Muse

You know, he's not the only one that's exploring their creative side. Oh. I had that awesome directing gig recently, and I really got bit by the art bug. So I'm secretly taking stand-up workshop down at the community college. So. You want to check it? Yeah, yeah. All right. Welcome, Susan Bieber! I'm usually a lawyer, but I'm also a mother. And I find time to do charity work on the side. Also, oh, I was so popular in high school. And I'm still popular now with the people that I work with. That's what I got so far. Okay. TBTL.

It's the first line of the film, man. It's got to be on the money here.

Wow. You want to roll with this? Then let me tell you how this is going to go. No, let me tell you how this is going to go. No, I'm not interested. I'm not interested. Do you know who's not interested? Me. I'm also not interested.

You know, a lot of people may not know this, but I happen to be quite famous. Please. I hate to say this about anyone, but that man is full of bologna. Bologna. You're right. He's so vile, we should use the crude Americanization of the word. He's full of bologna.

Okay, are we done with the business part? I wanted to start the clown portion of the meeting.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

The vibes will be the illest, and the jams not ridiculous.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host, coming to you today from the Algonquin Hotel in Times Square, New York City.

New York City!

Where it is. It's absolutely beautiful outside. It's warm. Sun is shining. Got to take a little jaunt through Central Park today. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. I did see a beautiful bird, a very like almost exotic kind of yellow canary looking bird in Central Park today that swooped down and landed right on top of some fresh horse crap and started eating it. so that was um interesting i made a mental note to not kiss that bird if i see it later because of what it had been doing anyway it's a lovely monday here in new york and a lovely day for episode 3683 in a collector series let the fun begin uh news from the apple company that they are not going to make ipods anymore i'm just sitting there on my ipod and it turns out there's a thriving online community of people who have basically are hacking iPods they they get their hands on an iPod and then they soup it up and do all kinds of cool stuff to it so we will um we'll remember the humble iPod that uh well really in a way kind of to some degree launched this whole thing right I mean we call these things podcasts for a reason without the iPod who knows if I would be sitting here in this hotel room talking to all of you or talking to my good friend and the longest-running co-bro of the show, Andrew Walsh, who really considers his stint with TBTL to really be his big break.

Things are going to start happening to me now.

He's joining me right now from the Sweet Cream District of Seattle, Washington. Hello there. Hey, Luke.

I'm going to do something really bold on this Monday morning, okay? Okay. I'm going to describe this meme to you. So I just woke up this morning and opened up Instagram notes.

It's unique. It's bold.

It's ahead of the competition. On one side, you see kind of a bluff, right? Like cliffs overlooking water. Kind of muted tones, though. Kind of a gray rock face. And you see kind of a serious visage of Daniel Radcliffe sort of superimposed on the wall of the cliff, right? And that's on one half of the picture, if you can picture that. Then on the other half of the picture, you have same exact image, right? Only the colors are really saturated and popping, and there's rich blues and greens, and Daniel Radcliffe, this time his face is, like, smiling and happy, and his mouth is open, and he's got, like, a colorful baseball cap on backwards with orange sunglasses, and there's a monster truck driving off of the cliff, and on one side it says, Daniel Boring Cliff, and on the other side it says, Daniel Radcliffe. That actually really worked. I figured either it'll work or it'll be hilarious if it doesn't work.

Well, you were right, my friend. It's a strong start on this Monday.

Strong start to this week. Definitely a bold stroke to take right off the bat on a Monday when I'm definitely not usually on my game.

But you're at the house of the Algonquin Roundtable, huh? Yes, indeed. The oldest continuously operated hotel in New York City. That's what they told me when I checked in. That's what they said on Ask Jeeves. And, yeah, this is where the Algonquin Roundtable was. All those kind of New Yorker writers and influential folks would get together here and say, you know, kind of snarky things to each other. No, there is not.

How it worked. Is there a table that they've sort of set aside to honor that, even though it probably was not a table that they all sat around?

You know, I need to go do a little more exploring after we're done today. I've been in a bit of a tizzy because I got here late Saturday night, and then Sunday morning I had to get up and go to a theater to sit with my friend Anthony, the producer of this piece, and watch the Baz Luhrmann film Elvis. Like the thing they were going to fly to Portland to have me sit in a theater by myself and watch. Instead, we watched it in New York. And then we went over to Baz Luhrmann's house and talked to him. So that kind of took up most of yesterday. Hold on one second.

I have some questions about the timing on that. Can you tell me? Because I thought of you. I conjured you this weekend sort of in conversation. Thank you. What time? Just give me local time on the East Coast. What time were you watching that movie? And about what time were you interviewing Baz Luhrmann? Did you sense a disturbance in the force?

Did you feel there is great, there's great, I don't know, delight in the world? Somewhere, my friend Luke is talking to Baz Luhrmann.

There was a moment where I felt like I wanted to start dancing. No, what it was was I was, Vives and I on Saturday went to see a matinee because we thought it was going to be a rainy day. Turns out it wasn't. We blew two and a half hours in the movie theater. No problem, though. We had a nice day. But anyway, we went to see that the unbearable weight of massive talent, I believe, the Nicolas Cage meta movie, which is a fun romp, very meta, very, you know, pointing back at itself and at him. You know, I recommend it. It's funny. It won't blow your mind, but it's definitely a funny premise and some great performances. Actually, his co-star is amazing. But while we were watching that, so I believe the film started at 12.45 in the afternoon. So it was probably around 1 o'clock exactly that I was sitting in the theater watching the trailer for that Elvis film, which I had seen before. But I leaned over to Veeves. I said, as we speak, Luke might be interviewing him, Baz Luhrmann, about this film. That was exactly what was happening. Was it 3 p.m. your time? Yeah. Literally at 3 p.m. No, wait, 4. It was the start. 4 your time.

Well, we talked to him for over an hour, so when you said that to Genevieve, I was sitting in a room. I was sitting in one of the many rooms in Baz Luhrmann's incredible West Village apartment and chatting with him, and he was a delight. I will also say that movie is really good. The trailer does not do it justice. When I saw the trailer, I was like, we'll see how this goes. But the actor who plays Elvis, his name is Austin Butler. I'm going to interview him later this week in Los Angeles. But he is unbelievable as Elvis Presley

Wait, wait, he's believable as Elvis Presley

Excuse me He is unbelievably believable

This is why nobody lets you blurb their films

My friend Misha the other day We were trying to coordinate hanging out somewhere And we were both going to not be in town And he said, your timing is peckable Oh, which means Is that a thing? We should start making that a thing. Yeah. Like, you know, unfortunately. I mean, is there a version of, because Impeccable, obviously, is good. Peccable, not so great. But the trailer to that film, again, I don't really think it sort of does it justice for how I found actually quite gripping and watchable the film was. But what they do at the very end that's kind of genius is they switch over to some footage, some real footage of Elvis. So this whole movie now, you know, you've been watching this actor portray Elvis. And then at the end, they switch over. And then you realize what an amazing job he's been doing playing Elvis in the film, because now you're seeing real Elvis. And you're like, oh, my, it is a clever, a clever little ending to the film. And anyway, I really enjoyed it. And that guy, Baz Luhrmann was like, so nice and genuine. Although, Andrew, he's also so charming. At one point, he sits down and something falls out of his pocket. And it's a little note card. And on it, he has handwritten the names of everyone, including me, in the crew, the CBS television crew. So he's got Efrain, our camera guy. He's got Anthony, the producer. He's got me. And he clearly quizzed somebody from Warner Brothers about what are the names of the people I will be dealing with. And he wrote those things down. He kept the card with him. He referred to me.

He did that move where he was like, well, Luke, that's a great question, et cetera, et cetera. And it was interesting because I was like, I am in the presence of a professionally charming person. This is somebody who has a system, and it works, and it's working on me right now because I am just absolutely charmed to be around this person, even though I know he has a note card with my name on it so that he doesn't forget it.

Yeah, when he dropped the card, did he act at all like he wanted to pick it up before anybody saw it? I can't see him really breaking a sweat. Like, it would ruin his shirt, probably, which probably costs more than my house.

Which was Prada, by the way. Oh, my God. The amount of glam, I talk about this on our show kind of a lot, but, you know, when I do these interviews, particularly if I'm doing an interview with somebody who's in the pictures, they will always have a makeup and hair team. And I have a makeup and hair team, it's called me, at the hotel, slightly jogging over to where Baz Luhrmann lives because I couldn't get an Uber. So it's me damp, walking over with my hair melting, and some cover-up that I apply irregularly. I regularly apply it irregularly to my face. That's it. That's the whole glam team for old LB. And so I just always feel, like, especially unattractive. But there were multiple teams of glam people there. Like and just I'd go into a room and there would just be people sitting around waiting to make Baz Luhrmann look handsome, which he is a very handsome fellow anyway. So but yeah, it was really it was a really fun afternoon. And then New York City in the springtime when the weather cooperates is just I don't know if it gets if there's a better place on Earth than New York City in the spring on a Sunday. I walked over to Bryant Park, which is near where I'm staying. And I sat in this kind of outdoor cafe and I had a little snack. And then I walked over to these ping pong tables where there was just all these people playing really competitive ping pong. I started chatting with the fellow on the bench next to me who's a filmmaker who's got a movie coming out on HBO. It just feels like lots of people are doing lots of interesting stuff in this city. And it was just a lovely afternoon. It made me miss living here. Now, of course, when I really lived here, I would cry regularly because of how hard it was to live in New York City.

Somebody should – sorry about the microphone. Somebody should make a movie where New York City is almost like a – almost a character of its own. Okay. You know what I mean? Sure. Like the presence of the city interplaying with the other characters makes New York City more than just a backdrop because you're right.

What if somebody was walking down like – what if somebody was walking down 6th Avenue and it was – the shot was kind of tight on them but then the shot pulled out wide and they were just in a sea of humanity.

Yes. I like this. I like this. We'll call it Tootsie. I'm just jumping right to there. Just jumping right to there. That's what I always picture. I told you I grew up in the country, and so all I ever wanted to do was grow up to live in a city, and what I thought a quote-unquote city was was that famous shot. Is it the opening shot? I don't think so because he's already dressed up as Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman is, right, in that famous shot of him walking through what I assume to be Manhattan in a sea of people.

I don't think I've ever seen the movie Tootsie, but it's such a big deal in the culture of the 80s that I'm familiar with. I know it's Dustin Hoffman. I know he's dressing as a woman for some, I assume, job-related thing or something. And I do remember that scene, but I don't know if it's the beginning of the movie or I just saw it somewhere else, but it's pretty iconic. Yeah, exactly. Iconic things that are embarrassing. I might have mentioned this last time I was here, but I have this ritual. When I'm running in Central Park, I have to listen to the Paul Simon song, The Only Living Boy in New York, which is so corny. I'm terrified that my iPod, my AirPods, whatever, the things in my ears, are going to lose contact with my phone and they're just going to hear from my iPhone, The Only Living Boy in New York, as I'm jogging in Central Park, and then everyone's just going to be like, okay, a little on the nose, dude. But I don't know why. That makes me very happy to have that whole thing unfold. So I listen to my song. I do my jog. I watch birds eat horse apples. And, yeah, it was a lovely afternoon and a lovely morning so far.

I think I just put – so many people have tried to do this before. I think I just put my finger exactly on the nose of the difference between Los Angeles and New York City, and it has nothing to do with weather. I feel like I know what you mean I don't know exactly what situation I've been in before but you hope that You know you hope that people can't hear What you're listening to because maybe it's a little too corny Maybe it's a little on the nose maybe Maybe I've listened to Nirvana In downtown Seattle I don't know exactly But I feel like you're right it would be Embarrassing if you're in New York City And somebody hears you overplaying that But however if you're in Los Angeles

I'm playing New York New York on my phone

Right not cool Thank you.

But I swear to God, if you're in Los Angeles and suddenly your earbuds cut out and everybody hears that you're listening to I Love L.A. by Randy Newman, high fives. I swear to God, people will high five you. Am I wrong about that? They played at the end of the Dodgers games. Yeah. I mean, people love that song. I don't really like that song. Oh, only when they win?

Is that true? I don't. Well, I think, you know, it's been a long time. But when I lived there and I used to go to a lot of Dodgers games because my friend Kevin Arnovitz had season tickets. He was the one, of course, who perfected how to sneak beer into Dodger Stadium, which was to wrap it in the paper from a Subway sandwich sandwich. So you get a Subway sandwich, I mean, from the place Subway. Then you keep the paper, and then you can roll two Heinekens in that, and it will weigh and look like it's a sub sandwich, which you were for some reason allowed to bring into Dodger Stadium.

Yeah, I think you're still allowed to bring outside food in there. I think a lot of stadiums, you can still bring some outside food in, right?

Yeah, you know, actually, when my mom and I went to the Mariners game for Mother's Day, people near me were eating food out of, like, Tupperware. I will give the Mariners credit.

I was so mad when they instituted that, like, they reopened for COVID and said, oh, and you can no longer bring outside food in. And I was like, that is bunk. That has nothing to do with COVID. That is just you wanting to do a favor to all your vendors so people will buy food inside. And I truly believe they would never roll back to the old way of doing things where you could buy a hot dog outside for a buck and bring it in or whatever. And they did. They rolled it back. I got to say, I was really wrong and angry about that a couple of years ago, if you'll recall.

Yeah. No, they also have this thing called the value menu. Yeah. Which they everything's like three bucks or something, which is, you know, for stadium prices. And I saw somebody getting a hot dog and it looked like the right amount of hot dog to me. like the mariner dog is in is gigantic it seems like more hot dog than maybe you'd want but the everything on that value menu i thought well that's the way to go so that's that was that was nice of them to try to create something that's not you know 25 dollars or whatever but but yeah the dodgers if i remember right when they would win they would play i love la by randy newman which you know you're kind of right it's i think i love that song because i loved living in los angeles it was a kind of i've said this you know many times but i think when you the first city that you live in kind of as a maybe young adult that's not your hometown that you're sort of you're making new friends and you just feel like my grown-up life is happening it really imprints on you for me that was basically los angeles even though i was sort of pushing 30 by the time i moved there but i just love that song so much that i worked it into an npr piece once um trying to point out that the los angeles angels of anaheim was a silly name for that baseball team yeah and i was measuring how far anaheim actually is from la by how many times you could listen to the song i love la by randy newman um which i feel like they wouldn't let

you do that anymore on that network i'm lucky just the frivolity of that you mean yes yeah yes

i mean obviously we live in a different world than we did 15 years ago or something when i was working there but i feel like all i did was frivolous stories i mean my big beat was the wendy's finger chili oh yeah yes oh that was my that was about that i flooded the zone of that story that was on the the the the husband and wife so this guy owes somebody some money and they work together i believe in construction and he doesn't have the money to pay the guy so instead he had also lost his finger in a construction accident and had saved the finger and as a form of payment this is has to go down as the most bizarre way to settle up a personal debt but this guy says well how about i give you my lopped off finger and the guy says all right and then the guy's wife hatches this idea to put it into some chili at wendy's and then sue them but the whole plan of course you know fell apart because they figured out that this was a scam but um but it all

starts with somebody without a plan just saying i should hang on to that severed finger it could come in handy someday it's kind of like it's kind of an argument for hoarding

it i mean wouldn't you though if you heaven forbid if you lost your finger you want to

hang on to it right if you can't uh no genevieve definitely would whenever genevieve has any kind of medical thing if they don't let her keep whatever whatever tissue is left over i'm trying to think she had appendicitis she was really bummed she couldn't keep her appendix i should say i i think um and yeah genevieve is into that stuff i don't think i would keep it i remember so my dad had a dirt bike and growing up he was doing some wheelies in the backyard i think and fell off the bike and broke his shoulder and he got a screw in his shoulder and it was just like a metal screw and then eventually they took that screw out and that did live in the house with us. I can't remember if it was in his drawer beneath Oops the Dirty Bird or if it was somewhere in the basement but I remember being fascinated as a kid because it was put into like a little plastic tube right like a little plastic cigar tube or something and there was a metal screw in there and I would stare at it and be like that was in dad's shoulder

I still have a thorn that is in my knuckle that has been there since I was a kid and I do not understand why my body hasn't absorbed it but they're trying to get a wiffle ball out of a tree

Is it definitely wood? It was definitely off the tree?

Yeah. I'll show it to you when we're in Denver. Hey, by the way, thank you to everybody who's RSVP'd us for coming out May 27th, Friday night in Denver. We're going to be doing a trivia night. We're going to be at Local 46 there in Denver. Hope to see you there. But if you are just hearing this and you want to let us know that you're coming so we can just kind of have a good estimate of the turnout, you can email us. What is the email again?

Tbtailradio at gmail.com. It looks like, yeah, we have a couple dozen people who've emailed in. And, again, this is non-binding. We're just trying to get a sense of if we're going to have to bring some extra chairs or, if so, how many chairs to bring and other boring stuff like that. But, yeah, so just there's no cover charge. You're not being put on a list. We're not tracking you so far as you know.

Just send us your credit card information just so we have it. Yeah, definitely.

And don't forget the three numbers on the back. Mom's maiden name. You know the drill. tbtailradio at gmail.com

and of course this reminder that it's next week Andrew all next week we'll be in Denver broadcasting and we're going to be doing the shows we're streaming the shows live so you could call in if you'd like you can listen in real time usually there's a little lag while Andrew is posting the show but that's not going to happen next week so I believe it is going to be 9 a.m. West Coast Monday through Friday

because we're going to be in Denver so we're going to be starting at 10 a.m. local time which uh is yeah 9 a.m. on the west coast and noon sharp on the east coast

i just realized too like that's gonna be the closest thing to live radio that i've done in

a long time yeah true yeah i mean we streamed the shows live i guess we did stream the shows live from people's um uh front yards and driveways last year we're gonna be doing something kind of similar only in one place but we're gonna be taking phone calls this time um and also because it's on youtube we'll have that chat open too so that's kind of my favorite thing i can't really pay attention to the chat too much well you know luke i can barely do this show without paying attention to the live chat of listeners but it is fun that everybody can kind of like comment on how good we look how um how much hair we both have just how we're growing old so grace grace

fully or how do we do it gracefully how do we do it yeah i mean um and uh then we're also going to be doing wait can we we have we can announce you put in the newsletter right we can we can talk about what's happening at night as well uh yes for sure for scherzer's um we're uh doing for

max scherzer's for max scherzer's who uh got me some points did you start max scherzer did you

start him i mean that must have been a complicated thing for you although actually it was the perfect

ending because he pitched well and the mariners won it was exactly what you want there yeah exactly i have a lot of mets on the old uh on the old fantasy team was an interesting weekend but And go Mariners, for sure. I cannot believe they pulled off a series win. But, yeah, at night, Monday through Thursday of next week, next week, Monday through Thursday, we are doing TBTL game nights via Zoom. So if you were around a couple of years ago when we did, like, the TBTL show-and-tell Zoom sessions, it's kind of like that. It's just an excuse to gather together, and we're dividing it up by East Coast, West Coast, and everything in between. So let's see. You can sign up in the newsletter right now, and I'll have a website up by, I think, Wednesday of this week where you can let us know if you're in the East Coast and you're going to be joining us. It'll be at a 7 p.m. local time for every time region.

And our friend, this is exciting, our friend and colleague John is actually coming to Denver to help with all of this, to help kind of run these game nights and help us out on Friday. And John is just the best He's a big TBTL listener As well as being a big colleague of ours And super helpful in all of this fundraising stuff So that'll be great We're actually going to have an extra set of brains And hands to be a part of things So that'll be fun

So combined out there will be two brains John's and then you and me combined So almost two brains maybe Don't tell the bosses at 8pm though I believe he's just sneaking out of there I believe he's He might actually even be in my luggage already That's how we're getting him to attend

I'm already in trouble with Concur Because I haven't expensed the place that we're staying And broadcasting from I'm just starting to get notices that I'm in trouble already So that's fun too Let the fun begin

It's like the Swallows returning to Capistrano, Luke getting auto messages from Concur saying, we're going to turn your card off, dude, if you don't file this properly. Anyway, okay, so that's the plan for next week. Can't wait to get to talk to a lot of you and see some of you in Denver and see if we can keep this thing going for another year. I mean, that's just basically what happens is once a year we take a week. we remind folks that the only way we can actually do this for our job is if people are generous enough to donate and well it's worked the 13 times I think. Is this 13th? Is this lucky number 13?

It's our 13th year so I don't know if it's our 13th. We're calling it TV Telephone 13. Let's not get bogged down in the details Lord knows I never do

Let's take a quick break and then when we come back we'll actually thank some dazzling donors and talk about what's going on with iPods coming up here on TBTL.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the wonderful, generous folks who are dazzling us with their donation of dough each month. See my previous comments about how that's the only way the show can keep rolling on all these years later. Thanks to folks like Travis Worthington, who says it's pronounced like Worcester, except not.

Folks, let's not abuse the pronouncer field of the submission form. Thank you.

That's there for a reason, Travis Worcester. And we're very easily confused. Did you hear before the break, Andrew and I together maybe have one brain total? Maybe, depending on the day. Best case. Travis says, hello, imaginary friends. Thanks to science and adhering to the rules like a good boy, my family was spared the worst of COVID. Thrice vaccinated and always K-90 fiving it up. My wife, who is soon expecting our latest five. Hey, congratulations. and i had no deaths in our immediate families or at work but many people were not so lucky so i simply want to thank the boys and apm and tell you to hug your families today not next week we don't have enough time or enough hugs power out travis in linwood that is a very nice reminder travis that um you know if you have the thought oh i should call that person or i should shoot that person an email if you have the thought just do it i mean we'll really brighten someone's day and uh you know like you said you never know how long we're all gonna be here i also just feel andrew like everyone i know has gotten coveted again yeah like you know it's i my sense of it is it's a lot of folks who didn't who managed to avoid it for the entirety of the pandemic so far like i think me having omicron probably helps in terms of me not getting this latest variant although i don't even know what the latest science is on everything but it is just shocking how many people are coming up with covet again and now they're saying some people they're uh you know the vaccine is wearing off because they got the vaccine so long ago um which i got the vaccine really early in the process so i don't know if it's wearing off on me i'm seriously considering going back to masking up when indoors even though it's you know it's kind of basically up to you but i am a little nervous now about getting about the my immunity going down to the point where i

could get it again yeah it's weird i don't think i've gotten it yet i had like a little bit of snuffles like last winter viz and i went on that little we stayed in a tiny little town and it was right after the mask mandate went away the first time or something like that and i remember coming back from that with a little bit of sniffles but i also remember hiking through the rain like through cold rain so and whatever it was and we didn't have uh we didn't have a convenient home test then and so like i just you know stayed low for a day or two but i don't i honestly in my heart of hearts do not think i ever had it but on the other hand what am i the only boy in the world who hasn't caught some version of this at some point like it literally like every i i felt like last week you opened up instagram and every single person in my feed was showing like images of them

doing something at home while in isolation and it sounds also like this version is is not um super mild because like the omicron that i have just felt kind of like a you know a cold it didn't feel great but it wasn't anything huge but people talk about really being kind of down for the count with this latest version so andrew please please please do not get covered before i know no that's actually

something that I was talking to Vives about and I've been thinking about in yesterday

I've been masking up a little bit more because I'm like, OK, like if I, by the way, for what it's worth, it's funny. Most of the people that I've been hearing from in the past week or so said that they had very mild symptoms. Oh, that's the people I was talking to. So, you know, it depends on I mean, there's a million different circumstances, but I was happy to hear that for most of the people. But yeah, like just right now, I'm not I'm not going to name them. I'll save that for my other podcast called a covid shaming.

No, I can say like name and name, name and names and shame and shames.

No, I mean, I can just like as I'm talking to you in the back of my head, I'm like, oh, yeah, her, too. And him, too. And him, too. And that was all like in the past, like week and a half. And I think most of them said mild symptoms just need to take care of myself. Although now that I think about it, there were some people who had worse. But anyway, yeah. So I've been very paranoid about that. Like everything, you know, this is this is this is the one week that is the most important week of the year that I maintain my health. So, yeah, I'm being careful.

Well, you're driving to Denver. So that helps. yeah that's true yeah that'll you know you're not getting on an airplane so that's good

how are you feeling about that by the way i'm just carrying around so much anxiety and there are certain things i do need to get done that i haven't been getting done but a lot of it is also just me being very anxious like as far as as far as you and i throwing ourselves out there to the world this is not a fundraising week that i should be that nervous about we've hitchhiked before we're not hitchhiking down the mississippi yeah we're not driving straight through the australian outback where gas stations are 150 miles apart and the flies are as thick as honey um like we're going to denver you know we're gonna do some fun stuff i'm looking forward to it but like i should not be so full of anxiety and i realize i'm just carrying i'm just an anxious person and so i'm just carrying around so much anxiety about this lately the thing that i've been hanging on the most i know we got to get to our next dazzling donor here but um you know i had to be because of i believe the scarcity of rental cars and whatever the the complications of the system um i am renting my rental car from the airport even though there's no flights involved for me it's just where i guess most of the cars are um and then hitting the road on friday from the airport and like i'm getting nervous like what if i show up just like they did to me uh and christmas five years ago in atlanta and just say, yeah, we don't have a car for you. And I say, but I made a reservation. And she says, sir, I know what a reservation is. And I say, I don't think you do. And we do the whole Seinfeld thing.

I mean, I guess it's possible, but I don't think, I think you'll be okay. But I know what you mean. I mean, the thing is, my sense of knowing you, what stresses you out are just when there are unknowns out there. And right now there are a lot of unknowns. And it'll be super fun. but we just there are a lot of things that have question marks on them for us like we got to figure out the trivia plan we got to figure out you know um you know the exact broadcast setup in this place and i did get confirmation that the wi-fi is very good so that's good that's fantastic

i'm also going for us i'm also little the other thing that i'm nervous about is my trip home so on the way there i'll have like friday afternoon and evening i'll have all day saturday to drive and then a very short jaunt on Sunday so that I can meet up with you under the watchful gaze of Blucifer to start setting up the studio. But then on the way home, I need to do that trip in two days because I need to be back here. I need to have the car returned, and I need to be back in my studio for a Monday morning edition of TBTL on Monday. Monday's a holiday, dude. We should figure something out.

That's Memorial Day.

I should have rented the car for an extra day, dude. You can modify it. Do you think I can modify that through them? Anyway, we'll figure it out. But yeah, because that's the one thing that I've been kind of like, oh, that's going to be like if we're out having fun with the trivia love intends on Saturday night. But then I got to wake up and hit like it'll be like two 11 hour days, I think, with stops. And that's, you know, it's kind of a lot.

No, that is a lot. I mean, we can we're just basically having a show meeting now, Andrew, but we can talk about this off air. But yeah, we should come up with a plan for that Monday because it's going to be a holiday. I think we're going to be pretty broadcasted out. Frankly, the listeners will be pretty sick of us by that Monday because they'll have heard us in the morning and at night and maybe come and seen us in Denver.

So we'll just take all of their money next week and then go dark on Monday the following. I just feel like it didn't work. It didn't work. We didn't get what we needed.

Just you know what? We have to keep the listeners on their toes every once in a while. They're not listening, are they? Next in a while, I'll just... Not anymore. They are hearing whatever that weird elevator sound is, though, outside of my... I think it might be a fire alarm in this hotel. Oh, no. Oh, great. May I have attention, please? Okay, let's listen to what this is. This is your hotel fire safety director.

Please disregard all along.

Okay, good.

This was the most interesting TV. I was on the edge of my seat. That's great radio.

Finally, Andrew, we did some good radio.

I was seriously like, oh my gosh. And then I was like, what are we going to do? You're going to have to leave and then you're going to have to come back and do the show.

You're going to have to do the next Dazzling Donor.

Okay.

Okay. Now it's being extra. Come on. stop showing off. Dorothy Parker would not put up with this! Well, she would have written something very snarky and talked about town. Yes, very droll. She would have really, really laid into him. Anyway, all of that is to say Travis Worthington and family, excuse me, I get emotional. I actually was down trying to print some stuff out earlier today, Andrew, and it was weird because the way this hotel is set up, like where the printing center is, is also through these conference rooms. I think people can like rent or reserve and so clearly there was some corporate event like it was one of those things where there's like an easel with a big sign saying like finance something you know it was a get together for people that work in some sort of version of finance and so they're all sitting around these these conference tables and there's like food and drinks and i am just done with my run i am dripping sweat i had to cut through their corporate meeting to get to where the printer was I felt very embarrassed, but I was kind of – I mean, I had to get to where the printing was happening. But I was amazed that nobody came over and said, can we help you?

You should have stopped in the middle of the room and just shook like a dog. Like a dog, yeah.

And then I couldn't – then the printing didn't even work after all that. But anyway. Okay. Travis, thank you so much. Oh, this is why I was mentioning the printing because as I'm sitting there trying to, like, get my email account to work and print some things out, I start to have a cough Like a tickle in my throat So now I'm like I'm in shorts and a t-shirt I'm coated in sweat I'm in their business meeting And I'm like I'm trying to just like very I'm trying to get the cough out Without really coughing Which is just making it worse

Yes and then you Then eventually it's going to come out And it's going to be so much worse Yes

And then they're like great This is COVID What's a clever COVID name

oh uh oh uh covid kevin cody okay yeah i like that okay good i like covid kevin when the k's are backwards though yeah exactly for kids you should have wrapped your arms around yourself and just started saying so cold as you're well that's the thing i'm already embarrassed to be

there then i'm coughing i was just like amazed somebody was like can we get security then this this is a very old building andrew and so the elevators are so tiny like two people in the elevator is like too much and of course so the first elevator comes i'm coming back up to my floor and it opens and it's there's physically room for me to step in but i would be cheek to jowl with people who do not need to be in that elevator with me all sweaty so then i'd wait for the next one that one was also full i let like three elevators that's why i was a little late even dialing you up because i was trying to not subject anyone to my just absolute grossness yeah Anyway, but all of that is to say thank you, Travis, for supporting the show. Maestro?

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

Everything's coming up Travis today, Andrew, because our second dazzling donor is also a Travis. Travis Spokes.

Can I just mention that these, sorry, Luke, these Travises appeared next to each other on the sheet. Like, you know, I kind of pick these out, and so sometimes, like, you know, I pick the daily donors' dazzling messages based on length and if they go all together or whatever, if they're complimentary. This time, I just grabbed the top two, and they're both Travises, and you don't believe in a Todd? In a Travis. Yeah. You don't believe in a Todd?

That's a show title. Okay, all right. And you don't believe in a Todd. Travis is in White Plains, New York, and says, Hey, friendos, as I'm writing this, it's been about two weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine. As someone with personal connections over there, I would like to use my message to ask this incredible community to support those fleeing the violence. Two organizations I would suggest are International Rescue Committee and World Central Kitchen. Both help refugees with food and medical support. Every little bit helps. Thanks to both of you for continuing to show us that joy still exists in the world, in spite of everything happening around us. And best of luck to you both with your new houses. Power out, Travis number two. I don't know how Travis knew to put that in his message. He just sensed there was going to be a double Travis Monday. I got confused there for a second because I did hear a...

I was listening... to a voicemail line today and somebody referred to themselves as the other of a name like this is so-and-so from seattle the other so-and-so and i didn't i didn't know who the first so-and-so was

i felt like a bad uh podcasting host well we just want to say thanks to both travis's today for supporting the program and keeping this whole thing going because we just absolutely would not i would not be in this hotel room in new york living through a harrowing fire drill yeah if it weren't for the dazzling donors who are making the show possible. So thank you very much for supporting TBTL. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Apple has announced that they are no longer going to make iPods. They are just going to basically sell the rest of the iPods that they've made. Oh, my goodness gracious.

Okay, now it's getting too much. At first I was like, ooh, it's theater of the mind, and now it's just annoying.

And I have a feeling they're going to come back on and remind us again that it's not a real fire alarm. I will say this, though. This is the hotel fire safety director. Mm-hmm.

At this time, we're conducting a test.

Okay.

Oh, good. Okay, good. This is perfect, actually.

If I were a fireman, not a fireman, but if I were a fire, this is exactly when I'd strike. Yeah, exactly. Everybody's... I mean, 100%. Everybody thinks it's just a false alarm.

i will tell you this andrew this hotel is so old that i decided when i got back from my jog i wanted to walk up to the second floor where the business conference was that i would later crash because the elevators were taking a long time so i walked up the stairs and again i don't know if people were just tiny i don't know if dorothy parker could just fit in your pocket i think or truman capote or whomever but even like the the stairs it was like some like being john malkovich shit it was like the the the stairway was so tiny and narrow and the ceiling was low and i was like is this even like is this how this is supposed to be am i take are these stairs going anywhere like is this am i in the wrong part of the building like and i had this thought which i never i don't have these kinds of thoughts very much but i thought if there was a fire in this building we would be hosed like and not in a good way not like not fire hose us down with water we would be in a bad shape Because it's just very narrow The elevators take forever And don't hold that many people The staircases are like Two people could not go down the staircase at the same time So of all days, for me to actually have a thought Boy, this is not a building I want to be in if it catches on fire It's also the day they're running the fire test

How many floors-ish is it? I was wondering about that

I mean, no one's going to hear this in time Or also no one would ever come over to the hotel But I'm on the 8th floor And I think it probably goes up to 15 or 16

So a little bit taller than I thought I figured it couldn't, because it's such an old building I figured, you were talking about Waiting for the elevator before And I was wondering how many flights You might have to take if you were to take the stairs Eight is quite a bit, especially after a run

Yeah, so I'm glad to hear That the building is not actually on fire Because I would just be I'd be kind of done for This is an interesting story in the Washington Post By Chris Velasco Apple's storied MP3 players are on the way out, but some people are committed to keeping them running. So Apple has said that they are going to continue selling the seventh-generation iPod while supplies last, but then once those are gone, they're not going to manufacture any new iPods, which kind of makes sense, I guess, right? Because, I mean, they're driving everything towards phone and the cloud and the idea that you need a dedicated player. it's just not that many people probably avail themselves although we do have a listener who said they throw their iPod I forget that listener's name but we did recently maybe we just got recently we got confirmation from someone that they do in fact listen to the show on an iPod which I find charmingly anachronistic but what's interesting about this piece is that it really talks about how the iPod saved Apple in the years leading up to the original iPod's release Apple was only just emerging from what the iPod creator, Tony Fadell, called a death spiral. After a string of not-quite-right leaders, Steve Jobs returned to the company and shook up its computer lineup with a slew of cheap, colorful iMacs. In 1998 then came the iBooks, but it was arguably the first iPod unveiled in October 2001 that set a revived Apple down a different path, one that cemented its place in people's pockets and not just on their desks, which is really true. I feel like the iPod – did you ever have one of those? You're not like an Apple guy, but you must have had to have an iPod.

Oh, certainly, yeah, and I listened to my first podcast on it, and I would sync it up. But, yeah, I had iTunes just on a PC, and that's how we would do it in our PC land. But, yeah, I had an iPod. I still have it, of course. too because i usually don't throw away old technology like that and i gotta say like you pick it up and like it just feels good in the palm man like there's i really love my ipod

so they also interview in this piece some folks who are fans of basically like hacking old ipods they talked to somebody named b shepinski who's a student in boise and this person b who uses they them pronouns by the way said that um uh they go on this youtube place there's a youtuber called dank pods who's got a million subscribers and what they do at dank pod what dank pods does over on youtube is teach people how to actually open up their ipod and do modifications so like in some cases uh basically you can take out the ipod's original hard drive and then you can put an sd slot in it so that you could then put you know like the sd card i'm using to record this conversation has 50 hours on it so i could you know to get 50 hours of music on an sd card and then put it into my ipod which is kind of amazing the other thing that one of these folks in the article said was the reason that they like the ipod is because it does not matter if it's connected to the internet and i will say that there's not not a more frustrating experience than paying money for one of these streaming services like i use spotify now but i used to use apple and downloading stuff and yet somehow never really having access to it or i'm sorry our princess is in another castle or whatever like just the frustration of of paying for music but kind of not really owning it you just kind of own the rights to listen to it but then if there's connectivity issues or whatever it's like you don't even have that there's something very satisfying about low about bit torrenting a song by pavement that has a weird glitch in the middle of it andrew and putting it

on an ipod although yeah i mean that's kind of the the interesting thing is the only times i ran into annoying digital rights management stuff was actually with the ipod or actually oh really it would be like if you bought something directly from them now most of the music i had in my ipod was me importing it from my CD collection or me BitTorrenting it, like you say. But I rarely bought stuff from the Apple store. But when I did, that was the only time that I would run into frustration because then I would get a new computer and it would say, well, we can't play these songs. That was your old computer. That was somebody else downloaded that. You have to log in. Then you log in. It's like, okay, you have four devices. You have one more device. You can only have five devices that play this song. It was like I was that's one of the big reasons I did not get into buying music online in that way is like that that that I found to be incredibly frustrating, whereas with Spotify, I feel like I haven't had the same issues with downloading that you have. Now, it is true. You have to be you have to have connectivity, connectivity, or you just need to know in advance that I'm going to be through stretches without connectivity, like when you and I were driving, just leaning into it. Luke, nobody will notice this way. When we were driving across the Badlands, as we discussed earlier, when we were driving across Australia in the Outback, and we knew we'd have eight hours with any kind of connectivity, I would just download a bunch of albums on Spotify the night before. Remember that? And we were just like, okay, we've got about ten albums.

I got to listen to Galaxy 500.

Oh, right. Yeah, that's a good memory.

That's how we had one of our worst and only arguments ever. I think, was it a Jonathan Richman song or something? It was a question of if music can be objectively bad.

I'm pretty sure it was a Pavement song Maybe not I can't remember And I was trying to make the case

That there are sounds If I remember right I was trying to make the case That there are certain sounds That are unpleasant to the human ear Because of like you know Natural selection And like we've learned at some point That something is actually Like bad for us It's like why baby crying Supposedly causes to pick a baby up Or whatever Speaking of babies

It doesn't matter by the way But it was the silver juice David Bergman. Oh, right.

And I do like a lot of Silver... Yeah, David Berman. I do like a lot of Silver Juice songs, but then there was one that I was not into.

It's a noisy, noisy one. You and I had a big argument about that, which I still haven't forgiven you for. Wait, can I... Just to be very clear, we did not have a big argument about that. No. We, like, disagreed for about 45 seconds, is what I think happened. Yeah, but that felt like forever to me, Andrew. We don't argue much, so, I mean, like, we honestly did not.

Speaking of babies, really quickly, baby kittens, Andrew, So Becca is taking care of Bubbles graciously and gracefully. It's the second time that's come up on the show, which is very strange. Very strange. Sorry about that. But, oh, my God. Bubbles is a maniac now. Like, night one, she slept great. Night two, she got the zoomies at one in the morning, but I just kind of got on the covers and hid from her. Well, bye, like. friday andrew i am covered covered in claw marks because she is you know she's just at a very active age she would probably be wrestling with her siblings or mom and dad right now but she lives with me so she wrestles with me so her two modes are sleeping which is freaking adorable and then waking up and coming over and just absolutely terrorizing the shit out of me like if i'm just walking around in the house she'll just be under the bed and when i walk she'll just pounce on my foot i mean it's so cute except for the fact that it really hurts yeah she's just she's just i had i was googling when do kittens calm down the other day and the internet seems

to think at about eight months it also like we mentioned on the show and i didn't know this until i started seeing people posting about it since you were talking um about i almost said puddles sorry bubbles um that bangles specifically are a pretty active breed that need a lot of interaction and stuff too so yeah you kind of yeah you kind of um you you kind of picked that road what was i going to say oh i know i got a text message from somebody who said oh i get it you're not giving us enough puddles like content i think like pictures of puddles or whatever bubbles sorry we're also not giving enough puddles content frank frankly um that listener There's like a kid named Puddles, right? That's right. A puddle, yeah. Anyway, I'm all confused now. My point is this. Have we been withholding with the images? I know you haven't been personally, but somebody thought that it was a fundraising ploy that we were going to not release more photos of Bubbles unless people donate, which I don't think, I mean, we're not terrorists. That's a weird reverse ransom situation. Yeah, exactly. And I would say that if you sign up for the TBTL newsletter, well, I guess it's too late now. Maybe somebody can forward it to you, or I can. But you had an adorable video of Puddle. Jesus, Luke, what's wrong with me? I thought I was off to a good start. Just think of The Wire. Let me describe a meme to you. Just think of The Wire. Yeah, I know. That will fix it in your mind. Yeah, I know it's Bubbles. I don't know why I keep doing that. But anyway. I want to call her Olive half of the time, which was the other cat that I had. So that's bad form. Somebody's sleeping on the couch, right? Yeah, right. Anyway, you're in the doghouse, ironically. But yeah, so anyway, check out the newsletter video if you haven't already.

But so it would be funny if we did – if that was how we were trying to fundraise was just donate and then like there's a proof of life photo of Bubbles where she's holding a newspaper to prove what day it is.

That was maybe sad and then it became adorable.

But I mean honestly, if there's anybody who's a hostage, it's me. Yeah. This cat is this – I mean I don't – it's weird too because like with dogs, if they're misbehaving, I feel like there's a lot of – And I'm sure that there are books about training cats, which I need to get one, I guess. But like with a dog, it's like you do this whole crate training thing. And you have the crate and, you know, you make it so it's like a safe, fun place for them to go. And they like to go there. But then when you leave the house, you might, you know, close the crate, you know, for them. Or even if, you know, at night so they don't wander around and maybe go to the bathroom, you might have them sleep with the crate door closed. Like there's a lot of systems in place. I don't feel like those systems exist around cats. Like I can't just put her in Like my office and close the door Because she'll just meow and also Potentially just tear the place apart So what it really is is I just have to be On I just have to be On edge all the time if she's gonna decide To come scratch the shit Out of me or not so will she jump up

On the bed and start harassing you

Oh yeah and that's the other thing She can't she's tiny she can't jump But what she can do is jump enough To claw her way up any surface So couch the bed um you know the headboard uh on my bed is is fabric so she likes to crawl up and hang out on the top of the headboard i came home the other day she's sitting on the top of the rocking chair oh that i like my nice jen's rhizome design within reach rocking chair which was i got it for cheap because my friend katie works there but it's a very expensive piece of furniture and i really don't want her like destroying it and she just likes to sleep on top of it now like you know So I am very, very happy to have this cat in my life, don't get me wrong, but I don't think I was aware of how much scratching and biting was going to happen in the initial phase.

Did your cats do that? I don't remember them being kind of roughhousing as kittens, like as far as playing. I mean, Theo definitely played more, but we always had like, and I'm sure you have these things too, like the feather on the end of a string on the end of a stick game. That's a big one for them. Anything that kind of along those lines. I think like a little red laser dot was chased, et cetera. But no, sometimes I will have friends who have stories like what you're talking about. They have a every time I see them, their hands are all cut up because they have a kitten. And maybe it also is just kind of like the level to which I engage the cats to like I like petting cats. I like cuddling with them. But if they started to get to that point where like, you know.

I'll see some people play with their their kitten and they'll kind of like, you know, tease it and hold its chest while it kind of like goes to town using all four of its paws on them or whatever. And like, I do not I do not have cat scratch fever or maybe I do. I don't want cat scratch. I don't know. Either way, I don't like cat scratching my hand.

Well, that's the thing with her is. Yeah, I mean, really, what I have to do is just use the toy more because she'll endlessly chase that little thing on the end of a string. And that will at least get her to stop attacking me. But it's kind of like if I'm just sitting there minding my own business and she wants to come over and start playing with me and playing really rough, it's sort of like I need to learn some cat language to be like, hey, don't do that. So the woman on the flight next to me flying out here had a big cat scratch on her hand. And it took me the whole flight to get up the gumption to go, do you have a cat? She was like, yep. Like how old? She was like a couple months. So I was like, uh-huh, saw the hands, which I felt like, I mean, I would typically not comment on somebody else's body on the airplane, you know, ever, just about anything. But I have the exact same scratch on my hand, so I felt like it was an okay topic to broach. Like, yeah, we both have a cat situation. But what do you think? Is that an okay thing to bring up with a stranger?

I don't think I told you this. When I was flying back, it was two flights back from Cleveland, I think I had to take, right, to get back to Seattle. And I think it was on the first flight, and I was sitting next to this guy. And he had a big old butt. And I said to him, hey, you have a big old butt. And he was cool with it. Oh, yeah. So, no, I'm more for just going for it.

I know that's how you – that's why you're driving. You're banned. You're on the no-fly list for saying that. You're trying to do this whole thing about, like, oh, I just want to drive to Denver. It's like, you can't get on a plane, can you?

Yeah, and it's not just that airline, Luke. This went up to the TSA. I am on the do-not-fly list just because, I mean, the guy had a big old butt. No, I think that's fine. I'm with you, too.

I try to think very carefully before I comment to somebody I saw somebody with really cool boots the other day and I was like yes you don't have to tell her her boots are cool she knows this is my move if there's anything I feel the need to say to the person next to me I wait until we're in our initial descent or maybe have even landed because that's of course the everyone starts talking as soon as the plane has landed because we all know that the maximum amount of time will be with this other person is 15 minutes and that is a manageable amount of time Now, like, there's nothing I'm not trying to be antisocial But there's nothing that strikes more fear into my heart Than when you sit down And the person immediately starts talking to you Like, weirdly, I had that flight attendant Who was flying back from wherever Who kept talking to me I kept putting my AirPods back in And then she just kept talking I kept taking them out And I kind of thought What part of this Of me putting these headphones in To listen to something is not registering But on the other hand When you're landing I think everyone's anxiety goes way down Because we know we're not stuck together much longer

I mentioned this to you on the show the other day, a very similar conversation that like if I am on an airplane sitting next to somebody and I have to say something to them, I or if I have to or if I'm compelled to say something quick, quickly, like something related to the armrest or whatever, I then try to do everything with my body. And I don't know exactly what it is, but I try to put out the energy of I'm not following up with this. That was not a camel's nose under the tent of conversation because I'm going to be chatting with you this whole time. It literally was just about the armrest. You don't have to clench up and worry about if now the follow-up questions begin because we've been on – I've been on the receiving end of that, and it's no fun.

Yeah. Yeah, I said this when this came up a week ago, but I saw some tweet that really has very much been living in my head, which was part of why I didn't want to start a conversation with this person I was flying next to. And she said something like, shout out to the guys who just don't feel like they need to talk to you on the plane. Yeah, yeah. I was like, yeah, I think that's me. But then I worry I'm being antisocial sometimes because not everyone is, you know, not everyone is so like my mom would love to talk to someone on an airplane, you know. So it's like not everyone has the same kind of system or not everyone's hoping to just have a quiet flight of listening to Time Cop 1983, which is what I'm looking forward to. But anyway.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right, an email or V-mail before we hit the road.

Let me check here. I was caught a little bit off guard. I know that we have some voicemails that we should get to, but I haven't previewed them yet. So we could play a little roulette. I was going to say this. This is an email that we got from listener Ginny a while back. You were talking about this house that you're fixing up that you'll eventually move into that's in a more, would you say, kind of a rural part of Washington State? Is that the right word for it?

Yeah. It's about 40 minutes north of Portland in Washington State. And we're talking – And it's not like in the country. There are neighbors, but it's not like where I live in Portland. It's not like, you know. And I don't know why I'm being.

so vague about the town probably ultimately ultimately you know people will figure it out and start showing up there probably but um but yeah it's about 30 35 40 minutes north of portland

in washington state and you were talking about how you kind of wanted to get a i don't know if there's a flagpole there already or if you could see yourself there is a flag okay yeah and you could see yourself flying the american flag but unfortunately and this this legitimately makes me sad to say that like the the american flag has sort of been co-opted by the far right that it's almost become equivalent with almost a MAGA thing now which is a real bummer and I actually think that we should try to I don't think that progressives should give up on the flag actually I think that it can also stand for the things we believe but anyway you were saying like I don't know I kind of could fly an American flag but also that kind of sends an interesting message in 2022 the year of our lord and so we got this note from Ginny that says Cascadia flag the answer for Luke's house the Cascadia flag is the way for Luke to signal to his neighbors that he's got his political leanings. Your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore, but the Cascadia flag flies your West Coast liberal status. I did not know any of that. The Cascadia flag kind of signals.

Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the Cascadia flag and didn't even realize it. I'm going to look it up right now. Are you looking at a picture of it? I think it's green. And I guess what it's kind of saying is, like, the idea of Cascadia is kind of Oregon, Washington, California banding together as uh you know as states with sorry um with sort of progressive values i guess the thing is and this is why life is so complicated i don't really i don't know if those neighbors would even know what a cascadia flag means but to the degree that it would then make them like to the degree that it would be provoking to them it's like i don't want to do that either but which kind of sucks because i don't like no one's worried about flying their american flag or their don't tread on me flag luckily neither of my immediate neighbors have don't tread on me flags that would just be visual garbage if i had to look at that every day just i mean it just feels like a threat to me or my way of life particularly considering you know the gun violence in buffalo and just the awful things that happen in this country um luckily no one's quite that you know no one's that overt they're just flying american flags but if i were to fly a cascadia flag and then they were to come over and ask about it and then it's like do i have to be worried that you know bob my neighbor is now you know when i'm not there you know i don't know i want to be on good terms with everybody in the immediate neighborhood so i don't but again i it makes me sad to think that i couldn't fly it or like a if i were to fly a pride flag or something i mean maybe that's just called standing up for what you believe andrew maybe maybe that's what

i need to think about doing i did not realize that again i wasn't even familiar with this Cascadian flag, which did you know is called the Doug flag because it has a Douglas fur on it?

No, it has a Doug fur on it.

Yeah, it's like it's a blue bar at the top, a white bar in the middle and a green bar at the bottom. And then right in the middle is a is a dark, you know, kind of silhouette of a Douglas fur. And it's called.

I think that I have been looking at a different thing and thinking it was the Cascadia flag, honestly, like this. I feel like there was an earlier version that was or maybe that was just a Seattle thing this one that I'm looking at is not the thing that I've been picturing in my mind when I picture the Cascadia flag funnily enough because it could be the flag for Lebanon or something

I don't feel like I don't know what you're talking about and I clearly didn't even know about this flag but I don't think that flying this flag which is just pride in the Pacific Northwest and the tree area that it is and the greenness the greens of the foliage and the blue of the water in the sky like it seems pretty inoffensive

to me but oh i know it is and that's the thing it's like also what if i did just want to fly a pride flag because i wanted a random person who might be driving by to know that this is a house where we um you know where we stand with with people you know whatever their sexual orientation is etc but the my my hesitation about that would be i don't want to get into with my neighbors but But then it's also like, so then what? I'm not going to, like, put out a message that I strongly believe in, which is allyship, you know? Like, what if it did provoke them? What if they were like, we don't agree with that? And I'd be like, well, then we disagree on that matter, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. I don't. Yeah, it's hard for me to kind of picture the area. But I think you should fly something on that flagpole. I also think I should play this. This is going back a ways in our conversations. But I had this email flagged from Nigel because we're talking about team songs a while back. I mean, this is a while back now, several weeks ago, we were playing various like music that was professionally written to celebrate sports teams, professional sports teams. Right. And Nigel says, how did you discuss this without bringing up the Sonics song written and performed by Seattle's own presidents of the United States of America? Do you know this song, Luke? I feel like I don't. Oh, can I do you have it? Yeah, let me play.

uh this he says it's worth a let's uh worth a listen here um it includes the one and only kevin colabro of course the voice of the sonic so here take a listen to this this is a presence of the united states of america supersonics song i have not previewed this so bear with me so this is 90s so a little grungy So welcome to the game Ladies and gentlemen Oh, I do remember this, yeah Seattle Supersonics Our basketball bionic And Gary Payton was on Bounce as a butcher, Sean And the crowd sang along Supersonics, oh yeah supersonics it's funny it even has that like that part of the the song where you know for music from that time where it gets like kind of soft like what an interesting hype song yeah i i do kind of remember

that song being sort of in the in the air at the time um but i feel like it didn't quite it wasn't as ubiquitous as some songs like you know i mean it was almost like it didn't quite take off like they weren't playing it on every radio station or whatever yeah um but i do have a kind of a vague memory of that i miss those days i miss that team like it was a huge huge part of my life as a kid because i was very into playing basketball and also just like very into like the sonics were really good sean kemp gary payton i mean to this day although i actually don't know if i think that his restaurant closed down but you know sean kemp had that restaurant oscars i think down um kind of by uh what's now called climate pledge arena and camaro and i would go in there and then just like sean kemp would just be sitting there sometimes sean kemp would come to the mandarin gate too i

think yeah and i've run into him i was actually with with kevin otherwise i might not have recognized him even though obviously he's very tall like i just the six seven yeah but a massive human being that is sean kemp isn't the fifth f the fifth ave tav which is a bar um not too far from my old neighborhood that i used to like to walk to sometimes and he just like chills in the he chills in the spaces that we like to chill which i really like also kamero kev says that he uh when he when his restaurant was open it was the best french dip in the city

hmm yeah that was like the idea and there was one time i think kevin and i were there and it's like sean kemp and then gary payton just walks in and it's just like if 12 year old me could have known that someday i'd just be sitting there having a beer chatting with sean kemp and gary payton i

would have just i would have lost it can i ask you a question when and i'm going to look this up if you don't know the exact year because there's something that um this came up in a conversation for me recently and it was something that I kind of had to remind myself which is that when I moved to Seattle I knew that there was a team called the Sonics that played here and that they had moved cities but because I'm first of all was not at all a sport person and I don't think I watched I guess I'll watch a little bit of football before I moved out here but it was really kind of hanging out with you and the rest of the gang that I started watching the Seahawks you know religiously every single Sunday which then kind of got me into football and then my own path to baseball but all that is to say i always just thought of the supersonics as something that was part of seattle's past but what i didn't truly grasp and then i have to remind myself of is that was a brand new fresh wound right when i moved here right like i didn't feel like i was still seeing the ripples like in the newspaper the headlines weren't there um like maybe they would have been but it must have been i moved here in the very very beginning of 2009 i think And didn't they leave in 2008? Am I wrong on that?

I don't know because I don't think I was living here. I think I was living somewhere else when they had, like, these last few terrible seasons where it was, like, basically the Oklahoma City ownership group was trying to tank them and drive down attendance so that they could have an excuse for moving them. Of course, you remember when they bought the team, they said, oh, we're not moving them to Oklahoma City, which was a farce even then because Oklahoma City had had a team. Oklahoma City had had the team from New Orleans that was playing there because Hurricane Katrina had destroyed their stadium. So they were playing in Oklahoma City. They were calling them the Nooch, the New Orleans-Oklahoma City team. And they sold out every game. And they were like, oh, wow, Oklahoma City can totally support an NBA team. So then we sell to those guys. Of course they're going to move them there.

It was 2006 for whatever that's worth.

So, yeah, so I was not living in – I think I would have been down in L.A. at the time or something. but they basically just like...

Got rid of everyone good so that the Sonics were terrible and no one would go to the games and then they could say, look, basketball doesn't work in Seattle and then move the team, which was such a shame because the historically had. I mean, they were a very beloved thing in Seattle and there was not an attendance problem. They made that attendance problem so that they could get rid of them or move them.

Yeah, that's rough. In 2006, actually, that times out better. I was going to say it couldn't have been I couldn't have been here like the year after the move because it just you would still have so many headlines about like, you know, like what's happening in the in the vacuum of the Sonics or even what was happening with Key Arena. So, yeah, I guess if that happened in 2006 and then I move here, like I say, I think it was the very beginning of 2009. That's a that's a two and a half years or whatever it looks like here. And so, yeah, things would have calmed down. But it's still a much fresher wound than I think I appreciated or continue to appreciate. I need to remind myself of that. And also, did you notice that I would start weeping openly every time you had a Starbucks cup in your hand? That was one thing I thought it was. But I thought that was a statement on corporate America. It also makes me wonder because I didn't watch. I mean, again, we were living in New England, so we were watching football. It's not like I wasn't watching any sports before I moved out here, but I certainly wasn't like blocking off time on Sundays to watch one or eventually two football games religiously on a Sunday. And it makes me wonder, like, if I had moved here and the Sonics were still here, would I be a basketball fan now? Potentially, if you and if I moved here and I'm hanging out with you and Durs and whoever else and you guys are watching the Sonics like I've you know, I've watched a couple of NBA games. It doesn't hold a lot of appeal to me just because, again, that just wasn't my journey. And I don't feel the need to, like, force more sports on myself. I'm miserable enough. But there's a possibility that I would be an NBA fan now.

Be a whole different Andrew. Just like, you know, super into the Sonic, super into Squatch. Just wearing almost exclusively Squatch gear.

Do you think I would have? That was the mascot. Do you think I would have one of those sleeveless Jerseys I'd wear around that says Kemp on the back

I mean look I don't want to I don't want to judge people's fashion But there was After we did the shoot with Baz Luhrmann Anthony and I went around the corner To have a little libation Afterwards and I was shocked that there was like three different guys That appeared to be on dates that were wearing One guy was wearing a hockey jersey and two guys were wearing Basketball jerseys You know everyone can wear whatever they want But I just thought if I was going on a date with someone, particularly if it was early in the relationship, I think I would leave the basketball jersey at home. I'd probably wear, you know, a shirt that buttons or something.

Yeah. I mean, you don't know. I mean, maybe those are maybe they're having dinner with people they live with. You know what I mean? Who knows?

Yeah, I know. I just I have a very strong anti-Jersey personal. Like I would never wear a Seahawks jersey to a Seahawks game because I feel like I'm what am I trying to convince people that I'm on the team? I mean, listen, everybody gets to have fun and enjoy whatever they enjoy. I don't want to yuck any yums, but you will probably also I just find that like a football hockey jersey and football jerseys are so ill fitting on like a normal person, at least me, that I can't think of something that would be less flattering for me than wearing a, you know, some football jersey to the game.

Yeah, you know, I am I am not a jersey person myself for the same reasons. I do have one Bernie Kosar official NFL jersey that Genevieve probably paid a pretty penny for way back in the day. And it's a prized possession for me because I know that it was, you know, it was kind of a special gift. And yes, every now and then on a Sunday in the privacy of my own home, I would don that and root for the Browns. But like the idea, I honestly don't think I ever wore it out in public, which is I mean, that's what you do with something like that. Right. But first of all, you know that I have the anxiety of then they start asking me a bunch of questions about the Bernie Kosar years. I don't know who they are, but they do. You know, they start high fiving me with webs and they're making like Webster slaughter jokes that I don't get. That would be embarrassing for me. But also, like, yeah, I just look like a – I assume I just look like a barrel in it. I don't know, actually, if that's true or not, but I don't think that they're super flattering. And it's just, like, it's not my look in the same way that I don't wear sweatpants inside the house or outside the house. But then every now and then I will pass the guy who just has the perfect baseball look, and he's wearing, like, a slick Mariners jersey, like, especially that Sunday alternate jersey they wear that's, like, kind of the cream color. I saw somebody wearing a brand-new Julio jersey like this, and it's just like if you have the right build and that thing fits you the right way, they can be very flattering. I also think baseball jerseys often look good on women as well. Like it can look good. I don't think it would look good on me. But a good baseball jersey can really be a look if you can pull it off.

I agree with you. Of the major sports, I'm going baseball jersey is going to be the best look for a lot of people. Now, speaking of looks, when I was –

On Saturday before my flight, I was in the gym at my apartment building, and I was on the treadmill, and a very interesting thing happened. A guy got on a stationary bike. He started riding, and then he took his baseball cap he was wearing, and he turned it around backwards and then continued riding. So I guess as to be more aerodynamic. On the stationary bike? On the stationary bike. It was amazing. I was like, wow. I mean, maybe it's just kind of just familiar. Were you out riding on a real bike? Obviously, he'd probably do that, but it was very funny to see someone try to improve their aerodynamics on a stationary bike.

So, you know, I grew up in the 80s and lived through the 90s, so there was definitely a time and, I mean, the really awkward phase for me when I'm, like, starting to try to gain my own fashion autonomy, and it turns out I really shouldn't have been trusted with that either. And so like there, you know, those those awkward tween years were not especially kind to me, like they aren't for a lot of people. And so I went through that phase of wearing my baseball cap backwards. And it wasn't a good look for me when I see those old photos. I cringe. But the other day and I'm trying to think what I was doing, I was doing some project where I needed to turn my hat around backwards. And I did it in the spur of the moment. I feel like it was a painting project, although I can't remember what the reason was. But there was a technical reason for what I was doing. I couldn't have my hat on for it anymore, so I just flipped it around, and I forgot about it. And I saw myself in the mirror later. I was like, oh, wow, what a decision. What a look. Cool guy. What a look, Andrew. What are you going for here? I'm trying to think what project would I be doing that I couldn't have a bill coming off the front of my head. I don't know, but it's a true story. Trust me.

Yeah, but did you like how you looked? Did you, like, hey, who's that rugged man who was just doing work under a water heater that necessitated the hat being backwards?

Yeah, I don't know what I was doing. I probably had to let some steam out of the boiler room so it wouldn't blow up like in The Shining. Oh, spoiler alert. But I – no, I didn't – no, I didn't look good. I didn't look good. And it was kind of shocking. It was kind of shocking to see myself that way. I righted that wrong very quickly.

My Aunt Mary Lou, when I was flying out here, randomly just texted me these two pictures that I guess my Uncle Mike took of me as a kid. I'm holding up a fish that I caught at some lake. Oh, how the worm has turned. I know, exactly. I would never support that kind of behavior now, but I look quite happy, and I've got like a seriously OG Mariner's hat on. Oh, wow. I'll send this to you, Andrew, because it's just like, it's the like, and of course in the background of the photo is one of those Danish cookie tins which went everywhere in my life as a child any family gathering who even knew if it had the cookies in it anymore it might have had fishing tackle

it probably did in this case or buttons if it's inside it probably has buttons if it's outside it has either hardware or fishing tackle can we use it as a show pick or do you not want this on the internet

no I don't care but let's see I'm sending it to you right now I don't know how fast it will come through but this is the era of Mariner Hat that I still love deeply the like trident is it called a triton or trident i believe trident trident and um yeah it's a very uh seriously old school i was trying to analyze the rest of my clothes like i'm wearing a shirt that um says uh let's see i'm wearing a shirt that says epcot center on it and um this is and some kind of like i think maybe bo jacksons or like off-brand bo jacksons or something like i'm trying to analyze what's going on from a fashion standpoint i love how big that i mean

this is like norman rockwell shit right here that hat is so big on your little i don't know what i

was doing wearing the hat is bigger than my entire head that's great oh this is a good show yeah i know except again poor fish had to die for me to get this picture i mean you got to like you got

to like go on a dating app and use this as your profile pic isn't that exactly what you were saying

the other day that yeah exactly that's something a lot of people on the apps are doing so all right we should wrap things up here on this Monday because of course we all have lots to do getting ready for next week but the good news is we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you I will be back in Portland so we'll see you from there until then have a great Monday take care of yourselves take care of each other and please remember no mountain too tall

and good luck to all

oh my god that is still good meat on that fish kid am I lying no oh my god this is crazy power out