Muse

Over there live, talking baseball, hitting, catching, making all the plays happen. Let's talk to it. Ever seen them launch your Grand Slams? What's that? Ever seen them launch your Grand Slams? I don't know what you're saying, dude. Ever seen them launch your Grand Slams? Oh, Grand Slam, yeah. Of course. Is it real? Is it real? Yeah. It's a real, real great sport. When everybody is around and we're swinging for two long bombs away, how do we come around to know, man, this really is what it's for? Are you high right now? What? Is that a question?

Wow, this is the worst interview I've ever had.

I'm sorry, man. No problem. great group of guys TBTL

you gotta be vaping me

that is totally absurd and please don't play this on the radio no one listens to the radio I wasn't even listening I was listening to podcasts podcasts are great radio's boring

this Canadian rap jump man jump man them boys up to something oh oh oh I think I need some robitussin this party is gonna be

off of the hook all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live it's as easy as one two three four my name is

luke burbank i'm your host i've never been on live television before coming to you from the

Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where the current weather situation is cloudy, but some sun breaking through. I did see in the Seattle Times today that the Northwest may be in for what they're calling a triple La Nina, which can't be good. Something about the cold temperatures in April have created the circumstances for a possible triple La Nina. So we'll see how that goes. I know this is going to go great. Episode 3672 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Things did not go great for a woman visiting the Olympic Peninsula up in Washington State when she was trying to use one of those. I've been calling it a port-a-potty.

What's the potty? What's your body?

It's really called a pit toilet. You may have seen one of these when you're using a campsite or national park. You know, it's a permanent structure, but it's not plumbed. So it's kind of got a, you know, big sort of tank underneath the toilet. And this woman fell in. She's trying to retrieve her phone.

I'm trying to use the phone!

And we have the 911 tapes. And they're there's fairly remarkable because of how calm she sounds. In fact, she's joking with the 911 person. I'm just wondering how many people had left a grumpy in that pit toilet before this woman fell in. She sounded, again, much less upset by this than I think you or I would have been able to play the tape coming up. And then also I've got a new weird thing on TikTok that I find oddly intriguing. People of TikTok. So we'll talk about that. And do some Blur's Days here on this Thursday, a.k.a. a Blur's Day.

Spoiler with it today.

Do all that with the help of this young man. The longest running Cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. His voice is a combination of Fergie and Jesus. This is how he described what he does on his recent work self-evaluation.

The guy back here in the trenches, you know, I'm hitting the boom-booms, make the Skrilla.

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

Good morning. I didn't know you had that tape of me. I didn't even know I was being taped during that meeting, but... Legally, they're supposed to tell you if they're audio recording you during your performance review. That's what I thought. That's on path. Hey, I don't want to make a big deal out of this, but I mean, on this show, we sometimes joke around about me being somewhat put off if you're maybe promoting LiveWire a lot and not promoting TBTL and like a little just joking. I mean, maybe some of it is joking on the square, but most of it are kidding on the square, but most of it is just good time jokes. But I got to say, like I saw some listeners talking about it, that you are now starting a segment on Thursdays on your LiveWire podcast called Lawer's Day.

where you give out birthday-style greetings. What do we call it again? Lawer's Days. Oh, Lawer's Days. Live Wire. Oh, birthdays. Live Wire birthdays. Sure. I think. I mean, I feel like you should know that better than me. But, you know, it just sort of – do you understand how that feels a little bit like encroachment a little bit? Or like you're kind of like – you're taking ideas that were popularized on TBTL and a lot of the labor that I put into it and kind of transferring it over to your new friends. You understand why that would hurt a little bit, right?

Wait until you hear that I also need you to edit down the Lawer's Days. I've been giving your email address out. Could you also be a pal? Just go ahead, and if you could have those over to Laura Haddon by, I don't know, in about one to two hours today, that would really streamline things on our side?

Sure, no problem. And I understand that you just want me to take the TBTL Blur's Days and just change them to Lawer's Days, right? Let's be honest. Just prime the pump a little bit.

The overlap, I'm sure, is almost a perfect Venn diagram circle because, I mean, this is the true thing, though. And I know that you're joking, and I know that it's now a bit that you're sort of like, huh, Luke really talks about LiveWire a lot on TBTL, but TBTL doesn't get mentioned on LiveWire. And I would say there is a parable, Andrew, in the Bible. Maybe you've heard of it.

A man walking across the desert with a lot of money and it weighs him down and he dies in the desert, even though I know that's in the Bible somewhere. Nobody will back me up on that.

Keep looking. Keep looking. There's a shepherd and he has a flock and one of the sheep goes missing. And the shepherd will not rest until he finds that sheep. And, you know, I believe this was a parable maybe that Jesus laid out for some folks. And they said, yeah, but what about the, you know, the hundred other sheep? that he was ignoring them and and the point is no when one sheep is lost that's the sheep we have to go look for that's the sheep we have to take care of it's not the sheep that are doing okay

it's the sheep that's in danger and in live what i'm trying to tell you is live wire is an intense danger at all times of being canceled you know how hard it is out there save it is the worst days

i believe if you know how hard it is out there in the weekend in the weekend public radio show game when you're just a scrappy little show from Portland with about three or four employees?

I actually don't believe that. I mean, we don't have to get into a LiveWire meeting here, but I feel like...

Maybe the first LiveWire meeting I've attended in ages.

Hey, let's just Zoom for this part of the show so I can mute my mic and then talk. But it sort of feels... And I don't want to dance on the misfortune of others, But it sort of feels like the the weekend public radio landscape was really fertile for you because other shows kind of collapsing in that space. A lot of I was in a meeting with our APM colleagues earlier today, and there's a lot of talk of the podcast space. I thought of you and me and in the podcast space. Consider entering in podcast space. Nobody can hear you scream.

but i sort of feel like you know it's more like in the podcast space nobody downloaded

your screen in the podcast space nobody can hear the leaf blower um you did not get enough impressions of your screen i was gonna say though i mean i'm gonna try to list these i'm gonna fail miserably but from the whole prairie home slash life from here going away clearing up some space on weekends to the uh that npr ask me another show ask me another um and several others i sort of feel like uh wits clearly um i sort of feel like you have you guys kind of lucked out like i find it hard to believe that it is that hard to remain relevant given your foothold on public radio weekends if we're being serious which maybe we weren't supposed to be well the thing is that

definitely helped us that we but i mean i don't i wouldn't call it luck i would call it everybody on livewire making less money to do it than all of the people doing the shows that you named so if you have three full-time employees and everyone is making less money than they could yeah sure somewhere else the show has a longer lifespan because you can you can keep it going um because it's not costing a million dollars a year in production costs sure so that's a big part of

Some folks who are overworked, though, is what you're saying.

And I'm not one of them, by the way. We have the people that edit and produce the show are unbelievably hardworking, talented folks who are burning various candles at all kinds of ends. So it's like we're still here, and we did pick up a few spots where some of those more expensive shows ended up ceasing their production. but it's still hard because we are.

essentially at the mercy of these program directors at these various stations. So, like, we're still not on in New York. We're still not on in Los Angeles. We were on San Francisco, but they got a new program director who radically reshaped their whole lineup, including dropping a bunch of shows, including My Lair. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. See, now don't you feel bad, Andrew?

Well, that is an interesting development. I'm kind of, and again, I don't know that this is, we dialed up late today because i had this long meeting to go through then you and i talked a lot before the show so i'm sort of in like kind of in the mood to talk about the business of radio and podcasts i've also because we're dialing up late i've already like consumed the entire uh carafe of coffee uh-huh that i would usually just be working my way through at this point waking i like to wake i like to think that i wake lines of coffee about four minutes ago The Folgers. Key. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, I do like to say that I wake up about halfway through TBTL every day. I don't know why we're not more successful. But anyway, we don't have to get into the details of all of this stuff. But I had some sort of business-related question that I've already forgotten.

The reason – here's what's actually been surprising to me about that particular radio show is we just got all the numbers back from the distributor of the show, PRX. And our radio listening is up 20% last year for our show, while overall listening on public radio is down dramatically. Like the pandemic, I think it's two things. One, the pandemic really upended a lot of people's commute. And so that put a real dent in the overall public radio product. And then also the rise of podcasts and digital things. So more and more people are listening. they may still be listening to public radio offerings but they're not just like turning on their local station and listening all day in the way that they would have been five or ten years ago and and yet even though listening is down across the the like the the industry if you will of public radio live wires listening was up like radically so that's good everyone seems happy about that but i mean it just feels like we it turns out that they're going to give us one of the suites on the titanic uh you know but it'll be nice while it lasts it's nice that we're going in the right direction as a show in terms of getting more listeners but it's not quite as easy as just calling up a station i mean this is what's maddening about it it's not as easy as calling up a radio station looking at their weekend lineup right calling them up and going hey um you're playing hidden brain with shankar vanantham four times what if you played it three times and put us on in one of those times which seems like an extremely uh you know compelling argument from us but it's not that easy because one of the things is there's it uh there's a there's a financial end of it i can't believe i'm breaking this down this hard andrew this is so boring to

people while you're doing this i'm also trying to figure out what the hell kqed is doing on the weekends but they are so tv forward i can barely even find their radio presence online anyway go

so one of the things is if you're an npr affiliate which means if you pay money to npr for like morning edition and all things considered you pretty much get every other show maybe except for wait wait for free so if if we're talking about i mean some of those shows are really great you know i thought it's been a it's been a minute is a really good show but if you're somebody that's sitting in um tallahassee and you have a hole in your weekend lineup and you're trying to figure out what to plug it with and one thing live wire will cost you money theoretically at some point down the road and one thing is free because you're already paying for npr and they're just like giving their weekend program to stations weekend programming i mean you're probably going to go

with a thing that cost you no money isn't this what got microsoft in trouble isn't aren't there some anti some public radio antitrust laws like is this exactly what microsoft did they think they were giving over they were bundling too much stuff for free or something like with windows

or somehow kind of like taking over your computer i thought maybe i'll look into that but anyway so it's just it's weird because i sit there and i like for as as overly self-deprecating as i am at times uh you know whether it's regarding this show or live wire or other stuff that i do i actually think that show holds up pretty well compared to a lot of the other things you could hear on the weekend i actually am pretty proud of it and i will look at the a particular station where we're not on the on the air and i'll look at the things they are playing and i'll think god There's just a lot of opportunity here for us, but it's very, very hard to get a program director of a station to take something off the air and put something else on because when they take whatever it is they have been playing off, people yell at them. And these are a group of people who hate being yelled at or emailed at. They're very conflict-averse, and they're rarely the most dynamic person at the radio station. That's not how they became the director of the programming.

when did these radio When did I'm sorry, I'm getting a little defensive here on your behalf, I guess. When thank you. When were these when were these changes? You didn't say the name of the station before, but I do. When did when did these changes happen on the radio side in the San Francisco market?

I don't know. I got an email from the from our distributor saying we have some bad news. We're not going to be on that station. We might still be on there for a while.

Oh, you are still on there because I was going to say, I don't know, because I'm on there. i'm on their schedule now and it looks like you're still on there along with your usual because i was like well if they're really doing a shake-up of weekends i just and again this is just business talk but like i just don't know unless you're creating a lot of local brand new content of your own i just don't know how much flexibility radio stations have for their weekend programming if you're going with the usual kind of you know the usual suspects and well that space

well i don't i'm i'm not even sure what the status is there i mean i know that it's going away at some point maybe it's like they're going to make the change in a month maybe they already made the change they haven't updated the website i don't know i was going to say like if they did

if they're doing that they're not even updating the website it's like they don't even care about radio over there i was just gonna i was gonna create enemies at kqed nothing that i need to do let's not yeah let's not i mean i don't like you on the record do you have anything luke if the

program director of kqed worry no sorry no i you know it's just a it's a weird thing because like i said you would think it would just be like how many national shows are getting created that have um hopefully somewhat lively conversation going on and uh you know a wide range of of different styles of or types of folks coming on as guests etc like it just seems like it wouldn't be a tough sell but it's a tougher sell than than you might imagine which is why andrew i have to constantly promote livewire on tbtl and i'm only half kidding with that in that when we the thing about the tbtl listeners and the reason that i feel like this little lamb that is tbtl is not lost is because our listeners are so dedicated and engaged and active that the typical conversation with the folks at livewire which is a even though it's a scrappy operation it's a much bigger operation than what you and i are doing just the two of us when we need to activate people for livewire tbtl is the best place for me to do that because the tbtl listeners they they come through as it were they turn out after we get done with an episode of livewire live like at the theater like 30 of the people there are tense so it's very funny that this thing really is like livewire can benefit at least as much if not more from tbtl than than than tbtl can benefit from livewire um so i that's i just thought i would put that out there as a compliment

to our listeners of this show yes exactly and we have some big asks that we're going to be asking the listeners of the show in the next few weeks um so i certainly appreciate that and again coming out of a meeting with a bunch of um apm folks who kind of i think forgot tbtl exists but that's fine

only because we weren't on the we were on the survey of prospective listeners like which one of these shows would you be most interested in listening to and on the list of shows tbtl wasn't one of them is that why they forgot and they're in a sensitive place they forgot that they asked

they forgot to ask in their focus groups how people feel about uh tbtl or even the idea of tbtl just left right off the list but uh i think there were still some john moe shows on that list oh cool no i'm good to see something finally happening i'm joking about that but um no but that is like i i always want to um walk the line of being sincere and earnest with our listeners when I tell them how important it is that they that they show up for our existence which we're going to be asking in a few weeks and I don't want to scare people sometimes we get in these conversations and I'll see you know earnest conversations on slack like I'm kind of freaked out are the boys okay and it's exactly that kind of attitude that just warms my heart and it makes it all the me all the more appreciative of um how much we owe the listeners right um but it's also not total bullshit either yeah like nobody's threatening us no I mean the thing is just nobody knows we're there yet we went from sneaking onto the network kind of under the cover of night then kind of working with some people who who wanted to maybe increase our profile a little bit that's kind of ebbed we're now back in the shh don't tell anyone at apm we're here

phase of things so you know that's where we are i said to you off air and again this is not a scare tactic it is what it is if we lost even a hundred dollars for apm a year we would be gone

You mean if we were in the red by it, like $50 or $100?

Yes. Yeah. Like if it cost them at the end of the year, if it cost them $100 for this to exist, they'd be like, yeah, we're going to go ahead and part ways. They'll give us the old Rod Arquette treatment. They'll say, we're changing some of the lineup at 8 p.m. on demand. And we would say, oh, really? What? Well, we're moving TBTL off.

the network what other what other changes what other changes oh we're not making any other changes oh i see okay i know how this goes this is what happened we were on the radio yeah um but no i mean we are only talking to you on this particular frequency and able to do this like in this particular format where it's like our job and we come here five days a week and all of that because of the incredible generosity and long-suffering just like tolerance and even support from the tens of listeners on the subject of which speaking of big asks we're going to be in denver may 23rd through 27th it's going to be the tbtlathon 13 let the fun begin and we're doing an event we're going to be doing virtual events all week so if you can't make it out to colorado there's still going to be lots of ways for you to interact with us and the other listeners but then we're also going to be doing a real live event on friday night in denver and i think we've gotten the place actually kind of I think we've locked it down as to where we're going to have it we probably should dot a couple more I's before we announce it but with some help

from our local Denverites by the way I love the way that's coming together yeah exactly who Robin by the way who's been advocating Robin and Rachel have been two of the loudest voices in getting us I don't even know if those two listeners know each other honestly but they've been some of the loudest voices in trying to get us to visit Denver over the years and now we're finally doing it and Robin's going to be out of town for most

i don't think out of town i think out of the country i think out of the country she's flying back from like mozambique or something i can't remember where and she was like she's like i get back not to get too much into robin's business but she let's just say she's she'll be returning to the greater denver area from a very far-flung place the kind of place that when you get back

you're like kind of jet lagged for a week yeah who am i right where am i yes exactly so um we're trying to so robin has already been a huge help in identifying a place where we might be able to hold our trivia night on friday the 27th um but robin isn't sure if robin can make it herself actually so we're irony so we need to i i want to do everything we can to both get robin there and also make her happy that she came so i don't know if that means red bull or i mean people love red bull right maybe a cot me maybe a cot maybe that special maybe that's a special cot for her what was that thing you showed me from tim and eric where you can be in a party standing up the party

the party party stand party face yeah where it looks like you're awake and i understand yes

i understand thank you for coming thank you for coming should that be the name of the trivia

night yes i understand thank you for coming and you and i just do we do the whole show in our Cinco party face.

Cinco party.

Party mask. Cinco party mask, I think, or something. Anyway, well, there you go. Once again, we have pulled the curtain way too far back on the inner workings of both public radio and whatever this is. So we are sorry, and you're welcome. Let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back and we'll thank some dazzling donors, and we'll talk about what's been going down on the Olympic Peninsula in terms of unfortunate toilet incidents. Stay with us 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.

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. God, we haven't talked enough, Andrew, about the financial model of TBTL today.

I know.

so um buckle up because there's even more uh these are a couple of particularly wonderful generous folks who are dazzling us with their donations and i don't need to say it because we've already said it about 40 different ways but this is basically why we get to keep doing this five days a week folks like cory diamond in cambridge massachusetts cory says last year you gave me advice on what to do with the plastic film that had been slowly peeling off the radio in my girlfriend's car for several years unfortunately i did not follow that advice and the peeling film continues to torment me okay so we must have said to cory pull that you know you know whatever you want to call it protective film dustproof film we must have just said pull it off and it sounds like cory did not yeah that's what i so um i did

go back and find the original message from last year that cory had written in but i did not go back and find the audio of us responding to it but it it seems weird that i would advocate for just ripping something off of somebody else's belonging without their permission but on the other hand a little piece of film like that if it's not if it's not dangling at all i'm i can live with it it's fine but once that corner starts peeling like i can't i mean it's making me i am like i'm not even joking i'm like tensing up right now thinking about like being in a car with that thing like maybe like

like an eighth of the corner being peeled back and not being able to rip it off like that's because it also becomes more opaque.

Like, you know, for people, if you have like a protective cover on your cell phone and then like the corner gets like jacked up for some reason. And now instead of being more or less transparent, it's kind of a little whitish. Like it's just, that's a bad feeling all around. And I guess you're right. I mean, it's not Corey's car. It's Corey's girlfriend's car. And so it would seem that you shouldn't do that to someone else's possessions but i of course said just do it and deal with the consequences which is why i'm a noted successful relationship person because of exactly that lack of respect for other people's boundaries and things anyway cory is now following up on the advice he didn't take last year with another request for advice i am a fan of a sport that is fairly popular in europe but not very popular here in the u.s after listening to you two do whatever this is for the last 10 years okay it's called i thought if these two middle-aged dad types can do this every day i can start a podcast on this very niche sport i've not pre-read this message does he ever tell us what the niche sport is

no i'm assuming it's soccer no just joking um quidditch uh yeah yeah i'm not sure i don't

think that we ever get the reveal on that uh i reached out to a fellow fan i've interacted with several times on twitter to propose that we do a podcast together he didn't respond to several attempts which i thought was a bit weird till after about a month after my first email he tweeted i'm so pleased to announce my new podcast oh my question is do i have grounds to sue him for theft of intellectual property i will say that and then cory writes whispering now so that no one can hear The podcast isn't great This is why he's not identifying the niche sport Yeah sure yeah While I hate listening to it I think two things One I'm 100% confident I could do better And two Luke and Andrew Are really good at this Thanks Corey you really got the nose up on That whole whatever this is Still been stinging For the last 45 seconds

Still two sentences left let's see if there's a phone throw Mention

That's what it is Andrew it's Belgian phone that's the sport talking to someone else on the imaginary radio and making it interesting is quite difficult and you guys do it really well every freaking day so thank you for providing all the tens with one to four hours of entertainment on a daily basis signed cory well see now andrew i thought where this was going was cory was going to ask our advice on podcasting which me too me too as you know i've got nothing but theories i am just a walking i'm just a walking um encyclopedia if you will or a walking list of podcasting hot takes and theories

but it doesn't it sounds more like should he's asking should i sue this person right i think

what you should do cory is i think you should start your own podcast yeah and and um and first

of all i think with podcasting this is something that jenna even i learned with after these messages It is a it's a it's a game of attrition or a pod of attrition or whatever you want to call it I'm avoiding the word war but like when Veves and I started our podcast I think I've told you this many times So I'll tell you I'll tell you the very brief version after these messages after these messages which is about TV commercials We made sure that there was not already a podcast called after these messages And then we chose that name and then it took us maybe three or four more weeks to get the show actually up and running And by in those three or four weeks, somebody else created a podcast called After These Messages. And we it was it was different. It wasn't what we do. It was just like a parody, a kind of a commercial parody maker or something. And we're like, this isn't no offense, but we're like, this isn't that good. And also, we're going to do this every Tuesday. We're going to be here. Maybe, you know, there's some embarrassing things early on that we did, too, that I wish, you know, were better. But like we were there. We showed up every Tuesday. And within a week, this other poster was getting sporadic. It wasn't the same day anymore. It was all over. And then like less and less and probably ended up posting like maybe five episodes. Unfortunately, still exists, as you call it, a ghost frigate in the pod stores. But so it gets a little bit confusing for our listeners. But like we just stuck with it. So that's one thing. And that's I kind of get that from you, too, Luke. I'm not trying to claim that as my own thing. I probably probably got that advice from you.

but also I think you and I have very yeah I think you and I have extremely similar theories on this whole game that I'm guessing that I'm guessing you had that in your brain long before we talked about it but I think that actually there's a lot for Corey to feel sort of um bullish about with this project one it sounds like the other one isn't so great two if it's truly a niche sport I think... that that's so good for you if we were talking about soccer or american football or baseball or anything else that is kind of widely popular you're already in competition with like you know a minimum of 10 000 other podcasts if anyone ever asked me about doing a podcast what i usually say is try to find something that you're like overly interested in that not that many other people are interested in and that's what it should be about because whatever this sport is belgian phone throwing if you can become the number one podcast or even in the top 10 podcasts about belgian phone throwing that's still a lot of people like that's a lot of people like that thing that that you like that feels niche um and my guess is there's not a ton of competition other than this person who stole your idea although in truth so let me just go back and read this cory said that he i reached out to him on twitter to propose we have a podcast together i wonder if this person doesn't check their dms that's a that's a point too you're right you know like that's a real that's a real thing is that there are some people who depending on what their settings are like or just how they tend to interact with twitter like i think actually there was a period of time where i had i don't dm very much at all on twitter but there was a period of time where i think i might have had like three or four messages from people you know about various things and i didn't even know that i didn't even know that was happening so if you it's possible that this person never saw the dms it's also possible this person always wanted to do a podcast and just like i don't know they wanted to do it solo i would be shocked if cory suggest if this was the first time this person had ever thought of doing a podcast was cory's suggestion so i wouldn't be i wouldn't feel too mad cory i think probably this was just a coincidence but i think you can do a better job just based on how funny this message is from cory whispering now so that no one can hear see that's good podcasting you're already you're already doing a version of it cory so i would highly suggest that you push forward with this and then next

year use your dazzling donor message to promote it the one thing that i would maybe add one caveat to there is um before you do that let let luke and i know what the sport is because i might I might want to get my teeth into that. You know what I mean, Luke?

It's a weird thing to get into.

I don't know. I don't know what words mean. But I don't let that stop me.

Corey, could we sink our teeth into your project?

But I'm just saying that maybe we have an opportunity here, Luke, too, if this is kind of an underserved audience. Well, you think this could be a disposable media show? I sort of feel like I like sports. You like sports. We're good at podcasting. We already have a platform. Yeah. So anyway, Corey, just let me know what the sport is. And then I'll let you know whether or not we want to pass on it. And then two weeks later, we announce our podcast about Belgian phone throwing.

And Corey's head just absolutely detaches from his body with anger. Corey, thank you very much. And, hey, no joke, if you want some advice on this, email me, Luke, at tbtl.net, and I'll give you what paltry information I have on the subject. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

We've also got to thank Beth and Kevin Lynn Shumway, who are in Leighton, Utah, and are dazzling donors. They say thanks for giving us something different to listen to on our walks around the neighborhood.

Now that raises a question, right?

We've been tuned into this amazing Belgian phone-throwing podcast. Along with that, TBTL is our very favorite.

You know what? I didn't see that second line there. So that is what they've been listening to a Belgian phone throwing contest. Okay. Yeah. Cause I was wondering like if what we're doing is a little, little different, I'm wondering what was the norm, but I guess we have an answer to that now.

Thank you for giving us something different to listen to on our walks around the neighborhood. Now this raises the question, are Beth and Kevin Lynn listening to, are they sharing AirPods? Are they listening to it on a small speaker? are they each listening to the show on their separate devices while they walk and then occasionally taking an ear an air pod out to comment on it i just wonder what the mechanics

of this are i was wondering the same thing and i think you mentioned uh was it um oh goodness was it eon musk you were talking about or somebody else who had a photo taken of them where they were sharing and jeff zucker of cnn zucker right right right which and again it sounds like that was the wrong photo for the moment but god i love the romance of of sharing of sharing like one you know sharing earbuds with the wire you know you're both leaning in and holding one up to your ear to listen to something that's just such a sweet move i think that is actually very cute you know the og version of that and again you've never seen this movie

but in it's a wonderful life Let's go. There is a scene where Donna Reed is on the phone with this guy named Sam Wainwright, who's like made a killing in plastics or something. And he's this guy who's kind of sweet on her. And but she, of course, loves Jimmy Stewart's character, George Bailey. And Jimmy Stewart has come over to visit her at his at her house. But he's trying to be cool now. He's over there, but he's trying to act like he's just trying to act like he could take it or leave it, even though we know that he's very into her.

And that's where the money is, right? In her house. That's one thing I've learned from you telling me about this movie. The money belt? It's in his house. It's in her house. Isn't that like the big...

I don't know why mine was Scooby-Doo, but you get it. I don't know why mine... I don't even... I don't know where mine went either. It did not go towards Jimmy Stewart town. But there's... So basically, Jimmy Stewart goes over to Donna Reed's house. and um and and she has set up this little tableau that's a reminder of this really great night they had had previously where they had been at this dance and the swimming pool opened up beneath the gymnasium floor and everybody got soaked and they sang a song walking home and it was just this kind of really beautiful moment and when he comes over to her house and sees all that he suddenly feels embarrassed and he just tries to start acting real cool and at the same time this guy sam wainwright calls this rich dude who kind of is sweet on her and so uh she's on the phone with sam and then sam who they're all friends from growing up in this town together is also trying to talk to george bailey and pass these messages on and donna reed is like repeating what she's hearing through the phone to george and then she's trying to get him on the same receiver as him because her mother is upstairs listening and on the other receiver which is a classic trope from every movie of that era and of course the mom wants her to hook up with sam wainwright because she's like mary sam wainwright's on the phone so so uh she and jimmy stewart have to share this one earpiece for this old-timey phone and of course just being physically that close their their you know their sort of essences are starting to mingle and they've never actually physically been that close before and uh and they end up kissing it's very it's very

I can picture one hand cupped over the microphone part of the phone, right?

And she's like, it's so dramatic because Sam is, because, you know, the plot of that movie, one of the plots is that this guy, George Bailey, has always had dreams of leaving this small town of Bedford Falls. But because he's a good guy and his dad had died at this inopportune moment, so he takes over the family business, there's always something keeping him in this town. And so he's never really made any money or anything. and uh sam wainwright is going tell bailey i'll let him in on the ground floor and and donna reach is going he's talking about letting you in on the ground floor and jimmy stewart just goes like now you listen to me i don't want anything with ground floors that's good you got there you got there and he's like getting all mad about this off room sam wainwright and then like the phone gets dropped and then that's the moment that they kiss it's very cute oh very nice you

know it's the wrong word it's very dramatic you know what that makes me want to watch not that movie weirdly enough but it does make me want to watch the philadelphia story again i saw a long time ago i think god that's a good one head you you probably remember it better it's cary grant's in that as well right and i love god i love me some cary grant how can you not and is that a is that a is that a uh hepburn and odd not is that catherine hepburn catherine hepburn story maybe

there's another one called kitty foil that my mom was really really into when i was a kid so we would watch kitty foil a lot so kitty foil the philadelphia story there's a movie with a young ronald reagan called king's row that somebody really needs to remake it is dark it's basically this town that's sort of got kind of run by this doctor and it turns out that some stuff is not okay and it's an intense kind of psychological thriller almost from like the era when ronald reagan was like a young up-and-coming actor but anyway all of that is to say i hope beth and kevin that you have at least one moment on your walk when you're listening to this where you're sharing ear pods and then you lean into each other and you say i don't want anything with ground floors or plastics and then you kiss right there on the street while walking the dog

get a room that was me driving by

hello and welcome to top story if you really want to keep with the it's a wonderful life thing what you need to yell is ah youth is wasted on the wrong people which is what this crotchety guy says when when george bailey and donna reed are on their like first date which is after the debacle at the school dance they're like flirting and they're like you know kind of pitch and woo as you might say but they're too nervous like george is too nervous to try to kiss her or make a real move and there's this older guy on his porch

who's like reading the paper and smoking a pipe and he's becoming so frustrated at how these two people who clearly are sweet on each other will like just and he goes, why don't you kiss her already instead of talking her to death? And then George Bailey says huh, her? And then he's trying to make a joke and then the guy says, ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people, which is something I increasingly feel as I get older and my youth ebbs away

I, you know, I it's hard to make the first move man, it just is

I mean, I've told the story hundreds of times on this show of when I had a big crush in college on a classmate, and I believe she suggested coming over to my house for dinner, and we made dinner, which I'm sure was some sort of like macaroni and cheese product out of a box, and then, I mean, the ostensible plan was to work on some kind of class project, but then at some point I remember sitting on the floor in my apartment, and her sitting behind me giving me a back massage, and me thinking, why won't she give me a sign?

I know, man.

And nothing ever happened. And yet, so making the first move can be very intimidating.

I could write a book. I won't bore you with the same stories you've heard. But man, do I have some of those that just stand out. It's just like, it's like literally people, not literally, it's like figuratively people taking out billboards and putting them in my dorm room and be just being like, if only I knew, if only I knew.

I know, right? And it's like once you get older and you've just seen – you've just had more experiences, you've witnessed more humans interacting with each other, you sort of – you can just go back and go, oh, that's what was going on at that moment.

Right. But I will also say I know for a fact that if I were single again, you know, everything's the same. But for some reason Genevieve and I decided to have a – what do you call it?

We decided to hang a pineapple outside your house in the sweet cream district.

What did Gwyneth Paltrow have? Oh, conscious uncoupling? Uncoupling, yeah. If that were to happen to us, God forbid, and if I were single again and ready to mingle, mingle is all I would do, because I would still be right back to 17-year-old Andrew Walsh. It's just impossible. It's just I don't have whatever those genes are, which is fine, because I don't plan on uncoupling anytime soon.

Well, that's good. Believe me, now you all got that house together.

Yeah, no, she's stuck.

This is happening. She's stuck. 20 years in, and a house in the Sweet Cream District, and I think that this has become a permanent situation.

And I keep threatening her with palimony, too, which she keeps on saying doesn't exist, which I say, I don't know, man. Tell it to the judge, literally.

I'm surprised this story is not getting more attention in the national press, Andrew, because it is truly breathtaking in terms of an event. I believe this was Louis Cam writing for Axios. Louis Cam was a longtime Seattle Times reporter.

Yeah, writing for Axios now?

I didn't know that. I believe he's—well, this is his byline at Axios. I think he might be there like, well, it's listed under energy and environment. Maybe this technically falls under the category of energy and environment. But the headline is 9-1-1 audio reveals predicament of tourists trapped in pit toilet. So a California tourist was visiting the Olympic National Park in the state of Washington. And she was using one of those so-called pit toilets. And, well, I'll just jump right to the 9-1-1 tape.

Hi, I can't believe I'm this person. I'm stuck in a port-a-potty. In a port-a-potty? In a port-a-potty on, I didn't even count you, it was a Phoenix route off the side, and my phone fell down, and then I slipped into it, and I've been trying to get out, and I just need a lift.

Okay, so where...

By the way, how much do you think this 911 dispatcher thinks this is a prank?

Good question. I hadn't thought of that. I think it helps that it's a woman.

I think it helps that it's a woman calling because if it had been like a teenage boy sounding person, like, there's just no way that happened.

Where are you at?

I'm up at the top of a scenic route to look at Mount—oh, hold on. Sorry, I'm going to try to figure it out.

Were you on that walker? That sounds right. coming, like, from Brennan to Quilstein in that area?

Yeah.

By the way, if you're wondering, this is all just a little bit south of Port Towns in the small-time maritime village? Small maritime. Small maritime. It's not small time. Big time. There are no small-time cities, only small-time podcast hosts.

Okay. So you went up to the top of the lookout at Mount Walker? The north side. Okay.

yeah they'll look out though now this all is kind of boring and and sort of seems like well why are we trying to be so specific but think about it

there are probably like a hundred of these pit toilets at different places around this national park and they got to figure out which one this poor lady is in so you actually are stuck in

in the port of pagi and yeah okay it's retarded oh fortunate use of a word yeah because i can't do it or give me a ladder because i thought the leashes i had and the What did she say there?

I think she said, I thought the leashes I had, because she also mentions later in the call that she's got her dogs with her and they're in her car. So maybe she was trying to somehow kind of like mountaineer her way out of this. And clearly the dispatcher was trying to assess, when you say I'm stuck in the port-a-potty, that could mean the door is jammed and you just can't get out of the little hut, I think that the dispatcher is still trying to understand you're physically down where the grumpies are. Like, you're in, I mean, anyway, hold on.

Yeah, okay. But, I mean, you're not injured. You're just stuck in there, correct? I'm not injured. Okay. No. She's laughing. No, no, I'm here.

She is laughing. she is she's handling this very well as well as as one could hope like she's you know she's being self-deprecating she did unfortunately use a word that we don't use anymore but like generally she seems to be taking this in stride and i am i'm pretty shocked by it because i think my life would be over at this point like i don't think i would be able to stop vomiting i mean she's talking

into a phone presumably up to her face but maybe she's on speakerphone that has been in the muck

and that was how the whole problem started her phone she dropped her phone in there which again i bet you there's a verizon store somewhere near port townsend like that phone's done yeah right like there's nothing that could ever get me to try to retrieve a phone out of that situation but this

i mean it's literally a burner as in you need to burn the phone now you need to maybe burn the

whole pit toilet down honestly maybe just close the park close the national park for however long you have to or the state park but yeah she dropped her phone in there which again is is really the worst case scenario when you're in one of those things and then she decided to try to reach in and get it and then at some point you know slips in there we have to guess head first she's reaching for it and now she's in there and not i'm i'm not trying to make this more gross or more sort of vivid than it needs to be but for her to even think she could reach the phone makes me think there was a significant amount of grumpy already in there because when those things are like freshly i mean it's a pretty large tank and let's imagine that it's been it's just been emptied it seems like it'd be kind of far down but if you thought you could reach something it makes me think there was already i mean i don't even like looking down there no i don't either if i'm using i mean i will also just hold it generally more rather than you know um leave a grumpy in one of those places but i didn't by the way i didn't sometimes the universe just delivers you the word you need the day before a topic is going to come up and that was just what the universe did for us with yesterday's conversation and then today's conversation but

like you know that if i'm like if you could get in a time machine and kill hitler um you know before the atrocities happen i'm sort of starting to ask myself like if i could go back in time and kill johnny depp before he used that word and you heard it if i could do that would that be a you

know that's one of those moral conundrums sure um so uh there was a i think i saw a quick scene i haven't watched that that show is it called pen 15 yeah i've never i've never seen it i don't

think i'm the target audience for that and there's so much stuff for me to watch but people i haven't

watched it although we did i was on wait wait when the one of the two you know co-creators of the show was the guest and she seemed delightful i just saw a clip the other day of something where they're like in class and the the the character who's like a middle schooler playing middle schoolers i think um who we had interviewed on wait wait she was like i'm gonna go back in time or she had a bullet in class and they were like somehow i forget the whole joke but it was like yeah i'm gonna this is i think it maybe was like a visual aid for like i'm gonna go back in time and i'm gonna use this to kill hitler and someone's like but you don't even have a gun how are you gonna throw it at him no i'll find a gun when i'm there and i'll use this bullet it made me kind of laugh anyway um the call

Paul just kind of goes on and basically this.

I'm talking on the radio and talking to my partner. How long have you been stuck in there? Oh, probably 15 minutes. Okay. Oh, is it there? Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay.

I'm driving a blue Volt. There's dogs in the car. They're fine. You're driving a what? A blue Volt, a blue Chevy.

Oh, okay.

it's a kind of funny thing towards the end when the 911 dispatcher just starts asking her how her trip's been going you know because she's a tourist she's up from california she's like oh so there's going to be california plates on your car and and she's like oh it's been great uh it's been beautiful i mean this is the worst view that i've had on the vacation she's handling this well

i know it's a presence um shoot what's the name that i'm saying they're angeles i think oh toward

Port Angeles, but you were on Mount Walker. Yeah. So you just came through Brennan? Yeah. Okay. And then you got to the top of Mount Walker and you took the road to the right to the Mount Walker lookout?

I took the road that said North Lookout.

North Lookout. Okay, okay.

Yeah.

What's your name? Yes.

Okay.

They bleeped that out or edited it out.

We're getting them on the way. so um otherwise known as stupid tourists in california oh my god that goes my phone well just think what story you're gonna have to be able to tell if you ever choose to tell it

right i like these people yeah now i wonder if it's against the rules for the 9-1-1 dispatcher just to ask like the obvious question which is just like how bad is it down there yeah she never

does which i think is she's trying to be you know professional and respectful which i sort of appreciate as well even in that moment where she says well think about the story you'll have or also maybe if you choose to tell it because like you want to lead your next hinge date with you won't believe what happened to me when i was vacationing in washington right i don't know i mean i don't know if there are enough showers in the world if i were on a date with someone and they revealed to me that they had once plummeted into a pit toilet that would that could potentially really alter my sense of of how i perceived that really not if you're the person but like you

wouldn't you you don't know if you could be romantically involved with somebody if this

happened to them even if you weren't around for it i mean i think the chances of me ever having to make this decision in the real world uh the chances are low but as i just kind of as i just am thinking out loud here it would live in my mind somewhere like to just i can't i mean you know there's other stories in the past and these are again sort of darker stories about people voluntarily going into those things because of some sort of uh sexual um thrill that they're getting out of out of seeing people use those i mean and that's just like horrifying in and of itself but this somehow is like a normal otherwise normal person going into those depths like well i mean just imagine andrew if i told you that one time i fell into a pit toilet and had to call 9-1-1 because i was trying to get my phone wouldn't you think about that every time

you saw me um i dwell i don't know about every time it depends on the nature of our relationship

What if I tried to escalate the intimacy?

I don't think it would get in the way of intimacy for me. Like, this is something that happened to me in my past.

I mean, listen, I've been very public about crapping my own pants at a Mariners game, but that was my crap. That came from inside me. That was my grumpy. How is this getting so graphic?

How is this getting worse?

I actually am kind of proud of how about how sort of not graphic or specific we've been about the in discussing, you know, the physical location that this poor woman found herself in. But anyway, the thing I also thought was interesting from this Axios piece was, of course, they don't have a photo of the woman because who would pose for that? But there is a photo clearly of two of the technicians who had to show up. They were the firefighters, I should say, who rescued this person who was stuck in there. And they're from the Brennan Fire Department. from their facebook page and what's notable to me is that you can see that they had to take the toilet out using some kinds of like some kind of those like you know ratchet like tension straps or something those are sort of in the background of the photo it's also a very funny look these two brennan firefighters just like they're kind of they're posing they have smiles on their face i mean i can't imagine what that was like when they got there and then they they realized i So they had to take the toilet out.

In order to get to this poor person So we just know that about the rescue operation Because you can see that the toilet has been removed Can I tell you something awesome about this story?

Yes This is Louis Cam's very first piece for Axios Because I clicked on his byline Hell of a come out roll, Lou And I was like, wait a second Is this just something that he's doing freelance While he still has his other job Because this was the only story on Axios With his byline But then I was like, let me go to his Twitter feed See if he's changed jobs recently and he did just tweet out earlier today or last night hey my first story for axios is out and it's this story i'll tell you what that's a hell of a first story yeah yeah this should this should get a little viral action i mean with the 911 tape yeah it feels to me like it's it's surprising

that we that it because i think this happened like last week or something i'm surprised it hasn't um gone gone wider because again it really does represent i think every time any of us use a porta potty or uh one of these type of pit toilets one cannot completely sort of push out the worst case scenario thought of oh dear god what if i fell in there oh yeah i just think it's a natural human thought because of how just absolutely and totally overwhelmingly disgusting it is what if i fell in there and so for that to have actually happened to somebody is just it's it's so shocking i'm surprised this isn't a bigger story i think i've told you this

before maybe even when kiki lolo was on the show talking about her experience getting briefly stuck in an elevator in a grocery store uh during the pandemic um i don't think i've been in an elevator in the past 20 years without having like thoughts at the front of my mind like what will it be like if i get stuck in here like what is my plan and is this a decent elevator to get stuck in and do i have to go to the bathroom right now and if so how will that play into this

do you know that i had to call 9-1-1 from my elevator in this building like three days ago no how the hell how the hell i mean we talk about so much shit on the show how in the literally

literally yeah please please use its proper name how in the world does luke has to call 9-1-1 from an elevator and that doesn't make it anywhere near the show sheet well because it was it was

just the briefest of moments i was coming home it was probably like 9 30 at night i was coming home from becca's there was a post-it note on the elevator that said don't get in this elevator you'll get stuck and i just thought it was a joke it was handwritten

was it written like a dog like a dog had written it with like a pop it was like the chick-fil-a ad wait for real is this a true story you're telling me that you got stuck in an elevator that had a handwritten note that said don't use this elevator you'll get stuck how are we talking about this on

Thursday uh because you know Andrew I can still surprise you so I get I think either it's a joke or I just I'm just like well let's see what happens so I hit the button and then the elevator opens like normal and my thought was okay whatever that referred to is now over and so then the door closes and then i go to hit my floor and nothing happens and there's a key you know like a fob you have to scan i'm scanning it and it's like just nothing and so then i hit door open door doesn't open it's exactly as the post-it note foretold so i'm just only there had been a sign i know but it looks so janky it wasn't like from the management of the building it was a like handwritten on a post-it note in not great handwriting it just didn't look very official and so i'm waiting i'm waiting i'm hitting open open open and then i'm just like okay oh i hit the um the whatever button you know the like fire department button nothing happened with that so i just called 9-1-1 from my phone and i got somebody who sounded almost exactly like this one when i said hi this is really embarrassing i'm stuck in an elevator at my apartment building and she said okay uh what's the address i start giving her and then as i'm starting to give her the address somebody heard me talking somebody was bringing their dog back and they opened it from the outside because you could do that by pushing the button not by pushing the button from outside and then so right as i was starting to like give them the info the door opened and i was like oh my gosh thank you and i was like i'm so sorry somebody just let me out sorry for the hassle and this person said oh no problem and then i just walked out the whole thing took seven minutes and maybe that's why i didn't think it was worth reporting because it's basically like well a my own dumb fault for ignoring the post-it note and b it was it was resolved very quickly and with a minimal amount of hassle but

it's so funny and it plays i mean you know treading carefully here it also plays into your personality so much oh yeah this sign doesn't apply to me or it's just like well this is if you could have seen this post-it normal people

If you could have seen how janky this post-it note was, I think you would have considered testing it. Oh, my gosh. Considered testing it.

So any follow-up on what the deal was? It's working now.

Everything's fine. I mean, everything was by the next—well, so the funny part was, so then, of course, I take the stairs. And then cut to the following morning, I'm going to go on my jog. and i walk out and the same handwriting post-it note is also on my floor of the building saying don't use this elevator you're gonna get stuck and you're like yeah i'll give it a shot i did and it worked no i at a 100 andrew i'm telling you the truth i got in the elevator i hit ground floor it took me there it let me out i figured they would have fixed it by then and they had

what is happening didn't you and just god yes why are we talking about nine hours previous

I had been stuck in the elevator and I and I decided to roll the dice a second time because I figured there's no way this has now been broken for all of this time. And I was right. So 50 50 you win some you lose some.

I might have this one wrong or like the use of this phrase wrong. But didn't you and Jen talk about something called shocky cheese? Oh, yes. Yes. This is a shocky cheese situation. Like you got shocked by the cheese, but you still went back.

Yeah. I did. I think I just was like, you know, I was a mouse who really wanted that cheese of taking the elevator, even though it shocked me once. I just thought here. The first thing I did was, well, actually, OK, like in my defense, here's exactly what I did the next morning. I hit I called hit the button for the elevator. And when the door opened, I straddled it so that it couldn't close.

I picture I can picture it.

my fob and hit floor one and it lit up so I didn't fully get into the elevator and then re-trap myself and then just hope I checked to make sure so I guess in a sense like if it wouldn't have lit up if it would have done the same thing there's no way I'm taking the elevator so maybe that makes the story less funny

or weird I would have put like a Russian dog in it or something and then sent it up to the top I can never remember the name and then I would like run up the stairs to see if the dog made it or not or down the stairs in this case yeah um so i guess i guess

it was a little less dramatic when i went down because now i'm just remembering i did do a little a little test because i didn't want to get stuck still though but you still don't know you don't

know you don't know if it's gonna get stuck on another floor well that's apparently don't have

the fear of getting stuck in an elevator that that is not a fear that i have oddly enough like that's i have very very low like claustrophobia levels and i've i just you know i just don't have uh any kind of fear around around elevators unless maybe if i were to overthink it and it was like a super duper skyscrapery kind of you know building and if i were to imagine where we were kind of physically in space that could get in my head a bit but as far as like in this building i i have Even having been trapped in there one time and having had to call 911, I still feel very comfortable getting in there.

You don't want to be trapped. I've said this before, too, and this is where I think our friend Kiki got trapped. You don't want to get trapped in a grocery store elevator, though, because as my friend Hannah says, grocery store elevators are just weird, and they are weird.

It's always because they have subterranean parking. Yep, exactly. My guess is for access reasons, as of course they should, they have to provide an elevator. But there's something always weird about that elevator. It's going to have a stem from an iris that was from the floral department. It's just going to be moldering in the corner. It's going to be like two or three receipts. It's going to be stainless steel but grimy.

And it's going to be somewhere in between a people elevator and a cargo elevator. Exactly. Because they're using it for deliveries. They're using it for the carts. They're bringing, you know, the big stacks of grocery carts up and down. And so it's never like, you know, a nice, lush hotel elevator or apartment elevator that is well maintained with maybe some potentially carpeting, although that has to be very well maintained for it not to make it grosser. You can do that. But also, I think I am claustrophobic a bit. And, like, if I think about There's a scene, spoiler alert here There's a scene In Interview with a Vampire Which I saw, you know Years and years and years ago on VHS I think when I was in college I don't remember anything about that movie Other than one of the characters I want to say Tom Cruise's character Because I think he's in that Is a vampire And, of course, vampires are immortal But he does something wrong, I think and his punishment is that he has to be put in.

into his coffin for eternity and then buried behind a wall or something like that. But then I think that the big, I think, again, everybody's caught up here, right? Then I think the thing is he somehow gets out or they reverse, it reverses course somehow and then he's still a character in the movie. But I think about that, like, that is like just, it drives me out of my mind, Luke, to think about that and to know that you don't even have the sweet release of death.

yeah to be buried alive would be i think i used to um i didn't want to be cremated because i thought well what if you're not dead but i would rather be slightly alive than buried in the ground slightly alive like i that now to me is way at the top of the list of of of you know of just horrific possible scenarios like you know you can go ahead and decarbonize me please and just one less one less plot of uh of land you know somewhere that's being used for memorializing people that's fine uh i'm way more afraid of being put underground when i'm

still slightly alive i went for a walk yesterday i know we we need to get to blurs days here and wrap things up but i went for a walk yesterday and um i realized hey i could cut through the cemetery there is a kind of a large cemetery and i'm sure you know it luke and um i was like oh i'll walk through here i got um i got it had more of an emotional impact on me than i thought now that is not to say that i was overwrought in any way but i really looked at it as just like well it's like a park only there's a bunch of you know you know what would you call them obviously the headstones but also just various ways of honoring the dead and soldiers memorial memorials yeah whatever the broad term is. But I wasn't going in it for that reason or to think about death or to think about people's lives or to think about this marble that just keeps spinning of earth. But I don't know. As I was looking, as I was kind of, I ended up slowing my pace and actually kind of like looking at various stones and memorials and really kind of considering, kind of thinking who was this person and looking at the years And looking at the and looking at, you know, the years that people had died, like, you know, like comparing it, just kind of thinking like, well, now this one has been here since 1956 versus this one, which has been here since 2003. And just I didn't have any thoughts really that I guess maybe I shouldn't have started this topic because I don't have any real thoughts that formed that I had no epiphanies or anything. But it was just more of a somber experience than I thought. I thought I was just kind of kicking it through a park quickly because it's a very beautiful cemetery, too.

Yeah, I just depends on the mood I'm in when I see that kind of stuff, if it causes me to feel kind of, you know, apprehensive or anxious about the fact that we're all gonna, you know, be done on this planet at some point, or if it's kind of a relief, relief is the wrong word. But, like, I, you know, last time I was in, no, a couple times ago when I was in Hawaii, we went up to Punchbowl, which is this big national, it's like a cemetery there in, like, Honolulu. And I was just looking around at all of these graves and gravestones, and it was like these were all people who lived, and they're not, you know, they're not alive anymore, but also there's lots of flowers out, and people were remembering. It's a very beautiful space, and it was like, I don't think those people are conscious of where they're at, but I remember thinking, well, this wouldn't be the worst. This is just like a really very gorgeous kind of lush place to spend your days. And I guess I had a sort of positive feeling about it, like, well, this is pretty good. But then I was also going to the Warby Parker at the mall to get my eyes checked, to get these glasses that I now have. And it turns out this particular mall in the greater Portland area, I think it's called Washington Square, one side of the parking lot actually abuts a big cemetery. and i was just coming out of there just thinking i don't know about boring life stuff and then i look over and people were having a full-on memorial for someone or funeral for someone and it was just kind of like oh yeah that's also a thing that's happening all the time i'm thinking about if i selected the right scratch proofing on these warby parker glasses which was an upsell yeah and the fact that i was able to use my hsa card and i'm just like deep in thought about things that are kind of minuscule in life and i saw all these people gathered around and i i you know i just reminded me that someone's life had ended recently and that all these people were there remembering this person or honoring this person and that person's now gone and it was just like more intense feelings than i was you know signing up for on tuesday at a on a tuesday at 4

p.m just in the mall parking lot the most fascinating thing i saw and then we can move on was not a gravestone but a bench and i i don't know that there were any remains buried under this bench or anything i in fact i assume not but the bench was there to memorialize

memorialize the fellow who had essentially run the cemetery for a very very long time i didn't take a picture of it so i can't remember the details um but it was like a bench but then it had like his face kind of carved into it or like an image of his face carved into it and said this is where and i can't remember his name but it said this is where so and so used to love to sit and take his lunch breaks and then it said oh he had been with he'd been with the company he'd been with the cemetery um as an employee since 1967 then as vice president starting in 1970 something and then president and then ceo and you could and up until his death i believe in 2004 and i could i was just like for me the thoughts that i had had less to do about my own morality but just more about just in this i believe you mean mortality there but did i say morality sorry um but also

So if your morality is wrong, it's not going to be good. You have to go to hell.

Yeah, I know. There was one, I saw like a place where a hole was dug, but it wasn't being used. And I peeked down in there and I saw a little red devil with a little pokey spear with a little trident thing. And he was kind of like laughing at me and kind of gesturing. Yeah, it was weird. But anyway, that was, and I'm not trying to say that like on another day I wouldn't maybe think about my own mortality. But in this particular case and the mood I was in yesterday, I was really just more like kind of puzzled, not puzzled by, but intrigued by and I don't know, kind of getting lost in thinking about the people's stories and about how much the world has changed even since 2004, which I consider to be, you know, very recent history. Right. And just thinking about this person, this person stopped seeing what happens in 2004 and also just thinking about their life from the 60s and what it's like to work your way through an organization. And in that organization, being a cemetery and being memorialized at the little corner, you know, kind of under this beautiful, beautiful old tree where you're used to have your lunch. I don't know. It was just like it was just interesting to think about.

And to think about all the stuff that's happened to that person. Person never knew about COVID.

Yeah.

Never knew about, you know, so many things that are just huge events. Never knew about the use of the word. Never knew about that.

So there's just upside, too.

There's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll. You can just listen to your soul. Just remember that life is number one. You can be having so much fun. Just remember that life is much fun. You can be number one.

All right, let's do some blurs days, not lowers days.

Let's speed through these, though, because there is, in 15 minutes, somebody's showing up to look at my oven that doesn't work. Okay, yeah, let's do it. I didn't realize just how long in the old tooth we were going to get today. Yeah, so let's... If we're going fast, just know that's why.

But it's not disrespectful at all. We will give you your due. In fact, we're going to give Michael in Spokane his due. Anne says, please wish associate producer Michael in Spokane. Our list of associate producers is growing in number, and I kind of like that. A lot of most of our budget goes. Yeah, exactly. And this is from Anne wishing associate producer Michael in Spokane a very happy, mild, mildly belated Blur's Day. Here's to another year of dazzling deets. And, of course, Michael gets that title because Michael was sending in a lot of stories for a while that did end up on the show sheet.

Yeah, Michael really tapped into some kind of frequency or wavelength of TBTL-appropriate stories.

He's like the Lewis Cam of TBTL.

Keep them coming, Michael. We can always use it. Adrian in Portland says, My Google calendar says April 28th is Ed Balls Day. I'm pretty sure this could only be TBTL-related. So, happy Ed Balls Day.

I got a text from somebody today saying happy Ed Balls Day, too. Do you remember briefly what Ed Balls Day is?

It 100% rings a bell, and I 100% don't know what it refers to. It's definitely something that came up on the show.

There was a guy, Ed Balls, I believe, I want to say a British politician, although I'm not 100% sure about that. And he was testing Twitter for the very first time. Oh, he just wrote Ed Balls? He meant to search maybe for his name, Ed Balls, or something. he didn't know what he was doing but he just somebody named ed balls just tweeted out ed balls and it was like the only thing on his timeline and somehow it got caught at the updraft of the internet and i believe uh that i think this is today would be the 11th anniversary of happy ed balls day everyone

Also, I mean, leave it to the Brits for some good trending names. Did you see the whole Lord Pickle thing recently?

No. You know what? I think I might have – now that you say that, I think I saw references to it that I didn't get because I didn't know what was going on.

This guy was some sort of British politician or government official, and his last name is Pickle, and he has the title of Lord. And he actually had gotten something factually wrong about a very serious topic, which was this terrible apartment fire that had killed a lot of people in the UK. and he had somehow misstated just a number around it but he then apologized for it and then just for some reason just the headline that was flying around the world and Twitter was just Lord Pickle apologizes and then the thing is if you look him up he looks exactly like you would think Lord Pickle would look Is he green? Okay, minus his skin tone

I had to ask

Exactly

Susan says happiest of blurs days to my actual and tbtl offspring ruby of course this is uh susan and ruby who we just mentioned earlier this week as dazzling donors they know each other then turns out they they took your advice luke they got together and susan says it's been a privilege and honor to be your mom and watch you grow from the quirky hilarious kid who is pinocchio's best friend to the amazing smart kind woman and fantastic dog mom that you are today can't wait to hit Seattle's finest karaoke rooms with you next month. Love ya, Rubes.

Does Pinocchio's best friend mean that Ruby was like Jiminy Cricket? That she was constantly trying to tell someone not to do a thing because it was probably a bad idea? I'm not sure. I mean, it could also have to do with maybe like a plush doll? I have no idea, man. Okay, well, maybe we'll find out at one of Seattle's finer karaoke bars at some point. Jesse says, please wish happy birthday to Ruby and Susan. These gotta be the same two people, right? No, I find that hard to believe. Okay. Their Blur's Days are only about a week apart. Ruby and Susan were the first tens I met in real life. They're both amazing people, and they're both beautiful singers. I can attest to all of that. A lot of pressure. A lot of pressure now. A lot of talk about the singing of the Thaler twins.

Like a drunken Thaler. We have a couple of messages here for Jen. The first one comes from Kelly. Now, not only are these for the same Jen, but I also noticed a trend that I was not familiar with in Jen's life. But Kelly says, happy Blurze to Jen. I'm so happy that we've remained good friends, even though we now live in different cities. I miss our Friday of the middle week happy hours and going to baseball games, chanting at the Flailing Nationals. Please don't lose. Thank you for all of the laughs, your sage advice, and being such a good friend to me for the better part of a decade. We know Kelly and Jen very well. Long time tens. Happy Blur's Day, Jen, from Kelly.

Then, Andrew, a little mystery is solved. Does our friend Barbara West of San Jose, California, in fact, still go by San Jose Barbie? Or is she now known as Barbara? And I'm thinking San Jose Barbie is just fine because that's how this one starts.

You know I write that, right? I think she just signed it, Barbara. I wrote San Jose Barbie. Wow, that's her name.

Andrew, you really hung me out to dry. That's her name. You really hung me out to dry. Okay, Barbara, I apologize for my colleague Andrew's behavior. Barbara would like to also wish a happy Blur's Day to Jen. We met way back when we were both Bay Area 10s, and then she rudely abandoned me to move east. Nevertheless, I find her endlessly delightful. We have similar sensibilities, and I feel like we could be sisters. If you're looking for a great Twitter follow for about the next three days, until we all run screaming from Twitter. Follow her at Jenlicious.

Jen is a good Twitter follow, but do you notice also what's going on with, like, Jen keeps making friends and then moving away. She's leaving a trail of friends behind.

Or running away from something. Possibly legal entanglements. Also, Andrew, we can't get into this because now the refrigerator person is going to be here, the stove person is going to be here in five seconds, but my sources are telling me musk might not even buy twitter now did you see that i just saw one headline that somebody shared

but when i did a google news search on it i couldn't get um i couldn't get confirmation of

that what is the publication that you're quoting um i saw it being it's not like you know there isn't hard reporting around it but i saw a couple retweets of people who seemed like they might know their stuff like okay you know reporters who generally cover the technology beat or something The thought is if he doesn't – because he basically – he is on the hook for a billion dollars. He paid a billion dollars for the right to acquire the number of shares that would then cost him 43 billion more dollars.

On top of that, okay.

But he's only on the hook for a billion dollars. billion and since he has started doing this stock in tesla has been going down oh yeah and as i mentioned yesterday twitter is not profitable so to spend 44 billion dollars to buy something that is as of yet not profitable as it's driving down the stock price of your other one of your other main things i mean and again being that this guy really is just an attention monster he may have gotten everything he wanted out of this process yes exactly and i'm looking at this quartz article

now and that is a i think a trustworthy publication and it says that he's already broken some of the rules of the contract such as you're not allowed you can tweet about the merger quote so long as tweets do not disparage twitter or any of its representatives and he's been disparaging twitter and its representatives for the past 24 48 hours so anyway you know what we've given him too much

attention i'm just saying genlicious you may get to be on twitter a little bit yeah good follow

okay madeline says happy 10th birthday to august augie is smart funny curious and has been resilient throughout a move from arizona to new jersey living in four temporary apartments attending two new schools and then a diagnosis of mine that's been challenging for our family i'm really sorry to hear that madeline um throughout all of this august has remained sweet generous and thoughtful obacon grandpa clove cashew dad and i are all so proud happy blursday augie hope the

family's doing okay yeah madeline thinking about you hope things go as well as can be with that whole situation sounds like you got augie as a ride or die so that's pretty good uh libby says i'd like to wish a very happy birthday to my five griffin who turned five yesterday yes i purpose delayed it so we could listen together while I try to not crash our rental car on vacation. Like everyone, we've had a rough couple of two years, so we are celebrating in Disney World and getting his, Griffin's, first COVID vaccine.

Yeah! Heck yeah, Griffin. Good job, Griffin.

Try to get a bitchin' band-aid after that. Don't just go with, if they have some Buzz Lightyear or something like that, that's what you gotta go with. None of this, like, just regular old... Minecraft-themed. There you go, Roblox. So I think I mentioned this to you offhandedly. I tried to get it into the TV story I did about this kid, Ryan Kaji, who is, you know, earning all this money on YouTube. It was pretty funny because, you know, this family lives in a pretty spectacular house in Hawaii now. And, you know, they're generating, some estimates are, like, north of $25 million a year with this stuff. And what he was really excited to talk to me about Was that he had $400 of Robux In Roblox So I'm sure our listeners know this So much more than I did But what Ryan explained to me Off camera was that Roblox Is a place you can go sort of like Minecraft But you can make games Have you ever been in Roblox?

I haven't been, it sounds very tempting It sounds up my alley

So you can basically use this platform To design games and then people play the games And if people play the games and like them they can buy things in the game and then you get the money interesting okay i had no idea that's called robux and so he was like could not wait to tell me that he had 400 robux in his from his

roblox designs and i just thought you have no fucking idea kid you give me how many bucks you

have you are you i mean i actually found it to be quite charming because i hopefully griffin has stop listening now i hope that they just right after we wished him a happy fifth birthday they turned the radio dial with a snarl before i used the f word but it was quite it was a bit surreal to talk to somebody who is i mean he's very smart person this ryan kaji kid he's 10 very very intelligent person so like he's incapable of understanding that all this stuff generates a lot of money but i found to be actually quite charming that he was excited that he had his his robe his robux um when you sort of counterpose that to the vast generational wealth that he is also now generating yeah he's been part of generating yeah that's really that's interesting

and sweet there's another game by the way um this is off topic but there's another game that actually our friend toon suggested for me she said hey andrew and this is on a text chain that genevieve was on as well and she said hey have you been because she knows i like to game she and i she actually set up a minecraft realm for us for a while that we were playing around in another she was basically just my sugar mama she basically bought this thing we played together once and then i just was the only one who used it for the next year she eventually stopped paying the bills on it i don't know if she knows that or not but i got kicked out of my realm don't tell her anyway um what i was gonna say was she's like hey andrew have you been playing this new game called um i think it's called like unpacking or something and it's basically i think i saw i think i saw a text about this oh were you on that chain as well like have you played Thank you. this game about unboxing things and unpacking and and setting up a new home and i was just like um that does sound like something i will play but can we please have this conversation on a thread that genevieve is not on because at that time i still had a lot of boxes to unpack and if i were down in my office virtually unpacking virtual boxes but we are surrounded by book boxes that wouldn't have been that wouldn't have been great well it would have been great for the mark the eventual march towards palimony that would have been ironic on the scale of me getting back in

that elevator the next morning it really is really is all right uh let's go ahead and wrap it up because again somebody's gonna come that's the craziest thing in my building that my stove doesn't work anymore and then for the last two days the breaker the fuse keeps blowing on my refrigerator and ice maker which has never happened before but every like two hours i have to go and like trip the fuse again because it's just turned itself up my refrigerator was off for an entire day before i realized it oh man but luckily it was it maintained its coldness because it was just mostly closed but um in fact i think that's a rating on refrigerators i think that's a real

thing that they now have to account for like how well it can maintain how long will this thing

keep the food if you don't open it very much right after you know when you lose power right i got to give this whatever fridge i have here i got to give it um pretty good marks on that because i took me a day to figure out that it because i at some point i was like oh wait the light's not on

in here did oh no did we talk oh yeah we did talk on the show because i've been getting a lot of advice from um listeners about a bunch of our a few of our outlets just went out too and it doesn't seem to be a breaker issue and one of them was our downstairs refrigerator situation and um we actually uh you know like we're on these long wait lists for like official electricians who like work at you know shops or whatever but i will i will i hope it's okay to say this our buddy kirk long time listener of tbtl um and friend of the show texted the texted me yesterday and said um hey use my guy colby here's his number he's free on saturday he already had checked or something with them and this is how veves and i like doing business anyway just like kind of like you know finding the right person for you as opposed to necessarily going through um oh doing like i did

the other day and going through a website which i don't have bad things to say about it but let's just say it's advertised widely it used to have list in the name and now it's just a name and uh oh yeah okay yeah because i was like trying to find somebody for a particular part of what i'm trying to do in this house that i bought and again it may actually it may ultimately have actually worked out but what i realized midway through was oh this is just going to transmit my information to a bunch of people who are, from their end, paying a subscription service to get leads. Uh-huh. Interesting, yeah. So I'll keep you posted on how that whole thing goes, but this sounds like the direct... Hey, Kirk, if you know anyone who wants to build a deck in southern Washington, hit me up.

I might have a guy for you on that, but anyway. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to this. Yeah, so far we've had really good luck with another fella who's just been kind of like doing handyman stuff for us and kind of like rebuilding... rebuilding like during a time that you can't get contractors i love having these relationships with like just human beings who are just kind of on their grind yeah all right well

that's gonna be uh that's gonna be it for today's program but i have some amazing news we are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio i'm gonna do the show and then i'm gonna jump on the road and speed down to eugene where we're doing the show doing live wire at the Holt Center. Sorry, Andrew.

Just keep promoting it.

Sorry to promote my other sheep on this here flock. So we'll see you tomorrow. Until then, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Aloha means hello and goodbye goodbye!

Power out!