Muse

Okay, the computer is tabulating. Oh, you got category I9C3G6.

I9C3G6. Is that as good as it sounds?

You have a robust sense of self and are well-suited to leadership positions, characteristics, strength, determination, tenacity.

Yes, I suppose that's accurate. They do call me Tenacious Ray down at the country club because for the past 10 years I've been suing them for discrimination.

TBTN! bbtl i love your imagination and your imaginary show i've got to have that thing on 24 7 i love

the patter we can save any segment we've done in the past okay remember that segment where we did the world's fattest pets glenn lost all the tapes we made that work you mean when we got those two rabbits and we tied them together to look like a big fat one yeah people loved it They bought it.

I see you exhaling, sir. We're going to be with you in just a moment. You've got to be patient, okay? We're very, very sorry. Our apologies. We apologize to you. You will not have to wait that much longer at all.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's an audiophile's nightmare. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. As Jay would say, he's got flow. Coming to you today from Oceanside, California, perched just off of the Strand. California got sunshine. Where it's actually not that sunny, although I will tell you this morning, I was looking out at folks that were doing real early morning jog stuff. You know, they were really out there at the absolute sort of crack of dawn. And I was getting ready to go out there myself and do a little run. But people were bundled up. Looking at the amount of clothing and gloves being worn by the locals who were out exercising on this little stretch on the beach called The Strand. When did you find time to eat a diaper that you found on the beach? Folks were dressed like parkas. And I didn't bring any stuff like that because I was going to California where I heard they got sunshine. So I walk out of the hotel, and I am just ready to just be hit by just an absolute blast of Arctic air. And it's, I don't know, 68 degrees. It was balmy when I went outside here in Oceanside, California. So even though it's not that sunny, it is nice and warm-ish here in Southern California, where we are very excited to be bringing you episode 3674 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Tried to get to this story on Friday. We ran out of time, but there's a quite interesting story.

Now that's interesting.

Interesting story of a guy who was staying in a lot of different hotels, speaking of hotels, and noticed that he would use a teeny amount of the bar of soap that they had hermetically sealed for his use and thought, boy, that's a waste. There's got to be something better we can do with that. And he figured it out, and they are doing something better with it, which we want to talk about. Also, some news from down here in the greater San Diego area. The San Diego City Council is trying to crack down on scooters and the danger around those rental scooters.

Call Kenny Loggins because you're in the danger zone.

This occurs to me because it was in San Diego where I first saw, I believe, if memory serves, which it rarely does for me on this program. It's where I first saw just mass embrace of that kind of short-term scooter rental culture. And I remember thinking, because it was like 11 o'clock at night, I was probably in gas lamp, and watching drunk people pilot these scooters on the streets along with cars, I thought, this cannot go on unregulated. And it turns out it can't, and they're trying to do something about it down here, so we will talk about that. And we'll definitely talk about this, because I need to process it. I did something so unforgivable and embarrassing at the airport yesterday, getting on my flight to come down here to San Diego. So I'll probably have to unburden myself of that with you, the listeners, and my friend Andrew Walsh. Speaking of which, he's the longest running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. By his own admission, today he said he has a thermos full of coffee and nothing to say. But I don't believe that, by the way. He's joining us right now from the Sweet Cream District of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

I'll come up with something. Just, you know, it's Monday, it's early. I actually did, as the intro tape was rolling there, Luke, I had a thought that I wanted to run by you. And then it occurred to me, eh, this is more for the part of the show later on.

in the week, maybe buried deep into an hour or two where you and I forget we actually have an audience and we just start talking to each other.

You're saying Monday morning, six minutes in, is not the time to introduce this particular line of inquiry?

Yet I'm going to anyway, is my point. Let's just kick off Monday pretending that it's three o'clock on a Thursday, if we can, and just skip to the part where you and I ignore the audience.

Just do that move. Do that move that people do where you go, it's my Thursday. It's my Thursday. Hey, how you doing today? Not bad. It's my Thursday, so I've got to get through tomorrow.

Today's my Tuesday. Here's what I'm thinking. I heard something in that little intro montage package that I put together, I don't know, several years ago. There is a voice that we heard in there, a caller calling in the TBTL line, I assume. I've had this thing kicking around for years. I mean, this might go back to 2012 or something. And I don't know who it is, but I was just listening to it. Let's play it again here.

TBTL. I love your imagination and your imaginary show.

That's not a drunk version of our friend Aaron Roden, is it? Play it again.

TVTL. I love your imagination and your imaginary show.

It's just at the very end it sounded like him a little bit.

You hear it? I can hear it, but I don't know if that's because you've now put the image in my mind.

Yeah, I've poisoned the well.

there's a thing going around tiktok actually that becca showed me that's really funny which is it's sort of like ruin a song by thinking this person is singing it and i can't give you a specific example but what what'll happen is it's playing a song that we're all well familiar with that we know the singer to be whomever and then it'll just flash a picture of like um uh who could it possibly be like uh i don't want to i was going to say homer simpson but we talked a lot about the simpsons on friday or at least buff homer it'll just show you a picture of a of a real or cartoon character who is like okay i i forget what the song was but then it just flashed a picture of elmer fudd okay and then all i could hear was elmer fudd singing the song really was

it yeah because i think what would be an elmer not tub thumping what would be a what would be

an album or fuddy song that's the thing that's why this is you hang off you've you've started us down a road that i am now taking us further down called the not interesting radio but but it's funny how i guess the reason i bring it up is because now that you said it might be our friend road and from we'll mention uh you blew it from the stack of dimes universe uh which is a fun podcast where camaro kev and road and watch blu-rays and analyze them um but now that you said Of course, it sounds like it to me, but I don't know if that's just the power of suggestion or not.

It's funny that Rodin doesn't have a nickname. Everybody's got a nickname. I guess I don't have a – you and I don't have nicknames either. But a lot of people –

I call you Walshki behind your back.

Oh, behind my back? You can say that in front of my face and in front of my back. Can you do something in front of somebody's back? Speaking of songs – actually, we should get into your misadventures. But I did find myself with an earworm this week, and I swear to God this is a true story. i was going around the house ever since we talked about the fact that the song that i always thought was sweet dreams are made of these once we recently realized that you and me both don't feel bad of this i honestly was going around the house singing this and then genevieve laughed and i realized that she could hear me and what i was doing was singing sweet dreams are made of this who am i to disagree that is literally how i there's something like i do that i think that we did that maybe as a joke on the show and then i just forgot and my brain just turned into sweet dreams are made of this who am i to disagree and like that's the song for me now

i do versions of that which again see previous inability to give you a specific example but i know that exact move which is like just singing a song in a silly way where then you are forced to change the rhyme and then you do and then that starts to sound okay to you if you if you wear the mask long enough as it pertains to Disagrist that'll just be the song to you now which I don't I again I I put that squarely back on Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart I believe is the other person in your rhythmix yeah that's I feel like that well you know why I know that guy's name I can't believe I'm gonna I think I may have mentioned this on the show before this is a little bit inside the baseball of of local uh musical booking i guess and by that by that i mean local to seattle i heard a story that this um the the not annie lennox part of um of eurythmics had had a show scheduled in a seattle theater it may have been the paramount i think and that it had sold at some point a month out or two weeks out or something it had sold four tickets oh my goodness. And so they canceled it.

and that's my living nightmare when it comes to events that i am the host of which is whether it's tbtl or more like livewire although we had a great crowd in eugene on friday thank you to everybody who came out it's nice to see some tens out there uh and and uh so that was awesome but my living nightmare is that we will get booked to do a show somewhere and we will sell so few tickets that they will have to cancel it that hasn't happened yet but i constantly think of the other dude from Eurythmics when I'm feeling that kind of fear because the story I heard from

someone on the inside was it literally happened I am surprised that at some point in the mid-2000s a bunch of quote-unquote other guys didn't get together to form a like non-super group like you could have had Andrew Ridgely from Wham right the guy from the Eurythmics there's no way you have to

look up Andrew Ridgely or did you know I just know that one for some reason Andrew W Monday isn't that

a weird thing that that's in my head i was talking to my friends this weekend um and we're talking about i know i can't even think of his real name and i and i made a carlos danger joke and i was like there are so many what's carlos dangerous real name um uh anthony anthony um wiener we're

talking about anthony wiener and remember his carlos danger that was his one of his like that

was his online handle that was his online handle was carlos danger how would i forget that how

you forget Andrew Ridgely and I would forget Carlos Danger that's much more evocative also

not great that in this context here and me retelling the story I actually had to struggle with Anthony Weiner but I remembered Carlos Danger and that was my point when I was talking to my friends like I made a quick Carlos Danger joke dipped in with it dropped it people laughed and I was like hey good timing Walsh this is I'm just judging myself in the back of the head and I'm just like sure why Carlos Danger of all of the shit that I can't remember on a daily basis I mean, just the first names of incredibly popular actors and musicians, and the fact that I didn't know who were the two musicians named John that I would get confused. John Legend and John Mayer. The fact that I thought those guys were the same guys for like a half a century, or I should say a half a decade. Yet Carlos Danger, right there, front of mind, ready to go. any moment anybody mentions anthony wiener i'm there with a carlos danger joke that doesn't seem

fair that doesn't seem right we don't get to pick no the things that our brain remembers that's that's what's i mean actually you probably do there's probably a book about it in the hudson booksellers at the san diego airport that i'll be walking past seven tips to only remember what you want by brene brown i'm sure there's peace and love to brene brown i know a lot of people love her i don't actually i just picked that name because brene brown is very popular right now for these, I would say, relationship-related and sort of self-improvement podcasts, which probably are great. I don't think that's fair. It's more like Seven Ways to Maximize Your Brain to Remember What You Want by Dr. Oz. That would be more accurate.

Speaking of traveling, I feel like I am extending the part where I have nothing to say, where we are ignoring the part where you actually have something to say.

Well, that's why I knew when you said that you have a thermos full of coffee, nothing to say. I knew that wasn't true. Well, we could always say something. had nothing to say on the show oh well that's a totally different standard is that the standard now it's got to be good

now I don't want to if you wanted to talk about this later in the show I don't want to force you into it but I am interested in hearing you said you made some sort of huge travel faux pas

or something yeah I just did something I'm really embarrassed let's do this let's do a break early break wow well then we'll just have it out of the way

I'm congratulating that was not me that don't no i think that's your approval voice yeah you should hear me when i'm disappointed oh god no i don't please no i think daddy no i'm sorry in the clear one more time what uh no the advertisers will be happy the sales people will be happy this is great let's get to the let's sell some shit

okay let's do it and then we'll be back uh with the story of what i did that was humiliating in the airport yesterday coming up here on tbtl we was hoping for some razzle dazzle razzle dazzle

That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle.

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

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the wonderful, generous folks who are dazzling us with their donations each month. That is, of course, vital to this thing occurring five days a week. Speaking of which, we will be in Denver in just a few weeks. Andrew earmuffs I don't think you need to hear this We're going to be in Denver In three weeks

Do you want to check We should do this thing where you check my heart rate Before you say those words Or maybe my blood pressure and then you check it again Right after you say those words That's why I know

I think we got this There's a lot

I's to dot and T's to cross and things to figure out. So for you, the listeners, I'm letting you know that this is happening so you can all tune in. It's going to be a fun week. Every time I say that, though, it does take one year off of Andrew's life, unfortunately.

I like, I mean, the optimistic way of putting it is that we have I's to dot. Like, have we drawn the straight part of the I yet or the T?

We are in good shape. I know. I was just trying to be funny.

I was trying to be funny.

I saw a note in a Google doc from our colleague Emily saying it's rare we're this far ahead on this stuff, which I credit you and our colleague John and Emily for. I get none of the credit for this, but I was actually feeling I was feeling like this is, you know, certainly you have more to worry about from the technical standpoint, which I think is my guess is that's a lot of what's kind of keeping you up at night. I love how we're thanking someone for donating money, mentioning we're going to ask for more money in three weeks, and now just talking about how stressed we are about asking for money. Let's just thank Carolyn Carlin in Edina, Minnesota. Edina. Edina?

How? Edina. It is definitely Edina. Let's call the whole thing off. That's it. Show's over. Okay. I wasn't doing that to be funny. I think it's Edina. It's always a topic of conversation, and then I can never remember it. But I do know Carlos Danger lives there. That's all I know.

Yes. He lives in, oh gosh, I wish I could think of another suburb of Minneapolis other than Edina. Now that the last college bill has been paid, wow, Carolyn, congratulations. That's really something. And the mortgage's history, whoa, we're all moving into Carolyn's house is really the takeaway from this. I thought it was time to step up and become a dazzler I've been with these beloved dummies since just after Luke and Jen got booted off Cairo as one of the early wait-wait recruits I see that's how Carolyn heard about this TBTL and this amazing community have been friendos in good times and supporters in bad times I'm still rocking the Facebook lifestyle and love our Stens page I mean Carolyn you're not alone I believe that is still the most active place for TBTL fans to hang out wouldn't you say the the facebook page i think so yeah i mean i haven't been over there in quite some time but i think it's a good active community um carolyn continues uh i've been thinking hard about what i want to plug and here's what i want to say check out unicef usa.org unicef is so much more than the trick-or-treat boxes although carolyn i will mention that the one time i was allowed to go trick-or-treating as a child and it was short short-lived i went exactly to one house and the woman was dressed like a witch and i got so scared i ran back home but had i continued that trick-or-treating journey i would have been collecting for unicef because that was my parents other deal was i had to collect for you unicef and i had to be a character from the bible but weirdly i was a roman soldier they were the ones yeah that's the wrong side of history they were the ones it's like you have to dress up from something from this important history to us but dress up as the bad guys you have to be something from star wars but it has to be a stormtrooper i want to be pontius pilot oh that's taken okay roman soldier um unicef they're on the ground in war-torn locations they're helping the most vulnerable they work for equity for girls supporting access to education and fighting sex trafficking they even work to help the 230 million children across the world without a birth certificate get formal documentation so they can be legally recognized and access services i never even thought about that i mean i don't have a birth certificate but only because i keep losing it i was gonna ask you

that one was issued i didn't want to make light of this but i saw a meme the other day that said like me trying to fall asleep and then it was like me remembering at 3 a.m that i don't know where my birth certificate is and the person was like wide awake i actually i guess this wouldn't be surprising given my personality i didn't know where that stuff was for a long time but now i do know where like birth certificate social security card that kind of stuff that's all in a secure location i mean it's not that secure to be honest with you things fall out of this folder sometimes but i know where the folder is i'm not even joking um do you know where your stuff is luke do you know where your birth certificate and social security card is i think

it's in a storage unit in bellingham okay pretty sure maybe i brought it down to portland and put it in i mean it was i will say this when i was living in bellingham there was a file in a filing cabinet that was important docs and it was in there um i do have my passport my passport is in in portland that that made it yeah you need um my birth certificate is weird though because you know it doesn't say luke burbank it says luke kelly oh yeah and because when i was born my mom was not married to walter burbank my dad and so i have my mom's maiden name on there and my name was never legally i was never legally adopted uh by We'll be right back. walter and my name was never legally changed to burbank there is some sort of common use clause where if you just use a name long enough it and in enough different sort of circumstances it just becomes your name but i do remember getting your jesus yes that's right exactly

the real luke burbank uh i met in nam while traveling yeah no it was like 2006 yes yeah

We were both staying at a seaside resort But I do remember the first time That I actually got a passport I had to take my birth certificate And then I had to take some kind of yearbook And also classwork From my elementary school days I had to basically prove to them That over the course of my life People have generally called me Luke Burbank

Maybe mail Did you have to bring a utility bill

Not for that one And I thought the yearbook thing was really weird, that that was something they would accept. Yeah. Because I remember being like, well, how do I prove to you that this has been my name? And they said, well, bring in a yearbook, and we can look. And they literally, like, looking at a picture of me from, like, the Jesus Creek yearbook or whatever, and then they scroll over in the Bs, Burbank, Luke Burbank. That looks like a young version. Okay. And now it's fine because I'm in the system. But the first time out, it was a little complicated to prove that I exist.

But did you have to prove that you are still friends forever with some of your friends?

I also had to prove that I did stay cool all summer, not just part of the summer. See you in the fall. Yeah, exactly. To wrap things up from Carolyn's message, UNICEF is one of the best ways I know to work to end global loneliness, as Jen used to say. We still consider that the mission of this show, Carolyn. We're still working on global loneliness. thanks to Luke and Andrew and all of their support staff for bringing us together well thank you Carolyn for supporting the show financially and supporting the show by being a listener all these years and congratulations on paying that college off and that house off that's I mean I'll see you at the casino I mean you just right now I mean you just you're just farting through silk and I'm standing over here impressed by it so thank you Carolyn appreciate you Maestro

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

We've also got to thank listener Schaefer Hall down there in Austin, Texas. Schaefer says, hi, guys. Three years ago, I used this platform to announce the birth of the front page. Yes, I remember that well. That's Schaefer's bar and restaurant in Austin. A year later, I used my dazzling donor message to announce that the front page was closed for lockdown, but not forever. Last year, I told y'all we were open again, but a long way from normal. This year, I'm super excited to tell y'all that our little cafe and bar in East Austin is nearly fully operational. The last few weeks, we've seen business equal to and even exceeding the before times. That deserves one more ding. we have a standing offer for any tbtl fans to receive a discount here but unfortunately i am sometimes away and my employees get confused so i wanted to give y'all my email address if any tbtl fans think they might head this way email me and i will send you a gift certificate god schaefer this is why the front page in austin texas is um thriving andrew despite the unfortunate timing of going into business right before a pandemic it's this kind of personal service. Schaefer says if you email me I will send you a gift certificate consider another thank you to those who donate to TBTL and those who wish they could much love to everyone on both sides of the TBTL order of operations and now can we just give are we just going to give Schaefer's email address out

it's a business address

Schaefer that's S-H-A-F-E-R Schaefer at the front page dot pub see that's a good use

dot pub right? yeah that's good Now, I think this is curious here. It says, use the promo code MURDERRENO, which I'm not exactly sure why. Yeah, that is something that must be an Austin thing or something. Yeah, I guess so. Huh. Anyway, but yeah. So there you go. And by the way, did you spell Schaefer? Because it's spelled different ways. Okay, sorry. I wasn't thinking about my joke. Do you want me to quit? I can just quit. No, I don't. I love it.

Andrew, this is just the kind of relatable content that folks like Schaefer donate for. And we're 100% sure that it's Schaefer at the front page dot pub.

Okay, good. S-H-A-F-E-R, since you didn't spell it, Luke. I'm sorry. I'm really Monday-ing out here. I hear it in my voice. I'm just... See, I think it's in your head.

I think you sound, to me, no, to me, you sound awake. You sound lucid. You sound engaged. Okay, good.

But I do know, and I appreciate this, you talk often on the show about how kind of Monday morning you're not sometimes loving how you feel your brain is working. And we do the show typically at about 9 a.m. But to be totally honest, between the two of us, one of us kind of checks in five, ten minutes after nine, and then we kind of chat, and then we kind of warm things up. And then it's around 9.30 on a good day or maybe later, we're actually ready to start really recording this. But today, because I'm down here in California, and I have to go to this TV shoot after this, we were like dialing up at the crack of nine, and we were getting right into it. So I could imagine that that's adding to your sense of whatever it is that bedevils you on Mondays. But I'm not hearing it is what I'm trying to tell you.

Okay, good. I'm glad to hear that. Thank you. Yeah, because I am in my head, and what's going on in there is kind of marshy and mushy.

It's not apparent to the rest of us for what that's worth. Thank you to both of our donors today for making the show possible. Hello and welcome to Top Story. I will try not to belabor this too much. I've already made – I've promoted this way out of sort of relation to how interesting it's going to be. But here's what happened yesterday, Andrew. I got to the Portland airport. I was flying down here to San Diego. And because of my status with the airline, when there's one of those big, long lines to get on the plane, like so, for instance, if I get to my flight and they're already boarding and there's one of those interminable lines, I am allowed technically because of being what they call gold 75K. there's there's two little there's two lines actually and one is for the hoi polloi and one is for people that are in first class or if i'm not in first class which i wasn't in first class yesterday gold 75k you are allowed to sort of skip around the line this is something that i always i kind of go back and forth on because i don't like availing myself of that of that particular sort of vip line what i like to do is just wait around in the waiting area and then they announce okay we're gonna board people with young children and also we're gonna board active duty military and then they go we're gonna board first class and we're gonna board group a so i'm always in group a because of aforementioned status so i try to just at that point get in the line and then

just get on the airplane i will also say there's something terrible about that name gold 75k it just sounds terrible it just sounds terrible like it's not smooth and it also sounds like it does like do you want to wear that crown it does sort of sound like i don't actually they send you

luggage tags that say your name and say gold 75k on it yeah and i do not put those luggage tags on my bag um you know if you ever see somebody with one of those and it's on like a to me some kind of to me branded luggage you know that is a road warrior anytime i see someone with to me luggage i'm like yep i see you i hear you that's like the most like if you're going to be getting on and off of airplanes constantly that's like the sort of road warrior business luggage of choice anyway that's not an ad for to me i'm just an observation so generally i just try to like get you know get on the airplane when they say that my level of whateverness is allowed to get on the airplane every once in a while i roll up and there's a crazy long line and i just don't feel like waiting in it like again because i've already started boarding and so i will go use that other kind of like vip thing which makes me feel kind of gross but not so gross that i don't use it every once in a while so yesterday i'm at pdx i am my flight is delayed because that's a thing that's happening constantly in the world right now it will be a miracle andrew i think i have about five flights in five or six days this week it will be a miracle if i make it to each and every location this week as planned because it just means none of the flights can get canceled on me and without a you know possible replacement so uh the flight is delayed a bit so i walk down uh to get some uh soup to eat so i'm sitting and i'm eating some soup and then i look up and i realize that oh everyone's lining up now and so i finish up my soup and i walk up to the the gate at pdx and it's there's like this really long line now like stretching out into the concourse and i sort of this is where my like this is where the part of my brain and my personality that i don't really like very much really kicks into high gear because i'm i know that the people that i'm now standing behind in line are in like group z like they're just they're they're like it's going to be forever before they board

board but i don't want to start asking everyone what group they're in but i also feel like you know what's so much of my life is impacted by all this travel that i'm doing the one upside is i get to get on the airplane when i want to get on the airplane this is what's going on in my mind do i jump to the front of the line or not the other thing that's not helping is this particular gate c6 at pdx doesn't have the little other lane so i'm now i'm like asking folks i'm like hey what group uh what group is boarding right now i tried to generalize it i'm like standing in the concourse like by the mcdonald's and i'm like hey what group is boarding and they're like uh we think it's like a and first class or something and so i'm like oh okay so then i walk i just i just go for it andrew i walk up to the sort of where the gate agent is taking you know checking people's tickets and there's not even a special lane but i just stand there kind of next to somebody and i wait for a few more people to go through and finally this very kindly um older woman says oh here you can you can slide in her i was like oh thank you so much she goes i guess your your group already boarded i go yeah i think they did i was having some soup or something and so she laughs line

are like there's one of those gold 75k rich boys just coming in here smelling like free soup just leaving a cloud of free soup smell behind them as they cut to the front of the line they have your

number and well that's the thing though i don't think that they even yeah knew no but this is the thing yeah because they because there was no like special lane all they saw was a random guy walk to the front of the line and be like yeah don't you know who i am i've seen that before

though and i just assume like i mean there's all kinds of you know i just i'm glad i yeah honestly

in this case i would rather that it was clear to people that this is why i'm doing it as opposed to i just think the rules don't apply to me i'm just going to go to the front of the line because why not so i kind of make a silly joke to this nice lady who's letting me and i'm feeling deeply self-conscious about this whole thing and so then but i just like okay fine i'm going to scan my ticket and then i'll get in and i scan the ticket and there's an error on my ticket and i'm like oh you got to be kidding me now i'm this guy i'm holding the lineup and i'm like can you just scan it again and the woman scans it again i go i go uh i'm i tell her my seat number or something And she scans it one more time and she goes, oh, I realized the problem, sir. This isn't your flight. Oh, Jesus. It was a flight to Hawaii, Andrew. That was in the C6 gate. My gate was C5. It was yet to board. Everyone is still just sitting around waiting. So I now get to turn around and walk past this entire line of people over to the C5 waiting area. and then red-faced sit down amongst the people who are on my flight who have not even begun to board.

Did the Charlie Brown music play as you walked away? Did you hunch over and drop your shoulders and just kind of like do the Charlie Brown walk?

Andrew, when I tell you that I have not been that humiliated in a long time. Oh, I'll fix that on the trip. And not only was I just doing this unnecessary thing of cutting to the front of the line when I could have just waited, I didn't it wasn't like I didn't have a pressing situation as to why I needed to be on the airplane. Other than I just didn't feel like waiting in this huge, long line. But not only had I done the kind of annoying move of trying to go get on the plane first, but it wasn't even my flight. Then I had to walk past everyone, and then I was just trying to laugh it off. And I also have my AirPods, and I kind of can't hear what's going on. I'm just disoriented. I'm embarrassed. I want to crawl into a hole. And then I have to go back over to my people, the people that are flying to San Diego, who all saw this unfold. Also, thanks, no one, for saying, sir, sir. It's not their job. But still, I didn't walk back over to my people and just sit down and then just stare into my stare, a hole into my phone. Andrew, just like Superman's like x-ray vision into my phone. My phone just started smoking from how hard I was concentrating on it so that I didn't have to look at anyone in my shame.

You know, I don't like to give you a lot of cover for your bullshit, but I don't really think this is bullshit. Like for a couple of reasons here, like, you know, in other words, like I'm not looking to bust your chops, but I'm also not looking to necessarily just like. fix your chops either but uh so in all earnestness here like as a person who especially recently i fly so infrequently now and i'm going out it feels like last minute trips or whatever it feels like the last couple of times i've flown um i've been like in the very last seat i'm the last you know group to board like just the you know just the worst situations which are not you know they're livable but um when i see somebody walk to the front of the line and they move aside and let that person through

I assume that that person is allowed to go through. I don't, even as judgy as I can be, I don't judge that person. I'm like either, you know, like everybody's got their own like situation. Either you're a first class person or you belong to some sort of, you know, like loyalty group or you're a pilot and you're deadheading. Or like, I don't know if I use that correctly. Like, I just assume like otherwise, they're not actually, they're not letting you through unless you're allowed to be there. Now, in this case, I understand it didn't work out well. You held up the line for probably what felt like an hour, but was probably about, I don't know, 45 to 90 seconds. And also, this is where I'm going to become a real jerk. I guarantee you that 98% of those people who were possibly watching this unfold and probably weren't even watching this unfold, but we're just waiting. They're all doing it wrong anyway. I few things irritate me as much as people like kind of milling about before their group is called, but like wanting to be in pole position so that when their group is called, they can be right in line. And it just it is one of I cannot believe airline. It's not even I shouldn't blame the airlines. It's just human behavior. It's American behavior. And it drives me bananas like sit down, stay out of the way when they call group C, then get up and board the plane. The fact that everybody's like, well, they just called a so C is coming up soon. So I need to stand here. I'm not in line. I'm next to the line. I'm sort of by the line. I've got tons of shit like it's just like, no, just clear the way for the people who have been called like I that is way more of a bigger offense to me and also holds up, I believe, the line more because it creates that confusion of like, well, what group are you? oh, I'm group C, but they're only loading A right now.

Yeah, I agree with you that that is annoying behavior, but I also have to admit that that kind of behavior is much more in my personality than yours. I think you tend to be really conscientious about other folks' experience, which is one of the many things I admire about you, and you're just like, you're never going to be jockeying for position um if if it even raises slightly the chance that you're going to be inconveniencing other people um and i like that about you i don't like that about myself that i'm one of those people who's like okay group a i'm sitting there like resenting people with children i'm like really you get to board first with what with children like wow you're i mean my brain goes to terrible places because what happens is if what i'm trying to avoid the whole time is having to quote unquote pull rank so if i am just like sitting okay it's the waiting area i'm just sitting and they go all right um we're gonna start boarding first class okay i'm not in first class but i know that after that they're gonna say group a now my feeling is if i wait for them to say group a and again Andrew, you're right in this. You are right. But I'm telling you what my defective brain is telling me. If I sit there and then they say group A and then the group A starts boarding and then for some reason they say group B, now I'm going to be behind group B and I'm going to have to either just like wait and wait in a longer line or I'm going to have to go up to the front and flash my credentials. So I am like as soon as they're like boarding first class, I'm I'm standing at my seat. I'm not blocking anyone, but I am like I'm all my bag is, you know, all closed up. I'm standing. I am like ready to get over there. Like I'm I am overly anxious about making sure that I get in there when it's allowed.

I mean, I definitely I'm alert in those situations. Like I'm not like, oh, whatever. I'm group B. I'll just load with group D. It doesn't matter. Like I want to get in there because I want to. I'm always overly concerned about them.

I'm group B for beta. You know what? Just do the flight without me. I don't want to be in a house.

Well, that's the other thing, too. All of these things could be avoided if we just never left our house, which is something that I've been working on a lot lately. Interesting strategy. Interesting strategy, indeed. Group A, your popcorn is ready. I'm group A. It's my popcorn. It's my house. So, anyway. Yeah, I just think that, like, I don't like holding up the line. That's for sure. Like when I'm in the security line, I can't I can't I can't claim to be the fastest, but I go as fast as I goddamn can. You know what I mean? Like shoes are untied, if not off. Like, you know, all this stuff is out of my pockets and in my jacket pocket as far as keys, wallet, you know, all of that stuff. I'm like ready to go. And so even at the gate, I'm like, you know, sitting in my seat ready for them to call my my group. And then I will get in that line and hopefully like avoid the gate checking of my bags. Um, so, you know, I'm not just like, I'm not just like the dude in the big Lebowski, just like whatever, but like also it just does no good to mill about. It's like, it's torture for everybody.

I know. I, I, I agree with you on this. It just, like I said, there's the part of me that is the least chill. uh and the part of me that i there's a lot of part of my a lot of parts of me that i'm not a fan of but near the top of the list is this like weird like need to make sure that i'm not being inconvenienced or delayed even ever so slightly like because again i don't need to repeat it and i want to talk about soap so uh we can move on but i just i wish that i was able because also the other thing is i had checked my bag andrew this is where the story gets even more like lame for me is I had actually checked my larger bag because I'm traveling for a week so I had to pack a suitcase that was sufficiently large that I checked it so all I had is my backpack so at that point when all you have is your backpack there's no danger of it not of there not being room for your backpack because you can put it under your seat so and who likes to sit on the airplane for any extra time there's zero logic to it at that point I have a backpack and the rest of my afternoon to just wait in this line and get on the airplane I'm listening to the Mariners, actually. Like, everything was fine in my world, but there is this little voice, this ugly voice that's like, yeah, but you could be at the front of this line. And then when I give in to that voice, and it turns out that it's not even my flight. That's not making me feel good. Speaking of travel, though, I saw this article in The Hustle the other day, and I thought it was really interesting, the surprising afterlife of used hotel soap. So let me give you some data from this Hustle piece. And I don't actually know. The Hustle is like a newsletter that I get, and it's all biz-related. So I don't actually know who. I was wondering.

This is written. I have some questions about this story, but go ahead.

Well, I don't know who to credit. Maybe it's better I'm not crediting this specific person.

Oh, Zachary Crockett is the person who wrote this.

Oh, there you go. Okay. So one thing is this sort of, what do they call this, the USA Today? Infographic? I thought this infographic was kind of curious. what are the most commonly used hotel amenities so what are the of the freebies in the hotel

what are we using including on this list are things like the closet too you know what i mean and and yeah and internet and what have you yeah at the bottom of the list and this would this

would track andrew with with you with what you and i have said i think at times apparently only 10 percent of the people who are staying in hotels uh from one to two nights the amenity of room service only 10 percent of people use room service and did you see how that breaks down

as far as how people are using room service like breakfast no i didn't is that also in this it's at the very very oh right right right go ahead that's real this is interesting right breakfast

11 that makes sense i feel like room service breakfast kind of makes the most sense because you wake up maybe you're feeling kind of decadent depending on what you know you're doing maybe you um are celebrating something an anniversary or the idea of like getting room service breakfast that kind of makes logical sense to me it feels like a huge splurge but i think it's the meal i

would be most likely to order yeah i could sort i would think dinner because i growing up you would see room service in tv shows or movies and it'd be like oh you know it'd be a dinner thing where They pull off the cloche, a word I learned from TBTL, and there's your fancy dinner meal for your date or whatever's going on. But the way you describe it, actually, breakfast does make sense, too, because it's like if you're visiting a city, you're going out to a restaurant for dinner, probably. But you might just want to sleep in a little bit late, and you don't have to go to a nice place and have a breakfast experience.

particularly if you're with another person that to me feels like a fun kind of you know we're in the bathrobes from this hotel and we're like drinking orange juice and someone brought it to us again that's a very fun and bougie kind of little um celebration i don't know probably sorry i'm just fly just tried to fly in my mouth i tried to blow it away and i blew into the microphone that's what that sounds like um uh they say though that lunch is the most ordered room service lunch is 16 which i'm kind of shocked by that seems like the least it's not celebratory it's just practical i guess maybe you're just working in the hotel room but i feel like if you're on vacation like i'm here in oceanside it's beautiful if i was visiting i'll tell you what i'm going somewhere else for lunch i'm out i'm walking i'm on the beach i mean who's ordering lunch room service

Is there any chances people who've slept in really late And it's like technically lunch I'm not joking We kind of missed our opportunities We're here to be lazy bones Let's be lazy bones Sleep in really late Get a midday meal Then get our day started I don't know

I guess I mean we could spend two shows just on this infographic Because it's just absolutely fascinating 27% of people

people use the bathrobe 61 of people use the hairdryer more people use the bathrobe than the

pool i i want to be surprised by that but maybe i shouldn't be i also another subset of this data

would be do you have kids with you or not yeah that's true if you have kids i bet the use of the pool goes to the almost the top of the list but all of which is to say the most used thing in the hotel room, according to wherever this data came from, is the packaged soap. 86% of people use the packaged soap.

Even more than the people who use the TV or the closet.

People are coming in, they're walking right past the TV, and they're washing their hands. Yes, right. That's what we can take away from this. But I've had this thought many times. I feel, particularly if it's a bougie hotel and they've got, you know, some kind of real high-end soap that's, you know, got some fancy name and fancy smell i will take it out of the you know whatever the seal like the plastic is or the box and i use it and i i legitimately always feel slightly bad because i know that this 99 of this soap is going to be left tomorrow when i check out and it's here for me to use it but it feels wasteful to me because i know it's just going to get thrown out did you know um a three ounce bar of soap you can wash your hands a hundred times with a three ounce bar of soap and what is three ounces is that like a hotel size i'm guessing um i'm looking like now i'm not i'm not good with volumes of things or sizes of things but anyway uh this article talks about a guy named sean seepler who was traveling in 2008 he was staying at a hotel in minneapolis actually and he was noticing the same thing i was talking about which is that he would you know use this soap for one night and or maybe the next morning and there'd be a lot of it left and so he called the front desk and asked them what you know what they were doing with the leftover soap and uh they said we're throwing it out and so he asked if he could uh have it and uh they said sure Although I don't think he got it – I don't think he actually took the soap from that hotel. I think it was a little bit later when he was home in Ohio – or, excuse me, Orlando, where he called a local Holiday Inn and said, like, hey, could I come have your leftover soap you're going to throw out? And they said yes. And then he called, like, six other hotels, and all of the hotels were like, absolutely. I'm a little surprised, by the way, that the hotel – I mean, there's – I don't know why they would want to hang on to or where they'd want to keep throwing all of their used soap out. but also someone says can i have all your used soap doesn't a red flag go up a little bit yeah

a red flag goes up for me um in this article at this point now i'm not claiming that all that this isn't this this story isn't true obviously this is all demonstrably true that this guy ended up kind of creating an organization around this spoiler alert but like the way it was written there where this guy has this idea and so he starts going around he goes to a hotel and he says hey can i have all of your old soap and they say yes like enthusiastically i'm like no that's not how that happened like i don't know if we're just telling it that way to speed up the story but like i do not think that hotels like you know what tell me if i'm wrong if you work in the hotel industry i could be loud wrong about this but if you go to a hotel and you say hey can i start taking your garbage soap they would have to say well we'd have to implement a new plan to separate out the soap from the rest of the garbage i don't think that the housekeepers unless they already had some other system where they were separating out the soap and it was going somewhere which this article doesn't address there's no way these large hotels started saying okay we have a guy he wants our soap hey everybody who's in the housekeeping staff you now have to separate out the soap like that would be a huge policy change to separate out certain pieces of trash and collect

them separately for somebody uh this is a very good point so uh and it's it's not mentioned in the article hadn't thought of that you're probably right um but it does sound like as you said he was able to through whatever means get these place i mean the article says that he literally left that holiday and with a giant bag of of sort of half used soap now maybe that's maybe that's um kind of just moving the plot along and leaving out some of the boring parts of we actually have to like start like you said telling housekeeping to throw it maybe they already do throw it in some other container for reasons that we don't know about and that are not mentioned in this article but yeah somehow somehow he eventually got these hotels to start giving him the leftover soap and this is the part that i do think is is pretty interesting he he gets a bunch of this used soap and he then sets up a workshop in his garage and he gets a bunch of his friends to come over by their telling of it, and they sit down and they've got all of this gently used soap, which they're

using potato peelers on to sort of like take off the outer layer yeah that's interesting and and then throwing the so like the part that's touched someone's skin they're trying to get rid of that and then they throw the rest of it into a meat grinder and they like run it through and turn it into this other sort of thing and then they melt it all down in some slow cookers and then they pour that into these soap molds which then dries overnight and then they've got new bars of soap which are you know presumably now clean and all of that so he's doing this kind of as a i don't know just as a project but the thing is it's like it's not the economy of scale that he's working with is just not it's too time consuming to have everyone sitting around with potato peelers and so he basically is going around trying to get grant money for this because he also at the same time was doing some reading on um hygiene related illnesses around the globe and he was finding that according to this article like around 9 000 children under the age of five were dying every day globally with illnesses that were related to lack of access to like soap and water and things like that. So he's got this idea of like wanting to get the old hotel soaps and then turn them into something usable and then send them to places where folks don't have enough access to stuff like that. But this is something I thought was kind of interesting. He wrote a grant proposal and he sent it to the Gates Foundation. And I like this. I mean, you know, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is well known for its work, particularly in developing countries with things like mosquito nets and things to fight all kinds of illnesses that are often the result of lack of access to clean water and things like that. So you would think, he writes this big proposal, sends it to them. He goes, I put together a grant application for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Imagine that Bill would walk up our driveway and hand us a check for $1 million. We got a rejection notice within eight hours of the submission with a note that said, please do not reapply for three years.

which i'm sure is just standard right like i'm sure they you know i'm sure there are a million of these proposals and they have to you know some are going to get chosen and some aren't but i do like the way that they tell that story right i mean yeah i don't i mean like you said i know this

is i'm sure stan it wasn't like bill was personally offended by the proposal but it's just funny that they would again it just feels really up their alley it feels like something they would be doing

yeah because they look for novel approaches to these things too right didn't you do a story Did you worry about the device that turns, like, very polluted water into clean water and it's just, like, a handheld device?

I didn't, but Kerry wrote – Kerry was working for a production company in Seattle that was hired to shoot that with Bill Gates. And it was out in actually, I think, maybe even like Cedro Woolley or somewhere out in the Skagit Valley where they have this device that takes, you know, sort of wastewater that's like come like it's, you know, it's bodily waste. And it processes it so thoroughly that at the very end of this process, it's drinkable clean water. And they had Bill Gates drink a cup of it.

I remember I remember that story. I don't know if I remembered the carry angle on that, but I know that on TBTL one time you were doing a story for CBS and we used a photo of you. Maybe yours was a straw device, but we used a photo of you drinking really filthy water through a filtering straw.

I was drinking out of the fountain at the University of Cal Berkeley. They have this fountain that is so – the water is so scummy. And I was using a thing called a life straw, which is a very cool invention. I don't know what it costs a dollar or two per LifeStraw, but it is a filtration system that allows you to drink just about, I think, any water. I don't want to overstate the efficacy, but yeah, that was what you were thinking of. Yeah, the LifeStraw. I did definitely use that in a piece. It never made it in the television piece, by the way, Andrew. So I'm glad it got at least a life on TBTL because it was not on—I drank the scummy fountain at Berkeley, and all I got was this lousy podcast reference.

They were hazing you. That was the first story I did for CBS.

So the – I guess the upshot of this whole thing that I think is a bit interesting is he realized that he wasn't going to be able to raise the money from places like the Gates Foundation or private investors. And so he came up with this solution where these hotels – and now it's like 8,000 hotels or something are part of this – where they basically pay a small fee. It's between 50 cents and a dollar per room per month to take part in this soap recycling program. So that's where the funding now comes from. And his organization, which is called Clean the World, they provide the hotels with the necessary containers.

that you throw the old soap in like they've now figured out that process that you're probably correctly identifying as being the first hiccup like they kind of come in they set you up they set the housekeeping up this is where you throw the used soap this is how you mail it to us or get it to us etc and um now uh since 2009 they've collected 13 million pounds of discarded soap from hotels which is kind of cool i this is the other thing too that i thought was fascinating because this is i was like can you just throw all the soap they have a big industrial process now In fact, they have a bunch of locations around the world. But I was like, can you just throw all the soap together? And, Andrew, you kind of can't, or at least there are combinations that work better than others. I don't know if you saw this part.

No, I didn't get that far.

The Macau oatmeal soap that the Holiday Inn makes pairs well with the Taipei Bliss Bar that the Aloft hotels get rid of. So apparently they have now—it's almost like wine tasting. They have figured out how to clean the world. they said they rely on 20,000 volunteers to determine the right sorting process which actually I don't understand that sentence because that sounds like they have 20,000 people deciding what soap goes together with what other soap but anyway they have figured out that some like the cast off soap from one hotel chain blends particularly well with the cast off soap from a different hotel chain and that's I guess part of the whole process too is figuring out what it sounds like you can't just throw it all in the same vat and then just you know reconstitute it because it may not actually be a good combo i like a lot of stuff

this this is a story that speaks to me for a lot of reasons because first of all i like tedious little jobs like you know like i like repurposing things first of all i that's how i got into candle making to the degree that i do that anymore it's been it's been a while but like the reason veves and i are now in a situation where we will buy candle wax and actually have a candle making day um it all started when i had a candle that would not melt down properly i think that i think it was like the casing broke on it or something and i like this candle was just like tunneling down the wick was tunneling down and leaving so much wax behind and it just was driving me bananas this is like five years ago or something and so i think i just put it in the i took the metal out and put it in the microwave and melted it down and oh i wanted to get a new wick for it so then that sent me to a store that sold wicks which then sent me into this whole world of candle making but it was like that sort of obsessiveness I had about like wasting this and wanting to repurpose it and it reminds me this is very close to a project that I was just doing this weekend which again is I was telling some other people I was doing this and they're like why would you do that that sounds terrible I'm just like this is the exact type of thing I like to do for the group that I volunteer with and we hand out food to people who need it on Sundays we also hand out some other things too right like we have soap there every week like little hotel bars of soap that some of them are just donated to people who travel and they collect the soap but i also buy this hotel soap um online so this is kind of in my wheelhouse but we also hand out little mini bottles of hand sanitizer right especially since the pandemic just like little ones that you can fit in your pocket um and one of our volunteers can get those things like really cheap at the dollar store or something but they ran out at the dollar store and our volunteer ended up buying like kind of full size pump bottles of hand sanitizer and said well you can just hand these out instead and i was like that's a lot that's a lot of hand sanitizer like a whole pump bottle that would last maybe a family several months if not a year just to hand out to one person who's potentially living on the streets and doesn't feel like lugging that thing around anyway right right so i said i'll bet you they sell empty little bottles on amazon and i looked And they're very affordable and they sell empty little bottles that you can put hand sanitizer into. It's like perfect for that. And so I spent some time this weekend and I ordered more, too. I did it as an experiment this weekend and it went well. So I've ordered more of these empty bottles. I am now in the process of pumping one by one these big bottles of hand sanitizer into my God. These tiny little calling. Yes. I mean, and I swear to God, this is a project I did this weekend, not related to the story. But it's like, you know, this is my wheelhouse, a small, tedious little task where I can watch or listen to Sunday night baseball and just make and feel like I'm doing something, even though I'm not really doing much. The woman who I told I was going to do this, another volunteer, she's like, I would never I cannot believe you would do this. Like, that sounds like the worst to me.

And of course, it sounds like the worst to her because she's such a doer. She's always she's like you. She's got a million things going at any given moment. And she's always somehow she's always in two cities at once, like, you know, around Washington. And like, of course, you would hate this job because you actually have a life for me. It's perfect.

That's not being nice to my friend, Andrew. I mean, I think it's actually and I know you didn't bring this up. No, so I would say this. But I think that's I think that's cool that you're doing that. And also, I don't think it's I don't think it's a sign of a life not lived well. I think it's a life where you're. Doing something that's useful to some folks who could probably really use it. On the subject of which, and then we've got to get to emails because I'm already getting a little bit up against the clock here. But so it turns out that post-pandemic, and even like this hotel that I'm in here in Oceanside, a lot of hotels have switched over to like hand pump. Oh, the pump soap, yeah. pumps it's all about the refillable which is which is good in a way because of course even though these folks at clean the world are working with a lot of hotels there's many many many many more hotels that they're not working with so the the pump thing you know where you got the soap and the conditioner and the shampoo or whatever is probably overall better plan but it means that there's actually less and less of this used soap coming out of hotels so they have now also created a kit that they will send people if you ask them to send it to you this clean the world company where you can throw your old soap into some kind of a thing and mail it to them or send it to them in some way and and unused toiletries so they will like package that up and send it out to folks who need it so um i hadn't thought of that but yeah i think we're moving away more and more from the like from the you know kind of standard a bar of soap in the shower thing because most of the hotels i go to now seem to have those refillable deals yeah i prefer a little bar of

soap oh quick uh quick correction three ounce bar of soap is actually like a full-size bar of soap that you would probably oh so that's why those 100 that sounds low um hand washing just washing

their hands harder than i am yeah don't you know have you heard of covid here i go once again with

the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female

all rightly quick email or v-mail before we skedaddle one quick voicemail i'm not even going to set this up i'll just say that i am playing this under some duress hey luke and

andrew this is uh chris from reno nevada and uh i definitely had a co-worker when i was in high school and a little bit of college i worked at a machine shop very andrew-esque but i had a co-worker who would say he needed to take a grumpy when he needed to go to the bathroom and he also would like to talk about being in negotiations when the event was not ready yet So to answer your question, yes, I have heard Grumpy before. Thanks.

So there you go. Grumpy. It was not something that Johnny Depp made up on the stand.

Christmas came early for you because even though I pay an exorbitant amount of money to the Apple Corporation every month for the iCloud, No. And my audio drops that I have at my house in Portland should transfer to my computer down here in Oceanside, California. I do not have my beloved Johnny Depp grumpy drop. So at least you dodged that bullet. Yeah, I guess so.

Anyway, there you go.

So we know that it was not an invention of old Johnny Depp. Nope. That, I mean, I'm the one that said we have to go and we do have to go. but it's been interesting ever since i said to you that i think this is definitely not having the effect that johnny depp wants as far as his pr goes now i keep seeing millions of stories about how like people are apparently rethinking some of this stuff or i think really what's happening is instead of it just being johnny depp is a monster it's now both of these people had a lot of problems which i don't know if you call that a win for johnny depp you know it's not like it's not like johnny depp oh actually johnny depp was doing great and someone framed him like no one thinks that's the takeaway it's just made people think that amber heard is also dealing with a lot and a lot of her behaviors were probably not good for her or johnny depp that was some of the vibe

i was picking up but the vibe i was getting was from memes like i'm following the story mostly through memes which is why i'm really glad you gave me the kind of vox explainer of the of the Depp heard trial last week.

All right. We're going to need to wrap it up there today because I'm going to go. Whoa. This so loud. Sorry. It's Monday. Didn't sound that bad here, but you're looking at the you're the you're the master of recording. So I want to apologize to the listeners on behalf of what Andrew just did to your ears, even though it sounded fine in Oceanside. The whole show. I will be checking in from Stockton, California tomorrow. Until then, have a great Monday. Thank you for listening. Stay safe, take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

For Kids Appreciation Day, this Sunday against the A's, all kids will eat free, eat a free Mariner's, have a, let's try this again. They will not eat a moose for free. That would be just awkward and strange. Got to be really hungry. I've heard that moose is a delicacy in some parts, though, Rick. Here's the pitch, and it's a strike. Kids will, they'll have a free moose poster, which seems so less complicated the 0-1 swing and a tapper foul have you had moose before rick uh no power out