Muse

This is the DJ 3000. It plays CDs automatically, and it has three distinct varieties of inane chatter.

Hey, hey, how about that weather out there? Whoa, that was the caller from hell. Well, hot dog, we have a wiener.

Man, that thing's great. Don't praise the machine.

Looks like those clowns in Congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns.

How's he keep up with the news like that?

are you all right no no i'm confused nothing makes sense to me anymore this face it's not my face my whole world has disappeared and and now i'm talking to a car you know you're overthinking it buddy yeah i mean just kind of see this as a fun thing to do or you

make a little bread you've got to remember that these are people of the land the common clay of

the new west you know morons stop talking get off the phone and let's do this let's do this

immediately let's go all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl

I just want to hug this show and never let it go.

The show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Oh my God! He unmuted!

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Coming to you once again from the Queen City, beautiful Denver, Colorado. Day 1, 2, 3, 4. Day 4 of TBTL-a-thon 13. Let the fun begin. Let the fun begin. And boy is it beautiful here in Denver today.

Oh ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

beautiful. Denver regularly shows up on sort of most livable cities in America. Those lists and getting out on the Cherry Creek Trail this morning and just kind of experiencing about 75 degrees at 8 a.m. with the river rushing by and all of the fine folks out there. It makes sense. It is as advertised. Denver, Colorado, a beautiful place. Of course, we're not just here to admire denver colorado we are here this week to raise some money for tbtl so uh you got uh you got my money this is the uh one time a year where we take a week and we remind everyone as if they need reminding that the way this whole thing works is uh through listener donations and so uh appreciate all the people who've donated so far uh and really appreciate the people who are going to donate today to get us on track. It's been a weird week to say the least, and we're a little behind schedule on this. I have great confidence we will catch up, but if you go to tbtl.net right now and donate to the show, that would be amazing. We have all kinds of thank you gifts. Tonight Pants and Mad Libs, or I should say Too Beautiful to Libs, and other things for you as a thank you for your support. So thanks again to everybody who's participating this week in TBTelethon 13. Now, Andrew and I had quite the adventure yesterday. Oh, and the adventure begins again. Trying to see if we could swap out his rental car that he inexplicably selected at the rental car location in Seattle. They said, young man, all of this could be yours. I assume the person Enterprise just sort of spread their hands and showed an ocean of different vehicles. And Andrew went and found a Mitsubishi Mirage, which is on the smaller side for driving across the Rockies. We wanted to go trade it in. We went to the airport yesterday and immediately encountered a situation. Did we have to slightly prevaricate to accomplish our task? I'm not going to tell you. I don't want to spoil it. I know you're good at lying. But yes, we did. We had to lie. We had to lie through our frigging teeth. So more on that coming up. Also, it's a Thursday. Whoa. We had a dud bell. Is it the altitude? This bell performs very differently at sea level. It's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day.

It's my birthday today.

And we will celebrate the birthdays of the listeners today. And hi, everyone out there on YouTube watching us. Thank you. We had some technical times. Thanks for your patience. Here we are. We're going to take your phone calls. Again, the phone number is 206-414-TBTL. Ahoy, ahoy. 206-414-8285 if you want to chat with us today. Thank you, everyone. welcome to the internet saying hi by way of the internet chatting it up chopping it up on the youtube page oh and one other thing i have a certain audio assistant that's going to be helping me today that i'm very excited to talk about with the listeners hey want to hear the most annoying

sound in the world

It's something called a Yo-E-Go Talking Hamster. It's something called a Yo-E-Go Talking Hamster. And it is really something else.

Really something else.

We'll get into it. I've got to turn that on. That's going to be a major distraction. Actually, I don't know how to turn it off. I don't know how to turn it off. It's learning. It's disabled. It's off button, Andrew. Oh, speaking of my friend, Andrew Wall, she's right over there. Please welcome the wickedly talented. Longest-running Cobra of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. How are you, buddy? I'm good. We need to talk about that hamster. But I had something that I've been sitting on for the past hour or so that I've been wanting to tell you. I need to give a little bit of background for the listeners. Because we are streaming these shows on YouTube, YouTube is very sensitive to copyright infringement. This is something that we learned last year. The hard way. Yeah, and certainly last year when we were streaming these shows, you were playing some music ahead of the shows just to like we'd get the live stream going and just some like, you know, just random bed music, old jazz or whatever. And we got flagged on YouTube, all these copyright claims like, hey, you have a copyrighted song in your in your YouTube video. You need to like handle that business or whatever. This time around, we've been being very careful. You've been trying to play rights free music at the beginning of the show.

If you've tuned into the live stream and you've been listening before we actually start the broadcast, you've heard some of the truly worst music ever created. Peace and love to the people that go out of their way to create copyright-free music on YouTube that you can use. But let's just say you get what you pay for. Right. It's hold music. I mean, on its best. I would take that sort of famous hold music that actually goes pretty hard. I would kill for the rights to that hold music.

So we did get flagged a couple of times this week. Flagged. Wait, wait, wait. Earlier this week, I'm saying, like, you played some music that we thought was rights-free.

It was literally a Spotify playlist that said royalty-free. No, it was a – what was it? Public Domain Music. The playlist was called Public Domain Music, and it was a bunch of old songs, and I was like, well, this should fix the problem, and apparently it didn't.

It was probably made by some 14-year-old kid in Lakewood, Colorado, who made it. But anyway, so we're getting warnings from YouTube. They haven't shut us down or anything, but we even – this was a real bummer. A couple of days ago, I think it was on Tuesday's broadcast, they said you can't use words by doves. Now, this is the song we've been ending TBTL with for over a decade now. And so we've been getting around that by at the end of the show. Maybe you'll notice that I sneak words by doves underneath us a little bit, but then I pull it down really quickly. Way fast. We don't leave it in the clear very long. Today I woke up. I'm behind the eight ball today. Maybe we can talk about that later. Maybe not. Kind of an interesting morning for me. But every minute counted this morning, and I'm kind of racing around. I'm trying to create the YouTube page for today, and I see that we have another warning from YouTube. And I think to myself, and there was also something funky about me setting up today's YouTube feed, and I think it might be because we've been flagged so many times now despite our best efforts to be on the right side of copyright law. But, Luke, do you know or would you like to venture a guess as to what, Luke Burbank, what do you think we were flagged for playing on yesterday's show?

Was it when I sang that Janet Jackson song so well that the computer thought that it was actually a Janet Jackson song? He's going to confiscate my journal. No, no, no, no. Don't break it. Is it turned on? It's on. Do not break it.

do not break my gerbil okay so i'm gonna tell you here you just took it away i'm just trying to not have a repeat everything i say for a second because i'm gonna tell you and the gerbil's gonna

tell you what we were flagged for okay we're gonna tag i'm really i am i'm i'm that thing's really annoying i am searching my memory for anything we could have played yesterday that could have in any way run us afoul of youtube's you know kind of content moderators are you ready

for it i am ready okay let's be quiet for a second so the gerbil will shut up

this is the part of the week where we get loopy i don't know if you've ever checked into a TV telethon before.

Denver, the last dinosaur. Okay, I'm turning off this thing now. We got flagged for Denver.

We got flagged. How is that? I mean, that's a theme song of a TV show. From the 80s.

We were playing the theme song, a listener. I blame that listener, by the way. Alicia, by the way, said, hey, give me some silliness in your life. Played this song, Denver, The Last Dinosaur. It was stuck in my head all afternoon. I was, John, by the way, John is here. Oh, hey, look at our friend John.

Call it friendo. Hi, John. Hey, how's it going? Good, man. Boy, you left at the right time last night. Sounds like it. You probably left thinking, well, it's, you know, one in the morning. these two these two guys are gonna go to bed you would have been wrong i was very rested this

morning oh man i will be rested when i wake up later um but uh yeah we played this song denver the last dinosaur the theme song to this tv show it was stuck in my head all afternoon this morning i wake up and like i had certain functionality turned off on my youtube studio stream and i think it's because we've been flagged once again and we have a copyright claim from tune core on behalf of world events productions for denver the last dinosaur what this is what i don't understand

is there someone trying to make money off of that song and if we play it without having the proper rights then they will be deprived of their you know of sort of their due i mean and again you know i respect content creators yeah not us like i don't respect the content we create but as an idea like you know if you write a denver the dinosaur song you wrote a song just as much as uh you know neil diamond wrote uh you know sweet caroline so i'm not trying to song song blue i'm not trying to forever in blue jeans forever this is the part of the show where we just name neil

diamond john you got a neil diamond song uh sweet caroline was a karaoke hit of mine yes i don't have any others as a yankees fan i'm surprised i know it was beers were involved so i guess i'm

not trying to draw a distinction between the kinds of music that gets created but i don't understand what the copywriting of a cartoon theme song is like if it's a if it's a song by prince the idea is if we play it on the show and someone hears it they don't have to go buy that song from the estate of prince rogers nelson but this is who's being deprived of a potential source of

income if we play denver the dinosaur weirdly did you know and it's funny that you used that That is an example. It was written by Prince. Did you know that? No. Yes. I mean, here's the thing. I would like to joke around about this and in a certain way, it's like, hey, listen, we played an innocent clip of an 80s TV theme song. But on the other hand, if I think about it enough, I think like we took food off the plate of the last dinosaur. You know what I mean?

Of World TuneCore limited liability incorporated in Grenada. I'm sure that sounds like can you read again who flagged us

well the copyright owners are TuneCore on behalf of World Events Production, World Events

that sounds like a really that sounds like a mom and pop operation that sounds like a real artisanal hand forged cartoon theme song company

I'm not even joking when I decided to play that on the show yesterday and we played it so much in the clear I thought, I had the thought like we can play this, you know what I mean this is just ridiculousness but no youtube is very so i guess what we should maybe just appreciate is when we go back to not streaming these things live on youtube next week at least spotify isn't

pulling us for stuff like that you know you know it takes it takes youtube's extremely anal retentive tendencies to make us appreciate spotify's yeah very kind of particular uh thing okay listen andrew i am the last thing the last thing that i would want to do is put you on blast But you sort of mentioned about being a little behind the eight ball this morning. And I do think it's kind of it's interesting because I had a sort of an experience this morning that I don't know if I've ever had from this exact perspective, which is, you know, we had a really fun night last night. We were all tired. I think the three of us were all pretty gassed. And we decided to go get a little dinner around the corner from here. And then we thought, you know what? Let's have one little nightcap. let's walk a block or two to a bar here in the in the rhino district again i hate the way that word has been co-opted to mean something else um but i and then we walked a restaurant in name only that's right hey that's pretty good um you're in a flow state this morning and i've been there i know the feeling of like you're sometimes the best shows i've turned in are the ones where i'm the least lucid but so we were like let's walk somewhere and just maybe have one little little drink to cap things off but we had been at a restaurant that was a really nice place like a awesome uh staff and good food but it was kind of it was sort of bougie it was it was a place where where you know beautiful people go to eat beautiful food and we wanted to go somewhere that was a little bit more our speed so uh you punched in a you know basically i believe you asked Gorgle where's there a good dive bar around us and the thing is the term dive bar has been so co-opted co-opted to just mean any place that uh you know people under a certain age think of as being divy if they can wear jeans there right and if it has like wood paneling or something it's divy but to google where is the good dive bar well now because of the way algorithms work and yelp and things like that, it will take you to something that is a, is it, is the word I'm looking for similacrum? No, I'm not even trying that.

Ask the hamster.

Hey, Harvey. Is it similacrum?

Similacrum? It sounds better coming from the gerbil. It really does.

The gerbil is a better host than I am.

It gets to this point where it's unlistenable. It starts off cute and then it just goes into full.

Just to kind of close the loop on this. Somebody, and I don't know if they're a TBTL listener, if they are, hello, or if they're a LiveWire fan. But when I came out of the Holt Center in Eugene, Oregon, security stopped me. And I assumed it was because of something I'd done during the show. But they said, someone left something for you. And it was this, and I'm not even going to say gently used, it was very clearly had already lived an entire life, this talking hamster. And I looked it up yesterday on Amazon. It's called a Yoigo Talking Hamster. It retails for, I believe, about $16. And it is just some weird recording device that when you say something, let's see, switch it on, as if people haven't heard it enough. When you say something It just repeats it back to you in a really high voice And I swear to god Andrew When I got this thing

I sat in the hotel room laughing my

Freaking ass off It's programmed not to swear

Can we develop a relationship Where whenever you have to have A serious conversation with me Or tell me something that I'm not ready to hear you do it through the gerbil.

Hey, Andrew.

Hey, Andrew.

We really need to try to start these shows on time.

We really need to start these shows on time.

So anyway, that's what this is. I'm sorry. I know that is the most annoying sound in the world, but I am personally obsessed with this. Thank you whoever gave me this talking gerbil. Now, again, no part of me wants to put you on blast, Andrew, but what ended up happening last night was we went to what was, the internet told us was a a dive bar and you know what it was at some point at some point i mean it was beautiful dive just absolutely beautiful but now what it was was a place where people and you know peace and love if you're somebody who's you know in your mid-20s and you're and you're listening to this or watching this it's great we love having you here but it was just a bunch of people that were 20 years younger than us or maybe 20 years younger than you and me not you john i felt like

they're 20 years younger than me they know they're very young yes and and so anyway it just wasn't

our scene and so we didn't even go in it was also weird because we sort of got menaced by like three drunk 25 year old women one of whom said we're not here to be hit on as we were walking by you

oh i didn't hear that part i heard them say keep walking keep what i thought she was saying we're close i thought she was being obnoxious saying don't hang out in our bar they were saying don't hit on us oh yeah i think it was specifically we're spoken for or something like that but what I wish I had known that that's what they were saying. I misunderstood. I would have said my favorite comeback. What is this from? Don't flatter yourself, Angel. I believe that's from the 1989 Batman movie. Jack Nicholson says, don't flatter yourself, Angel.

I did tell him this town needs an enema. Don't flatter yourself.

Grisham doesn't know about us. He's a tired old man. I won't do the whole movie.

I would have loved it if these three mid-twenties women who were clearly pretty drunk and just kind of yelling random things at people walking on the sidewalk which is how we arrived in their life if they yelled the thing that one of them yelled which was basically like we're not here to be hit on which was interesting because we did not come to hit on them we were just walking on the sidewalk trying to get away from it would have been great andrew if you just delivered like a three minute monologue from the tim burton batman i just turn around and say don't flatter

yourself angel grisham doesn't know about us he's a tired old man that would have been dope that

isn't what happened what happened was the three of us so we're walking up to this what we thought was a dive bar that is clearly full of young people enjoying themselves which is great but it was not going to be our scene as we get towards the door of the place we had already decided we weren't going to go this one drunk young woman yells at us basically not to hit on her and her friends and what did we do we walked an entire block to get away from them we were hiding You're welcome.

from relative children we went we literally went down the block and then called an uber to try to it was like hey grandma can you come pick me up from the rap battle no i didn't win it no i saw me he saw you dropping me off no he said some he said some pretty hurtful things about it we were a block away hiding from these children just trying to get out of there oh so anyway we ended up at a second location that we then had to uber to that place was fine it was still it was still

younger than i want i wanted a quiet dive bar where you have a couple of old regulars maybe somebody gives you the stink this the stink eye when you walk in um but no this i love this neighborhood but this neighborhood feels very young there's like a lot of good places to eat and drink but it's definitely for young people who have a little bit of scratch yes so okay so we go

to this other place it's actually ends up fine um andrew decides to enlighten them on some of the rarer b52 classics via the jukebox via the touch tunes they know the song give me back my man everyone started dancing it was amazing a room full of 27 year olds were just like he did it he played the perfect anyway so it was a really fun night and then we got back here john you departed for uncle chucks and um which is a bar that you like to go to speak easy that see that he didn't want to let us know yeah anyway so all of this is to say andrew you and i then got back here and then we continued to kind of hang out and and chat and all that and uh it got you got later in the night than we realized okay so we both go to bed this morning uh i went and did my little jog thing and the door when you open the door on this airbnb it makes a chime and when i came back from my little jog i and and also the room that you're in andrew because this is sort of a loft space the room that you're in doesn't actually have it's like a macklemore song it doesn't have a ceiling it can't stop us no it can't hold you so you're in kind of a like a you're in a in a room that's partitioned off but that doesn't have a ceiling on it so it's sort of

open air which by the way can you guys hear me snore um and when i say you guys i took a quick very like half hour nap yesterday john was working in the kitchen area and i said i need to close my for 30 seconds or for about 30 minutes and i told john you're gonna hear me snore did you

mild okay i haven't heard you snore okay but so i come back from this jog and i open the door and it chimes and i just hear you go oh shit like i and you know we still had like an hour before the show wasn't like you woke up a minute before we were supposed to go on the air but it's just

like i don't think i've ever i've i have a lot to do in that hour yes and that's true i should have prepped better yesterday if i knew i want to mention hard last night i want to mention too

that like i've literally overslept entire episodes where my neighbor rich had to come wake me up off the floor of my tv room so i'm not on any kind of high horse but it was it was interesting to be in the room with someone who is realizing in that moment that their alarm has not gone off well not

only did my alarm not go off my phone was entirely powered down now i swear because i i set like a million alarms for myself usually like you know 5 30 6 30 whatever I didn't go back all the way to 5 30 but I swear that I had an early morning alarm this morning that I snoozed but responsibly snoozed I feel like that's a show thing responsibly snoozed I don't know if that's true or not but I feel like that happened but then I heard you come in because every day this week it's been nice I've been hearing you leave for your jog and that's woken me up yeah like it's been good because I'm like oh i got stuff to do i'll get up early and so hearing you leave gets me motivated i completely slept through hearing you leave i did not hear that i swear i snoozed my alarm once but then i hear you come back and i look at my phone and it's powered down it's a brick now not only am i thinking right now oh no i've overslept i only have an hour to get everything done before we go live but i'm also thinking is my phone jacked because it's how we do the broadcast on youtube that was exact i mean so it wasn't just maybe that's what the oh shit was it was a combination It was just a combination of a lot of stuff at once. I woke up. We didn't go to bed until – I don't think we said goodbye to each other.

We didn't do our goodnight kiss until, I think, 4 a.m. Who tucks who in, though?

2.30 maybe? I tuck Andrew in. We finally tucked it in. Best case. 2.33. 2.30 for three. We weren't going to get a lot of sleep last night anyway. So I'm waking up feeling very bedraggled. My voice was as rough as I've heard it in a very long time. I think it's finally warmed up now.

It sounds fine. I mean, at least you weren't where I was when we were pitching on MPR once. Oh, my gosh. And it was a Saturday morning. And literally, I walk jogged to 480 Cedar Street. And then, like, this is our friend Amy Wu had, like, literally brought us to Minnesota to sort of help raise money for the station. And the whole sort of. Crux point was like, maybe it was during this American life or something on a Saturday was like, these guys are going to knock it out of the park. And it's literally like, I like to tell you about it. It was like a disaster. You don't sound anything like I'm feeling better now.

But this morning I woke up. My phone was completely dead. I had no voice and I didn't have enough time to do everything I needed to get this broadcast going today. But here we are. We got off to a slightly late start. And that's the thing. We got off to a late start a couple of days ago, too, because we had some meltdowns, technologically speaking. today thank god everything was working as it did and we didn't really have too many things to troubleshoot because if so i don't know what would have happened we weren't dealing with any margins

and i'm a little i am a little embarrassed about that you should not be embarrassed andrew at all um and the other thing too is what it points out is the amount of the number of different things that you are personally responsible for getting together before we even get on the air or get the thing going you've got to like write some youtube you know like html code so that when people go to tbtl.net and click on the thing they're watching us you're you're doing a ton of behind the scenes if you're putting the intro package together you're today you're collecting up the dazzling donor messages you're getting the blurs days together you're just doing a lot of stuff before the show so i appreciate you doing all that stuff yeah yeah no problem i mean it's not

thank you i mean i am i am a hero in a lot of ways and i do wear a cape yes in a lot of places But yeah, no, I appreciate you saying that And everything seems okay But you know what it's like when I'm still kind of waking up right now Like you said, I'm a bit kind of in a dream state I mean, last night was supposed to be the night where we just laid low And I was going to do laundry last night

Your laundry's done, by the way, that's the good news It's dry

Yeah, I put it in the dryer You moved my laundry over? Yeah, is that alright? Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that Did you see my nightie?

No, but I did touch your underwear I thought this last night Like, I was like, let me just throw this in the dryer. Thank you for doing that. Sure, man. I was like, let me throw this in the dryer for him. But then as I was doing it, I was like, I am now, I'm touching Andrew's underwear. This is not something I'm comfortable with. Okay. So two orders of business, my friend. Could you activate the TBTL phone situation?

I think. Oh, yeah. The phone situation is activated. Okay, nice. Do you want to bring, we have a caller waiting to talk with us. It's been on hold for 15 minutes. All right, let's do it. You want to just do it now?

Let's just, yes. And then we'll thank the dazzling donors as well.

Okay. It looks like this is Steve. this is steve calling from the east coast right steve hello welcome to the show hi steve hi

steve and alexandria how's it going hey what's up man not not too much uh just uh enjoying the the live listen here and i didn't mind being on hold for 15 minutes so you can hear let me ask

you a technical question you can hear us when you're on hold i assume what happens and andrew

can correct me that once he decides to pick up the line he like picks it up and keeps it on hold

right but i can hear what you guys are saying yeah nice okay good so you know that andrew overslept is is the important thing i do yeah okay yeah i want that on the record now steve

i knew it was you because i have your information already saved into our google context list i have you as clubhouse steve now that sounds as hell now wait is that that audio is that like audio

hangout thing yeah yeah i was i was hosting those like meetups for a while about a year ago um and it was fun for a while but then the app kind of fell a little bit out of passion i tried to do another one uh the other night it was just the the core washington's here me jen and uh ryan and plus uh listener jamie jumped on but uh maybe we'll do some more it's it's fun when you get

some some good group of people together well sure do you want us to promote it i mean like if you want do you want us to like try to you know give it that tbtl bump get up to seven people

participating in it yeah sure i mean there is there is a tbtl club on clubhouse and if you go there and like request I will add you I promise that and then I don't know when the next time we'll actually do a uh a call is maybe this evening or maybe I don't know it's hard to like commit to a time at the moment but I but I uh I should do more because it is fun yeah and so I

you know I remember when that first came around it and it is it is it you're talking into your phone basically right and is that the technology does it sound like everyone's on a phone line or Does it sound like everyone's on FaceTime? Is it video or is it just audio?

It's just audio. It's more like FaceTime than phone, right? And people's audio quality varies depending on their setups. And then there's this kind of weird quirk is that it sounds better if you're just a listener than if you're a speaker because of the way, like, phones work. But you can all be speaking at the same time, and there's, like, very social aspects to it. But there's also some rooms that are a little bit more organized where it's more like a radio show with a listening audience. But every time we've done it with TPL, it's just like whoever wants to talk, talks, and we all kind of talk. I had my computer set up for a while with sound effects, and I could play the TPL music and sound drops. Whoa, that's cool. That was kind of fun, because we were playing each other's favorite.

What drops were you playing? Do you remember?

Oh, well, you know, it ends up being a lot. a lot of like random stuff from you guys because the bulk of the marsupial gurgle catalog is just the stuff that i think lynn finds funny oh so it's like it's us basically saying unintentionally erotic things yeah yeah a lot of stuff like that and a lot of times when you try to find the drop like oh yeah so i was you know i was the guy on the on the call on the game night right you had to go with carol hold my calls and so i was trying to find that oh you acted out carol hold my calls for the game night right right yeah i tried to um i tried to send that to my wife and i was looking for the first bit is like all the times that you guys have said carol hold my call

right well that's the only thing that we have given lynn the rights to not the actual drops us saying the drop so that's that's that's copyright free otherwise we get pulled down by world events yeah exactly tune core yeah limited liability um i totally remember denver

the last dinosaur by the way i was i knew that's what you're gonna play when you teased it really i won't i won't sing it so you don't get taken down again how old are you steve i am 38 okay

cool so that was i didn't know it but it would have been probably around like i'm the generation or i'm the age where i should have known that but you're significantly younger than me but you still

new denver it just comes down to what was playing in your local market where did you grow up steve

uh that was in dallas texas at the time because they didn't play down there i guess yeah right

denver the dinosaur was not playing in the seattle area when i was growing up which is why it was a

blind spot for me was also an age where there was a glut of cartoons i feel like there was just a lot of cartoons yes and so uh you know everyone watched different stuff because it was yeah we we were in the golden age of cartoons at that time i you know i'm about to say something that

i already know i'm going to regret but i feel like when i was a kid the cartoons seemed pretty awesome whether it was ducktales or and maybe those and maybe those awesome cartoons still exist and i just don't see them but when i see like paw patrol or the things that are now being created for for young people to watch it just looks like wet shit like i don't i mean and again Maybe there's really great stuff that I'm just unaware of

Well you got the people under the water Like the Spongebob people Well that's great

I almost think of Spongebob as being So creative that it's Adults can watch it and enjoy it as well I guess I just mean The things that we were watching to entertain ourselves When I was in 4th grade I mean Heathcliff You know Like I said DuckTales Silverhawks

Did you ever watch Cops? C.O.P.P. period s period no but i was aware of it that was kind of gritty for a cartoon right it was not like

the show not bad boys bad boys what you're gonna do but it was an animated show i don't know i i'm not even saying those shows were the best but they just i don't know there was a certain there just seemed to be a certain amount of care and creativity that went into them and now when i talk to my friends who have kids and it's like what do you what are your kids watching it's like paw patrol it's like something that just so for some reason seems like it doesn't have as much And maybe it's also an age thing I was 11 when I was watching Silverhawks So maybe the 11 year olds of the world are watching something interesting But it seems like a lot of the shows now I just can't imagine at any point in my childhood Enjoying a show like Paw Patrol

Steve, do you have kids? Can you speak to this? I do not have kids But I can speak to I think that budgets were much higher for cartoons back then And also they were being hand drawn It's much easier to phone it in with computer animation than it is when you're having to hand-draw stuff. I think it's just the market was less fragmented. It was like a traditional network system, and so there's just a lot more money to make higher-quality stuff. Now they just need to turn it out so these kids don't just start watching YouTube.

Right. There's some guy named Blimpy or something. There's a guy who wears a hat. So far, I like it. He's called Blimpy or something. It's very popular with babies.

okay yeah no i haven't heard of blimpy at all and that i might be wrong on the it's something

close to but he definitely wears a hat he wears a hat is the thing that i remember but he's like he's he has on these silly glasses and again i understand like if you're a very young child you're just interested in bright shiny things and voices that seem non-threatening like that all makes sense but i think you're right steve i think there there was so much more money and it was so much less fragmented that the system created these kind of higher production value things and now it's like you could just be this guy blimpy in front of a green screen on youtube and get eight million subscribers and and and like that's a thing now and i'm it's fine it's just media is evolving but i'm just glad i didn't have to grow up on paw patrol and blimpy oh gummy

bears would you say that it's disposable media you don't have the right unless you want a lawsuit on your hands steve you better not keep danny away from me i don't need it i don't need any

season is disremarked.

Steve, in all seriousness, those clubhouses that you set up.

He's called Blippi. Oh, Blippi. Look at this guy.

Don't play that. We'll get pulled in a second. Is he related to Clippy?

He actually is Clippy. Look, he has a hat on, Andrew. Am I crazy?

Oh, I am offended by that still shot. I will be honest with you. I hate that person, and I don't even know them, and I'm sure that person is a good person.

His name is Blippi, and I'm sure most of our listeners, their kids friggin' love him. But he wears like a silly hat and glasses. I mean, again, it's programming aimed at young children, So it's not fair for me to criticize it from the perspective of a hungover adult, but it just doesn't seem as good as the stuff we were watching when we were kids.

I heard the very last episode of Blippi, he's like sitting in a cafe with his family and some gangsters walk in and then it just cuts to black.

Journey is playing on the jukebox. The B-52s are playing on the jukebox. Andrew's in the background. He's touch-tuned the B-52s into the cafe.

I walk into the cafe.

What's that, Steve?

And then Blippi wakes up next to Bob Newhart Yes inside a snow globe I believe right

Well Steve hey thanks for calling in today Is there anything specific that you needed to say Before we cut you loose

The one thing I wanted to say When on the game night we were talking about How I was on that party bus with you And I took credit for getting live wire On South Carolina Public radio I just feel like I need to return the favor To TVTL and do my hard pitch That says listeners out there attends if you're not donating now i want you to think in your hearts of how much uh joy these guys give you every day and and think about donating if you can and if you're already donating think about bumping your donation i became a dadson donor for the first time this year and thank you do it too if you can that's my hard uh public radio pitch for you guys thank you for doing that

that's actually very helpful it takes it takes the pressure off of us to say that exact thing so thanks for saying that man and thanks for um donating and thanks for just like being part of the

the tbtl family and for creating those clubhouses too man i i only joined you guys for one of those but if you do another one i'll really make an effort to join you again that was that was really good um and it was great to to be able to just kind of like chill and chat with everybody so thanks for doing that that's kind of a no those community building events are amazing what i'll

do with this is if you're on the slack that's why i'm not on facebook um i'm going to try to do one one more this week maybe tonight maybe tomorrow but i will post on the slack when i'm doing it But if you download the Clubhouse app and search for TBTL, you'll find the club. And if you say, like, I want to be a member, I will add you to that. And, yeah, maybe we can do another one of those this week during the thon.

Sweet. Hey, thanks, Steve. We really appreciate you, man.

Thank you.

That's a great segue, Maestro, into the thing that I want to talk about next, which is our dazzling donors today.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. We're going to thank some folks who have been dazzling us

with their donation of dough over the course of the last year. And, of course, Steve made the point. I started the show by saying it. This is the TBTL-a-thon week, TBTL-a-thon 13. Let the fun begin. And it has been a hell of a week. And rightfully so, the focus has moved off of this show a little bit, as it should be. But it also means that we're kind of, let's just say, if the money we were raising, we're supposed to wake up at 7 a.m. It woke up at more like 9 a.m. today.

You know, the money is starting to think about taking a nap on this couch right now. That's right.

So we're just a we're just we're running a little behind. And I guess the point of mentioning that is if you are someone who kind of has in the back of your mind, oh, I'm going to do that on Friday. or I've been meaning to, and you're just busy. Everybody is very busy. If you could just take a moment today to go ahead and go to tbtl.net and sign up to make a donation each month at whatever amount works for you. It doesn't have to be the dazzling donor level. If you can do that, that would be awesome. Again, just think of us as the gym you subscribe to that you don't go to that you forgot you're still paying $50 a month to. That's right. We're happy to provide that service in your life.

And not to be a broken record, as my mom used to accuse me of doing, boy, that was cruel now that I think of it, but I'll work out my mommy issues later.

I like this verse of you, Andrew. We're getting down to the real.

So out of my gourd right now. We have a game night to do tonight as well. Imagine how loopy I will be.

By the way, possible Bubbles sighting on the game night tonight.

Oh, Bubbles your kitten.

Bubbles the kitten. Becca the girlfriend and Bubbles the kitten, I believe, are going to be checking in. And I'm sure that what will happen is She'll try to hold the cat up to the camera It will claw her to shreds And then run away

I wonder if we just got 7,000 people Rushing to sign up for the game night

I think there's already a healthy

number of people signed up right john yeah we're i'd say if you want to join and do it now because it's getting close to capacity oh wow okay okay wow um so we we should thank the dazzling donor but i just want to say like in addition to what you were saying luke about donating we've we have a um a great community of people who have been supporting the show for a long time now and generously and have been upping their donations and doing all kinds of things that every time i think about it i'm almost overwhelmed by the generosity and there are people listening who've been listening to the show for quite some time whether it's two years or 12 years who haven't been in a position to give maybe in the past but maybe are now and maybe you've just kind of gotten into the habit of listening to these tbtlathons and not donating because you don't have to and i'm with you man i've been there i've listened to shows and been like well i don't have to donate maybe you're bit torrenting us right now right then suddenly i realized the pirate bay to me maybe you're going on the pirate bay to get this show maybe you got this from kaza light or even casa heavy um but you know just maybe if you're somebody who's never given before maybe just take a moment and think about that and say and think hey maybe this is the time to do that even if it's at a at a um at a lower level like no matter what level you give by the way you'll receive a um a link to an audio track that luke and me and uh my partner genevieve did uh watching the princess bride and loving on that movie and talking about that movie um and that no matter what level you give at you'll at least get that as a thank you gift so maybe think about that

we've also got this book of Mad Libs that are all TBTL related that we're personally writing too beautiful to lib so it'll be like all the fun of Mad Libs and all the fun of TBTL inside information and stories we've also got these tonight pants which are actually really quite something they are comfortable they are well made they have a cool tag

inside that says tbtl they've got pockets if you leave him in the washing machine luke will

transfer him i will come to your house i will come to your house and i will get to your drying machine and uh yeah these these things are incredible john good job on this our friend john and our colleague emily uh worked really hard to make this happen um and you keep pointing this out john that you know there was within the american public media universe there is a there was another version of this uh that was the i believe it's the make me smart podcast right that's correct kai rizdahl pause pause for angry pause for cartoon angry things to come off my head as i mentioned my nemesis no kai rizdahl this kai kai rizdahl and molly uh would uh do this great uh podcast anyway they would say that things were banana pants sometimes when something was particularly um galling to them and so then they made banana pants and the thing is i have so little in this world that i can point to that makes me better than kaira's tall in fact i have nothing that i can point to but if we could move more tonight pants than they moved banana pants it would it would emotionally get me out of a couple of jams that's what i'm trying to say the gauntlet has been thrown exactly so anyway um if you can go to tbtl.net and take a look at the Various levels that you can help us out at And also the things that we would love to send you as a Thanks we would really really Appreciate that be cool like Keith Stone in Libertyville Illinois indeed We put these pronouncers a place Where someone can help with the pronunciation of their name And Keith says my first name Rhymes with teeth yeah

Well it actually just says rhymes with teeth what if he's Talking about his last name what if it's Keith

Steve Keith Steve we'd like to thank Keith Steve in Liberty He says, I want to give a brief update on stone craft leather. Give me a follow on the gram. If you're interested, he said Instagram, but I was trying to make it more. I want to make it more youthful. Last year, Jonna from at sunshine zoo design created an awesome logo for me. I love it. Check her amazing workout on Instagram. Another TV TL 10 reached out requesting a log tote. Oh, that's cool. So that'd be like a leather thing that Keith made that you can, like, carry some firewood in, presumably.

Yeah, I can picture that.

That's pretty dope. It was an absolute blast making it. Thanks, Heather. Doing leather work and joining the Leathercraft community has been really fun and rewarding. Recently, the community has raised over $40,000.

That's $40,000 for the refugees from Ukraine.

Amazing. I wanted to use this opportunity to direct you to the hashtag Leather Crafters for Ukraine effort. One of the leather crafters from Poland, Wuka from Skalen Goods and Matt from Matter Supply Company, have been instrumental in putting all the donations to good use. Wuka is on the ground in Poland and providing daily updates on what the donations are buying. Everything from food, hair dryers, plates.

spring shoes for kids and even hospital generators to help power pop-up hospitals. The group is selling $5 raffle tickets for some amazing leather goods and all donations are going directly to Poland to buy goods for refugees. Thanks again for each of you for following me on the gram. Oh, he did say the gram.

Does he say the gram?

He says the gram at the end. Oh,

wow.

Keith, can we get some consistency please in this message and for liking my little leather projects? I try to follow everyone back, and I really enjoy seeing the variety of accounts. Power out. Keith, thank you, my friend, for donating to the show, and thanks for being such a longstanding and long-suffering 10.

Yeah, and I just have one question for you. Do you have anything that says Daddy Loves Leather?

On your mind. On your mind. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Hold my stones. Go. Everybody ready. We've also got to thank Nicole Oswill of Temecula, California.

Temecula, one of the more fun names to say

So fun to say Temecula I believe there's some good wine out there in Temecula I believe that's They've got some vineyards It's a very wine These days a very wine centric Kind of part of the California landscape Nicole says I started listening to TBTL 10 years ago When I was pregnant with my first child It quickly became a staple of my day Making me feel at home With friends and reminding me of my PNW roots my son came 12 weeks early and tbtl helped me get through many long days this community is amazing even for those of us that remain quiet in the background it makes a difference another thing that helped me and my son is the organization mother's milk if possible please consider a donation to them and not to worry my son is almost 10 and wonderful with two younger siblings you've and busy nicole even in our crazy busy lives tbtl remains a daily staple thanks to the cobros and also all of the tens i don't know what mother's milk does exactly but i think it's a making breast

milk available to as many people as possible it says what i do know is that families that we are

dealing with a formula shortage in this country it's um and i don't i don't know where this this organization fits into that but i would have to imagine it's helping in some way yeah shape or

form yeah in fact this i'm quite sure this message came in um long before this shortage which is i mean wreaking havoc on families i mean you're seeing that too luke i know it's um and you you

you and i are not in a position that's affecting us but like i was on a formula diet like six months ago i'd read about it on instagram yeah you're all formula but i have a window i'm only allowed to have formula between 4 p.m and 4 15 p.m i'm formula fasting yes yeah so anyway so i

I think this was sent in before that. But, yeah, what a great organization. I'm on their website right now.

Absolutely. So thank you so much to both of our dazzling donors today. Thanks for keeping TBTL going. We really appreciate you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right, let's get down to brass tacks, Andrew. You and I yesterday hopped in the Mitsubishi massage and headed for DIA, Denver International Airport, because we were hoping to trade in that pretty small vehicle that you had driven from Seattle all the way out here to Denver to try to get you something a little more substantial for both your safety, for crossing mountain passes, for a few more bells and whistles inside the vehicle.

Yeah, because I just want to reset this one more time. I'm not very familiar with the car rental process. I've done it. I think this might have been the second time in my life that I've actually been responsible for this. And so I rented it using our company resources through Enterprise, and all the paperwork went fine. And then when they said, okay, go ahead and pick your car, the kid at the rental agency gestured towards a couple of mid-sized sedans I could take because I bought a car or I paid for a car that would be more of a mid-sized car. But we happened to be standing next to a little hatchback, and I'm more familiar with driving hatchbacks. I always drive around the city, so I always think, oh, a small little car is good. The smaller, the better for this, Andrew. And so I took this tiny little car, not really thinking about the fact that, oh, I'm going on a road trip. This needs to go through the mountains. And I didn't realize that just because this was a hatchback, I didn't make the assumption that it was going to be kind of a very cheaply made car. And it did not feel very good trying to get through the mountains on this thing. That was on me, but I was paying for something that should have been better for this.

so I um I think maybe Monday called Enterprise and a weird moment happened because of course I was just doing this on your behalf Andrew but they were like okay uh rental agreement number and I told them because you'd send it to me and they're like date of birth and I muted myself and I was like Andrew date of birth and you told me then i repeated to them and they said okay andrew and i felt very it was an interesting experience to fully inhabit the character of andrew walsh on this enterprise rental car who would have thought two days later you'd be touching my underwear i mean life comes at you fast tell you what so i called and it was a it was one of those um kind of customer service situations that leaves one feeling less than fully satisfied because i was very definitely talking to someone in a very far flung place not the united states somebody who was kind of working off of a script and and and then just transferred me to was having a hard time kind of understanding the nature of the problem which was i just said we've got this car we need to bring it in and trade it for a different car and what i had wanted to do was just call this is my whole trick call the actual physical location that you're trying to do a thing with yes because when you get routed on the 800 number it's like you're really rarely going to get help that's very useful so i had called a an enterprise location here in denver and got a human and they said you know what you got to go to the airport for that so then i tried to find a phone number for the airport location they didn't have a phone number i ended up in like 1-800-HELL but some at some point someone said if you take the car to the airport they'll just trade it for you there so you and i yesterday drove to the airport

it and they did say i'm sorry if i just warged out but is it also important to say that they said usually we only do this if there's an issue with the vehicle yeah the last person i talked to on

the 800 number said well you got to take it in there and um they'll probably trade it for you because i i mean i was at that point i said look this is a a car that's just really not safe for driving these mountain passes in etc and and the woman said but there's not a mechanical issue and I said, well, not really, but there's a satisfaction issue. She said, well, usually it's got to be a mechanical issue, but take it, and I'm sure they'll trade it for you. So you said to me as we were leaving, what do you think the chances are of this working out? And I was like, 100%.

Because yesterday we had kind of a hole in our day a little bit in between live events, and I was like, should we go try to swap out this car? And the reason I asked you your confidence level on this, I feel like if I ever ask you your confidence level, you'll say 100%.

The answer is never not 100%.

Mine is like somewhere in the negative.

Between the two of us, it's 40% confidence. It averages out.

What's your confidence level that they'll bring you an English muffin that you ordered at the diner? Like negative two. But anyway, I didn't want to waste our time. And it was the airport is a little ways out and the traffic was really terrible. So that's why I asked you, like, I don't want to go through all this rigmarole if we end up just coming back in the same mirage. you know so that's why i asked you that and you said no this is going to happen like you didn't

you didn't even bat an eyelash so we drove because i really did think it was just going to be like no big deal because again we were not at the time proposing that they take a rental car out of the system we were proposing that they give that rental car to someone else maybe who has rented the most economy model possible and give us slash you a car that's a little more substantial i didn't

think it was going to be a big thing unless we told them it was malfunctioning which was sort of the plan because that does take it out they're not going to give a malfunctioning car to somebody

so the plan as we rolled into by the way watching you andrew i i please hope you know i'm not trying to give you grief but watching you drive over those spikes when you go into the lake i could just i witnessing how much you even though you know we were doing the right thing we were going to where you return the rental car at the airport they have those spikes it's one way the sign says entrance there's no way it's going to damage the car but it was like you know there's that thing i think they call it um like habituation therapy like if somebody has um a particular like maybe phobia of something they will like let's say somebody has an ocd around um germs and cleanliness what they'll do is they'll take that person sometimes a therapist and they'll have them put their hand on a toilet seat in a public restroom the worst thing you could do right and they say like rate your anxiety from a one to ten and the person's like it's a 50 and then they just say okay stay in it stay in it and they leave their hand on it and what happens is your system cannot stay at a 50 and so after five minutes they're like rate your anxiety and they're like it's a nine and then after 10 minutes it's like it's a seven and it's a it's actually a very useful therapeutic trick for helping people get over sort of things like that i feel like you were in a habituation therapy experiment trying to drive over those spikes i like i was watching you stress out even though this was the this was how the system works i lost 10 pounds yes and

just shaking i hate those things so much you know i don't love them they are very terrifying so

anyway get in there and now the plan is you and i are like we're game planning this the idea is that i because i had been on the phone with people and because this is a little more in my kind of wheelhouse basically lying like i'll do the talking lying slash schmoozing slash um just convincing i would say

you know so the whole thing was like luke's gonna do all the talking but of course as we pull up because you're driving the person with the little scanner for the return immediately comes to your side of the car yeah which makes sense our plan is already going sideways i kind of had a feeling

that was going to happen yeah and so you had said in the car like you know don't downplay it you know say something specific or the plan was to say something specific the reason like we can't take this car back to seattle is because it's malfunctioning in some way right the engine i

think that the the plan was we were going to say the engine was making a weird noise yes that was going to seem mechanical enough to force them to give us a new car now i really don't like lying

We'll get more into this later. Yeah, you know, this is the heart of the story. But but I but I in the instance that I have to be maybe slightly less than honest, you know, I like to I don't like to start. You don't I feel like you don't necessarily need to start with the biggest lie. Right. Like just like warm up to it. See how much information that person needs. And then then you can give them more of the details. But my in my head driving up, if they asked me, like if I say this, we're swapping out this car because this car is not working and I can't drink. it back to seattle i assume the follow-up question would be well what's wrong with it and here's what i had in the back of my head it was um struggling to go through the mountains it was shaking it was straining and i think i had one third thing it was like a dog shooting a pizza exactly but i was gonna say bob walsh i was definitely gonna say shaking making weird sounds and it's unsafe to

drive back yes and those were that that was a that was a very good plan that's what was in my head

totally they pull up but then when they when i pull up and i roll down my window the woman asked

me she goes what are you doing here and you and the reason that it was important what are you doing here i said what what do you do it was chris hansen from dateline it was very weird i was off my game immediately um so the whole thing was we needed to immediately establish with them that we're not checking the car in like we're not returning this car as much as we're swapping this car and so we had to kind of like before they just like do the scan of the of the barcode and then the car goes into some other like system in their computer we had to make sure that like that didn't happen because as soon as that happens maybe it's getting rented out somewhere yeah and

i was focusing on that she had the little scanner in her hand so you were like you had you notice i

reached my hand out the window and kind of gave one and you said hey we okay we need to trade this car um there's a problem with it she said what's the problem and you said well i came across the mountains in it and it's just it just isn't it is just isn't making it i well actually i don't

think that's quite right what do you remember saying because i remember i mean what i said is similar to that but the the i thought that she was going to ask follow-up questions basically she said you know what are you doing here and i said i didn't touch her um why'd you bring that

mcdonald's the specific order that you were corresponding regarding terrible joke i apologize

um no but she said hey how can i help you or whatever and i said you know we're here to swap out this car because it's uh you know we drove it through the mountains and it's not up for the

task that's what you said that's exactly what you said it's not up for the task and and i said you

know but i do think i said something like it's malfunctioning or i said something did not you

said it's not up for the task but you didn't say it was malfunctioning and this is what struck me and and i hear what you're saying as far as like why start with lying if you don't i was ready for

her to say oh what's wrong with it right okay but instead i said yeah we're driving in here we're here to swap it out because we were on a road trip we drove her through the mountains and she was kind of and i said it's not up for the task and she immediately had this look on her face of kind of like oh like understanding sort of and so i was ready for her to say what's wrong what are the symptoms right and that's when i was going to get into the shaking and whatever but instead she just said okay gotcha and she just walked away and so i was like and now this is where i think it's interesting because i said not up for the task or whatever she walks away in my head i'm just like that was as easy as it could possibly be i thought she was going to ask the follow-up questions i was ready to to lay on some see i didn't know this truth i didn't know that you

had slight mistruths ready to go i thought that you at my read of the situation which was wrong was that when push came to shove you couldn't bring yourself to actively lie so you said it's not up to the task because you didn't want to lie but i didn't realize you were that was just the beginning of that was the opening salvo for you i thought that you just you're because and this is one of the many things i love about you andrew you're a deeply ethical person generally other than the part where we lied later aggressively to them but but i mean you're at your core you are a very ethical person and you really try to move through the world in a moral way and and you said something to me on the show about um it was about getting a second boost and i said oh a booster shot yeah well i was like what is unethical about me i don't want to get covid i'm i'm vaccinated i'm boosted there are these places at the airport and elsewhere where there are just It's like a tent set up with people like from the national.

guards sitting there with vaccine that no one's using how is it a harm if i were to go up there and say i'm here for my booster shot and get a boost and what you said was well if you have to lie that tells you something yeah which is a very profound thing actually and i hadn't really thought

of it that way but i will say that like there are instances where there are immoral or um sure broken systems in place the nazis come to your door and you're hiding jews you lie to them i'm saying that if you you tell them you know what fascism is it's not going to cut it that's your opening lie and then you have more lies ready to go it's fascism not up for the task not fascism is not up for the task but anyway yeah so i just want to be clear about that i'm not saying that there are moral lies there are times to do it and so that situation you had with the booster shot i think is actually gray areas but i just said you know that is one thing to think about if you're going and lying right away are you lying because the system is totally broken and this is the only

way to do the right thing so you know um again i had read the situation i think slightly inaccurately which is i thought that like very moral andrew had just like sort of had sort of broken through and you were just like you weren't really willing to fully lie to them you were just going to say it's not up to the task now i know that you're ready to get into the rest of the story but she

just like went to the i couldn't believe it i was just like whoa that worked so then she she we get

out of the car and she comes back from the like you know whatever rental car thingy and she goes i'm really sorry but i just talked to my manager and because of the holiday weekend and lack of lack of inventory we can't trade cars and that was when i said you don't understand it was smoking

yeah you went right to i went right to smoking and that's the right to right to full-on lying Because to me, I mean, I don't know, like, I would have never, I would have never gotten there. Like, my lie really was as much as, like, shaking. And because, like, going up the mountains, like, it's not shaking right now. But yeah, I was struggling. I could have made a sense. And I was ready to make the argument that you later made, too, which is like, we need to do this now because you don't want to call from me from the peak of Vail in two days where you're sending out somebody to rescue me, right? But smoking, that is such a huge lie because it's not smoking now. There's no evidence of smoking. That just seemed like you just bit off. We could not have been approaching this differently.

We really escalated there.

And again, I want to make it clear that in this case, if I was there alone, I would have either walked away or driven away in the same car I came in. or somehow they would have just confiscated the car and told me I'm hitchhiking back. Like, that's how bad, so I admit that, but I admit it. He admitted. But you went right to the car. Oh my God, he admitted. The car was smoking. I was like, that's when I decided I need to stop making eye contact with everybody involved because I can't poker face this. It was amazing.

You just, you, you left your body at that point.

It's like I'm not – if we're going with that, I can't do that. I'm outside of my skill set here, so I don't want to make eye contact with anybody.

You should have seen it, John. It was remarkable. He just – he literally astrally projected out of Denver, Colorado to some other place.

I didn't want to salt it. That was honestly what I was doing.

Can I ask you a quick question, Andrew? What's worst-case scenario if they catch you in the lie, in your opinion? Like they're not going to call the cops. Like what do you think is going to happen in that situation?

I guess there's a couple of things. I didn't want to salt the deal. I really did want another car. But also, and that's a really good question because I didn't think about this, and this is going to maybe be an embarrassing thing to say. But if I was on this mission by myself and I failed at this, I would live with that failure. I'm used to that. But in a certain way, I would have been letting down Luke. And it's my situation driving down the car, but I did not want to be leaving that rental car lot with Luke being like, you salted the game, bud. And that's how Luke talks to me off air.

And usually I'm tearing up a racing form while I say that.

That would have been really embarrassing for me.

You would have no coffee because it's for closers only. Yeah, exactly.

That would have been really embarrassing. And I would have wasted Luke's time. And so I think that would have been it. If I was here by myself, I wouldn't have even tried to do this. I would have just been like, I'm an idiot. Next time I rent a car, I'm going to take this lesson with me. But we're going through the process of taking an hour and a half out of our day to do this. I didn't want to ruin it. And I'm not a good liar, and I realized when Luke is saying this thing was smoking, I did not want her to look at me and ask any follow-up questions. We know you're good at lying. So I didn't try to project out of my body. Right, right. I just did not want anyone to look at the face. It wasn't a selfish move on your part. It was me being like, this is not my skill set right now. I'll go back later, and I'll set up the YouTube stream, maybe a little bit late. But this is not.

This is not the droid you're looking for. Right.

So the Siamese guy was a little bit worried. So now I'm like, it was smoking. And then her affect changes a little bit because she's like, okay, if there's smoking involved, now maybe we have a situation. But still, she's been told by the manager she's not allowed to give us a different car. So she said, who did you call? And I said, we called this 800 number. And she goes, we just don't have more cars. And I said, yeah, but this thing is not going to make it back over the mountain pass Which is a complete lie It would have made it back over the mountain pass

Can I get a clarification? This is now the manager, right? Nope, not even

This is with the first person we talked to So she then realized I said, could we talk to the manager? Which even saying those words in this day and age Makes me feel like a person who's being a hassle But she's like, sure So she goes and gets the manager She goes back into the kiosk hut, whatever And she's in there for like four minutes It's like a very long four minutes Because now it's like What are we going to do The manager now comes out And I can tell as she's walking towards us That she's already kind of getting her Sort of statement together She probably deals with things like this all the time

I've never seen a human being Walk into a situation Knowing that no is the answer Like I just

You mean more so than this

Yeah exactly Like this woman came out And her whole body was like Everything said no Everything said you guys are going to tell me a bunch of stuff and i am going to say no to you like she came out of that yes geared up to say like no matter what these guys say the answer is no it was her whole

100 she was very yeah she was really kind of spoiling for and she wasn't rude no you could just tell that she was going to give no quarter yes what we were pitching so she comes out and she says i'm really sorry but we holiday weekend inventory we just don't have any more cars and i said well i go well we we called the 1-800 number they told us to come here to trade the car she goes well you didn't call us because we don't have a phone number and i was like yeah i know that i mean i didn't say that but i was thinking yeah i know that because i tried to call you the other day she goes you were talking to someone in seattle because your car was originally from seattle and i said no we were talking to someone in uruguay and she kind of laughed she said oh even better yeah and so then she's just looking at that was actually maybe the turning point that might have helped that might have helped so she sort of chuckled at that and then so then of course i sort of doubled down on the line i said look this thing was smoking and i don't think it's going to make it back over the mountains and it's going to be a worse situation i'm suddenly noticing

the trees i'm just kind of like a butterfly goes by and andrew starts chasing it and like i was

like it's going to be worse for enterprise because you're going to have to come get us in the mountains or we can just get a different car now and i can just see her doing the calculation and this was still all very cordial as i told you later on the drive i was i was doing the thing you know i always think you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar so it's like let's keep this nice for as long as we can before it goes to this is unacceptable because that would also be a thing which is like your company told us to come here which was a pretty substantial drive to trade this car and now you're telling us it can't happen that's unacceptable we didn't go there

it was just it was still on the positive but you did you did your tone it did shift i was i was pretty soft but like your tone pretty early on was like i need to have an edge here like i believe like that i don't know if you said this exactly but you had a so you're telling me vibe to what you were saying i called this number and your company told me this like you had i guess i was

doing that even more than i was realizing but i i was still trying to keep it i didn't want it to be like going super negative but you're right i probably had an edge in my voice so there's just this moment where she's saying we have no cars and i'm saying are you going to come get the car you know from a mountain pass and then she's just looking at us and i can see the gears turning in her head and then she just goes chris and chris is the dude who has the grease pencil that you write on the window of rental car this thing's broken and chris comes over and gives her the grease pencil and that was when i leaned over to him i was like we're in now i see chris writing

with the grease pencil on the car and i hands it to her because he doesn't even know the situation

he was just the person who had yeah she writes the date and then she writes engine smoking oh i didn't even on the window which was like that was like the the heavens parted and like this like came down like i was like she's okay this is now we are now getting a new car because she is writing she is buying the second big lie this is the second biggest lie there's a bigger one out there that's more pernicious but she is now she is she is living in this universe that we have created which that this car has got problems which it really kind of doesn't well it's amazing so we

were talking earlier about this moment that you and i both perceived very differently the moment where i said to this woman it's not up for the task and she kind of nodded and repeated what i said like she seemed very understanding and I took that to be like wow this was super easy and you took this to be like what is this idiot doing no

no no i didn't think that but i just didn't like i i at that moment i thought it's not a sufficient situation to get us a new car okay right that was what i thought right and you were right but now

here we are 10 minutes later and the grease pencil is out and there is writing going on in the window and this is and again this is from my inexperience in rental car lots but like i see that grease pencil i'm like you're like this is great and i'm in and i'm like this could be the darkest moment because they're clearly now taking this car away from us we're not in this car anymore but i still have not heard the words that here is your new car sir so your thought was we may have now what

i'm thinking we may have deprived ourselves of this functional car that is just basically too small and now if they really are out of cars now we just have no car we've gone from having one

car that isn't great to no cars i was lit because we're in the rental car area of the airport so i was legitimately and again wrongfully so and i often as as you and i were talking about yesterday i am always prepared for the worst case scenario which is why i'm so cool um but uh i was ready for her to say okay you can't drive this car because it's smoking we will give you your money back for the rest of this thing i recommend checking out alamo i recommend like i was ready And then I was like, oh, my God, like we're going to be spending the rest of the day trying to find another car to rent on Memorial Day weekend. I hadn't really thought about the Memorial Day factor of this until they had mentioned it. So I was almost that was the darkest moment for me. That's so interesting.

The difference in experience of that is so fascinating. Yeah, I was like, we have triumphed. We have gotten her to put this car out of commission, meaning they're going to now give us a new car, which ultimately they did, thankfully. Another thing too is that this manager Was clearly pregnant And of course Saying something about Someone's pregnancy when they're not Pregnant is a mistake you make exactly once in your Life I've made it I am still scarred from the awkwardness Of that but I Also had in the back of my mind somewhere like this is Also a convert this could be a softener A conversation softener hey when do you do Do you know it's a boy or girl like if I Needed to sort of try to humanize myself to her i was thinking about that but i also thought what if she's not and i i mean that could also just absolutely solve the deal so once yeah because i didn't i didn't notice that again i'm

trying not to make a lot of eye contact and stuff anyway which is kind of my mo i guess anyway but i

didn't notice that so so she grease pencils the car and then she goes give me a minute and she starts walking back to the hut and i said we'll drive one of those rental buses if you want she goes don't tempt me yeah and i was like okay we're a hundred percent in now yeah we're cool She's, like, irritated with us. She's laughing. Don't tempt me. Like, we're good. We're good now.

This is the most I can picture you when you tell your stories in grade school, right? Like, the teachers both kind of like you, but you're irritated. You've pushed them. You've got your way. You know what I mean? Like, this was like little Luke Burbank that I saw here.

A hundred percent. So then, you know, she comes back and, you know, has, like, I don't even think she actually gave us anything. She just said, like, so-and-so is going to help you from here. But she basically came back and pointed us in the direction where we should go for the car. And then as and we said, thank you so much. We were very appreciative. And she said, you know, no problem. We were. Thank you. Thank you for making this happen. And I said, I'm something like, well, good luck with the baby. And she went, thank you so much. I only felt comfortable referencing that when I knew we had another car. I mean, it would be so hilarious if she was it'd be like out of a movie if she was ready to give us the next car. And I said something like, good luck with the baby. Just baby. And then she takes the keys back. anyway so the the greatest thing is you got dude you're getting a kia you got a kia soul a boxy

car that you love you love boxy cars i love any car that has a hatchback you got a hatchback and they she gestures over and says you know so and so will take care of you and i look over and that to me was the the clouds parting and a ray of sunshine shine down on this beautiful boxy car soul that is probably like twice the size of my current car which is what is necessary so it's still relatively small but you know what i mean it's manageable for me but it's not like i i did not want anything that even is even close to suv levels or anything like that i don't like driving big things like i'm not used to it i didn't want to be driving because we're still a couple more days in the city here um and i just see this car that i i love i don't know if i've really noticed a kia soul before clearly i'm not a car guy there's something about the soul of a kia it's true And the other thing is we have a hamster here sitting in with us today. Didn't hamsters sell these dang things?

Are you related to any of those hamsters in the commercial? Were you our guardian angel? Were you manifesting that Kia soul for us at the Enterprise?

I can't do this show. You've got to stop. John, you've got to take over from here.

Anyway, the point is, we got Andrew a new whip.

Jalapeno! Jalapeno!

And I know some of you who are even more moral than Andrew will say, yeah but like now they think that car is broken and my theory is it's gonna go it yes okay we sort of got over on enterprise that is true but what's gonna happen is it's it'll go through the system they'll pop the hood they'll start up probably the people that like work on these broken cars have probably seen this move before smoking huh turn it on look at the engine everything looks fine they'll send it back out into service i'm i'm hope you know i'm hoping that it's not a huge uh sort of time suck for them because yes i mean and i'm being if i'm being honest for once uh we were not being truthful about that but we did get you a kia soul and i think in the end this falls into a gray area for me and you know how the story ends right this is i wonder you i wonder if you're kidding on the square with this because i think i know

what you're about to say i've mentioned it to you a couple of times so i i wonder if you really do

feel karmically like this car will catch on fire when you're driving home because of the lie i

think this car is going to be smoking when i drive it back like i mean i don't really think that's going to happen but like wouldn't that be something if you and i dial up for our show next week and i have to explain that i had to get towed out of the rockies because the car the new car started smoking that would be something and you don't believe in a Todd hey let's do some blurs days what do you say okay I think we should do that actually before we do a blurs days that we have

somebody who has been on hold for oh my god if it's the lady from 38 minutes if it's the lady from enterprise uh everything we said was performance that none of that was true really

was smoking I have the keys you can't get them back so um I know that we do have to do blurs days, but Luke, 38 minutes is a long time to keep somebody on hold. Ahoy, ahoy. Who are we talking with?

Hi, welcome to the show.

Hey, guys. It's Craig Dodge

from Denver. Hey, Craig! A great job on the TBTL game night last night. Yeah, and you don't believe in a Dodge. Really special stuff, the way that you acted out that particular thing.

Well, thank you. Yes, it was great to be able to make my introduction to all of the tens that were there by showing them just how much bolt but i have to cover it's a paint i wanted to mention i was

thinking of you this morning craig because uh you're a runner you were giving me some advice on trails and i had said to you last night during the tbtl game night that i was going to go out to the um the canal uh what's it called the high canal trail the highline canal yeah and this morning when i when i got up and i looked on ways it was going to be 58 minutes to get there because of traffic from where we are yeah and i was like i don't have two hours of drive time not including the run so i ended up doing the cherry creek trail which yeah do you run on that one oh of course that is so beautiful that might be one of my favorite uh one of my favorite runs

i've done here nice did you go by the four mile house when you did that uh what's the four mile house oh it's a place that's like just like four miles outside of downtown where they used to like rest their horses and that kind of thing i didn't get that far i did a little i did an out and back

i did five miles but you know what i did do i this is new to me this is a denver thing i was running on a side of the river that's only for bikes oh oh yeah yeah the one side is trails one side is pedestrians and no bikes and the other side is bikes and no pedestrians and i got on the wrong one and i'm jogging and these bikes are flying past me and i'm like where's the fire and it was only later when i was coming back that i realized oh because i was like running on the bike one and it's it's that's all there is on this side of the river like it's just exclusively bikes and

nobody yelled at you i'm kind of surprised i was oh i'm surprised too because those people those bikers will yell at you if you're jogging on their side i had my headphones in i was listening to

telekinesis on my jog so i don't know maybe they were yelling at me but i was blissfully unaware because i didn't realize how much i was in violation of the rules then i crossed over to the other side where's that where there's that little when basically everything goes to the other side of the river but between the the murals and the artwork and just the the river itself and just being around the sights and smells of denver i mean that was just so cool yeah that is a cool

trail i do like going on that one um you have to and i know i told you this yes wash park right wash park you've got to yeah and and don't run on the inside trail that's paved run on the outside of the edge of the park where it's like gravel it's amazing okay i love it

Thank you.

All right, Wash Park. I'm doing that tomorrow.

Awesome. I look forward to hearing about it. I'm probably the one person that's here for your running content. Especially when you're doing it in my backyard. Right. I'm calling. Yes. Go ahead.

No, no. What would you like to tell us or say?

I'm calling in slightly depressed. I mean, after going two hours, or two hours, excuse me, two years and three plus months or whatever, never getting COVID. Oh, no. Yeah, this morning I woke up. Craig. In my hometown, the one time I was going to be able to come and see you by just driving 20 minutes, and I test positive. Oh, buddy.

I'm sorry.

Where do you think you got it? God only knows. I've been trying to be pretty careful. I'm not going and hanging out in tons of groups of people, but who knows? I could have gone to the grocery store. I mean, you just don't know these days, right?

I'm sorry. How are you feeling? I mean, other than being bummed about not getting to the event, how are you just feeling physically?

basically i feel fine i mean i've got you can kind of hear my voice i've got that wonderful you know baritone rasp that's uh lovely with the coughs and stuff but uh slightly tired i have a bit of a cough it feels like a bad cold but that's about as bad as it gets so hopefully hopefully it stays that way and i get over this quickly but uh yeah i the timing couldn't be worse i thought covid had already taken enough from me but now it takes away from me to see you guys oh that sucks

i'm so sorry man that is like really bad timing yeah um well well do you want us to set up a laptop there that you can like facetime or something so we do like uh some kind of uh you

know technological solve for this i was a little i was kind of torn because the colorado avalanche who are like my favorite hockey team and we do like hockey here especially yeah i i couldn't

believe how many people had avalanche jerseys on last night in the two locations that we were at The cook at the restaurant we went to, the chef, I should say, had an Avs shirt. The bartenders, all these guys that were doing one of those weird punch machines where you punch a boxing, not a heavy bag, but what do you call the little one?

A punching bag? Punching bag.

They all had Avs jerseys on. Boy, this is a big thing out here.

Oh, it's huge. Yeah, we love the NHL and hockey in general, especially when our team has nine wins away from the Cup. Oh, okay. Go Avs. Wow. Yeah.

The only professional hockey game I've ever been to is an Avalanche game.

oh thanks and it was very very fun cracking now i know you guys have talked about you don't have room for more sports and stuff but you should give it a try just go to one game being there

in person is like a totally different experience absolutely no hockey hockey is a very very fun very entertaining sport i will i will concede that um well craig i am so sorry about the bad timing um but uh we'll be thinking about you on friday night oh i appreciate it so i had to call

in and say say hi to you guys since i wasn't going to do it tomorrow but i'm so glad you're my town hope you love it and uh yeah it's good to talk to you thanks man i feel better okay i'll

think of you tomorrow in wash park yes all right take care craig thank you um all right luke is now the time are we ready to blurs i was born there's a right way to rock and a wrong way to

you can't just listen to your song just remember that life is number one you can't be having so much fun just remember that life is much fun you can't be number one

everybody

All right.

I think we should make all the callers talk directly to the hamster. Is it a hamster or a gerbil?

I believe it's a hamster. It is a hamster.

Okay. And hamsters are the things that sold Kia's, right? You reminded me of that yesterday? John did, actually. What a coincidence.

They were like cool hamsters that wore track suits and bumped.

Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, John. I turned on your mic. What's that?

Cool is very relative. i think yes but i mean they were like as hamsters go yeah pretty cool hamsters i believe one had a

necklace on one had a chain yeah you know about my vampiric uh hamster tiny tim right you remember

this story wait you had a hamster that drank human blood or other hamsters blood no human

what tiny tim yeah um this is this story is best told with the uh with the blurs day music underneath it yeah um we had a christmas celebration in which our family gifted ourselves i guess a uh a hamster i think that maybe it was a gift from my parents to my sister maybe officially it was my sister's hamster i don't remember the the details on that and um we named it i guess we or they named it tiny tim it was a small little hamster uh we put it in a uh

you know, terrarium or whatever, as you would, a little hamster cage. And apparently, and I was not here for it, but apparently that night we went to bed as kids, and then my mom went to play with the Tiny Tim hamster, and the hamster latched onto her finger and bit her hard, and she had to shake the hamster off of her, but wait for this. Yeah, so that kind of hurt, but, you know, it was, yeah.

Cover your ears. I'm covering the hamster's ears.

Wait, hold on, my mom's the victim, not the hamster, Because listen to this, she shakes the hamster off her finger. Now there's blood on the side of the terrarium. The hamster, Tiny Tim, goes and deliberately licks all of the blood off the side of the terrarium. Vampiric, my friend.

That is menacing.

That is menacing.

You owe my mom an apology. You owe my mom an apology. I'm sorry, Barbara.

I'm sorry, Barbara.

Something about the idea of the hamster of Tiny Tim, Tiny Tim with unbroken eye contact, just mean mugging your mom while licking her blood off of the... I thought that the story was going to be that she flung Tiny Tim to get him off and that he flew across the room and maybe met his end.

No, but he did meet... He met his end with our family because we returned that thing like a Mazda Mirage, my friend.

I'll tell you what, this hamster was smoking when he tried to ride.

I don't think there's here's a story.

Here's a story I've never heard in my life. And the hamster passed away at the ripe old age of nine, having lived a good and untraumatic life. That is never how it ends for the hamsters. Like everyone who ever had a hamster, it met some kind of untimely end. Yeah. Yeah.

Or gerbils for that matter. We did replace Tiny Tim with another hamster, but I cannot remember that hamster's name. I do remember also that after this event happened to my mom a couple of days later, like I am remembering somebody else's dream from about, I'm going to say, 35 years ago. But I remember my mom then it traumatized her so much that she a couple of nights later had a dream in which she came down from the bedroom and came into the family room where we had a fireplace and there was a giant hamster in the fireplace.

I remember I understand if I were bit by a hamster or a gerbil it would haunt my nightscape yeah that's it I always say this about small dogs too like sometimes people like you have a small dog that kind of wants to come up and bite you or nip you and sometimes the owners will be like oh they're just playing or they're just like they think that because it's a very small dog you're not scared by that but it's like if that was a rat of that size and it was biting your leg think about how absolutely traumatizing that would be yeah absolutely okay so anyway that's the

traditional way that we start the blurs day segment we're gonna have some people wishing each other some happy blurs days here including virginia who says happiest blurs day to holly you make the world a better place cute it's wonderful got one from lisa here oh sorry are You, uh, okay.

I don't think that works.

I don't think anybody has any idea what Lisa said.

Fine. Joey gets it. Lisa said, happy Blurz Day, my 11. Joey, who is the best, he humors me by listening to my TBTL references and actually listened to part of an episode once. He's on point for 11-ness in his patience about my 10 friends and my retelling of hot dog stories. I really think it's just a matter of time before he converts. Andrew, I think that bit of radio magic that he's created is going to be what tips him over. Happy Blurz Day, Joey.

Happy Blurz Day, Joey. Hey, Donna in Baltimore says, Happy Blur's Day to the best friend and neighbor a girl can get, Laura, from Baltimore. Here's to many more stoop wines, garbage-slash-recycling can anxieties, fire pit fires, toddler shenanigans, and all the adventures in between. I feel like I could write a hot dog story about what an awesome friend-o-Laura is, but I will spare the other tens. Power out!

Happy Blur's, Laura. Indeed. Is this our dear friend, Katie Beck?

Indeed it is.

Aw, hi, Katie. How are you? Happy belated Blur's Day to Liz, my friend, since third grade. A loyal 10. And now, also, neighbor Liz. We hung out with Liz a few weeks ago. Brother Liz. Right. Thank you for being a generous, considerate, compassionate friend to me. And so many others who are lucky to have you in their lives. I'm sorry. I took your purse.

Oh, this is Liz. All right, Katie, you know what? We went on an adventure with Liz.

I was low-keying that, Katie, on your behalf. But okay, now it's out there. Katie left the Eagles accidentally with Liz's purse.

And jacket and shoes.

And keys. Everything that was in the purse. And it was a bit of an adventure that night tracking that down. But we did track it down, so that was good.

I can't remember. Was alcohol involved?

Nope. That was the surprising part. I'm sorry I took your purse and sent you on the great caper the other weekend. Love, Katie and Poppy. And Poppy. Happy Blur's Day, Liz.

Yeah, happy Blur's. See you when we get back. Douglas says, if my birthday is the same day as the TBTL Zoom, does that make it a zirconium Blur's Day? Yes, it absolutely does. Because, as Douglas says here, it's my birthday today.

A zirconium Blur's Day. Exactly. I love that. That's a whole new category. And I almost pronounced it. April and Edmonds, happy Blur's Day to my five, Zoe, who is turning 11. That's very cool to be 11, Zoe. You're a creative, smart, funny fifth grader, and I couldn't be more proud to be your mom. And also, to me, we have back-to-back Blur's Days, and as a single mom, sometimes you've got to send in your own Blur's Day message. I feel you on that, April.

Amen.

Zoe, don't sleep on getting your mom. Even if you just get your mom, like the thing I used to do when I was a kid, which is you cut up a bunch of scraps of paper that say, like, I'll sweep the kitchen floor, free back rub. And you put it all in a jar, and then you pray to God that your parents lose it or never redeem any of these, like, little free things. But, you know, make sure, Zoe, if you're hearing this, you do something nice for your mom.

Yeah. I mean, happy Blurzy to both of you, April and Zoe. And, Zoe, so you're 11 now. Next year you'll be 12. That's how this works. And I want to say something directly to you, Zoe. Next year, I want you to email me, andrew at tbtl.net, and write a little message that says, Happy Blur's Day to Lawn Chair Larry.

And I want to say something to you, Zoe, as well.

I'm an uncle. Sarah in Woodinville says, I want to wish my daughter Kylie a happy 17th Blur's Day. She continues to be an amazing person, a great artist, and a good friend to all. I'm so proud of her. That's from Sarah to Kylie. Happy Blur's Day, Kylie.

Meryl says, I just wanted to wish myself a happy Golden Blur's Day on my actual Blur's Day. Looking forward to an extended celebration over the Memorial Day weekend. I love that. Wow, I love it, Meryl. Yas Queen that's this new phrase that I'm trying to start Memorial Day weekend with mountain biking and kayaking on the Nisqually River as I think back over the years of TBTL making dinner in Olympia while listening to the Prezine show to my phone throwing you've brought a great viewpoint to my life and I so appreciate the many hours spent with my friendos well Meryl we appreciate you have a very lovely Memorial Day weekend that's awesome, happy Blurs Day everybody Let's try to rent a car from Enterprise, because it turns out they're very... They're down one. Yeah. You're going to have a hard time. Although, you know what's kind of funny, Andrew, was as we left the kind of rental car area in the Kia Soul, the car in front of us, leaving, checking out, was a Mitsubishi Mirage.

It absolutely was.

It was a gray Mitsubishi Mirage.

Good-looking car, man. I was a little jealous.

You also mentioned at one point, you're like, wouldn't it be ironic if they just brought us another one of these?

Yeah, that's right.

I mean, that actually seemed like a very real possibility.

Yeah. I mean, they have a fleet of them and they said, okay.

We're bringing one in. We're saying it's got problems. We're like, well, here's one we know doesn't have problems. I mean, that would have been, honestly, that would have been karma.

What would you have done?

I would have just got, I would have been just like, this is your car now. I mean, I would not have had, I didn't have a backup plan for that. Yeah. I mean, that would be, you know, me caught very clearly in some kind of fabrication.

I am excited for the ride home. I had I don't want to overplay it. As you know, I had kind of a lot of anxiety coming out of coming out here just due to, you know, a week's worth of activities and whether or not I brought all the right equipment and just a million things. And in actually talking to Craig earlier today and the fact that he caught COVID, I was just so happy when I was recollecting yesterday that yesterday that we're halfway through our TV telethon. And that was another big concern I had. What if we one of us, you know, contracted COVID or something? And it looks like, you know, knock on wood, but we're so far so good. But, you know, like little by little, these anxieties have sort of washed away because.

They proved unnecessary. Right. But I was kind of anxious about driving that Kia back. Not the Kia. I'm sorry. The Mirage back. And so I was prepared to do it. I wouldn't have tried to make the swap out if I wasn't here with you. But I got to say, I am looking forward to drive. I mean, you have increased quite a bit the amount that I'm looking forward to drive. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad. Of course, I'm glad I lost my words at the end, man.

Well, you know what? We made you made it to the finish line. Coasted on fumes. Now Andy can nap time again

Can he? I think we have stuff to do

Not for like seven hours Oh speaking of which we are going to be Hosting the final round Of TBTL game night Tonight's west coast edition 7pm west coast and John you said We're almost hitting the capacity For this thing right?

It's really filling up for sure so if you want to join Go to tbtl.net Click the join us button and then it'll take you to a page With the registration link

do it now yeah and if i can just say one more thing here too you know it is the tv telethon thank you to everybody who has donated so far if you are considering it and haven't yet please do it now time is of the essence and also and i hope it's okay to say this like john's here in denver with us um and it's been great and he he's on the show he sounds like a very pleasant man i'm sure you guys all pick up on that but let me tell you this he's not like he's not a pleasant man this is a character that he plays when his mic is open and when the mic is... Do you remember... Son of a B. Do you remember

the Alec Baldwin character from Glengarry? That's right. Call back to ABC. Mitch and Murray sent him down here to basically set us straight. That's right. Do you know what kind of car John drove here to Denver? A Mercedes.

So anyway. I don't drive

Mirages. Right, exactly. That's right. But really and truly Lee, thank you so much for the support this week. And if you're planning on doing it, don't delay joy. Go ahead and jump on tbtl.net and make that donation and help us keep doing this for yet another year. Thank you. That's going to do it for today's show. We'll see a bunch of you on Zoom tonight. And the rest of you we will see tomorrow for another edition of this imaginary radio. We will be live streaming tomorrow's show. Again, 9 a.m. West Coast, noon, East Coast. So we'll see you then. In the meantime, thanks so much again We love you, we really appreciate you Have a great rest of your Thursday Stay safe, take care of each other And please remember, no mountain too tall And good luck to all

Something to this month's sales contest As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives Third prize is you're fired You get the picture?

Are you laughing now? You've got leads. You can't close the leads you're given. You can't close s***. You are s***. Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it, because you are going out. I've been in this business 15 years. What's your name? F*** you. That's my name. You know why, mister? Because you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name. Power out.

Thank you.