and we were appreciative appreciative of the fact that they respected that they kept us in their apartment and we didn't have a rent increase for i think two years or a very very minimal one if anything certainly not this last time because i remember i was on the phone with them and i said hey listen you know our our financial situation has not changed at all we don't have any more income coming in and so we're not going to be paying more income out for this place and you know you say that because you know in the back of their minds like it's a bigger pain in the ass for us to leave and for them to put somebody else in there and we were freaking model tenants like and that's the other thing to remember in all of this anyway in this email where he's like now negotiating this like us getting out of our contract he's talking about how he's disappointed in us and then he brings up and i had a feeling this was the case he brings up well when you when you said that you didn't that you couldn't pay any more in rent it was my understanding that you know you were facing some some hardship or something along those lines and then like it all came

crystal clear to me in a way that I had my suspicions anyway like he'd been sort of like feeling put out like he was doing us a big favor that he didn't you know increase our rent and he felt like we were being disingenuous to him during that negotiation when we turned around and bought a house but you know what buddy our finances are none of your damn business first of all you don't know maybe we were gifted this house and secondly um that's called negotiating like if you're mad at yourself for not negotiating and holding the line when i said we're not paying more in rent and you said okay okay, fine, well, then be mad at you. Don't be like, well, then you turn around and you buy a house and you lied to me and I'm disappointed in you. He didn't use the word lie, but that's what I just feel like was, yeah.

Have you considered going back to the scorched earth policy, the Burbank gambit that I first presented to you a month ago?

It's still unclear to me. My sense is, even though I don't know that this is fully legal, although it'll just happen, is they have a certain amount of money as a security deposit, And usually I think that's for I don't know if that's legally only supposed to be for the security of like damage. Absolutely. I don't know. It could be for security of not paying your final month rent or something like that. So wait a second. In fact, don't we usually pay for their last month rent when you when you rent a place?

Well, like, yeah, I mean, I guess technically, if you're breaking the lease, maybe it puts it into a separate category. But if you're if you're, I mean, renting a place, it's actually very clear in most like city and state law that the damage deposit is only to be used to address damages. And those damages can't be normal wear and tear. It can't just be like the carpet is threadbare because people have been living on it for an additional four years. So you can't use that for other purposes if you're the landlord. Now, maybe, I mean, I guess technically if you're trying to get out of the lease early, that might throw it in a different sort of legal category. But, I mean, yeah, it was just what everybody knew when you were renegotiating the last time around was if that apartment is empty for a month while they're trying to find someone else, they lose more money over the course of the next year than they would if they jacked your rent.

Well, also, okay, let me just tell –

It's simple math.

Let me tell the full story here for the listeners anyway. And you know this, Luke, but this is the other galling thing about this. So when we knew we had an opportunity to buy this house and it was happening faster than we thought and we were going to have to kind of ditch out of about five months of our rental agreement. First of all, we knew that we loved that apartment. It is an amazing neighborhood because they were nice and didn't because we were good negotiators and didn't raise our rent for two years. they can and a train station has opened three blocks from that place since since we moved in the value of that place is so much more like I was like you can rent this place in a second right and we gave them seven weeks notice and we sent the note to this guy and this other woman who I've mentioned on the show before Shelly who is always my contact and Shelly is like more like a I would call her like a nice human being who talks to you like a human being and so I said always copy Shelly on things just so that somebody can see these emails, right? And so we sent the email saying, hey, we have an opportunity here. We need to move out. Let's talk about how to make this as easy as possible. And we're willing to help however we can, right? That's seven weeks out of our moving date. And Shelly writes back right away, hey, congratulations, guys. Steve will be in contact with you. Half a week goes by, nothing. Genevieve's, maybe we wait a full week, nothing then we finally type in like hey steven want to talk about this a week's gone by you know like let's hear what the deal is it took i think a week and a half to two weeks until genevieve finally just sent a curt email to the thread just saying like we would like to hear from somebody about this immediately like he let two weeks go by where he didn't even return the email saying that we want to help you rent this place then he finally reaches out after genevieve's curt email they talk on the phone apparently it's very pleasant and then genevieve agrees and you know this part Luke Genevieve agrees to stage the house for photos which she did beautifully which was a lot of work because we were just starting to move and she had to like you know move things out of frame and take these nice photos of the apartment with our nice furniture in there she agreed to write up the description for the listing which she did and again she's a very good writer and she gave all of this stuff she said here are like 10 beautiful photos of the place and here is your listing language he sat on that for another three weeks Genevieve keep right kept writing in hey when are you guys putting that listing up our our real estate agent would like to share it with some people like we also have some other people who are interested we want to share this like can you post this thing and he's not he's dragging his feet dragging his feet then he finally posts it 10 days before no he posted on the 17th and we're moving out on the 31st he posted it like less than two weeks before we're moving out and now is claiming we owe that bit of money when the apartment isn't filled for two weeks it's like we gave you so much time and we did all of the work for you we did everything and also it's in the agreement that we could have

sublet this if he had been more honest straight and straightforward from the beginning we could have sublet that place in seven weeks time are you kidding me we did all the work anyway when i say we

i mean genevieve yeah and also how about this how about just being a nice human being who's like hey you know what i had these really great tenants who left that place in better shape than they found I'll see you next time.

it and who were really took great care of it and i mean again having been briefly a landlord when i lived in la and we had a like a a guest cottage behind our house it can be a real bummer when you have crappy tenants i mean you know they can really make your life difficult and they have a ton of of legal rights which i think is a good thing generally speaking but the problem is it seems like the really crummy tenants avail themselves of more of the rights than just the like people that we should be looking out for who who need to be able to live somewhere and not have an abusive landlord mess with them but point is if i swear to god if i owned this house like i grew up in rental houses my dad bought a house maybe two years before i bought a house like in my life we grew up in two rentals and in both places they never raised the rent because my dad took immaculate care of the house my dad remodeled the kitchen in one of our rentals i mean not a gut reno but he like repainted all of the cabinets um like my parents like the deal was we always had rentals but my parents always took really good care of the rentals and the people who owned it were loathe to raise the rent the how i know this also is because it was you know the late 90s or whatever but like the house that we lived in by green lake which was a one two three by the end it was like a four bedroom my dad was expanding in the basement he literally built a room in the basement too it was a four bedroom one bathroom house that with a yard and a garage that my parents rented for 450 a month i believe up until the day they moved out of it oh my gosh my point in that is the if this guy people this conglomerate that owns this place were just normal nice humans they'd be like wow that was great that we had two plus years or whatever it was of these tenants who really took care of the place and they could have i mean you guys could have trashed it you could have had sketchy people over i mean you did have me over sometimes so that i wouldn't strike one yeah but you know like just the idea that you took really great care of this asset of theirs

that could that should buy two weeks and apparently during the final walkthrough i just got a text back from genevieve apparently we didn't pay first in last month so when we moved in which that seems very strange for this guy but um everything was so buttoned up but again it's like weird it's like you have one thing over email but then in person so genevieve after this email exchange about we're not going to we're we're contesting that we're not going to pay these two two weeks because if you had been more straightforward about that we would have rented this place immediately i think the thing i keep coming back to is genevieve did all of the work she wrote a great professional listing for you that was glowing oh i also talked to prospective um renters on the phone because they were giving tours while we were there i spent like a half hour with one of the guys who i think is now going to be renting the place like and talk telling him how great it was and talking it up and answering all of his questions about the neighborhood and utilities like we put more labor into renting this thing than they did and they didn't and he doesn't post it until you know like again the 17th i'm trying to do the math on whatever the 17th of the 31st is just like whole just slow walks all of the work we did he could have he could have rented that in a split second it was because he was slow walking and then he complains and he's like well you know it's really he's always like so many landlords always talking about how hard it is to be a landlord how the laws are against you it's like you know who's not a victim generally speaking people who own land that they're renting out for other people like i'm sorry i'm not saying that it's easy to be a landlord i bet you it's a lot of work and especially depending on the details um being a landlord is a lot of work but it's also not a responsibility that you have to do if it's that you're not a victim you're not a victim if it's If you feel like you're being victimized by owning land that you rent out, sell the land. Somebody will buy it.

Well, I mean, for instance, during the pandemic, you would have been very much in your rights to stop paying your rent. And he would have had now you would have theoretically owed that at the end, but he could not have evicted you for the entirety of the pandemic. You didn't. You continued presumably to pay your rent because you could. But like that would have been a real pain in his backside that you could have done. And he would have been completely powerless to get. And that was a situation that I think – I'm not trying to stick up for landlords, but the term landlord is pretty – it's fairly broad, and you've got the landlords who own apartment buildings like the one that I'm in, which is like a multimillion-dollar operation. Then you have some people who have a rental that is how they're covering their mortgage, and they are like – if they don't get the rent for the place, they're going to default on their own mortgage payment. So you can go from really big to really small. but i just feel like this person is so not the victim and you guys were such great tenants and the fact that he oh this is what i think really bothers me about him is i see a lot of similarities between him and myself because he's got a tattoo of john prine on his arm he doesn't he doesn't like i was very i showed john waters my john prine tattoo and he was underwhelmed i I was very surprised. Oh, I mean, did John Prine come up? up to i mean was he a big fan well so john john waters we interviewed him for livewire and he put out this really great cd called a date with john waters which was just basically these are songs that i would play for you if we were going on a date and it was a great but it was the first that i'd really listened to much john prine there's a john prine song on there in spite of ourselves it's john prine and iris dement and i had heard the name john prine this is but this was like 2007 this cd came out and i was like really um that really turned me on to the music of john prine and then i listened a lot and as everyone who listens to this show knows i have this tattoo now so i thought that was really gonna win win me some points with old johnny waters but he was very he was perfectly nice but it didn't i don't know what the reaction was i was expecting yeah you wanted to blow his hair back i wanted to blow i want to really blow his hair back i want to really blow his mustache back but anyway all i was gonna say is like um i just it's so uh frustrating to me because you guys were such great tenants and you would just think this guy would Just be happy to have had great people living there for a couple of years who left the place in good shape. Because the other thing, you could have trashed it and walked out, and then he's going to try to get that from you because let's say it goes above and beyond the damage deposit. There are just so many ways that it could be not great for him that are so much worse than, okay, we're tap dance for two weeks. And, oh, this is the thing about the similarities. He only responds to you in a timely fashion when it's something that he wants. This, I want to point out, is the mark of a bad friend, a bad landlord, a bad colleague. these are this is the things that i do which is when i want something i'm like hey andrew do we have that thing can we do that thing do you have have you heard about that thing uh or when he wants you guys to re-sign the lease or whatever it's like he's communicating rapidly and and in a regular fashion and then when it doesn't feel good to him because he's annoyed that you're

moving out it's like radio silence yeah and again and for those i mean i'm sure there i mean i'm thinking of one in particular but i mean i know that we have probably a lot of people in our listening audience who do have to deal with like um who deal with terrible renters and i do know that there are a lot of i am i'm for the the rental protection laws in fact i i really think that that having rent control in in seattle or king county would go a long way and also make some of those other other laws um it would maybe ease the pain of some of those other laws you could even get rid of them but having i have my opinions on that stuff but i do know i want to stress i'm not saying it's a walk in the park to rent a property my my parents they they bought this little house in lakewood ohio that was a duplex like probably a 1940s era house um and my entire life growing up they rented that out while we lived in valley city like that was the first place that they lived when they got married they lived in one of the units and then they moved to valley city and they just kept this property and rented it out and me and my dad would visit there every couple of weeks and mow the lawn and do whatever then um eventually me and my dad lived uh in one of the units for a while too during the divorce i mean i'm okay it's just tough when your parents get a divorce um but i'm okay thanks for asking um but anyway all that is to say i heard so many stories i mean just from renters who again whether it's not whether it's like not paying and like well i already live here what are you going to do about it to people just leaving garbage behind you know i mean the attic and basement spaces would just become places where when people were moving out they would just throw their shit like there's all kinds of disrespectful terrible stuff that you have to deal with when when you um are renting to the wrong person but again it's not like this is some burden that has been thrust upon you if you are a property owner with a property that you no longer want to rent because it's not worth the hassle anymore then sell it and get out of the landlord business you know or the property owning business like there's you're just you're not a victim in that case you just are choosing kind of a shitty line of work and you should get into something else and again it's not like me saying that to somebody who's like hey i don't like my job at target and me saying hey pick up your bootstraps and get a better job i'm talking about somebody who's in a position to own land yeah a multi-million maybe

not multi but certainly at this point with what's going on in seattle um you know a lot extremely valuable asset so i'm just telling you andrew i am on standby to go nuclear if you need me to okay

just you well i won't you said go i don't know if you'd want me to say this or not but you said just leave bad reviews for their business on yelp and i gotta say i wasn't gonna do that but i uh i did briefly look to see if their firm is on yelp it is it is not but i i don't i i honestly it's so funny because like i am against and and you have known people in your family who've been kind of victims of yeah me out bombing and so i i wouldn't actually do that i do think that that is that is immoral like but when you're feeling very angry and frustrated all these it's like a relationship right i'm like thinking of all these other things like the timer the times our mailbox was pried open and our mail stolen and both times he just bent the little tab back and said job done in a British accent, and I actually confronted him one time. and i said we need a new mailbox clearly that's not secure and he said uh really like if anybody has the gumption they can open up any mailbox like you're just not going to get a mailbox more secure than that like right now this house we bought has a has a mailbox with a big i mean it feels like fort knox i mean it's an easy thing to open with a key but like it is demonstrably untrue that you can't get a more secure mailbox or at least at this point a new one where the little tab hasn't been bent back and forth a bunch of times when somebody comes by with a screwdriver and pops it open like it's just so cheap and we put up with so much of that stuff i'm telling you

andrew i'm like harvey keitel in pulp fiction call me the wolf i will you do have a tuxedo i will seriously fix this or burn that place down trying if you need me to no i'm you know what i'm just so

glad i don't know what's going to finally happen with the with the money they have in their hands from us from our security deposit but like i guess i i was never going to talk about any of that on the show and then i pulled a tiny thread and now everybody knows everything about this situation

which i'm a little embarrassed about i mean i hope you don't feel you i don't think you should feel embarrassed and i think it's highly relatable i think we've all been in these kinds of situations around personal finance where you feel like something is really um like i hope she's okay with me relating the story i'm sure she would be but like somebody um backed into becca's car and they were nice enough to leave a note which was the good part but then when she took it to the place to have it looked at and sent the estimate over they were like that estimate sounds way too high she was like okay well i can take it to a different place and then the person went on radio silence for like two or three weeks and then was just like fighting tooth and nail and part of it was like why did you leave a note if you didn't want to actually pay for the damage to be repaired and then finally just after like all of these machinations and and just hassle that none of which becca created by parking her car legally on the street in a parking space finally the person sent her the money and said do not contact me any further geez like like again like you're the one i was like message her back say do not contact my car with your car it sounds like you're the issue with you're the one with the issues with contact oh i was ready to go i was ready to go nuclear we her theory was that the person who hit her worked at a particular store in the mall and we were like in the mall and i was like is that the store she was like i think so because she had gone to the person's like linkedin or something and i was like i'm going in she was like don't go i'm going in no no no i just need to get eyes on the situation i didn't go in but point is i think everyone can relate to these weird moments of life around these kinds of weird contracts and sort of informal and and formal financial arrangements where it's just you just

wish everybody would just behave themselves yeah and you know it's kind of i think as time passes uh this particular acute moment will fade into the background and we'll just remember the fond times we had in that in that apartment two of which were during a global pandemic but even still like i was saying to veves like you know i will always have the memories of of sitting on our little roof deck area playing cards with you while the this the usually busy street below was dead silent because we're in the middle of a pandemic that first summer and like that and we and that's obviously the pandemic is not a good memory but i do feel lucky that we were able to live it out there we loved that apartment we loved that neighborhood and we were there before everything shut down and we got to be in that neighborhood when things started opening up again and we it was the only neighborhood we lived in where we really built some community there and like we have so many good feelings about it and then all of this happening at the end just sort of seems to kind of you know smudge it a bit and i'm sure as you know as time goes on we'll remember mostly the good times but um it's just like such a shitty end to what was such a kind of magical

chapter of our lives i think it's really smart though for you to keep that sense of perspective you're talking about too which is this amount of money that's in dispute right now essentially two weeks of rent is it's annoying and it's unfair but the memories of that place are great you're in this new place that you love where you have all of your books organized by genre and like you just i would i would say it's really good to keep that perspective that even if it stings even if it feels you got the fuzzy end of the lollipop overall you had a great time there and you're going to have a great time at your new place because i feel like what's really more corrosive for people and i know people like this if they see and i don't think you're in any danger of this happening andrew but it's like when people start to overly ruminate on the unfairness of life and it becomes just kind of a thing where like everyone's out to get them yeah and everyone totally sucks and again there's zero chance of this happening to you and vives i'm just think i'm just thinking about it how like it's you know i mean i think i forget who said this but you know it's like you know wanting revenge is like taking a poison and hoping it kills your enemy like you know This idea that, like, life is going to be full of some unfair events. We've all had them happen to us. We can either ruminate on them and get stuck and mired in that and just have that be kind of how we live the rest of our life, feeling victimized and feeling. And I'm talking about, like, financials. I'm not talking about, you know, physical trauma that happens to people or whatever. But just, like, the people I know who are the happiest are the people who are able to at some point go, okay, that was a crap deal. That sucked. I'm moving on, you know.

Yeah, definitely. In fact, I'm looking here. I think it's probably best that I don't, that I can't find this anyway. But at one point, oh, here. I wanted to write. I know we should move on. We should definitely move on. But maybe this will be the last thing I do here. On the show. Well, at least relay. Yeah, maybe. Why would I take this one step further? We had a bow on it. But when he sent that last email about disappointment and being disappointed and being like, we thought you were in a financial situation i don't care what you thought but yeah i told these i'm like i gotta write a draft email response i'm like don't worry i'm not gonna send it like and again it's he's the one who kind of got emotional at the end let him let him kind of twist on that um but i did just for my own just to get it out i wrote a draft email would you like me to read the draft email that i wrote in response to his disappointment email yes i would love that thank you for explaining your disappointments Stephen for the record I would like to add that I am disappointed that colon entering list mode number one on our very first morning as renters you woke us up to tell us that there were reports of a fire in our building apparently this was some sort of April Fool's joke between you and your business partner in which we became the victims do you remember that story Luke?

I don't even think I knew that that happened at the time you've relayed it to me since off air but that is just absolutely wild our our very first

morning we woke up to a phone call or text message from steven saying i'm getting reports of a fire alarm in the house what is going on question mark and that that's what i woke up to our very first morning in this place and it turns out one of his partners sent that to him on april fool's day as a joke it happened to be april fool's day and then so steven came to us about it and like do you want to talk about getting off on the wrong foot we never mentioned that right so i wanted to bring that up so that was disappointment number one number two that you did not offer us other living arrangements or appropriate rent relief during the week that the water was turned off in our bathroom as i believe is required by law he's so scared of the law three they re that you refused to replace our mailbox with a secure one after having our mailbox pried open and our mail stolen twice i investigated your claim that quote there are no mailboxes that are more secure than this model it is demonstrably untrue for that we had to email you four times over the course of 10 days before you would finally respond to our initial email telling you that we were planning to move if you had been more responsive and transparent throughout this process we could have adjusted our strategy and found a renter to sublease the apartment ourselves as laid out in our rental agreement and that's as far as i got i didn't have a close in there because i knew i wasn't going to send it did it kind of give you the catharsis you were looking for i think so yeah and again i'm very glad that i didn't send it but i just loved kind of having it in my pocket this list of grievances although i think you're very very right i know people who carry around grievances and it is a it is a terrible thing that it's like it's almost lord of the ringsy the way you carry around grievances and it turns you it turns you into an ugly person i i don't like that either and i don't want to be that person but it did it did feel good for me to kind of lay out and you know me you know i love me some bullet points right to like bullet point that disappointments and i also just love saying thank you for explaining your disappointments steven i thought that was a good

intro here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female

no man it's not from a female all right a couple emails or v-mails for i got to get out of here by the way in about 15 oh okay yeah um just to put a little um a sense of the timing of this But, yeah, let's check into the e-mails and v-mails.

You're putting me in a weird position. I have exactly 16 minutes worth of content here. I don't know what to do. We just end it. No, I'm just joking. Can we take out some of the pauses and try to get it down to 15? Okay, everybody, put your pod player on double speed here so that we can get out of here on time. Here, I'm just going to play one voicemail for you. So this is related to the conversation we were having the other day about the TV show Cheers and how watching kind of an episode of Cheers as a kid that turns out was in, I believe, the last season of that show. There was a plot point where a rich guy, Robin. I can't think of his last name. Robin.

I don't remember his last name either.

Cole. Cole. Cole.

Colcourt, yes, exactly. I'm pretty sure Colcourt. Robin Colcourt hides or at least tells the gang that he hides a money belt filled with, I think, six million dollars somewhere in the bar. And they end up destroying the bar or maybe somebody's apartment or something looking for the supposed money belt. And I didn't know what a money belt was. I'd never heard of a money belt before then. And I hadn't really heard of a money belt after that. So I just lived the rest of my life thinking that money belts are things that rich people hide in random places. And that anytime I go into a hotel room or I rent a new apartment or what have you, there's potentially a money belt hidden somewhere. And one of these days, I'm going to find me a money belt with six million dollars in it. And that was the background on this voicemail.

Andrew, it's Corinne, and I'm not trying to get you worked up or anything, but I've got a very small story that I feel like you should hear. So my dad served in World War II, and he didn't really tell war stories, but he would occasionally share these little anecdotes from his time in the military, like the time that he bought a whole bunch of tiny bananas and ate all of them and then regretted it. That was a really good story. But anyway, I remember him telling me once that when the war came to an end, And the military cashed him out, I guess. They gave him everything that they owed him. And because he had been very frugal with his money, a pattern that continued throughout his life, I assure you, they gave him a lot of cash. And he needed to make his way back to southeast Missouri. And so what did he do to protect his money? He bought a money belt. so apparently they're not just for criminals and greedy corporate types they're also for missouri farm boys who just need to get home safe and go into insurance so there you go

power out i don't know corinne are you sure your dad wasn't a corporate raider look into it i mean there is a chance that he is living a don draper-esque duplicitous life you know that my

grandpa jack kelly never used a bank no i didn't know that yeah kept all of his money in like i think his like underwear drawer or something really paid paid every bill in cash this is according to my mom anyway um yeah he never he he didn't didn't believe in using a bank which is weird because i don't think he had any other like he wasn't a conspiracy theorist of any kind you know he was just this kind of regular guy living in philly with this kind of large family um that wife died very early when my mom was seven but the one quirky thing was he did not ever take his

money to the bank yeah you know the just that story of corinne's grandfather carrying around or father i guess um carrying around that much money like it just makes my hand sweat out of nervousness it's so rare even us like i didn't grow up you know i didn't get my first credit card until i was you know a couple years into adulthood post-college like um so i'm used to carrying some amount of cash but the idea of carrying around a lot of cash especially when that is like all that you have like makes me so nervous it makes me appreciate so much the idea of being able to like just like kind of carry around these little cards that have built-in protections um and even if they annoy you every now and then when there's a giant hack like at least people are looking out for you as opposed to just like having to make my way via public transportation from one state to another with a money belt with my entire life savings on it so I can so I can start a new life after the war like that makes me so nervous it's like when I bought my camera off of eBay in a parking lot I can't remember how many hundreds of dollars that was but it was less money than Corinne's dad had certainly and I remember just like walking across the parking lot from the ATM where I had just taken it out to the person who was selling me the camera with like this wad of money in my pocket and feeling so nervous for that like 200

yards i had to walk i wonder if my granddad i don't i don't know the exact timing on this but he must have lived through the depression right um meaning i wonder if he just like if during the depression when there were runs on various banks yeah i wonder if that just informed his sense of the world and he just didn't trust a bank with not that he ever had any money but he didn't want it to be in a bank and then find out that they weren't actually able to give him his money back

yeah yeah you want to talk about yeah I mean my grandma who just turned 100 um she I mean I think I when I think of the depression I think of her because I can't think of any examples right now at the top of my head but I just remember like she had some various kind of quirks um and my mom would say well that's what you know that's growing up in the depression that's what that's going to get you. Mm hmm. Well, Corinne, thank you for calling in. I think we're going to have to go ahead. Corinne, the one who says I'm taking a hot air balloon ride. I think so. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Love that for you. We're going to we're going to call it good here on this Wednesday, but I've got some great news. We're going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you, including Andrew's favorite segment, the Blurs days. So. Oh, and we never talked about the Mariner thing.

Oh that's right Yeah yeah We gotta talk about that Let's talk about that tomorrow Yeah that sounds good Sorry about that little Musical miscue That you just heard everybody I didn't even hear it You didn't even hear it Okay good

But I don't listen to the show Very closely So maybe it was worse For the listeners

I just played Who Let the Dogs Out at top volume For a second Oh Yeah

God how It's strange That I just My brain just literally Edited that right out Weird

It's strange

Alright thank you everyone For listening We will see you tomorrow With more Imaginary Radio Until then Take care of yourselves Have a great Wednesday And please remember No mountain too tall And good luck to all Oh, my gosh.

i am dying right now i don't know what the episode number is but i'm listening to you guys trying to figure out where the word deca comes from or where the prefix prefix deca comes from i don't know what the answer is i don't know why it means 10 but i am honestly like in tears because it's so funny in like a good way this is not like a me laughing at you way this is like a thank you so much for just being so great and i'm thank you i had a terrible morning so i'm laughing and crying and i just appreciate it you guys are the best thank you bye power out