Muse

That's your spot. Do not move from it, okay? But also, don't be rigid, okay? Try to be natural. And speak to me, you know, conversational, every day, like a friend. But, ah, there's fear here. There's emotion. You're searching for a hero, you know. Will no one save you? But don't hit it too hard. Just throw it away. But with feeling, okay? All right. Oh, there's cue cards if you need them. But don't look at them. Look at me. Okay? But, you know, they're there. So, roll sound. Rolling. Camera. Spitting. And action. T-B-T-L. Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is.

It's Friday. Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. What is this guy trying to do? Is this supposed to be what Bozo's thinking or saying? What guy is Bozo? Bozo did it. Bozo did what? Bozo did the dub.

I just wanted to call and tell you guys that while teaching a Zoom class today, I grabbed one of the dead bats I was using as a specimen example and put it on my desk on top of my TBTL sound machine, which proceeded to play Don't Miss the Sausage Fest about 50 times in a row. I tried to talk really loudly over it, but there's no way that a bunch of middle schoolers missed something saying the word sausage. Anyway, that's my life now. Put my headphones on, and here we go.

I'm so excited.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTO.

Is it too early to get a fish sandwich?

The show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon.

I don't even know why I'm here for.

Where it is looking like it's going to be a beautiful sunny day. California got sunshine. About time, April. I'm talking to the month, not our listeners named April. But also, maybe to them. It's about time that you did whatever hex you needed to do to make it actually nice and sunny here in Portland, Oregon. Because we are long overdue for some nice weather. So that's going to be good. Also, this episode is going to be good. It's episode 3668 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Something that's not good. The performance of old CNN+. It was literally a major disaster. I believe it lasted four and a half quibis. They have decided to shut it down after just a couple of weeks in business. We'll try to figure out what happened with that. And then speaking of streaming services, Netflix is losing subscribers by the hundreds of thousands. Uh-oh. And some people are saying this might be, we may have hit the ceiling on streaming services. like we may there may be at this point no more people on planet earth who have access to high-speed internet who want to be a part of the streaming experience who are not um so we'll we'll look at all things all things streaming today on the program and also going back to more conventional media the new uh i guess you would say editor of the new york times posed for a photo shoot for an article about him and um i guess the photographer said what if you sat on the floor with no shoes on and had the paper spread out like you're doing paper mache or something and I wish I hadn't done that he did it and now he's getting kind of roasted on the internet so we'll talk about that too plus music for your weekend because it is a fryer do all that with help of this young man longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he is ready to party with the best of them get on the magic carpet ride he's Andrew Welsh and he's joining me right now from the sweet cream district

of Seattle Washington good morning my friend good morning Luke I'm very excited about my music for your weekend today and I think you should be excited about it too because and I know this is a feeling that you enjoy this is a this is a song actually a couple of songs I've been enjoying so much and I know about the band Luke because of you oh about that feeling I know you love that

feeling yes I I'm glad to hear that because I'm excited about the music for my weekend your weekend whoever's weekend but i don't have a long uh spiel on it i just know that the singer is from manchester oh okay england not new hampshire not new hampshire not the in fact i've already now i just did i just used up all of the content i had related to my music for weekend selection yeah but so

Don't we tell our listeners, just like Ted Lasso tells his soccer players, football players, you know, have a brain like a goldfish, right? Like, don't remember. I haven't seen that show. I just know that's something that is bandied about. And so that could work for us, too. If, like, listeners, like, don't remember anything that you heard on the show more than, I don't know, what, 35 minutes prior? Hi, goldfish darling. There you go. Do you like it? There you go. Boy, I'm blowing out that mic. I can't believe Molly didn't stop me and say, hey, you're blowing out the mic, dude.

So I noticed something in that intro tape, Andrew, and I've wanted to bring this up with you for a long time, unless I actually have brought it up with you and completely spaced it out. Goldfish. Goldfish. You forgot. So that bit of I think you should leave where Tim Robinson's character. Bozo did the dub. Yeah. Do you realize, okay, there's no reason. I don't want to yuck any yums or start the show off negative. But I just, for some reason, have this very vivid memory of you attending a stand-up comedy show many years ago and having a uniquely negative experience with one of the comics. It just didn't work for you at all. I believe it was in Seattle, but I just remember you talking about how much one of the comedians just didn't click for you. It was maybe generational, et cetera. Do you remember what I'm talking about?

I don't know where you're going with this, but I do know what you're talking about. What irritated me was Genevieve and I were going to see Amy Schumer. This is before Amy Schumer is a huge kind of, you know, I mean, Amy Schumer is kind of a household name now, right? She's had her own TV show, has had her own movies. But this is when she first was getting kind of popular because she had been in somebody's roast, somebody's Comedy Central roast. And she was starting to gain attention. And we had her book to be on the Ross and Burbank show on Cairo radio. And then she did that ever happen. No, she she blew it off. Like she she was just like, I don't feel like doing a morning. I mean, I assume I don't think we ever got a good excuse. She just we never got the info when I was supposed to call her to be on the air.

And that was the end of her career.

I'm sure it was the best decision she ever made. My guess is she probably was like, I'm on tour. I'm tired. I don't feel like, you know, and she doesn't know Ross and Burbank from any other couple of chuckleheads, right? She's probably like, I don't want to do morning radio in Seattle, like whatever. So she blew it off probably like a lot of comedians would. But that didn't deter me because I still had free tickets to go see her at what's the name of the place on the east side that has the bar made of ice? Oh, the parlor. So Vives and I make our way to the east side to go to the parlor to see her performance. And the thing that shocked me was I had not seen a lot of stand-up comedy live, and I couldn't believe how the person who was opening for her, which was just some, like, schlubby guy, was so, like, sexist and just, like, not funny and just dumb tropes, and I have no idea what he said. it wasn't even like so much like pearl clutchy I'm offended it was more just like really like these are the people who are opening for Amy Schumer who is like the opposite of this like this comedy style still exists and this is the best we can do for Amy Schumer so I was especially offended in that regard I would say so that's the story but how does this come back to

Bozo did the dub? My memory is that the comedian that you didn't like and maybe there was a different comedy show where the comedian you weren't vibing with was someone named Brandon Wardell and i thought that it was not that he was somebody who was being i don't know sexist or schlubby or whatever but that it was just it didn't the person was talking about how they had an mtv show coming out and how they were going to be big time and they were just sort of like doing a sort of a very pompous character that did not connect for you does any of this ring any bells no nothing

about that mtv thing rings a bell why that's something that you think i told you that this

I think you told me once that you went and saw a comedy show, and this guy, Brandon Wardell, was one of the performers, and I swear I remember you just saying, this guy was just like, you did not enjoy the comedy. Anyway, he's in Boza did the dub. He's the piece of tape. He's one of the people in that boardroom. He's one of the people in the Tim Heidecker charades scene. He's in. He's all over. I think you should leave. But if you don't remember this thing that I'm talking about, this story is really going nowhere. I thought it was interesting that a person who I remembered you specifically saying you did not enjoy the comedy stylings of is is in a lot of these sketches that you and I both adore.

I wonder if I mean, I'm looking at photos of this person now and this person looks nothing like. And again, we're going back to the Ross and Burbank show. We're going back to like 2012 or something when I saw this this comedian that I'm talking about. And I don't think it could have been this person because this person unless I mean, listen, my memory is faulty. But first of all, looking at this person's age, they would have been, well, 10 years younger, 10 years ago, if I'm doing my math right on that. Yeah. And I find that kind of hard to believe. And also. I just remember this guy being kind of like your your typical like kind of like button down shirt, but it's open in the front with a T-shirt and a belly or something, which is definitely not this Brandon Wardell's vibe. There's a chance now when I moved to L.A. back in 2013 or 14 and I started seeing more stand up comedy there kind of randomly. Is there a chance that maybe I saw this guy at one of those, you know, one of those shows at the Virgil? Not the Virgil. What am I thinking? Largo at the Coronet. yeah uh anyway and then maybe you're conflating those two stories maybe i saw this guy and i didn't like him in la all i know is i cannot believe this is where i decided to take the show

it's so boring and also i think brandon wardell is very funny for the record i just have this very vivid memory of whenever i see him i think oh andrew hated that show he saw that guy do now it's possible i i just confused two things but i again it just stuck out to me because it was so it just you know you're it was just I remember you saying yeah or I would that was so not for me whatever the comedy was but I I don't think it was the Amy Schumer thing I think it was

something else but do you think there's any chance this is a person who I met is it a possibility that this is somebody who I met at a party in LA that sounds like I'm but I mean you know I had some friends who are in the comedy scene so I'd be at gatherings and there'd be comedians there and I remember like you know one person who worked on one of the late night shows and he was a nice guy but i mean is there a chance that i was complaining about some blowhardened person that i that i met at a party it's possible i mean the thing is this is first of all not good radio sorry

and it's a hundred percent on me it's a hundred percent on me if you would have remembered this thing that i again maybe never happened if you would have remembered the thing that i completely fantasized about andrew then maybe this would have paid off because i would have been like guess what you actually like this person's comedy but this may have been something that i completely it may have been somebody else it may have been a different podcast co-host that i work with it may have been a different comedian i just can't believe that i have used up about eight minutes of the show on this i apologize to you i apologize to the listeners i apologize to brandon wardell

well i'll tell you this much i have no i have a recollection of that other guy like i told you everything i know about the schumer thing i have no recollection of this thing that you're talking about now and my instinct is to tell you that you're just wrong that you're thinking of somebody that you're thinking of somebody else but here's the deal while sometimes I feel like I remember like what was the thing that when I was in Cleveland that I remembered talking about on the show a couple of times you didn't remember it and I was like aha I have the tape I remember it like in this case I think you have a really good memory for conversations around comedians because I'll see a comedian I won't I won't remember who they are or whatever and like you really have like total recall on that kind of stuff and especially so if I came back from some event and was complaining about it and then you would immediately triangulate oh yeah I know that guy like you know a lot about the stand up scene even now I think so that is one reason why even though I have the story supposedly about me and I have no recollection of it I can't completely dismiss it because you do sort of have a beautiful mind when it comes to that kind of stuff

I really appreciate you saying that thank you for believing me Thank you for overriding all of your instincts of trusting your own memory and believing me in this weird, ridiculous story that so did not pay off. Oh, goldfish. For reasons that make no sense, ended up essentially slandering a hardworking and funny comedian. Speaking of hardworking and funny comedians, can I tell you that Paul F. Tompkins is using Cameo exactly as it should be used? he recently hung his cameo shingle and what he has been doing is he will if uh if you uh you know send him the money which is 300 bucks he will improvise he will mention your name or the names of the people you want to mention but then everything else he does will be improvised yes perfect some kind of story about like so you know if you're like hey it's my friend uh you know connie's birthday he will then just go completely nuts on some premise i'm just grabbing one of these at random from cameo take a listen to this oh good thank you uh for cooperating cameo this is like the tiktok yeah it's mutes itself but then also like it starts auto-playing and i kind of want the beginning to be in there yep but where's the volume on this dang thing i'm trying to give him some free business all right well that's not going to work i guess i thought i

heard it for a second there now in the background well okay here we go thank you a little bird

named mike not the mike you know it's an actual little bird that's named mike he he goes and he looks at stuff for me so i hear about things he tells me that you are expecting something you are expecting three ghosts who will teach you the true meaning of labor day um i feel like you've got christmas all sorted out uh but labor day is something that we don't think about that often, but it's important to know. what it's all about and what it is all about is labor is doing work or not it's about not doing work for a change when you do oh man i'm asking for some ghost to visit me okay here's what's fun we're both going to get visited do you think it'll be the same three ghosts If it's Or will you get it this Labor Day And then I get it next year Or is it like six different ghosts Oh this is exciting Alright so let's meet here The day after Labor Day And compare notes And we'll see if it's the same ghosts Maybe it's a Santa Claus thing where they can Travel all over the place But I mean They only have to be in America I don't know it's not as impressive now when I think about it Anyway, congrats. I hope you're looking forward to it. I don't have any advice for you other than enjoy it. If you can, find a bird spy of your own. Don't aim a mic because that will be confusing. And really just good luck. Just good luck. Hang in there until Labor Day. And think of me all the time. Okay.

Goodbye forever.

Goodbye forever.

That's great. Yeah, he is entertaining cameo. Uh-huh. Yep. I just feel like scrolling through. I know that's like the Paul of Tompkins brain is uniquely designed to to really succeed in that environment.

Unlike me trying to remember comedians, you don't like it makes you know, it makes me and I'm not usually like this and I would not do this even if I were more famous, I'm sure. But it is tempting to start a cameo because I can lean on my talent of impressions, you know, like anybody could just like just like, you know, request me doing anybody, any including Paul F. Tompkins. And I would just do I would nail the impression because that's a skill of mine. That's how you use cameo. You find what you're good at and you just push everything in that direction. Absolutely.

I feel like that is, I mean, I guess people get excited when, you know, someone who's, I guess, famous or someone that they admire or are fans of says their name. So that's like the cool part of Cameo. But I feel like what Paul F. Tompkins is doing there is just so much more valuable. Oh, yeah. then somebody uh played uh the um mark mcgrath from sugar ray uh is on cameo and uh i think it was one of becca's friends um was a big fan of his and so he was doing a birthday shout out to them on cameo and it was like eight minutes long and so full service he kept saying their name he kept saying the name of the people who had bought it for him he kept saying the name of their kids he played one of his songs at some point i was like enough mark mcgrath wow it turns out he's

only got one customer man and it was like fifty dollars i was like this is not penciling out for

mark mcgrath yeah well i mean honestly though i don't make fun of him good for him absolutely he super served those two ones i mean i'm not trying to say anything um you know uh sort of derogatory about him like he put so much effort into this i mean it was but it was almost like it was almost like too much it was like we all have places to be but I mean that's so much better than the alternative which is someone just kind of like phoning it in and you know collecting the money and not really you know doing their best I mean he he went so far with it I couldn't believe it

I'm making the hey dummies videos too long by the way that's just something we need to talk about I did it for 12 minutes last time whoa yeah and then I was thinking about it I was like that is it was meandering it didn't have a power out and it went on for 12 minutes the content was terrible but this about labor day the servings were large yeah um in like 12 minutes i'm like remember that podcast we were looking at the other day um where the guy was basically ripping off somebody else's reporting and just retelling the story on his podcast his episodes were like 12 minutes long right yeah so anyway i need to be briefer with the

hey dummies is my point we need to andrew you pointed something out the other day that has just been living in my head related to podcasts which is there needs to be a term for those kind of like middle three podcasts episodes that are just totally unnecessary to move the plot along but they're there because like you were saying we've got to have you know an eight episode season or whatever i am listening to this it's a it's really good it's um it's a podcast uh put out by like nbc it's a a reporter named brandy uh brandy zadrosky who's an investigative reporter and writes a lot about conspiracy theories and q anon and stuff and it's called tina dover is dead and i didn't know anything about this story but there was in the early days of the vac

vaccine there was a nurse i believe in tennessee who you know how that they were giving the first doses to a lot of medical uh folks and they were doing it often on camera you know kind of like in the local media just to prove that it was safe are you familiar with this story at all uh no i'm not i don't know where you're going with this so she this this she was the supervising nurse at this hospital and she got the shot and then she also has a very um she's very easily triggered into fainting and so uh she just so happened to with the media there and all the attention the lights she got up to sort of like do a quick interview and she felt a little bit faint and she she fainted basically and then like 10 minutes later she was totally fine and then she continued on with the interview well that her fainting shortly after getting the first dose of the vaccine just became this conspiracy theorist you know Disneyland where so there's all these people who now claim that she has she's died which she obviously hasn't because she went off of social there was so much speculation around her health and what happened with the vaccine that eventually she just kind of went off the internet and all of the you know crazy QAnon people etc took that as evidence that she had passed away so the premise of this podcast is to look into the conspiracy and also to go find this nurse in chattanooga or wherever she is in tennessee and prove she's not dead problem is i feel like they probably proved it in the first time they went to tennessee yeah right like the opening episode is great and i'm sure it'll be it'll be a real payoff when we actually get to hear the nurse in question but it feels to me like like there's this one point where they're like we you know she's working actively at this hospital and they're waiting outside looking for her and they're like is that her no is that her and they're like we decided it would be weird to go into the hospital. Really? Why don't we go in the hospital and just shake her hand and say, hey, nice to see you. We're glad you're alive. It's because we need to get 10 episodes out of this, so we can't go find the person who's very findable early in the episode or early in the episode. So anyway, whatever those, and again, I really like this show. It's only two episodes are out so far, and I will listen to the whole thing, and I'm recommending it to people, but I also feel like I'm in that filler. I'm in whatever that we need to come up with the kind of catchphrase for that or the term for it. I'm in this part where we're all just, like, making it harder than it needs to be so that we can get 10 episodes.

Yeah, and as I've been kind of bopping around listening to various podcasts that I usually wouldn't have listened to, like, you know, series of, you know, like kind of limited series with a narrative arc and what have you. Because I was just obsessed with The Levitard Show for the past several years that that was more like my TBTL, right? I was just obsessed with listening to all of it, and it was just chat and jokes, and it wasn't like that style of more like prestige podcasting, if we want to call it that. maybe that gives him too much credit Luke maybe we're not prestige podcasters under that definition and I consider myself a prestige podcaster oh we are not at all but here's one thing that I would say like God love Ira Glass Ira Glass is a smart smart man and a lot of things that people are doing in their podcasts you can trace back to his production roots as host and producer of this american life the moment of reflection is a great great thing but it can be a moment just a moment and i know that's coming from me like i i was on uh i was on kow seattle now i guess on the podcast that airs today i did it yesterday oh wow i coincidentally literally coincidentally ended up having drinks with the um executive producer of that show yesterday and i said oh i was on your show today he's like oh that's right because he wasn't on he wasn't part of the recording session he said yeah they said you really talked a lot what yeah the thing is last time i was on that show and i don't think i told you about this last time i was on that show um i did i i felt like i did a really bad job i edited together great but there were a couple of moments that i was really embarrassed about and i was pretty nervous about and so this time I was like, I am not going to like fall flat on my face. I'm going to have something for everything. And I just like, I was thinking about it for like two days. And then, and then I thought about it too much. It's like, I went on some sort of spiel about taking Biden to Costco. Like, I don't think, I haven't heard the final product. I'm assuming that is not, that is not going to make the final cut. I'm not sure. But anyway, so I know that I don't really recognize what a short moment is either. But like when you have a story, however long it is, like, let's keep the moments of reflection like relative time wise to the length of the story, because I'm hearing these shows being just sucked down under the burden of reflection and making it too much about the narrators. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And for folks that don't know what you're talking about with Moment of Reflection, Ira, I think, sort of pioneered this. This sort of thing that happens at the end of just about every This American Life piece, which I believe he literally, you know, kind of patented or copyrighted the phrase moment of reflection. It's kind of that moment where you sort of think, what did this all mean? Or should I have even done this, et cetera? That's the moment of reflection. But now we have podcast series where four of the episodes are the person going, I had this really start thinking, should I even be reporting this story? Exactly, right. Because Moment of Reflection, that's more or less a naturally renewing resource where you could just Moment of Reflect for three episodes if you have to.

I mean, we kind of do that.

I started to wonder, was I myself becoming more of a criminal than the criminal who I was podcasting about? And so you're exactly right, though. Those are the episodes that I'm less interested in. And again, I just want to be very clear. what we're doing here is not entertaining to most of the people on planet earth yes this is not it's not you know i'm not trying to compare what we do with what some of these other podcasts do because we're trying to do something different but for the podcasts that are like hey we're going to go on this journey together and really it's about one hour's worth of content or two hours worth of story to be told but they've got to get 10 hours out of it it does seem to sort of deteriorate into so many hours of reflection.

You know, you often use the example of In the Dark as a podcast that was based on a true crime story, but I don't consider it to be a true crime podcast because it's journalism in a way that they had episodes in there. I'm talking about the first season, which I think is the only season I listened to all the way through. They had episodes in there while they talked about this abduction and the mystery surrounding it they use that as a way to then broaden the scope of their reporting and talk about how you still see kind of bad policing in this manner in communities around the country including even king county where we live and i'm being vague here because i listened to that like three years ago no no more than that like a long time ago so i don't remember the details but i remember thinking like this doesn't feel like filler to me this sounds like this is like just solid journalism where now you're saying okay we've we've told you the story the sort of delectable bits if you can say that about something that is so tragic which i already regret but you know the the real the stuff that gets you leaning into the into the podcast and in the story but then to say okay now listen this is this is what we're actually learning here and this is actually the change that we're putting out or the or the idea of change that we're putting out there

right clearance rates are shockingly low in a lot of places was a big takeaway from that first season which was related to the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterland in Minnesota and this place called Stearns County, and also just the really, really bad policing that was happening there and the fact that that's nationally kind of a trend. I just would have thought clearance rates would be like 95%. I would assume that when somebody commits a truly heinous crime, most of the time they get caught, and it turns out that's not the case, as was illuminated by that first season of In the Dark, And then the second season was also really, really incredible and led to this person, to some degree, to this person finally, you know, being freed from jail, who had been tried, I think, five times on a case that it seemed to be very unlikely, a crime that he could have committed. So there were no episodes in either of those seasons where Madeline Barron was going, I had to start wondering, was I the person who kidnapped Jacob Wetterly? like it was all just solid journalism you're right andrew that just advanced the story and made it relevant to people that were in other parts of the country and not just in minnesota or mississippi where the seasons were taking place yeah i would like to hear man maybe that just ended up on the cutting room floor yeah i guess you never know right i mean maybe maybe

there was three episodes of madeline just going like i realized when i pointed a finger at the suspect i was pointing three fingers back at myself except that's not really true because when you point you curl your fingers into your hand that's one thing that always bothered me have we talked about this recently because i was talking to somebody about this recently maybe it was on seattle today and they cut it out but that whole expression when you point at somebody got three fingers pointing back at you is like demonstrably untrue right yeah you're right i'm thinking well how are you and i mean maybe you're doing a finger gun those things are coming but usually if you point i'm curling what my middle finger ring finger pointing at someone

standing to your right exactly depending on how tightly you make the fist yeah you're it's it's definitely not a straight shot back to you no at some point i can't remember if we did this as a joke or if this was something somebody really said but if you do the finger guns somebody it was a kid said when you point at someone three fingers point back at you and one finger points at god your thumb i guess i guess so i i feel like that might have been a joke but also who knows So when.

I went to some very weird schools. Okay, let's take a break, and then when we come back, we'll talk about the various machinations in the streaming services because I think we're doing a lot of important media-related work today, Andrew, so we're going to keep that going right after this.

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 rattle, dazzle

Hey, let's thank some Dazzling Donors These folks are making TBTL possible Month in and month out And boy, don't we appreciate it Heaven forbid we have to go off And do some kind of investigative journalism, Andrew Where we're not allowed to self-reflect We're not allowed to stare at our own navels We'd be in rough shape We want to thank Peter and Sherry Kopp Of Port Townsend, Washington small maritime village of love that place especially on a sunny day like this it just makes me miss the days of being in Port Townsend when it was nice out the three days when that happened Peter and Sherry say long time listeners slash donors first time dazzlers while cooking dinner in our Seattle house Peter found TBTL on Cairo radio Sherry would poke her head in and listen and ask what is that we've been regular listeners since following the show into its imaginary radio phase through our and your many life changes including our move to the small maritime village of Port Townsend we'd never quote participated until Sherry got into the live stream and the Sten's Facebook chatter during the 24 hour show we were there for the thing also giving the magician the stink eye the mentalist who went before us and pushed our performance back by like a half hour

the fact that you call him a mentalist bugs me just call him an insult to mentalist yes he wanted to be called a mentalist i call him a

magician who does tricks for money yes the boat show we zoomed in for the thon 2020 and sherry contributed a poem to the talent show tbtl keeps his company through changes and challenges we've cried with luke and andrew more than once but mostly we laugh at the absurdities and your

conversations the sad thing is they cried when i was talking about those hot dogs i bought back

in 2014 cried when i started the show today to remind you of a thing that probably never happened um our friendos on facebook and irl have created a warm safe community where we can be out old 10 selves i think our keep our i think that's a tower we can be our old 10 selves yeah uh keep up the good work uh what you do is so important we look forward to seeing y'all again soon jalapeno signed peter and sherry cop thanks so much guys thank you for that and also andrew you told me about that typo and then i just goldfished it no that was a different typo that's a typo

that's going to come up in the next one that uh i have corrected on my sheet we'll see if you corrected gotcha okay well then that's on you that one's yeah you could have i would have believed

you that you want me about that one as well peter and sherry thank you so much for supporting the show and um i'm gonna be up in port townsend in june i'm uh gonna be doing uh hosting a fundraiser for the jefferson county land trust at finn river so maybe i'll see you over there um for that thing i'm very excited i haven't been up there in forever i don't think like i don't think i've been back to port townsend since before the pandemic so i don't trust land don't invite

me to that because i'm the wrong person don't give me that organization let me tell you they

are so the land trusts in general are just amazing in what they do they basically raise money and then go out and buy up land so that it can never be developed so that streams and pastures and things that are important for the environment will not become a walmart at some point or they just talk you know farmers and other landowners into designating their land in perpetuity as

nature so so we're i get it now we're trusting that they're putting the land in a trust we're not putting your trust in the land we're putting we're trusting them that they're using that money we're giving them to actually buy land and not just buy a bunch of bouncy balls at the kmart

well that's why that's why i'm not allowed access to any of the mistakes that were made in previous years so this way the land trust is handling everything and they're doing a good job as are Peter and Sherry. Thank you so much for supporting TBTL. Maestro?

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

We've got to thank Diane Marshall who's in Beaux-Arts Village right here, or right up there, I should say, in the state of Washington. Sometimes I forget what state I'm in, Andrew. I'm so close to the border. I love Beaux-Arts Village. I bet I bet you last year, if Diane was donating last year and Beaux Arts Village came up, I bet you I said the same thing, which is it is one of the coolest neighborhoods. It's over on the east side, kind of, I guess you could say near-ish to Bellevue, but it's this really cool community that was built, I don't know exactly when it was built, but it's just, it's just lovely over there. So, Diane. Do you have any good sandwiches? Because I'm hungry and I'm thinking about going somewhere for lunch. I bet you. I mean, it's a neighborhood. So I don't know if they have a Tubbs over there in Bozarts. But I know Diane Marshall is there. And Diane says, I'd like to use my dazzling moment to request a hand-selected artisanal drop for my dearest loved ones. For my daughter and fellow 10, Grace, could you please play I Hear the Jury is Still Out on Science? Let's see. I heard the jury's still out on Science. How was that, Grace? Was that everything you hoped it would be and more? For my son, Kyle, could you please play, here's some money, go see a Star War. Here's some money, go see a Star War. Sorry, I'm toggling between screens here. And for my very patient 11, my husband, Gary, who I think of every time I hear this drop, can you please play, a cat is an angel that poops in a box. Why does that make you think of Gary? Is Gary a cat or an angel?

A cat is an angel that poops in a box.

um uh thank you luke and andrew there's nothing else like tbtl and the fact that it exists is a very good thing i'm grateful to have the opportunity to support it we are grateful for that support diane thank you for subjecting your lovely family to these shenanigans and um yeah invite us over to beaux arts village sometime i would i would like it we carrie's friend used to live there and and when we were like between houses we would go stay at this house these folks had over there and it really kind of ruined me for living anywhere that's not beaux arts village

andrew that's the problem also can i just say before we go into top stories gary you do you live your life i'm not judging but maybe stop pooping in boxes a gary is an angel Thank you so much, Diane.

We appreciate it. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. CNN Plus is no more. After, I said this yesterday. Am I starting to say after that way? Do I say after funny? Do I say, what is going on? How is that the new way that I say that word?

I don't know. I kind of like it, though.

After these messages. After, I don't know, like a week and a half or something. And the budget for CNN Plus was going to be, Andrew, over the course of the next, I think it was three or four years, they were planning on spending $2 billion on it.

Oh, my God.

But they did not because they pulled the plug. That reminds me of something. I think you misspoke on the show the other day. I wouldn't usually bring this up, but it was a – I don't think that – I don't know if you misspoke or if you had the numbers wrong or something, but I think that you said that Tesla's worth $17 trillion, and that's like 1.17, I think.

Maybe I just missed a decimal point. Yeah, because I told like four people that in the subsequent two days. I think that there was a typo in the article that I read, like they were missing a decimal point, because that number was so shocking to me. That's why I was like saying it on our show and just walking around Portland going, guess what tesla's value yes you're right it's not 17 trillion it's 1.7 right it's one point

something yeah i don't know why i needed to like to go back to that obviously not to make you feel bad but i i was just so astounded by that and but i was i think i was also disappointed myself for not like kind of like just gut checking that in the moment because i was like that's like that's entire economy is stacked on economies i mean that might be the global economy 17 trillion i

don't know that's a big number yeah uh i'm glad you corrected the record because i went back and And then I Googled it like a few days later because I literally had been telling everyone I saw that Google or that Tesla was worth 17 trillion. And then I saw that it was like one point something. And I was like, what? I really do think, though, that that somebody missed a decimal point. And that's how I got that bad intel.

I know that I'm already getting us way off track. But do you mind if I just tell you one kind of related story when you're going around spreading misinformation? And I should whisper this because Genevieve is here today. And if she hears me tell this story incorrectly, she'll barge in again. but Genevieve i.e. finally make the show listenable today right exactly if you can hear me Genevieve feel free to correct the record here but Genevieve for a long time and I don't know why like one of her favorite movies is Silence of the Lambs and

And, you know, that movie came out when we were relatively young. And for some reason, she got in her head that the director, Jonathan Demme, plays Wild Bill. Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill. Not Wild Bill. Buffalo Wild Wings Bill. Now I'm hungry for wings. Do you have any wings in those arts? It puts the celery in the ranch. But there is a wing place nearby. Maybe I'll go there for lunch. I'm having trouble concentrating today. but anyway so Genevieve told me that 19 more minutes to do so let's just try to get through she said uh she said yeah that's Jonathan Demme and at the time I didn't really question it but Buffalo Bill is played by the guy who's in Monk right like the the chief in the tv show Monk if you know it and it's like that's definitely not Jonathan Demme and I can't remember at one at what point we made this realization but I think we made this realization while watching Monk one day like wait a second that's buffalo bill that's not jonathan demi and like we had to go back and like almost like calling former partners to let them know that you you have an std we had to like make a list of people a mental list of people that we needed to correct the record with like we had been spreading that story for years that jonathan demi played buffalo bill i guess that

actor's name is ted levine yes there it is or ted levine it's kind of interesting you had mentioned him because there was and i actually think this was also sort of apocryphal but a photo of him as buffalo bill and then the uh young woman who's abducted at the open of the silence of the lands the one that's um singing american girl by tom petty in the truck which i just think is a genius scene the use of that song is yeah it's chilling it's like that's like weirdly that's the i mean more than any of the anthony hopkins scenery chewing what stays with me from that movie is her singing in the truck um but anyway there was a picture of the two of them together like from the set and i believe the internet was saying that they dated which i don't think they did but it was kind of this idea that like in real life the guy who was playing you know this sadistic person buffalo bill and the person who's playing his victim were actually together romantically

yeah it's such a delicious rumor to want to believe but i saw that both pop up and then get dismissed like when within the course of like a day a couple of weeks ago so cnn plus was

scheduled to spend 17 trillion dollars in the next four years um no cnn plus uh they've they've shut down and it's a pretty spectacular failure um considering how much money they pumped into promoting it and hiring sort of uh expensive talent and and producers and i guess the real problem is that they went through a corporate merger like a few months ago and so they used to be i'm going to get this wrong of course you think i would just have the article in front of me but i think they used to be owned by time warner or warner brothers or something with a warner in it and under that parent company and with um what's his name uh jeff zucker at the head of cnn there was all this energy around this cnn plus idea this streaming thing which the reason by the way they couldn't actually put the cnn news feed on there was because of their agreements with cable providers yeah that makes sense which is a kind of a thing even npr runs into that a lot now because you know npr would like to just give you their shows directly into your ears but you've got all these stations in different cities that want to be the only place you can get it so you have to listen to the station this is sort of like that but um anyway i guess what happened was they the discovery the company like that does the discovery channel took over cnn and they were very not into the cnn plus idea and that guy jeff zucker got had to step down because he was having a relationship with somebody who worked there so there were like none of the people that really wanted cnn plus to happen were still around and but they still launched it because it was like they had done all this work on it but there was no real there was no real sort of political will at cnn at any high level to keep this thing going um but somebody pointed out too that's kind of a i mean it's it's sort of whenever something like this fails this spectacularly it's kind of there's a certain i don't know because i've rarely worked on any successful media projects it kind of it's fun to make fun of it but somebody was pointing out on twitter this is a real bummer for all of the journalists not the chris wallace's of the world because he's rich and he'll continue to be rich but all the producers and people that left jobs to go work there and it you know they shit candid in a week and a half like that really kind of sucks for those folks yeah i was actually i

didn't know that that was the chatter online but no that is i was thinking that while you were talking about the background of that story and how you said that they said well the people who created it were gone but we put all this work into it already i'm like yeah how did how did those people feel as somebody who was you know spent most of my life being a producer behind the scenes as well i mean those are those are jobs that does suck i have no idea if that means that you know if these were if these were cnn employees Again, I'm talking more about like the people that maybe you don't see on camera. If these were CNN employees who were just moved around and they'll be moved back or if these were people like you say who actually, you know, left other promising gigs. But the whole thing about CNN Plus, I mean, and again, I'm the wrong person to ask about this. Like you and I do this weird thing. We've been lucky as hell with it. We've been talking about that a lot lately and that we develop the community that we've developed. um but uh we are definitely living in an age both with audio and with these you know streaming services and everything it's just like there there's just a pressure to create something it's not even about like what does the world need right now it's what is our next project we we always have to be creating new podcasts we have to be creating new podcasts if you're not creating new podcasts you're losing it's like that it's almost like back in the day with when you just had like whether you're talking about just radio or television it was finite right and so well you can create a tv show if you want to and try to you know sell it to nbc for um uh for what was the nbc's big um must see tv like hey this is gonna be the next must see tv but only so many things would fit there so certain things would get accepted it doesn't mean that the best things got accepted and i'm not even justifying that old way of doing business but now that there's no limit

because the internet's big the single guy starring jonathan silverman and ernest borgnine was not the highest quality of must see tv no i'm saying that it was actually i'd never heard of it

but i'm saying now that it was um but anyway uh it's just like and now it's like well you have to be creating new content new content new content but like does the world need new content as i quoted my friend dave um not all that long ago on the show just because you can doesn't mean you should you know but from a business standpoint it's like it goes back to what we were just talking about at the top of the show it's like well this story is a three hour long story yeah but we told advertisers that it's an eight episode deal okay start reflecting well also it's we're

in this very complicated moment where we are still sort of straddling two worlds of how people get stuff which is because really like everything that we're watching on cnn everything i'm watching on cnn is technically via the internet like the cable that's in my house comes into my house on the internet right like when i turn on my tv it's i don't have a cable box that's like getting a signal or anything other than what the internet is sending to my television right so we are but you still have these cable companies these intermediaries there's still these like layers between cnn and us watching cnn and it just seems like at some point a lot of that will go away And we'll just get everything from the internet Same with podcasting Same with when you're listening to public radio It'll all just be coming by way of the internet But we're still just enough of the kind of radio station culture And television station or cable network culture That is kind of running this in-between layer That makes things complicated

Back in my day you watched Parker Lewis Can't Lose And you enjoyed it Period I can't believe you never saw The Single Guy

I don't think that doesn't even ring a bell to me it was this thing that they floated i believe like maybe after friends manhattan novelist jonathan elliott just can't seem to catch a break when it comes to finding the woman of his dreams even with the help of his well-meaning married friends um studio engineer sam sloan and wife trudy and why do i have to list the friends why why are you doing that to me internet yeah i just remember being a kid that was the first time when i saw the single guy that i remember thinking this ain't gonna make it like i was just like oh it's on television i'm sure it's a hit and this one i was like i don't think this is i don't think this one's going anywhere it's funny like the name

the single guy rings a bell to me maybe just because it's kind of a generic title um but then you threw an ernest borgnine and i wasn't i wasn't sure if you were spoofing no ernest

borgnine was the doorman by the way as much as i thought the single guy was a flop i watched every single episode really because andrew was must see tv it was on after friends yeah or seinfeld or whatever i was must seeing in those days and i was just like mainline it anything nbc is putting

on thursday night i am watching i'm seeing i'm here for it survived for two seasons now this was back when seasons were like 20 plus episodes so it looks like they got like over 40 episodes out of it but just two seasons so it did not it was not a friends it was not a cheers um speaking of

streaming andrew i do think this netflix story is kind of interesting as well because netflix uh is having some trouble they lost i think 200 000 subscribers in their recent times as opposed to adding subscribers which they were trying to add two and a half million subscribers and they said they lost folks so their stock is just getting kind of decimated they said that it's two things it's competition because there's just so many streaming services out there and it's also the fact that everyone's sharing their passwords yeah that's the interesting part of the story

to me well I

I saw a hot take somewhere that I actually agree with, which is that somebody was saying, I don't even think Netflix has the best shows anymore. Yeah, I wonder if that's really what it is. I have to agree. I feel like, I mean, Netflix is still by far and away the biggest streamer, and they're still a hugely powerful entertainment company, but I find myself more and more going to Netflix and then just scrolling through it and then just kind of going, occasionally there'll be some breakout hit. there'll be some kind of tiger king or whatever that everyone's talking about but the rest of the time like there's not a lot of great stuff on there for me and i was like i have had the feeling lately of being like is there anything good on netflix which i never thought would happen because it just seemed like it was so infinite uh but i do find myself on the hbo max one on you know showtime hulu all these other streaming services now so i'm just wondering i mean netflix

just needs to get some better shows as well yeah now i'm the worst person to talk about this because I use these services not to watch the Windsors, the newest thing that people are buzzing about. But yeah, like I just opened up my Netflix here to see like, what have I been watching? Now, sometimes, you know, Genevieve is, we'll watch the newer stuff. I see Anatomy of a Scandal has been watched. That was not me. So I assume that that's something that's kind of trendy right now. Me, I was watching Community. I was watching old episodes of Better Call Saul, kind of getting ready for the new season. I just started Better Call Saul, by the way.

Like season one.

Nice. Now, that's right. But you did not see all of Breaking Bad, right? So some of the stuff you're just going to have to let wash over you, I think, as far as the storyline is concerned. But there is some... His partner.

We started with Better Call Saul. That wasn't today. That was yesterday, maybe?

Oh, no, that was today. Yeah, today's intro tape was from Better Call Saul. Goldfish. I forgot. 35-minute rule.

I was so distracted by the Brandon Wardell factor. We started with Better Call Saul.

But I was watching 30 Rock on this, which is funny because I thought that that used to be on Hulu. that's another thing too these things like bounce around community and 30 rock i swear i used to watch those on hulu but now they're on netflix but and even with hbo which i'm not going to open now and continue this tedious conversation but um even with hbo i'm not sometimes i'm watching the new stuff like i loved white lotus i think that was an hbo thing and i watched that when it was still you know top of mind for folks but also i love hbo because i'll often just be like let me just find some old movie i like google classic movies on hbo because you can't like some of these services you can't sort in a way that like you can't sort by vibe sort of you know what i mean like i want a movie from the 1960s i don't want to just be like okay let's go to comedy and keep scrolling until i see some black and white you know what i mean but sometimes i'll just be like a classic movie because i want something on that's kind of in the background that i can sort of pay attention to i can sort of play on my ipad whatever like i'm not using these services for the latest thing and i do wonder also if i don't know if no i'm just out of step i don't see things ever really coming around to me i think the way of success for these things are to keep on creating the the new breakout hits but um don't i guess sort of i'm just sort of thinking like don't sleep on us who are also just using it's like i just want to know that i can watch my murder she wrote somewhere just somebody please take them and store them and stop moving

them around streaming app when is the kick see tv land streaming app gonna gonna come about so that you can watch your your old-timey shows on your ipad i got a text i can't find it now but

on the tb tell text line i think it was from max in brooklyn it might have been somebody else sorry if i'm misattributing but somebody uh who was listening and heard that i got the roku stick now and i thought it was going to be like oh this is just an easy way to watch netflix and hbo but Spare the Roku stick, spoil the child. Can you write that down while I finish my thought? Because I can't do both, but that's great. But I didn't realize that Roku also just sort of comes with its own, a few channels and some of its own kind of programming. Not original programming, but there's just stuff that you can access. And I think it was Max who said there's a station called Buzzer on there, which is a classic game show channel, Luke. Classic game show channel. That is right up my alley. I think I've even heard of that before. I think maybe somebody had mentioned that before, but I didn't have access to it. So I am very much looking forward to playing on my Boop Boop and watching some old, you know, Password. God, I love Password.

We probably shouldn't count Netflix out, though, because think about the, like, lifespan of this company. Like, I remember when they were mailing DVDs out, and I was like, this is going nowhere. And then I was like, how can that even be a business? You're going to mail people DVDs and let them keep them as long as they want? And then, of course, I got into it and was, like, obsessed with my, you know, Netflix queue and getting those DVDs in the mail. And then they wouldn't send me DVDs anymore. And I was like, you have really missed it. I'm supposed to just, like, what, go on the Internet and watch this stuff? Give me a break, Netflix. Okay, Web TV. You know, like, every time that I, I just always think Netflix is.

the wrong thing and they've obviously have much smarter people than me making decisions so i mean they could probably figure it out but i do think like you said andrew at this point i think what it comes down to is you got to have the good shows for most people like it's like i guess just like being a film studio like if you're putting out movies that aren't great people aren't going to go to them like and then the other ceiling for it uh is just internet connectivity like i was hearing a lot of people talking yesterday about this saying we're at a point where really everybody at least in america who has decent internet access and wants to be a part of netflix is now a part of netflix like how are they going to grow it the way they're going to grow it is crackdown on the password sharing they think a hundred million people are sharing passwords so if they if they can you know cut that in half they've just gained potentially 50 million subscribers of people that will have to start paying for their own netflix yeah that's interesting

i wonder what that um what that lockdown will look like lockdown is no crackdown is what i'm

looking for because it's going to be not annoying for us who are just like normal subscribers like i i see more hoops to jump through and dual factor authentication that's going to make me so angry

yeah because i mean i know one thing that they'll need to avoid i think to stay relevant at all is to avoid a system where only one person can be using the service at the same time because you want netflix in the home you want me watching my 30 rocks downstairs and genevieve watching her anatomies of scandal upstairs um and you don't want to like kind of take away that thing so i don't think but what they could do is something that used to happen when i paid for um my kind of cable service at my old place but then i could watch any cable channel online um using you know a computer or an ipad um but they made it so that i had to be on the home network to which it was assigned I see in other words if I took my computer over to your house I couldn't just dial up my MSNBC I don't think it would say you're not on your home network and I wonder if they

could somehow do something like that I wonder why well I wonder why they haven't already cracked

down on that because if I pay for Netflix and I'm just sort of thinking this out as we talk but if I pay for Netflix I've actually done this before I will because I'm a nerd back when we were traveling more I remember I started carrying around an HDMI cable with me in fact even when I went to Hawaii I carried an HDMI well I'll just be completely transparent about it because I don't want to be caught in a lie here it's a USB-C on one end HDMI on the other end so you know USB-C out of my computer HDMI into the TV and Genevieve and I watched all kinds of Netflix and HBO stuff while we were on vacation if if the rule was hey you can only watch Netflix while you're on your own home network that takes away a big part of the service for people right that's a good point

so yeah i guess i feel like they're going to figure something out though because the survival of the company depends on it but i do i am 100 sure that it's going to make me furious yeah whatever it is it's going to make me angry i feel like hbo max is the worst with that i have to friggin log into that every time i want to watch something on that stupid thing which i also pay for cable here so i i have to like read i have to go scan a qr code that shows up on my tv and it doesn't recognize me and then it's i mean is there anything more tedious than typing your email address in on one of those little slidey remote control deals with like a a bunch of letters you know who the fastest person on earth that that is uh kamarokav kamarokav yeah i didn't know nash in a beautiful mind with that shit like he just looks at the screen and then just like

So when we were setting up this Roku, speaking of Kamara Kev, he's the one who gave us the Roku stick. I told you that we were thrilled to find out that it had a voice activation button, just like our old cable remote. And not only does that voice button allow you just to say Columbo, and then it'll find an episode of Columbo for you. on some of the apps not all of them but the apps like hbo when it was time to fill in the address like the email address you could just hold it down and spell it out with your voice a that n d r you know what i mean like whatever i'm just making up an email address that starts with andrew i don't know where i was going with that um but uh you know that luke that was like next level shit these and i like looking looked at each other with our eyes wide and said well

next level that's so convenient i have i have basically decided not to watch various programs because i don't want to have to put my email address in with that whole like letter hunt game yeah like it has driven my behavior so i'm just like you know what i'm just watching dateline nbc because that's on the remote that i can talk to like yeah i that's how lazy i am

and some of the services we just did this the other day because we we got the roku and we had to sign into not sign up for but sign into at least four but i think Five or six maybe different services. Your HBO, your Netflix, your Hulu, blah, blah, blah. And some of them would let you talk into them. Some of them wouldn't. And then some of them use the QWERTY keyboard layout. Others are an alphabetical arrangement. And so every time you're relearning how to type in your long-ass email address. We need a unified field theory on all this stuff.

Hey, how about a little music for your weekend before we hit the dusty trail here on this Friday? um andrew i hear uh that i did you a real kindness by turning you on to a band that you're going to

play for us this week the band that you and i both like and you told me about him first but has a terrible name by my estimation what band do you think i'm talking about new band somebody who just released something and it was a music for your weekend maybe about a year

ago um a new band newer band does it what's it rhyme with Izzard Izzard and Izzard ah King Gizzard

and the Wizard Lizard it's funny that you said rhymes with because yeah it's King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard which I don't really like I hear that name I'm like oh that's probably not for me and also you know what's interesting is even the music like if you were to describe it to me it doesn't sound like it would be for me because like they just really I think they have an album coming out but right now they've just released kind of two songs like a single and then a b-side to it the single which i'm going to play for you here is called magenta mountain which is six minutes long and then the b-side is an 18 minute trip luke and i'm just like wow and i gotta say war on drugs vibration yes and i am here for it as the kids are going to start saying someday i'm just in front of that eventually thing yeah um it's and i i told you i was doing that project where i was walking around my house like kind of sorting books out and like saying okay this this goes in the crime category that's upstairs and then like oh this goes in my sci-fi

that's downstairs did you ever get your book by the way did you ever find out what happened to

your book i did not get an email back from the company so they're just moving forward sending it to me i have a strong feeling it's not going to be the right edition anyway but also befuddlingly i got an email saying it's on the way but it originally it said it was going to my old address I thought it said it was going to send it to Wallingford, which was like two addresses ago. But now I have a note that says it's going to my previous address, like the place I lived just like a month ago. And luckily, because I was so involved in the renting of our apartment, I have the phone number of the person who I believe moved in after me, assuming they went with it. And so I'm going to text him later and say, hey, I have a book that's coming. Can you keep an eye out for it? And then I'll go pick it up. So that's better than being sent to Wallingford, I'm sure. Anyway, and like I said, it was also like $5 if somebody gets a free book. Can I just – okay, hold on. Quick aside. No, this is unnecessary. But as I'm putting books away – this is so far from what we're talking about. But as I'm putting books away, there are books that I specifically don't want in my office. Like I went through – as you know, I went through like a big Bukowski phase, right? As a lot of white guys do in college, I went through a big Bukowski phase and I'm not, it's one of those things where Bukowski was an amazing writer. I'm not as embarrassed about it as maybe I could be, but he also is a despicable human being. And it's so funny. I found a postcard as I'm putting books away. I'm finding like old notes and postcards from friends. And I just read a postcard from like 1999 or 2000 from my friend Andrea was stuck in a book. and she's and it was all about hey i just read ham on rye by bukowski i'm not seeing it the way you see it and i understand he is a good writer but i think this is more of a guy thing or something like that and i'm reading that now in 2022 and i'm just like oh kind of cringing that i was telling andrea to she has to check out this bukowski guy but anyway you got that that's kind of the extreme

stuff and then you know my hemingway at least you didn't cry recently to a bukowski poem as i did

I mean, Bukowski has some good again. I do not want to dismiss that guy's talent or say that I'm never going to read his stuff again. I don't have that reaction to it. But what I don't want, long story short here, is I don't want in my office to have a section where I have Bukowski followed by Hemingway and then followed by like the more modern stuff that I have, like one or two Philip Roth books, John Updike, Richard Ford. And it's now these last three guys that I mentioned who are all like really focused on that, like male perspective, middle age, midlife crisis bullshit. Right. And I think about that stuff and I think like some of it I really liked. It's funny. I liked it when I was younger because I wasn't middle aged. And also, I just think maybe I didn't have as big of a perspective on the world, maybe in other people's experiences. and like i'm so first of all i put all those books in like kind of i've tucked them up kind of in a in a in a place where we needed some books but they're kind of out they're kind of out of sight because i don't want somebody coming in here to my studio and be like just judging me right away by just like oh this guy is really into this this midlife male fantasy bullshit all of that is to say i think i've only read a couple of philip roth books one was it was an alternate history about world war ii that i really enjoyed the other one was like port noise complaint which is like kind of classic roth right i am walking to meet some friends yesterday i'm walking to the train and i pass one of those little free libraries in somebody's front yard and it was a really well-maintained one it's near my house here and um not to give too much away about my house just joking um he lives in the little free library district i've only said that because you're because i know i made a big deal out of that and now you're being very sweet and you're being very careful so anyway um i uh anyway so i i was walking i was like you know what i have a long train ride to take let me see if there's a book here that i could just grab because i'm kind of in between books right now and so i see that there's a philip roth book and i can't even remember the name of it so i pick this up and i get on the train and i start reading it and the very this is kind of an adult topic everybody literally the very first words are it's a middle-aged guy i'm not literally these are the words i'm paraphrasing but like it begins with a middle-aged guy who has a heart condition so he starts taking so he starts taking medicine and it means he can't get a boner anymore and it doesn't just mean it's hurting his his um his marriage but the real problem is it's hurting his sexual relationship with the woman at the office that he's having an affair with and within two pages she's so upset about something that he slaps her across the face and i'm just like this is what this is why i don't read philip roth if you told me to like just make something up about a philip roth book it would be about some guy who written that scene i mean so we have a genre in this house that is obviously comes from Genevieve, which is a genre of TV show movie, and I'm going to apply it to books now too, called Nobody Cares About Your Boner, Dude. And this was like the most literal version of it. Why did I laugh over that?

Lynn? No. Take a memo. Lynn, I will never return an email if I ever hear that in the clear. I love you, Lynn. Please respect my wishes in this desperate hour. but you know like last man on earth the tv show was kind of like that too will forte oh no like is he gonna be able to get laid or not it's just like nobody cares i like that show hey the show had some good comedy chops but like it it dragged me down i hated it so much by the end of the first series not because i mean kristin shawl is a treasure and i actually really like will forte too but the whole premise was like can this guy have sex with the woman he wants to have sex with Or is he going to be forced to have sex with a woman who's less attractive? And it's just like, anyway, that's the kind of genre that I'm talking about here. And anyway, I pick up this Philip Roth book. I'm like, I'll give it a shot. And it was just like so stereotypical. It just begins with like, oh, he's going to write this story about a middle-aged, like middle-class white guy who can't get a boner. And so he can't sleep with his secretary anymore. I'm just like, you've got to be kidding me. Let me guess.

The guy works in the city, but he takes the train. I'm not sure. I honestly read. I think I read. Wherever he lives. I read two pages, and I left it in the train station for somebody to enjoy. This is kind of Philip Roth adjacent, but for some reason, I ended up on this Dick Cavett show, Rabbit Hole, recently. Oh, nice, yeah. And it was, so Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer just hated each other. Turns out Gore Vidal, we really had a lot of, he was kind of on sort of the wrong side of a lot of folks. And for whatever reason They decide to have Norman Mailer And Gore Vidal on the same episode Of the Dick Cavett show I've heard of this This is like classic Didn't they even make a movie about this? They may have Although it may have been Vidal versus someone else I forget what you're talking about Because that was the political debates I don't think that was Norman Mailer I think it was William F. Buckley

So I think it was Buckley and Vidal

Just like tearing into each other Related to politics But this was, again, this was Norman Mailer And it is, I don't really like Things that are cringe, like I don't like watching Things that are awkward, but I couldn't take my Eyes off of this Just, like, and Dick Cavett Even goes, I don't usually like to put Book people on the show Who don't like each other Like, I don't know if Dick Cavett didn't realize what was going on But it was intense

And long, right? I mean, they let these things

Breathe back. Yes, I mean it was like yeah it was like 20 minutes long or something of these of these guys just and then of course i'm for some reason this is how i experience this kind of stuff i'm trying to teleport myself into gor vidal and help him have good comebacks like i'm thinking like oh why didn't you say this or oh it'd be so great if you just like laid i mean i don't i don't i'm not rooting for i don't know enough about either of their work to say who i was rooting for in this fight other than i feel like mailer was also very toxic masculinity guy like that's why i said philip roth adjacent i haven't read that

much Norman Mailer but my sense of him was he was just kind of just kind of a chauvinist pig

yeah and again like so many of the books I would read would be like in this book that I was reading yesterday I think the guy was a dentist right but it was another like kind of sub-genre of this is it's often a um a professor or a writer who's having trouble like with his relationship with a much younger woman on his second marriage or something like that too I feel like that's a again a very big Richard Ford thing and like in you know some of these guys are great I all of these guys are great writers that's why that's why they're famous but also it just it's just like so you understand why i don't want that section in my in my study obviously you don't want the toxic masculinity wing of your house i've put them up in the rafters in a place where i plan on uh hanging a dartboard below it sounds like i'm going to be throwing darts at the books that's not what i'm actually setting up here but like for real there's a little chunk of our um basement that is kind of right outside my studio that isn't um it's not super useful right now so i'm thinking i'm going to hang a dartboard up there luke which i'm very excited about i haven't had a dartboard since new hampshire uh which sounds like the book that i will write in the style of richard ford um and so up in kind of the rafters because it's part of this basement is kind of quasi unfinished in the ceiling i kind of have all of those books tucked up kind of up in the ceiling where you can see them if you're looking for them and it's a good way of kind of hiding some insulation so they're there i couldn't part with them but not on display okay Go back to King Gizzard and the Lizard Lizard. What? Who's talking about that? I was putting all my books away the other day. I don't know if I mentioned that. And I probably listened to this song, Magenta Mountain, which, as I said, is six minutes long, followed by this 18-minute song called The Dripping Tap. And I just kept listening to it over and over and over again. And I was really finding a groove with it. So here, take a listen to this. It takes a while to build up here. And, of course, songs like this, it's hard to just, like, play a little clip of. But I'm here starting with Magenta Mountain.

Look past the dying trees Beyond waterless seas Up top the horizon I hate to end it there.

Oh, that's so good. I was dancing, and then I realized someone who was watching me from the sidewalk, like, what is wrong with that man? That man was feeling joy, and there's no shame in that. And I won't apologize for it

Yeah, Luke, again, I'm not like a jammy kind of guy Not like a super long, like, noodley guitar But I'd be interested in your opinion If you can call this up over the weekend If you're, like, puttering around or something And listening to, like, both the A side and B side of this And let me know if you find yourself in a groove with it, too Because it almost surprises me how much I'm into it

Yeah, I will definitely give that a listen I like that kind of stuff I mean, I don't identify as somebody who's into jam bands But I'm into a lot of music that goes on for a long time and builds, which I believe is kind of jam bandy. So maybe I just haven't realized that about myself. The song that I want to, speaking of names, I wouldn't give my band, Andrew. I want to play something from a singer and musician who she plays under the name Freak Slug. Oh, okay. And she's from Manchester. I already used that content. Oh, come on. Wait, I don't remember you saying that. and that's basically what I can tell you, except this song is called Friday, which seems apropos, and it's really good. Can we take a listen to a little freak slug?

Friday night I watch up in a room With my lover later at the same time I wanna get her up in my sheets But she don't ever want to come to mind Friday night, she said

She wanna tell me how she's getting on fire She's so lazy and I don't care why She's not gonna get me out

How's that for a Friday vibe? And also, like, would you ever expect that to be the music of someone who plays under the name Freak Slug? I don't know. I mean, kids these days. I know. Oh, and this person appears to be quite young, maybe younger than 20. Her Instagram bio just says, kissin' slugs since childhood, which she appears possibly to still be in.

That is charming. I like it. I love that song. Freak and slug.

Do check it out. Our listener suggestion this week comes from Shandor in Philly, who says, hi there. I wanted to recommend this track by Goff Babe. all of the band names on the king gizzard and the lizard wizard freak slug and goth babe what a

friday andrew well you know i'm glad that we're this applies less to the king gizzard but um like for a while there not all that long ago every musician who was a young musician performing like mostly a uh individual performing under a name it was always like a single word all caps you know and so we're kind of moving out of that phase now with these musicians which i embrace

i like i feel like everybody was named soccer mommy for a while or jorts yeah really soccer mommy soccer mommy is a real thing never heard of cherry glazer yeah named for the morning edition i host i think yeah who i used to work with time yeah shandor in philly says i want to recommend this track by goth babe it's a super dreamy beachy vibe to let you drift into warmer weather and Andrews, I'm looking out the window, the blue sky here in Portland. I'm really ready for this song. I listened to it already. It's so good, this song by Goth Babe. I actually don't have the title, though, in front of me.

I think it's called Sometimes. Yeah, I'm going to play it here. The song is called Sometimes. And, yeah, something's really shifted in me where I've been like, oh, my gosh, Genevieve, the weather's nice. I can pull weeds this weekend. Like, how has that become my priority? But, yeah, I look forward to listening to this while pulling weeds.

well that's going to do it for this broadcast week thank you everyone for hanging out with us just a reminder May 23rd through 27th we're going to be in Denver with TBTL on 13 let the fun begin so hope you can all tune in for that special week of broadcasting in the meantime have a great weekend take care of yourselves and please remember no matter too tall and good luck to all

I see the sun when it shines And others I might only see And I've ignored all the times That you might have wanted something to do I've got my heart rolling backwards I spend my only days with you I've got my dreams steady tall I wonder if she has Sometimes I wanna know What you're thinking of

Welcome to Thoughts for Your Thoughts. I'm Derry Mirbles, filling in for David Bianculli, who is in New York, filling in for Ken Tucker. My guest today is author Leslie Knope, the book, Pawnee, the Greatest Town in America. Leslie, could one say that a book is nothing more than a painting of words which are the notes on the tapestry of the greatest film ever sculpted?

One could say that, but should one?

Power out.