Muse

This is outrageous. Where are the armed men who come in to take the protesters away? Where are they? This kind of behavior is never tolerated in Barakwa. You shout like that, they put you in jail. Right away. No trial, no nothing. Journalists, we have a special jail for journalists. You're stealing, right to jail. You're playing music too loud, right to jail. Right away. You're driving too fast, jail. Slow, jail. You're charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses. You're right to jail. You undercook fish, believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with a dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, jail right away. We have the best patients in the world because of jail.

T-B-T-L. Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is.

Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday.

you're singing that wrong how i made it up have you all gone insane this is not good point is at

this time of national peril we all have to do our part and by do i mean don't we all have to don't our part i have never heard someone say so many wrong things one after the other consecutively in a row uh-oh he's starting that funny talk again

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL. From the magicians who brought you slingers and slingers to slingdingers on patrol. This is the show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host, coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon. Scat man's world. where it is raining for some reason didn't know you like to get wet though June the 3rd had like a nice day this week and now we're back to kind of a not so great weather but that's alright it's warm and dry here inside the apartment the apartment that is more or less ruled by Bubbles the kitten

there is something about the soul of a cat

although I feel like she is learning something that is making our interactions more positive, which maybe we'll talk about coming up here on episode 3698 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. The Elvis Presley-related wedding industry in Las Vegas

Marriage is what brings us together today.

is in an absolute tizzy this week because they were all served with cease and desists from the company that owns the image of Elvis Presley. And it turns out there is a very quirky law in Nevada about who can and cannot dress as Elvis for business purposes. So we will talk about that. I also did something this morning that represented a certain amount of personal growth.

Oh, it's grown now. It's really grown now.

Which we will get into. Oh, and I'm excited for Music for Your Weekend this week because I've got a song. This is a TVTL exclusive. I have got a recording that I want to play for you that you will only hear on TVTL. I'm not even kidding. So look forward to that. And look forward to this guy joining the show, the longest running co-bro of the program, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. I like to call him my man, but that's only when he's throwing styrofoam in the wrong place in the dump. He is Andrew. Oh, explicit.

Ooh.

Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Ugh, this is all my fault. I'm looking out the window, and it's rainy and dreary outside. And what did I do? I came on this podcast yesterday and I said, hey, I brought summer back characteristically cocky on the program. I really was your power, your powers of weather persuasion. I remember saying, thinking first, then saying, but thinking for weeks leading up to the TV telethon that once we returned from our TV telethon adventures and it would be June, two things would happen. The weather would turn nice for the rest of summer, and the Mariners would finally get their groove back and become an elite baseball team. Now, the Mariners have crawled their way into some contention. So that's contending for the not last slot of the AL West, is what I meant to say. Sure, sure, sure. No, they've crawled their way into actually being somewhat competitive in some games.

They're starting to beat teams that are actively trying to lose.

Right. So that's a step in the right direction.

The teams that are tanking in the American League, the teams whose ownership have made absolutely no secret of the fact that they want to underpay all of their players.

and basically just gorge on the shared media revenue money of MLB. We are now beating those teams, at least taking two out of three from the likes of the Orioles, whereas we were losing to the series to the A's recently. Sorry, this is getting very baseball-y very fast. I did go on a journey yesterday with my sports betting, though. Oh, yeah? I texted you all about it. Um, because I, what I like to do sometimes is if the Mariners seem like they're sort of playing okay, but they're not winning mid game, I'll throw a little candy down on them coming back to win because you are getting great odds at that point because the conventional wisdom is they're not going to win. So they were losing yesterday by one run, and I was getting, I forget what it was, like plus $250 or something. So I dropped some money down on them, like $50. And then the next inning, they score four runs. I'm sitting in my car about to go in for my haircut, and I'm like, this is amazing. And then I look down, and basically the DraftKings app is trying to, they're basically trying to buy my bet out for almost what I would just win in total.

Just say, like, give up now, buddy. We'll give you a little bit of.

We'll give you, okay, fine. We're going to have to give you $150, but we'll give you $130 right now to walk away and never mention this again.

Just never mention the name DraftKings again. Get our name out of your mouth.

And so I was like, that's tempting, but I was like, I want my... The Mariners so have this game that I'm going to go ahead and just wait it out and get my full payment. And so then I go in to get my haircut. Oh, more on that, by the way, maybe later, because remember I was having a bit of a crisis about which Rudy's I would go to. And I go in, I get my haircut. And by the time I emerge from the haircut place, the Orioles have tied the game. And DraftKings is now offering me $33 on my bet. Out of how much that you originally put in? $50. So now I'm losing. Now I'm going to lose money on my bet. And so then I was, you know, but at that point I was just like kind of mad at myself that I didn't just, I did not take the bird in the hand. Is that something that PETA has Oh, that's a good We don't know what the bird is doing

What you're doing with the bird in your hand You could be holding it gently That's kind of nice, I like that And then the birds that are in the bush They want to be in your hand too But everybody's at peace I'm guessing though that the origin of that is

You're going to eat those birds Gentlemen, one day you will eat those birds

I'm a man of few birds But those birds will count

and so will my actions because otherwise why do you care if you've got one in your hand but there's two there in the bush like let's be honest you're roasting those birds and eating

them later yeah that's what's happening maybe probably i mean maybe you're a bird petter i don't know also i feel like pete is a pretty like laid-back organization they're not looking to

cause trouble so but anyway i am kind of mad that i that i i tossed the bird that was in my hand You know away frivolously Instead of you know maybe just Accepting the payout from old draft Kings and then Of course the Mariners ended up winning in extra Innings and I ended up getting My full my full winnings so that

Was I guess nice yeah congratulations and also Congratulations to us the fans Like I guess you know obviously I'm not A better I feel like if I were a better I might even bet The opposite of What I want the outcome to be Because that way you're hedging you're hedging your

emotions there right i did that the other day i'd never do that which i was thinking about this actually like why is it that i just want to increase my pain like if they if they if they don't do well but the other day it was the same thing was like mid-game and it was like a ten dollar bet on will the i forget even which team it was but will this particular team score a run in this inning was our opponent and they had someone on second with two outs and i just said yes they will score and then they did and i was bummed but i also was less bummed because it actually profited me so that seems the more logical way to do it again you either get an emotional happiness you get a financial happiness but for some reason i mostly just force multiply in one

direction or the other i feel like shit and i'm broke yeah i am don't want to get too far into this it's just that you and i don't really talk about this stuff too much anymore um and i won't go into any details i probably can't even uh keep up with many details on this but regarding i'm just gonna call it my fantasy baseball team now it has both of our names on it but only accurate i'll tell you what if you can name um two players on the team who are not max scherzer i will or otani or otani okay no i'll give you otani name another one otani got rocked yesterday

yeah what i saw like three in three home runs then otani in the entire start this is what i heard them say on the radio he only had there was only three times where the yankees um swung and missed

in the game in other words they were either getting hits fouling it off or making contact for an out but as far as just straight up a swing and a miss it only happened three times to

otani during that start and otani i think he was bad at the plate i think they pulled him i didn't watch i wasn't following it live because the mariners game to answer your question i don't know anyone on the team yeah exactly so i'm going to call it my team and i'm not going to get into the details of that otani thing was a mistake we won't go down any more details but i'll tell you this right now i am once again so it's like these weekly matchups right so it's me versus one other team across the course of a week uh starting on monday a new week begins and then after the sunday night uh baseball game we rack up all of the stats and we see who won the matchup and there are various categories that you can win last week i got absolutely rocked but there were like all these various reasons like the luck of my opponent just went through the roof with one particular player story who happened to be playing against the Mariners and my luck multiplying your sadness

when your fantasy team is losing to a guy who's also destroying your real team

in real life. A player who had been bad all season and then suddenly just comes to roaring life against your Seattle Mariners and your opponent has them on your fantasy team. So anyway, suffice it to say that I've been, you know, I'm kind of learning more about fantasy baseball. I understand it a little. I at least understand why i'm losing this year whereas last year i was just losing without really understanding it

actually last year i've moved into known known unknown exactly unknown unknown so i'm not getting

too down on it like it's a learning experience it's actually good it helps me actually understand baseball better like i enjoy doing it but i got you know i i've been slowly just dripping down to the bottom of the pack um and then mostly staying there last week i got destroyed but again you chalk it up to kind of a bad week as far as luck is concerned now this week i'm getting owned even worse i mean it's just terrible i'm just a little turd out there and just now as we were talking about baseball i was like yeah but you know what let me look at what these standings are i'll bet you the guy who's beating me is like really good i'll bet you he's beaten everybody else and that is not the case he's the last in his division i should say yeah it's divided up into into two divisions and he's last in his division i'm last in mine and he is just like he is just making a a mockery of me and uh and so i it's a little bit demoralizing but i got to remember that it's fun that's the thing to remember that's my message to the listeners

sometimes when they're listening to this program uh every once in a while it can get a little cloudy but you've got to remember listeners this show is good this just remember this is good and my fantasy baseball experience is fun um okay i'll tick through these pretty quickly uh I got up the gumption, Andrew, to do something today that I have been stalling on for a long time. I called the mechanics place about my lunch truck because I drove by it yesterday on Burnside, and I just said, this ends tomorrow morning. And we got that voicemail from a listener.

Was it Jake? I think Jake was keeping it. I sort of feel like there's been a lot of kind of energy around this truck recently.

What I think is someone's going to probably just hotwire it and steal it pretty soon because it's not a secret where it is. what the like i'm sure if there was a car that was easy to hotwire or a truck it'd be that ford f250 so i um this morning got on the horn and i called them and they said the google subscriber you're calling is not available so they didn't answer andrew is the thing but i at least i dialed the number my trembling finger poked the number into my iphone And I waited and it rang and rang and like it just probably they were out, you know, doing something to some kind of engine somewhere because there was during business hours.

Yeah, they're doing a thing where they're lowering an engine down into the into the truck somewhere. But so just as a quick reminder, so your truck's been sitting there for months now at this mechanics place. And the reason it's just been kind of a stalemate is you told the guy, go ahead and fix it up and get it back to me. But he said, I want you here to listen to how loud this engine is. I want you to hear your truck before you spend any money on it. Is that where things are? I spent a few hundred dollars getting it started.

So I bought the truck off of the street. It did not start at the time. The guy who I bought it from said, this never happens. Believe it or not, he actually didn't seem like a scammer or anything. He seemed like a nice guy. and i appreciated that he used his ex-wife's triple a membership to get the truck towed to the automotive lot you appreciated it did his ex-wife appreciate it is the question i haven't been in contact with her directly but i just felt like that was a nice move from the best um and so he not he knocked like a thousand bucks off the sale price of the thing um and so then it gets towed over to the lot or to the mechanic and then i i talked to them on the phone and the guy called me back the next day and said oh it's just a loose wire we got it started and let me just say when i do my impression of these guys the two these two brothers that were that own this place i'm doing them a real i'm really upgrading their communication skills and this is not a um a situation where someone's uh english is not their first language or anything like that these guys are bizarro they're like bobo and little devil from the movie nothing but trouble just google that i told you one of the guys his truck is like orange in fact the word on the street is the truck was named clementine by one of its previous owners and one guy kept calling it the yellow truck and the other guy was like it's not yellow and then the guy would be like the yellow is what it's not yellow the truck it's the yellow one no they're like just like having this yelling match about the color of the truck every time you know i would deal with them it was kind of a thing right it was kind of like it just it was not an easy flow of communication and so anyway the guy called me and said it was a loose wire i was like okay cool so i thought well that was that's best case scenario because it's running again and so i think you know i think this guy was um was was basically i got a good deal on this because it was like 200 bucks to fix the loose wire so then i call back and i say i'm gonna come pick it up and the guy says have you heard it run i said no he goes it's rough and i go well could i pay you to make it not rough and he goes i want you to listen to the i want you to listen to this thing first before anything else happens which immediately sent me kind of spiraling thinking okay this thing is this truck is basically shot this guy if he's not even going to accept my money to work on it probably means that the engine is super duper in bad shape and i basically did a stupid thing which is impulsively bought this truck and um uh i shouldn't have done that and so that just created a kind of negative sense in my mind of the whole situation and what i tend to do when that happens is i just withdraw from the situation and so i haven't that was months ago it's just been sitting on the lot now as i pointed out to listener renee in denver who runs a a automotive repair place with her husband this place is not like packed with cars like it does

not appear that the truck is displacing anything like they have a fairly substantial lot and it's not full so but now i have like the my my apprehension has been when i call them are they just going to say like you know we're charging you 25 a day for storage and that means you now owe us ten thousand dollars probably not i doubt i would be surprised but that's but that's me catastrophizing i'm just saying that's the thought in the back of my head that just kind of like makes me feel stressed or that now the battery is probably dead again it's been sitting there so i'm gonna have to get a jump start from them also i've never driven this truck with a skull for a gear shifter and it's like a yeah four on the floor as you said so if we get it started and it's like running super rough and then I'm just trying to like limp it out of the car like the lot like the first time I've ever even tried to drive this thing

it's also enormous you know that's one thing we were talking about that but it didn't occur when's the last time you drove a manual transmission it's been a while although I will say

I'm fairly proud of my of my ability to drive

a manual transmission okay so that's not part of your anxiety you're not like worried about stalling out in front of Ned and his brother Ned

no exactly in front of bobo and little devil right now i'm i mean part of the why the guy freaked me out was because i told you this was like in the real real teeth of the pandemic when i went over to um pay him the couple hundred bucks for fixing the um the loose wire and he had his mask you know of course it was not covering his nose and mucus was falling out of his nose onto the receipt he was writing oh my goodness yeah it was

unsettling oh my goodness so and then so faintly in the background you heard the way we swing playing from behind the closed doors the digital underground did i get the song right what do they oh that's what do they sing is that what they sing in nothing but trouble i just took a swing i i love that you were i had forgotten that of all the bands digital underground makes the only thing i remember unexpected appearance in the dan akroyd film nothing with tupac right that's tupac's first on-screen appearance i mean i think they do the way probably same song oh maybe same

song if tupac is in it i don't know if tupac if tupac raps in it then it wouldn't be the way we swing only because he's not on that song but it could have been um i get around or it could have been um uh anyway just one of the other songs that tupac was featured in but that is the most bizarre cameo it really is that whole movie and i love it and i'm there for it that was one of those movies that like so carrie and her brother adam had as a lot of families did growing up a random selection of vhs tapes and you know being the age that we are if you just had nine vhs tapes that's just what you watched a lot of the time and for some bizarre reason one of those was the movie nothing but trouble this is the actual scene right here yeah oh yeah same song

so they're in the middle of this old dilapidated mansion and for absolutely no reason that you said is discernible digital underground shows up singing the song i want to rap along so bad with this but i'm like they were two seconds behind yeah annoying and that'll trigger the spotify spiders probably hundred percent but yeah the the plot of the movie

appears to be there's this weird town in i think new jersey that's run by dan akroyd heavily in heavy prosthetics yeah and he's running this sort of kangaroo he doesn't want to be around anymore

style prosthetics just straight up carl havoc that's like the inspiration for this too heavy

it's too heavy it's too much um so and he like also so anyway carrie and her brother used to watch this movie endlessly and it's not a good movie but because she liked it then we would sometimes watch it because for one thing i believe he refers to a cigar as a dog rocket i don't remember that and that made carrie laugh so we would sometimes like that would be an inside joke or talk about dog rockets and then i forget who the like sort of normal quote-unquote normal people are but it's like these two people are passing through this bizarro town that's run by dan ackroyd and his hench people and they get caught up in like a speeding ticket situation where they just like things devolve from there and then at some point digital underground just

shows up for no reason whatsoever yeah and it's almost a haunted house kind of vibe right i don't know if there's actual super i believe there's supernatural stuff that happens a very chevy

but they're driving through town but then there are these like bizarro characters called bobo and little devil not devil devil yeah bobo and little devil and that's the closest thing i can really relate to the guys that are currently have my truck on their lot but i'm not even kidding calling them this is how this is this is the seal i did i broke the seal like i called them now i'm not afraid to call them again even though i didn't even talk to them i was like okay i called them nothing happened the ground did not open up and swallow me yeah but you learned you

know they're just like you they set up their voicemail line one google voice at a time they're just nothing more nothing more humanizing than getting a google voice automated response

yeah it was just like again i don't i know it sounds like i'm just trying to be funny or keep the needle moving but i honestly felt a weird weight lifted off of me just trying to call them because now after the show i'll just try to call them again well i'm interested in

talking about i'm legit interested in hearing how that goes i'm also interested in um absconding with your skull um gear shift oh i'm glad that you don't gear shift if you i'm also i've been collecting skulls i like the shape of yours i'd also like to abscond with your skull which is you know weird i think before the show yesterday before we were recording i believe you told me that you have this skull or maybe it was that on the show where you said you're going to replace it you don't you don't like having the skull and i'm i i decide you know we have a volkswagen gulf would i be able to unscrew the top of my volkswagen gulf uh gear

i think that's a standard i think that's a fairly standard size thing um but i will happily give it

to you and i will trade you that for a cat tp on the and on rare occasions genevieve has to drive the president of the university to a an event or something and genevieve doesn't sweat it but it it's in my head so i always like make sure the car is nice and clean before those days and uh it would be funny if if anamari kaose got into the car and just saw like a i assume this is the skull on fire in any way or is it just a nice chrome skull what are we dealing with i think it's

chrome it may have bejeweled eyes it's been okay good it i've never driven this vehicle that's the crazy part four months ago on my way to see the french dispatch i made a questionable decision and my life has been forever altered by that but i have very limited information well then you know

what don't you don't make any um that's what i'm looking for don't make any decisions about this skull gear shift thing until you've put your hands on it like there's a chance that you're really like the physical feel of this like super super like polished round substantial skull in

between your like fingers you know what i could get down with and this is a classic one too is like an actual eight ball. you know from a from a table yeah sure i'm not against the eight ball gear shifter that to me feels more in line with this vehicle overall like maybe you're a cue ball though maybe you're less

of an eight ball and more of a cue what has anybody ever done that ball am i i'm probably like what's the yellow one is it number one or number three i'm probably that one that's great i didn't

And yeah, no one has ever wanted to be the cue ball, which is ironic, which is ironic because the cue ball is really what drives the action. Sure. Absolutely. It's the straw that is stirring that drink. But when it comes to the iconography around pool, it's strictly eight balls game. It really is. I'm just living in it. It's the tough guy. It's the tough guy of the pool table. No doubt about it. Although, think about it. If you hit the eight ball in at the wrong time, game over. Yeah. Because he's a bully. So I see. So you see that as that represents strength on the part of the eight ball. Yeah, don't touch. You can't touch that guy. Don't touch that guy. I see. That is a way to, I guess. And so then the cue ball is just kind of this little, like, Hans Molman just kind of going around the pool table, not trying to avoid the eight ball until it's time.

Don't make any trouble. I don't want any trouble. By the way, just one for the record, that was my imitation of a cue ball on a billiards table. Just wanted to slate that in case there's any confusion for future generations.

Let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, I will tell you how my haircut went yesterday. Yeah, I want to hear about that. It was interesting, at least to me, and I will share that with you and the listeners in just a moment here on TBTL. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. um so yesterday on the show i was saying how there's an incredibly nice guy who has been cutting my hair the last two times when i go to this uh hair place so nice but has this kind of quirky habit of talking really loud like honestly almost i would do an impression of it but it it would be annoying to the listeners and probably my neighbors in this apartment building but it's almost like he's yelling like that's not an exaggeration and i think what it is is just he's excited he's a talkative person and there's just some kind of little i don't know module like some sort of a thing that a lot of us have in our brains that kind of sense i mean there was a will ferrell character right that was on snl that was based on this whole joke some guy that couldn't modulate his voice but but this is like it it made it so that i would be uncomfortable while getting my hair cut because the guy would be would be just so loud but he is a sweet guy did a really good job with the hair but i finally just was like i got to go to a totally different location because otherwise i'm going to get him again because that's my luck so i did i went across town to one of the other rudys and it was funny because i got there kind of early actually so i walk in and so my appointment was for 6 30 and it's like 6 0 5 and i thought well maybe it'll just be you know they'll have room or they'll be able to slip me in and i can just get this over with and i walk in and i get a guy who could not have been more opposite than my first guy this guy andrew i couldn't understand one thing he was saying i shit you not he goes come like i walk in and he says something to me and i go what and he goes welcome to rudy's i was like oh sorry i couldn't hear what you were saying and then i was like he was like i was like what he's like what's your name and i was like uh luke and he goes uh what so he goes oh you're at 6 30 i go yeah but i'm here early i thought maybe uh we could just i could you know if it's possible i'll just start now and he goes oh no it's probably going to be later than 6 30 like not only can we not get you in early but we may not even be able to honor our 6 30 commitment to you and i was like okay so then i went across the street to get a taco and kind of just like kill some time i'm listening to the mariners on my airpods which is a weird experience because everybody in this bar that i went to is watching the nba finals oh yeah five million tvs and it's being broadcast throughout the facility and everyone's like cheering over three pointers and i'm listening to a totally different sports

experience as i eat my veggie taco but um so then i go back over at 6 30 and i walk in and The guy just kind of looks at me, and then he just says something and starts walking towards the barber chair. And I go, am I supposed to follow you? He's like, yeah, you can follow me.

So at this point, is he acting like this guy is deaf? Or does he think that you're deaf? Does he think that – is he going through life constantly repeating himself? Well, that's a great question. He was just a very quiet talker who was very initially – anyways very sort of i don't want to say stern but he just was not wired in such a way that he was like mr personality you could not have drawn up a more opposite expression or more opposite way of being in the world between this guy and the guy who i was avoiding at the other location yeah yeah it's like i just got a complete 180 of personality types but here's the funny part first of all he did warm up a little bit there was zero chance of him loud talking in fact i could have used a little more volume but we chatted it was perfectly pleasant but this was he did a really good job with the haircut he only charged me for a buzz cut because it's mostly just it was just kind of the sides he also shampooed my hair he said do you want to do you want me to wash your hair um he goes it's not extra it's it's you know it's built into the haircut you paid for it i was like thank you thank you because this of course has been a different frustration that i had a while ago which was when this particular hair place switched from the other place that used to be called bishops and then the whole chain kind of got bought by rudy's the new policy with rudy's was you get a shampoo with your cut because the price of the haircut went up to like 44 bucks or something which is not insignificant and the first time i went in they washed my hair and i was like i just really love getting my hair washed at the salon they use that you know like to get the water temperature just right and they're in that kind of weird ass sink but it's very relaxing like i enjoy the experience and then the next like three times just never mentioned again and so and in fact so much so andrew that i had forgotten that it was even i'd forgotten that i was paying for that shampoo that i was never getting so this guy mr quiet uh was great did a good haircut i got the shampoo he only charged me for a buzz cut then i just tipped him more but um everything turned out fine but it was just funny to me that i could not have got a more opposite person so at first i'm

like oh be careful what you wish for but no actually don't be careful what you wish for

you would prefer this experience than the other i actually would and and again you know peace and love peace and love to the other guy who was just a sweetheart but there was other than me not really Knowing what this guy was talking about A couple times Really what it was Because when I first entered the store And he just kind of had a sort of flat affect And was like Not only can I not see you early I might not even be able to see you Until like later than 630 I then was kind of like Okay the power dynamic here is He's in charge And I'm just trying to not Mess this up So when I walk back into the store And he's just walking towards his chair I didn't want to just start following him Because maybe he's just going over To sweep up hair or something Yeah Like I'm just because i could have seen a world in which he was going over to do some business and i'm just like standing right next to him and he's just like why are you standing over here yeah and he

actually just whispered whatever you do don't follow me and then right exactly sure right so

which wasn't the case but but you know other than him other than being sort of on the quiet side yes this was overall probably a better experience and probably the place that i'll just be going for a while now yeah because it turned out to be uh just fine so that's the update on that that's

interesting i'd also do wonder do you find yourself in more and more circumstances where you can't hear things that you think you would have been able to hear before and i'm not saying that's the case right now but like i definitely have middle-aged hearing these days like especially i don't think i ever had particularly good hearing um because i've been i've been damaging my ears with nirvana since um since bleach um but uh i feel like now i really like i i remember that little um restaurant we went to in our neighborhood in denver that was a french place and you me and john sat at the bar area but it's one of those things and a lot of like kind of cool places have this sort of design but it was like kind of one big room that had absolutely no sound absorption whatsoever relatively tall ceiling and everything was just clangy and bangy and

like every conversation in the place table when we went in you we were sitting at the bar but there was this very long table that probably seated like 20 people where somebody must've been having a birthday party or something. It was, how do I say this in a, in a way that's nice. It looked like a table full of Instagram influencers. Yeah. There was about seven different conventionally attractive women with the same wide brimmed hat on. And then they're conventionally attractive, gay appearing male friends. And they were having a nice time as, as, as folks do, but it was cacophonous. and i was saying to you and john thankfully they were kind of like starting to check themselves out by the time we got there and i was like wait till they leave this is the noise in here the ambient noise is going to drop by 70 just because there was a lot of them and then it did but you

would not buy as much as i thought no the design of those places is i mean especially the sound design of those types of places that again look very cool but like they they're killer on my ears because it just there's something that happens with all this

sound in there where it just kind of it continues to bang around like you say it becomes a cacophony it just kind of continues to bang around and it just sounds like everybody's voice at everybody's table is getting louder and louder to get louder than it's just creating more and more chaos

that's the kind of environment that i have the worst hearing and i used to have great hearing as a kid my mom would always point out that i could be anywhere in the house and i mean it wasn't a big house but still and i could hear her talking about me or some subject that i was interested in and i would kind of like go huh mom like it was a running thing she was like i can't believe you're hearing how did you even hear that so i used to at one point have pretty good hearing but now it is in those environments when there is if i'm in a any kind of loud bar or restaurant and music is playing and like becca will say like oh this song and i if you yeah paid me a thousand dollars i couldn't tell you what the song was even if music is playing sometimes sure i cannot So now what it is, is, and I'm starting to tell people this to try to help them understand that I'm not trying to be rude, but I really am that guy that if we're in a loud place, I'm going to be, and you're talking to me, I'm going to be staring away from you so that my ear is pointed at where you're talking so that I can hear you. It's not that I don't want to make eye contact. It's that if I'm looking at you, I can't hear you.

yeah i remember you know by the time my grandfather was reaching his sort of you know his his later days in life um actually i shouldn't even put it that way i mean really as long as i knew my grandfather so like i'm gonna say maybe like you know once he got to be in his i don't know 60s or 70s or something um he would just like once the house got to a certain level of noise he just went to a different place mentally like he just didn't try to follow any conversation and i think he was happy enough he didn't look happy he didn't have the face of a happy man but i think he was happy having his big family around him you know my grandparents had five siblings and uh i'm sorry my grandparents had five kids and um those are of course my dad's siblings and then they all had big family so he had many many grandchildren they would have these big holiday parties and get-togethers and they would make a meat they would roast you know nice roasts and you know we just have these days that i'm sure my grandfather was probably filled with a certain amount of joy but you wouldn't know it to look at him because he would just be sitting there like staring into the middle distance with remarkably huge ears that didn't work very well

that's the irony because your ears never stop growing yeah yeah your ears and your nose never stop growing or something i've heard um well there's actually a lot of really interesting research into um hearing loss and how it affects particularly older people and then their sort of mental acuity because there's a very real thing that happens where if you are having a difficult time hearing people and if you have to sort of just withdraw in social situations it actually like can over the long term it can kind of impact your connection to the world yeah i could and then a lot of a lot of other things kind of start to atrophy and shut down it sort of speeds up a certain part of the aging process um so hearing is a really important thing and i would just say to everyone including me i tell all of my 45 year old listeners you know i guess try to stay on top of that because being able to i wonder you know you're talking about your grandpa i mean hopefully he was filled with just kind of a an internal warmth of just kind of having his whole family around but also some of that might have just been because it's just too hard to try to engage in those environments and then you're kind of withdrawing a little bit which is generally not the best thing for a person that particularly as they age yeah no i definitely think it was a

hearing thing i don't that's what i guess maybe i'm just trying to tell myself like hopefully he wasn't sitting there miserable i don't think he was he probably wasn't miserable but there is something i told you that i had this cold when i was driving back from denver and going through the mountains my head plugged up in a way that it had never it had never plugged up like this before you know i've had my ears plug up when you're going over a mountain range or a hill too quickly or even sometimes on an airplane but um it's never been like kind of a big thing for me but But, you know, I don't know what exactly goes on with one's head when one has a head cold, but everything was just like blocked and clogged. And when I was going through these mountains, Luke, like it was like it was it was like nothing I'd ever felt before. But when I really felt that the most acutely was when I stopped the car and I mentioned this to you the other day, I needed to get gas and get some McDonald's and some coffee. And I went into the McDonald's, not because I'm afraid of drive throughs, Luke. I think this was the only option they had at this particular truck stop. But I went in there, and it felt like I was in my own world. I never felt like so – it almost felt like I was on drugs or something. Like people were talking to me, and I could barely – I did not feel like I was in the same world with them. I felt like I was in some sort of a bubble where people had to kind of yell through some sort of plexiglass that was wrapped around my head. Very strange. Yeah, it's very – it can be disoriented. This is different, but...

I remember once having laryngitis and being at some sort of big social event. Obviously, I wasn't hosting it because I couldn't talk. So you're an adult here, okay. Yeah, I'm an adult. This is probably in my 30s, maybe late 30s. This wasn't all that long ago, if I remember right, but I was at some kind of thing, and I just literally could not make a sound with my voice. and so but this thing was happening and so i remember being there and just standing around in these groups and hearing things and thinking oh if i could talk right now this is where i would zing them this is where i would whiz a smoker and it was that was really um eye-opening to me to realize how much of my personality is being able to verbally communicate with people Like I felt I don't know what I felt like I didn't feel good I felt very weird and disoriented By the fact that I was sort of a ghost In these situations That I could laugh along and smile and nod Like yeah I agree with that sentiment But I was not capable of Lock her up they were saying

And you were nodding vigorously

I couldn't hear what they were saying Because it was loud But it was something about the emails

They kept talking about her emails

Benghazi came up, I think, a few times. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, it just made me really appreciate that generally my voice works and that I get to use that form of communication in the world. Because sans that, I was like, wow, who even am I? What even am I doing here?

I think a lot of people would feel that way in that circumstance. But, yeah, I mean, like, honestly, is there anybody more defined by the ability to speak to large groups of people than you and other people who have chosen these professions?

Yeah, I know. I do think about that sometimes, like, you know, Val Kilmer has gone through a lot of medical stuff, and there's a very interesting documentary about his life and career, and he has a very difficult time speaking at this point. and that had me thinking like what would if I lost the ability to speak would I be able to sort of forge a new identity I mean I guess I would have no choice but to but like what would that look like for me and how would I kind of go forward with my life would I just try to become a writer um also at can I at 46 transition to that like how would I how would I be in the world if I

didn't have the ability to make sounds with my mouth and would uh your Christian science get you through it all that's a big part of the val kilmer thing too right as far as what treatments he decided to see i don't actually know what i haven't even watched the full i never i could be you know what i might be wrong about that i read a i read like a profile on him by i want to say taffy brodesser akner about a year ago if it wasn't her it was one of those people like her who we respect a lot who just write really really great uh um little profiles like that and uh yeah it was a really it was a really interesting read in fact when i saw that they were making a documentary i was wondering if maybe it was going to be at all based on any of her reporting but i guess anybody could could could get that access by the way you're exactly right it was a taffy brodesser act it was that's a really good piece i don't know if you've read it but it's a really good piece so anyway i don't know why i need to throw that in there but that was a big thing too about like what treatments he decided to seek and not seek i believe yeah oh i had a question for you this is what i really meant to say not to bring up um christian scientists but um what i really wanted to say so this new top gun movie is out i've seen the trailer for it a couple of times and it just looks laughably bad just terribly laughably bad people seem to be but that's what yeah genevieve offhandedly said she said to me the other day that she was going to see like the doctor strange movie or something and she said yeah everybody's saying good things about this top gun but i'm not gonna see it i'm like what do you mean people are saying good things you mean like ironically like campy and she's like i don't know people are just saying good things and she had a look of uh fear in her eyes uh first of all yeah are you hearing that too and second of all is it true that he's in there that the Iceman makes a a cameo like does he and does he not use his voice if that's the case I don't know I haven't seen the film I have seen some clips of

Val Kilmer who by the way looks pretty hale and hearty for what he's been through like I was under the impression for a while that he was maybe not gonna live a lot longer but he looks like he's kind of recovered a lot of his um you know sort of health and and weight etc he looks he looks like he's doing okay but um i've seen clips of him like in an outfit maybe on the set but i don't know i haven't read that definitively that he's in the movie it would kind of make sense you'd think to try to work him in somewhere yeah sure but but i just keep seeing like on twitter people just being like oh i loved that movie and then i there's and then these profiles of tom cruise seem to be coming out where it's like i feel like he's having a sort of a renaissance like i i feel like the the thing on tom cruise now is that tom cruise knows exactly what he is and what he isn't and for some reason the critics are really like

they're good with that like they're into tom cruise being unapologetically tom cruise which is a hollywood icon a person who doesn't appear to age a person who makes films that do not require a tremendous amount of mental energy from the viewer like that seems to be kind of the way people are writing about him in this film it's kind of like saying yes this is top gun this is or top gun 2 or topper gun or i don't know what the name of it is but like a gunner topper gunner full throttle um but like sloppy toppy gun full throttle but like i just feel like there's this weird kind of thing where it's like you know tom cruise has gone from being like a very i think admired actor in the days of rain man and and uh you know kind of maybe more serious acting roles and then in his later years he's just become like the mission impossible guy who learns how to fly airplanes or go to or helicopters or go to space yeah he's no longer like really trying to be in movies where he's like trying to convey important emotions or nuanced emotions like he's just the guy in the action movies that's just the thing and there's something where the critics seem to be like and he's really good at that i feel like no reason to criticize that basically

not this exact narrative but i feel like every 10 years tom cruise has some sort of moment like this like i remember when i was in la this irritated me and genevieve so much and i think this woman ended up we might have even ended up having her on a segment on press play and i did so very eye rollily um but she was like a writer for the i i assume the la weekly at the time and uh wrote this piece about how like well it turns out tom cruise is actually a pretty good actor and he's pretty self-aware and it's like yeah no i mean nobody's said that tom cruise wasn't a good actor especially in these types of movies and like i feel like every 10 years or so people are like actually tom cruise knows exactly what he's doing yeah you fucking think so yeah i mean like who whoever has written the piece that says he's not and i'm not trying to take away from what you're saying look maybe we're cycling back into that i feel like we just cycle through this every now and then people are like hey maybe you should give tom cruise a chance guess what we have

been right well it's because he basically i wouldn't say he disappears but and i could be forgetting some stuff that he's in but it just feels like you kind of don't hear about him for three or four years because he's making another mission impossible film where again he had to learn jujitsu and how to pilot a spacex rocket and maybe you hear him yelling at people on the set for not observing mask protocols or you know which was still a win in my book by the way he kind of fades from the public eye while he's like doing one of these big projects and then when the project is ready for presentation then he sort of starts doing on a very limited basis the rounds yeah and like for instance i mean i don't know i don't know what the rules at can are but my understanding is that this movie premiered at can oh really which i mean i don't know you know that elvis movie premiered at can and so i don't know what like i don't know why i would think top gun two sloppy toppy can't premiere it can but like anyway there was a toppies on patrol from the geniuses who brought you toppies on patrol from the magicians who brought you slingers and slingers to slingdingers on patrol but like i there was oh i think i even tweet i I don't know if I'm going to be able to find this on the fly, but I actually wanted to talk about this with you back when I first saw this headline. I want to say it was in, like, The Guardian. Let's see. If I go to my little Twitter profile and then I go to media, I can maybe just find the screen cap of this really fast. Somebody wrote this headline regarding this Tom Cruise. God, I've posted a lot of shit about this cat, Andrew. As I scroll back. It's like, I probably deleted it because, you know, that's my brand. Somebody wrote this headline in like The Guardian or something regarding this Tom Cruise press conference. That was like, it felt like the most contradictory headline. It's me trying to just paraphrase it from memory is not going to work. But it was basically like Tom Cruise dazzles Cannes press conference, but with a snide smile, but he does a great job at it. It was like the person was saying something negative about Tom Cruise, but then saying how well Tom Cruise actually performed in this press conference that was basically a joke. Because it's like the foreign press and they're just it's like maybe it was a list of pre-approved questions. Again, this is actually a good lesson to me to not delete every tweet.

That I tweet out because I really wish I could find this headline and read it to you because it was so impossible to figure out what the person was trying to say.

It was the headline equivalent of the two bumper stickers on the back of that card that you were talking about yesterday.

Exactly. Push past or get off my ass. But if I'm passing you in the right lane or the left lane, get the – yeah. Anyway, point is this person in the Guardian – I keep saying the Guardian because I think that's what it was. this person the guardian was basically saying the exact thing that you're saying comes up every 10 years which was tom cruise is at this complete ridiculous softball presser where no one's asking him any interesting questions it's just like how much fun was it to be in top slinger dingers and and and yet tom cruise shines in this environment because again he knows exactly who he is he knows how to play this game this is tom cruise in his element basically yeah tom

cruise on the red on the red carpet or in in in in front of a step and repeat or at a press conference talking about his um you know totally competent action movie that he made yeah it turns out he's comfortable there everybody it's just like and again i'm not i'm not i'm not arguing with you here it just sort of seems like people keep on like saying oh we're surprised tom cruise has really found himself he's never been lost he just keeps on cranking out the biggest grossing films he's never stopped cranking out the biggest grossing films this is the headline i found it

would you ask gene kelly that defiant tom cruise dazzles con or can i see you can you be can you

be defiant and dazzling at the same time yes and i honestly find dazzlers that should be a new level

of donating that's a new level next year i swear to god i also think that i feel like this they they trimmed the headline i feel like there was one more clause in the one that i retweeted that was so confusing ron i swear to god i think someone at the guardian this was somebody named peter bradshaw wrote this kind of review of this press conference i swear to god they took out one part of this that made it even more weird uh-huh anyway um just i guess the point all that is andrew to tell you that tom cruise knows exactly who he is i'm just glad he finally found himself

and that audiences are finally accepting him for what he is. Speaking of larger-than-life characters, Andrew,

let's talk about Elvis Presley. Now, the subject of Elvis has come up a lot on the show recently because I did that TV story about the new Elvis movie, which also was at cam, for the record, and supposedly got a 12-minute standing ovation. But I get the feeling that that's just part of the ritual there. I think that giving really long-standing ovations is just literally part of the deal. It's almost just kind of like like the way that a band leaves the stage and then you clap and they come out and play an encore. Yeah. Like, so I don't know if that means anything. But this is a story from the Las Vegas Review Journal written by John Katsalamides. Vegas chapels all shook up by Elvis likeness crackdown. They got to do it. They got to throw the pun in there. They can't. And I don't even know if that's on John. I don't know if John writes the probably doesn't. It's probably an editor who writes the headlines. So there is a company called If this is just not the most Corporate sounding shit of all time There is a company called ABG Authentic Brands Group And they own the rights to Elvis Presley By the way they also own the rights To Marilyn Monroe Muhammad Ali And a lot of folks like that By the way Shaquille O'Neal He's one of the leading investors In this company I'm glad to see Shaquille O'Neal i'm glad to see shaquille o'neal is finally doing okay in business yeah it's so um it's so strange

it's like because you you think that it's always like the um the estate of of a person i understand wanting to maintain the rights and protections that an estate can provide somebody who was famous and passed but now it's like oh no just companies own the likeness of a dead person that's

And they bought that likeness from the heirs, from the estate. So they went to, presumably, you know, Priscilla Presley or whoever, and said, we'll pay you $100 million up front, and then we just get to, like, every Elvis snow globe that gets sold in Vegas. We get a cut of that. We get our cheeks wet.

Or if they want to, like, animate them in a mop commercial or something like that. Yes. Wasn't that a big one? Wasn't it, like, Gene Kelly or somebody who was in a mop commercial in the 90s, and everybody But he was like, how dare you?

But you're right. Something about a company called Authentic Brand Group acquiring the exclusive rights to these James Dean so that they can then, like you said, put him in a Colaguard ad. They're playing in the Elvis space. I am James Dean. I was a rebel without a cause, but that doesn't mean I don't take care of my colonel. And the Colaguard cartoon. tune shows up so this well this is related to the movie though andrew because this elvis movie is going to come out in june and the thought is that this company authentic brand group is really trying to cinch down tighten up their basically ip control over everything elvis because elvis is about to get injected back into the culture in a really large way and one of the ways they're doing that is by sending cease and desist to all of the elvis wedding chapels in vegas that is such a shit move man isn't it and it's like these are not you know these are not like huge thriving businesses if you've ever been to one of these little chapels in vegas or even driven by them they're they're never in the nice part of town they're kind of little mom and pop shops you know it's and a lot of people interviewed in this piece you know it's like a husband and wife and they run this chapel and the husband dresses up like elvis or whatever they really got decimated by covid and so they were just started to kind of get back on their feet um a lot of these places and now they're freaking out like a lot of them are scrubbing any elvis references from their website this is amazing um chapels are scrapping elvis from their websites and ceremony listings One couple on Sunday was disappointed. After ordering an Elvis ceremony several months ago, they ended up with having the Elvis impressionist dressed in a leather jacket, jeans, and a fedora for something they were calling a rock and roll themed experience. Could you imagine? You book Elvis for your wedding and you show up and because of this cease and desist, the Elvis guy is dressed like one of the rescue rangers and he's calling it a rock and roll themed experience.

Who wants I guess they could just lean in like this idea of like Calling it something generic like You're a rockabilly wedding Or something like that

But you want the guy you want the jumpsuit You want the giant sideburns you want the glasses By the way it's interesting that that's the version of Elvis that's been Embraced for anything That's an Elvis impersonator

Although it would be weird to be married by a young Elvis impersonator right Like a super hot Just a devastatingly handsome young man Who just is kind of like Who's kind of demure Like yeah that would be strange

So this is the part of the story though Andrew that was quite fascinating To me The right to use Elvis's image In stage shows Is protected by Nevada's Right of publicity statute That covers tribute shows So this is according to An attorney in Las Vegas An Elvis show is a performer essentially entertaining others by recreating that person on stage. The juxtaposition would be deciding to go to a mechanic as Elvis. Is he really an entertainer? Is he creating a story? Or is he simply using the Elvis name to essentially draw a customer who can then say, I had an Elvis guy fix my car? The question is, are you using it to attract attention versus storytelling? so if you want to do if you want to get up there and pretend you're elvis and i think i don't know if you can sing suspicious minds because that might be a whole publishing thing sure yeah but if you are performing as elvis that's protected under a law in nevada but if you're just like a um you know well they use the example of auto mechanic if you're a plumber and you dress like elvis are you telling the story of elvis or are you just using elvis's image to promote your

business. Do you think one of the reasons some of your marriages haven't worked out is because you think Suspicious Minds is a good song to play at one's wedding? I do love doing that song at karaoke. You know that like... What is the actual plot of that? I mean, it's literally about people not trusting each other. Am I wrong about that? Well, we're caught in a trap. I can't walk

out because I love you too much, baby. Oh, can't you see what you're doing to me when you don't believe a word I say? We can't go on together with Suspicious Minds.

Suspicious Minds!

And we can't build our dreams with suspicious minds By the way, I'm doing this from memory So if an old friend I know stops by to say hello Will I still see suspicion in your eyes? There we go again So there's an old lover at the door? I guess You know, the thing about that Well, I love that song, obviously I have it quite committed to memory But I have a theory I don't think he'll hear this But we can check in on it next time we're at the Eagles I think that song and i'm not saying this to give myself credit but i think that song plays a role in our friend camaro kev's deep love of karaoke oh yeah years and years and years i mean talking 20 almost 25 years ago we went to a mexican restaurant in lower queen anne i don't think it's oh

Oh, Mamas or what it is. Halisco's, I think.

Okay, okay. And they had karaoke. And what I remember about that night was, so this would have been like me and Camaro and probably our friend JD. And I don't know if Newman was there, but just like- That crew. That crew, but like this was from the early days of that crew. Like we would have been in our like, I would have been 22 or 23. I also remember this is when there was a professional women's basketball team called the Seattle Reign. So this is pre-Seattle Storm. these i believe were part of the a b anyway because of the proximity to the arena where they played half of the seattle rain basketball team was in this mexican bar where there was karaoke and i got up and did suspicious minds and i did this move now again this is this will probably make your skin crawl because it's so look at me it's so show-offy but i sang the song And at some point, I used to do this move, again, when I say it out loud, I feel embarrassed, but I used to sometimes do this move where the kind of, you know, like a chair walkover is where like I would, you run up and you kind of like step on a chair. I mean, I would balance it.

Yeah, but you kind of balance it for a second and then slowly bring it back down.

Yeah, you walk it over. Yeah, you bring it down. But because of the way that, like, you know, gravity and momentum works, you can kind of run up, jump on a chair with one foot where the seat of the chair is and your other foot on the back of the chair. And then you step and then the chair goes down on its back. But it's like in a controlled way. Speaking of like Gene Kelly, it's very much out of one of those old dance type movies. Right. I had learned how to do this at some point. And so I guess it was, you know, I broke it out at this thing. and i i remember that that it was a big hit okay the whole thing seemed like it was a big hit in the room everybody was very happy and i remember camaro kev just being like that was really cool like watching it and being very i know this sounds like i'm telling the story to be like boy didn't i do a good job on that song but what i find so interesting was i believe it was maybe five years after that before camaro kever ever got up and actually sang a song so we would go to karaoke all the time he never sang like it was years and years before he finally and he's a great singer and really really good at it but it was like it took him probably five years in my mind between that moment and actually getting on stage and singing so you're telling me that if it weren't

for that moment um this evening around 10 o'clock when I think Vives and I are home for the evening but she gets a text from Camaro Kev and she says you don't mind if I go out do you sweetie and I say you guys are going to the caroline or they actually they don't have enough they don't have karaoke at the caroline but yeah they will i i guarantee you because i am aggressively staying home tonight i texted genevieve at some point during um what does that look like it means just like nobody nothing is getting me out of the house tonight like i've been looking forward to this weekend for a while because i spent the last two weekends literally driving on the road and um next weekend we have some house guests and i just really need this oasis of just andy time right And, you know, and, you know, I like Genevieve to stick around, but also if she wants to go out with friends and do some karaoke, that's how she recharges her batteries. I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I give her, I was giving her fake shit about that this morning, but no, that'll be fine. But I guarantee you what'll happen is Genevieve will be like, it'll be like nine o'clock and I'll say, so you're not going out tonight? And she's like, I don't know. Nobody sent out the bat symbol. This is what, um, this is what is going to happen when I'm talking about it in past tense because I guarantee you, she said, or signal. I'm sorry, not symbol. She says she'll say, well, I guess not. Nobody sent out the bat signal. And then it'll be about 45 minutes later once she's like, you know, maybe even in pajama and maybe in her night pants. Then she'll be like, well, you're not going to believe this, but I'm going to go out with Camaro, Kevin, Katie, because Camaro feels like doing karaoke. And then I'll be like, OK, I'll see you later. And she'll be leaving it around like 1030 at night or something ridiculous.

First of all, I am really looking forward to a full report on Monday. OK, how accurate this prediction was. And yes, none of that would be happening to you tonight if I didn't do that chair walk over to Suspicious Minds. You son of a gun. My relationship would be so much better. I think this relationship works great for you for this exact reason. And in fact, again, I would say Camaro and his lovely wife Anita have a similar thing going where it's like he loves to be out and having fun in that space. she loves to be home watching her um uh friday night shows with her popcorn and like as long as people are cool with like you know their sort of like their roles as it were i think the things can work really well because like you don't want to be out there in the wind being wild and genevieve probably doesn't want to be home puttering so yeah exactly it works out and

chances are if i'm at home like tonight if i'm if you know i'll probably be playing my stupid baseball video game or doing something else with like headphones on anyway it's not like i'm super present for her if i'm if i'm just like in my full-on putter mode anyway so when we were in denver i got to witness a little bit of that mode for you um on i forget which night it was it wasn't the night that you and i got ham boned no i think it was the next night i needed

to like i needed i need a little recovery evening yeah so we were like we kept it very mellow on

that thursday night i think it was and i just remember it was kind of getting late and i was starting to you know sort of shut it down for the night and you just had those huge headphones on And we're just like kind of doing your thing, kind of puttering and stuff. But I was like, oh, this is probably exactly what it looks like. If if I could be a fly on the wall at your house at eleven thirty on a Friday or Saturday night, this is probably exactly what it looks like.

Yeah. I mean, I guess if Genevieve is actually gone, gone, I might end up like kind of blasting some kick see like it was actually on a Friday night. And I'll turn up way too loud, but I'll have they have radio theater from the 1940s on. So that I prefer to listen to on a speaker, not the headphones. I don't know what the difference is, but I like to listen to that stuff on a speaker, not on Bluetooth headphones. Like, who would listen to old-timey radio on headphones?

I just love that image. Like, so that's a thing that really happens to you sometimes. You will be listening to old-time radio theater late on a Friday night.

Hell, yeah, like over the airwaves. Like, I never want to dial it up. I don't usually, like, hey, I'm going to go and look. It's just like I love turning on the radio and over the airwaves, I'm hearing like radio theater from the 1940s. And they have some pretty good shows, too.

That is really great. I love that. All right. Let's do a little music for your weekend before we get out of here. Andrew, what would you like to play on this Friday?

Oh, I guess I don't feel well, now this is going to be insulting to whoever I decide to play here, isn't it? I don't feel super inspired. I haven't been listening to a lot of music.

By the way, I basically have kind of like two songs I want to play. So if you don't feel like, you know, forcing it, I could just do my little song stuff here if you want.

I'll give you a little taste of this. I don't know much about this person, though. I just don't have – her name is Grace Ives. I believe she's a Brooklyn musician, as is like almost every, you know, every song that comes over the transom for me. It's like, oh, this is a Brooklyn duo or a Brooklyn-based musician who has a name that doesn't sound like a human name. But anyway, I believe this is a human name. This is a human being named Grace Ives, and the name of this song is Angel of Business. In a certain way, it's a good thing that it's not super sunny today because otherwise my music for your weekend might not fit the sunny mood. This is a little bit – this isn't super down in the dumps or anything, but it's a little bit of a walking through the rain song.

Okay.

Thank you. I could circle back 300 times The numbers I could show How's your mood? Did the cushion get to you? I could lie about all of the terms If you wanted to be sued Do you own it? Are you angry?

It's called Angel of Business, which is a pretty funny name, I think. But anyway, that's Grace Ives. I want to learn more about Grace Ives. This is all I know.

Yeah, I like that a lot. I was just Googling her, and I think, was this album called Janky something?

You know, I think that I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's a brand new song that's coming off an album that's going to be released, I think, on June 10th or something. I'm going off the top of my head on that. I saw a press release.

She had an album called Janky Star, which I thought was kind of funny. Yeah. That's a good album name, Janky Star. Okay, so the song that I want to play is by Andrew Bird. He's got this, I think this album might be like, literally have just come out this week. It's called Inside Problems. And the song I want to play is called make a picture um which is a good song but um i'll explain in a minute why i'm a little bit excited to play this because we do have a tbtl exclusive so here's a little bit of the album track of make a picture

oh i don't

I just want to ride on your shoulders and put you in the hospital. I just want to roll away boulders, though they said it was impossible. Don't you know that I'm an irrepressible optimist, walking with the fatal flaw. Running in the streets like feral cats will be hard to mistake a knee and raise a paw. Tell us what you think you saw, what you think you saw, tell us what you think you saw. Make a picture

All right, so that's the studio track. By the way, just catchy as hell. I love this guy. This guy don't miss. But so we interviewed him for Livewire this week, and because of some sort of basically complications having to do with, I don't know, this or that, first the label said, oh, Andrew's going to play a song. He's going to play the song for you. And we're like, cool. And then they were like, actually, the band isn't going to be there, et cetera, So we'll just play a recording of the song for you And then you can react to that And then Andrew was like Well, you know, I got my violin here Why don't I just plunk out a version of it on my violin Wearing my AirPods And so he did So he just This is never going to be released anywhere This was him literally just kind of doing a proof of concept Of that song you just heard But this is just him at his house in LA With his violin And singing a little bit

But you're not going to use this on LiveWire, though?

No, we're going to use—he is going to record another live version with his band that we will use. So we're not going to use the album track. We're going to use a live performance version that he's going to do for us. But this was just a placeholder. But I thought it was so cool. By the way, he's just like strumming the violin like a guitar, which is so frickin' cool.

I just want to roll away bold As though the setter was impossible Don't you know that I'm an irrepressible optimist Working with a fatal flaw Running in the streets like farrow cats Will be hard to mistake a knee and raise a paw Tell us what you think you saw What you think you saw Tell us what you think you saw Make a picture Make a snappy Make a picture Don't look so happy All the scowling faces All those furrowed brows All those burnout cases Make them take a bow

By the way, I'm playing more of this because I don't think there's any universe in which Spotify can ding us. And also, there's a great moment that I want you to hear, Andrew, which is my favorite thing about live recordings.

By some smiling faces, come on and show us how Never mind the braces, love you anyhow Love you anyhow I don't want to hear what's impossible Falling with the shepherd's tongue If you're going to have a good eye to this hospital You will never sleep alone Don't you know that I'm an irrepressible optimist Working with a fatal flaw No, that's not the right line Listen to the cries of the wounded metropolis Danis and some tenterhooks

you love the mess up you love the he forgot the lyrics and it was like oh that's not the words

okay and then went back and sang the right words yeah but the song keeps going on yeah i love that

too yeah that's like my favorite i mean it's funny because when i think about i mean there isn't any kind of performance that i do that's nearly as complex or genius as this but when i am on stage or whatever my thought is always like don't mess up don't mess up don't mess up but there's like nothing more endearing than when a live performer forgets the lyrics to the song or sings the wrong Lyric or has to stop and kind of start over like as the person watching it you're always like oh my

god I'm seeing something real happen I remember well I remember um when I was uh like the senior producer of shows that I was trying to emphasize more of a live feel for then the kind of thing that you ended up leaving NPR to do in Seattle which became TBTL but like I remember like during whatever happened to that show I have no idea I'm sure it's it was too beautiful to live but um I remember like... really wanting to kind of capture exactly that vibe not not in the musical standpoint but just like I would work with these hosts who would be like reading their script which first of all the fact that they were reading a script I didn't absolutely love I wish that they had just had notes you know and could work off of that and then if they make a mistake don't like stop and say three two one so we can fix it in post and I would just always say like don't try not to make mistakes just like learn how to make mistakes like just learn how to like we're not trying not to fall off the bike here we're just trying to learn how to fall off the bike safely and like and just kind of like just keep going like it's okay you're a human being and like i remember you know well now i'm just going off on all the things that i used to say but like you would hear these same exact hosts these public radio hosts would go into a room for four hours and without scripts ask people for money to support the station right and they'd be so fine with just like some bullet pointed notes and they would have personality and they would joke around with each other and they would laugh and then they would go back to their shows and none of that personality was in there anymore right because they were so scared of sounding human in their shows or of making a mistake and then moving on they'd all have to be cut up and cleaned up later and there's something about that conversation that reminded me of that i don't feel like that was the best place for me

to bring that up but you you follow yeah well little did those people know that someday you and i would work on a show that's all mistakes that's all mistakes i know i'm starting to question everything if we actually do something right then we go three two and one back to your

regular programming you know um one thing that the you and i are glossing over probably the most notable thing about that andrew bird song that you just played it's finally reminded us or at least me the word that rick riz claims a teacher taught him which is irrepressible isn't that what Andrew Burtese doesn't he say irrepressible I'm pretty sure that Hey friends Is there a teacher in your life Teachers are irrepressible That's a word that a teacher taught me

It's like the it's sort of the wrong I mean it's not it's not strictly speaking Wrong but it's kind of not really the right

Place for that word no it's not and it stands out But you and I on this show have tried to like Quote what does he say what does he say That's what he says he says irrepressible a teacher Taught me that word

I heard uh on the baseball game yesterday or two days ago a commercial that it's because you and i talk a lot just like off air about the commercials that air during the baseball games because we listen to a lot of them oh you listen to more than i do but i can't remember which it's not the two people in the car although i hate that one too yeah where the dynamic is supposed to be one person said that they would drive as soon as they lost 5g coverage of the baseball game yeah which is like first of all who ever would make that bet how would that ever be the situation like okay andrew you and i are driving somewhere but guess what okay uh you drive and then i'll start driving once i lose 5g coverage of the baseball game like imagine me presenting that to you as the

as the thing yeah i mean actually the setup i'm not not to be argumentative the setup of that doesn't drive me up a wall because i can actually sort of see the setup i can sort of see being like hey man why don't you drive first and then once i'm out of range and i can't follow this game anymore i'll i'll take the wheel like that doesn't seem like that setup doesn't seem completely ridiculous to me but it's all of the acting and everything that happens after that that really

drives me nuts i guess it comes down to the question of i thought of it as being you're playing the game on your phone like the audio of it you're thinking of it more i think he's watching it yeah gotcha okay that okay you know what that's you've you've you've won me i've

listen to that commercial a lot and i've talked about it on my other podcast it's just like and i i played that commercial four times in a row for genevieve on the other podcast and said tell me when you get the plot i had to listen to that so many times to understand what was going on in that

commercial um but but it wasn't even that one it was a different one and it's gonna haunt me hopefully when i hear it again i'll flag it and i'll send you a text probably this weekend um

because there's another one that's running does it involve acting there's one that i actually kind of like that involves acting where the guy where the I don't think it's the perspective of the person who lives in the house it's actually like kind of a narrator saying you found your first house for some people the house is a place to relax another place for other people a house is a place to entertain and for other people a house is a place that was to relax and entertain until they built a stadium two blocks away and now you're not ready to rock or something I think that's Geico right I think it is and the acting is really good in there And I want to give it some thumbs up But the more I think about it What is the scenario where you're a new Homeowner but they've built a stadium That quickly The physics don't pan out on that

Right, right They just threw that thing up Right

signed off on you were like i just bought a house in a quiet neighborhood there was absolutely zero discussion about the um did i tell you well i was talking about this last night with somebody um but i don't know if i i think i i definitely told you about this off air but the the the house that i bought um you know uh it was the price dropped significantly right before i bought it and i kind of couldn't figure out why except for it was probably a bit overpriced uh initially and then i bought the house and signed all of the paperwork and like really really signed off on it like i'm never you know like the earnest money is gone like this i own this house now and the next day on oregon public radio i heard them say oh this two billion dollar methane processing facility in this particular part of southern washington it's just been announced that it's canceled because of environmental concerns and it was literally in front of the place i bought

you didn't so you almost bought a place that that was across i almost bought a place that

was up the hill from a two billion dollar methane processing facility that was green lit and then red lit the day after i had signed my life away to own this thing that at the time i was signing it was for all intents and purposes as far as anybody outside the negotiations knew still on the road to having a methane plant in front of it and so do you think that had something to do with the price as well the price dropping i like i hope the gambler in me loves that narrative yeah that the guy that i bought it from was like i gotta get this off my hands and then he gambled and lost because they canceled it but based on the amount of nra mail that this guy still gets i don't know why that makes me think he wouldn't know about methane plants but it just doesn't seem didn't strike me as a person who was that cagey i think the house just wasn't selling because they were asking way too much for it um for what it was but i mean talk about it's like talk about a near miss that i didn't even realize was happening yeah like that shows you first of all what my level of due diligence is which is limited but like that was a very strange it was very strange moment to kind of like realize that i came very close to buying the biggest lemon of a

house you ever could buy well who knows though i mean if you're building a brand new plant like that it might not have actually been stinky at all like it might the whole point might have been actually no it's state of the art it's modern and it's a big plant that actually doesn't create any

you know the whole point i'm sure that would definitely be the sales pitch but also what it is is this wetlands that's on the columbia river that was the whole appeal of this particular piece of property is that it it has this really beautiful view that's what that's what you know drew me into the whole thing and even if it was not stinky which again i feel like there's usually a a fairly large divergence between what the um people who are uh you know i won't use the r word but the people who are stripping the land of its resources between what they say it's going to be like and what it actually is um but even just having to look at that instead of just like the river and like some you know trees and moss and things like that which is very beautiful and the construction process like just yeah i again i it was just like i was like you see these videos going around online where it's like somebody it's always seems like it's in like southeast asia somebody like is just standing on a small street and like a a car is crashed somewhere and the tire is bouncing down the street at like 400 miles an hour and this person just like takes a step to the right and the tire misses them like or there's a bus coming down the street somehow somebody without even realizing they're avoiding certain death they just do they just take a step six inches in one direction and then the thing collapses right where they were standing that was me with this whole situation

anyways

I think we've done quite enough for one week here let's wrap it up with our listener suggestion which is from our friend Melly in New York Melly says I just stumbled across this song again I've been using shuffle and it's so fun it's already songs I know because I put them on my phone but in a surprising order I'd forgotten how great it is I think it would be great for starting your weekend It has that kind of roll credits sound, like I imagine some choice last lines, and the protagonist gets into their car and drives away. The camera lifts up on a crane and pulls back, and we can only guess about what next exciting adventure awaits them. Roll credits. Wow. They never built the methane factory.

How did she know? I added that last one. This is from Stereogum.

This is, so I think this band is called Teen. This is from Stereogum. The sisters, Teenie, Catherine, and Lizzie Lieberson, plus Jane Herships, have delivered another poppy synthesized beat to be blasted with an irresistible repetitive chorus of sorry for all the big talk that begs to be sung along to. Their sound mixes the 80s, electronic keys, layered melodic harmonies, poignant lyrics, and beautiful vocals so um yeah i think this band is called teen and now i i included a link i think the song is called big talk does it seem like that right i think you're right about that yep all right so this is from listener melly out there in new york melly thanks for checking in

this band really rings a bell to me teen i'm trying to figure out if this is something that did we play them have we played i don't think we played this song hopefully i think i'm confusing them with somebody else and it's just um it's kind of tickling the edge of my brain i didn't really need to bring this up but it just this rings a bell to me and certainly the description there sounds like this is something that would be very appealing to me so i'm excited to hear

this i think you're gonna like it yeah um so it's a good way to wrap the week up and say thanks everyone for listening to tbtl thanks for being part of this uh we are going to be back here on monday with more imaginary radio for you until then have a great weekend wish me luck so i run this half marathon tomorrow oh yeah or let's be honest about that run part of it and walk a lot of it because i did 10 miles on wednesday and i was hurting i don't think i got 13 miles in me

but anyway we'll find out let's just let's just keep those nipples non-bloody okay that's the

most well i promise you if they do start bleeding i'll take a picture and send it to you christ see you on monday until then have a great weekend take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Love me and that's what we do, that's what we do, that's what we do, that's what we do.

Shelly Mills looking good out there at Arcadia Lake. Where's Shelly? What happened to her? Look at her run. You can't run. Power out.

You