Muse

Okay, go back to whatever you're doing.

Well, Ralphie, I wanted to listen to my podcast.

Okay.

And plus, I think that you've liked it. We've listened to it in the car.

Okay.

And I think you liked it.

Okay, you can play it.

Did you not like it?

I don't like it. What kind of podcast is that boring? What? What makes it boring? It's because you can't speak dead words and it's literally boring.

I don't think they said dead words.

sometimes i hear them say like what bad words wait what the fuck t b t l

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live my name is luke burbank i'm your host coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon. You know, it's a very strange sensation to totally expect something, but then also be absolutely shocked when the thing you were expecting to happen happens, which I think is the sensation a lot of us are feeling on this Friday as the United States Supreme Court has overturned roughly 50 years of precedent and has taken away a woman's right to have control of her body in this country. So it's a really sad day in America and especially a sad day for people who want to have control of what happens with their body. So we're going to talk about that. We're also going to try to do our relatively normal TVTL thing, which is talking about the difference between bear and bar, as that is the new dominant theme on the program. We'll get to all of that, plus music for your weekend. First, I want to introduce this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, my friend Andrew Walsh. Good morning.

Good morning, Luke. It's that wonderful stew of... I don't know if I'm feeling more hopeless or outraged right now, and I feel like it's like somewhere it's a slurry of the two. Yeah, it's just a potent combination. It is a potent combination. I'm shadow boxing a lot of people. I've gotten into many fights with the dude with the don't tread on me sticker down the street from me on his truck. I don't have any because you're assuming that his politics are adjacent to the same. I mean, it's it's got to be all it's all kind of the same. It's part of the same, you know, general worldview, I would imagine. Yeah, and assuming that I'm right about that, just the hypocrisy of how many people would say that they are here for freedom and fight for freedom and don't tread on me and people's rights, and it's just hundreds of years of being rights for some people and not all people, and it's infuriating, and it's just the myth of freedom in this country is just overwhelming right now.

I think what I find the most frustrating about all of this, and I want to just preface everything I'm going to say with, I'm a straight, cis male, you know, I don't, this is not, this does not affect my body the way that it affects a lot of our listeners' bodies. And particularly, I mean, I've this morning been talking to my sisters, to my daughter, to my girlfriend, to all the women in my life who I love. And I cannot imagine, and that extends to our listeners. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to live in a country where at a federal level they are telling you that you don't have the right to decide what is going to happen to your own body. I can't imagine what an infuriating, powerless feeling that must be. so I just want to I guess I just want to say I'm really sorry I'm really sorry that this is something that has happened in this country and that and I can't again I can't imagine what it feels like to be somebody who's who this is actually legislating or I should say this ruling affects their bodies because it doesn't affect my body directly and it still makes me so furious the thing that makes me especially furious is that we have a system of government where a minority of voters a minority of people are able to set policies that affect the majority of us it is so you have somebody like the former president whose name i will not even speak who is elected with three million i think it was fewer votes might have even been more than that he loses the popular election and gets to become president he then is able to nominate supreme court justices who are then brought through the senate by senators okay the republican senators the 50 republican senators represent Again, I'm doing these numbers off the top of my head, but it's something like 40 million fewer Americans. So, you know, Mitch McConnell, he represents fewer people than Nancy Pelosi. Actually, Nancy Pelosi is in the House, but he represents fewer people than Chuck Schumer does. So we have these senators who are able to hold up Obama's nominees and then push through the other guy's nominees who are representing a much smaller group of people than the Democrats are. nominees sent in by a president who lost the popular election who then are on the court for life the people that made this ruling do not represent the majority of americans and i don't know how this system can continue you know that's the part that maybe that's the hopeless part of this um of this little stew as you said is that it's it would be one thing if the majority of americans said look we don't agree with a woman's right to control her body if if they if there was

a national vote and the majority of americans ruled that way i mean you would have to at least say well that is what the majority desires but this isn't even that and that's what's infuriating

and that i don't know that i'm the right person to be talking about this today because my feelings are known, as you said, much more eloquently than anything else on the show today. I want to be here for the people who want us here for them, the people who this affects more directly than you and me. And I want to, you know, kind of recognize my place in all of this. Having said that, and also I'm talking to a microphone and maybe people are, you know, hoping to tune in today because they're feeling hopeless and maybe I shouldn't add to that, you know, like I feel like, hey, is there anything i could say that would somehow ease pain as opposed to make it worse um no i don't i don't know what it is i'm still looking for it but the thing that i keep getting hung up on is you and i opened up these microphones whatever it was six years ago um and you know talked about how what a gut punch it was to wake up and realize that that who had won the election i'll abide by your rule

of not saying the name i don't know why that's suddenly my rule it feels like well what can i do right i know just yeah and what i can do is not say that dude's name i guess i don't know why

that's where my brain went today and is upsetting and and that was shocking that was more of a shock to me and also that was super upsetting and of course it set the path amongst other things that set the path for where we are today um but there must have still been something about the fact that well there are term limits there's a four-year term and like just seeing like you said just like 50 years of precedent rolled back of protections for women rolled back and i don't know you know what they're going to tell us what biden today is saying you know you know vote like we voted for you asshole like i that's a rude thing i i just like we voted like i i just don't it's just it again i don't have anything to say i'm not articulate about it but the thing that i'm getting hung up on is i don't know what to do other than i mean i have you know been thinking about supporting the organizations and states that that um can can help women that women can travel to but i mean that's just ridiculous i can't believe i'm saying into a microphone that we now live in a country where i need to support organizations that will get women to other states so they can get health care it's just and i just you know and it just feels like they won like not for four years but like they have the supreme court it's a theocracy

uh i feel i don't know if if hopeful is the right word but what i know is that this there are more of us than there are of them and by that i mean the america is is becoming over time a more progressive place uh if you if you poll younger voters they are they are much more progressive than older voters the the arc of history is i think ultimately bending towards a more progressive more inclusive version of this country and what we are in the midst of right now is the patriarchy and uh white supremacy and all of these other terrible things trying to tighten its grip as it slides down the side of a cliff and i think it feels really dark today but i don't think it's i don't think it's going to look like this in 50 years i just don't think i mean i think there's going to be a lot that goes on between now and then a lot of it's going to be probably not great and and you know but i don't think you you just can't have a society where a tiny minority of people and an increased a smaller and smaller minority of people are in control of the majority of people something will give they will disband the Supreme Court. There will be a civil war. I mean, again, those are dark things to think about, but I just don't think this will not go on indefinitely in my mind. It's a very, very upsetting moment, but it is the death throes of a supremacy, again, involving maleness and to some degree whiteness. I don't know if the Roe v. Wade is a specifically white supremacy issue, but it's like the people who have gotten to be in charge of this country for its entire existence are having to reckon with sharing some of the power. And they're doing everything they can to not give it away. And but I think over time, I think that I think a more progressive, inclusive version of this country will emerge. I just think it's going to take a while.

I hope you're right. I do. I'm trying to get there. I would like to be more hopeful. I'm I'm just pessimistic because I just see consolidations of power that have been that been going on since long before I was paying attention to it. But they're getting just seems to be more acute and more on the surface and more blatant. And again, going back to this, you look at power begetting power and and you look at what happened with Merrick Garland and and also and this is going to be really rude. But also, I feel like the the the powerful the people who hold the most power in this country, leveraging the the uneducated and getting people the the magic act of getting people to vote against their best interests in so many ways. And then and then also almost turning it into a cult. I just see both a consolidation of power and a cultural war where I feel like the people who are the richest and most powerful are somehow aligning themselves with the the people who have the most power at the at the polling places. You know, and it's like to me, it's that weird conflagration that is also I don't think I'm using the right word there, but it's it's that weird consolidation of power and tactics and culture that is like, I don't know, chilling to me. And it seems it seems like we as a society are spinning pretty damn bad right now.

It is definitely very troubling the way that they are trying to sort of enshrine. And by they, I mean, like the Republicans are trying to do everything they can at the state level and at the federal level to create systems where they will stay in power as long as possible. and it's going to work for a while unfortunately and i do think that the democrats you know that meme uh which has been going around for a long time but i i think is is sort of accurate is you know the the whatever that is that like cartoon character that's sitting in the house and it's on fire and it's like this is fine combined with you want to talk about a conflagration another meme which is like somebody saying the democrats are are sitting at a table with the republicans and they're playing checkers with them and the republicans just light the entire house on fire and the democrats are still like okay if i move this checker piece over here like the democrats obviously you know chuck schumer saying history will judge the republicans and the supreme court for what they've done is like that's not cutting it anymore and i think that there's a huge disconnect between older democrat establishment and younger democrat voters how outraged and upset voters let's just say under the age of like 35 are democrat voters with i mean there was a there was a quote from james cliburn of south carolina this morning that's getting some attention on the internet where he said he found the row uh ruling to be somewhat anticlimactic because he knew it was coming and he said and now we just have to look at the ruling and start to figure out legislatively what can we do about it and like i i have i have admiration for james Clyburn um but I also think that was not the response that many Americans wanted to hear which was that we knew this was coming and now we just have to look at the ruling and figure out legislatively what can we do about it like that's not that's not encouraging to a lot of people who are just feeling absolutely powerless uh today as this ruling has come out yeah I agree I agree

I feel like I'm already out over my skis on this. I've already used conflagration in the wrong way. What word was I looking for there? I didn't mean great fire. Confluence, I think, is what I was looking for there. So anyway, sorry about that. I do have.

Would it make you feel better to know that you were right about something yesterday? Well, sometimes the bar eats you. Is that what you're talking about? I never do this, Andrew. But last night, I re-listened to some of yesterday's show. How are you feeling? Well, I was feeling great last night because I thought I made an extremely cogent argument for the fact that this whole bar as a way of describing the, is it Ursine? Is that the name for bears? Is that the, is that, does Ursine refer to a bear? That sounds right. This whole thing that we've been going on Or at least I've been going on about endlessly Related to the Big Lebowski and Sam Elliott Saying sometimes you eat the bear And sometimes the bear eats

you but he says it in a weird way and then i said nobody says it that way and then listeners sent in this utterly confusing davy crockett song sung by fess parker who also played daniel boone at some point and then we ended up on this picture of a tree that said somebody named d boone had killed a bar at a certain date in history and my theory yesterday which i felt great about until this morning was that nobody says bear as bar that was just a misspelling by someone on a tree many years ago and now it's just kind of like that's how it got into the song that's how sam elliott heard about it well i was wrong andrew listener jackie sent me a link to the film coal miner's daughter The Loretta Lynn story Starring Sissy Spacek And a very young Tommy Lee Jones I thought Tommy Lee Jones Was born at the age of 70 Yeah well

I feel like he was 55 For about 40 years of his life And then he started I always picture him as like Getting upper middle age But that leathery look And then he aged from there

I feel like he and Wilford Brimley Were both born in late middle age With a mustache So I was quite shocked to see a young Tommy Lee Jones playing Loretta Lynn's husband in Coal Miner's Daughter and this tape is Not great the audio is lousy Because it's somebody pointing their cell phone camera At a television That's playing Coal Miner's daughter That is then this whole thing was put on YouTube But I'm just going to play this for you It's Tommy Lee Jones is Fussing at Sissy Spacek And she says something To the effect of stop stop, you know, growling like a bear. But she says bar. Take a look. You need a little more time to learn how to clean the damn house.

Plus, you need a little more time to learn how to love your man the way you're supposed to. Goddamn, is there anything that you know how to do right now?

Don't worry, you want to get me that way in the ring. Stop making that noise. You sound like an old bar growling. Stop making that noise. you sound like an old bar growling okay i ask this question but state once again that i do not

buy into your theory that anybody is saying bar because of the carving in the tree from listen you're right andrew no no but i'm not it in no no no i i'm saying that i'm not i'm not i'm not buying that theory but i don't understand how this tape disproves your theory because this still happened after all here's what i did yesterday and i was going to do this for the newsletter i I don't know what the hell I'm going to do for the newsletter today. Can I just send out a blank newsletter today with a hate dummies video that I recorded when I was in a better mood? I found myself, Luke, I probably spent a half hour trying to log into some sort of a academic publication website called J store. I tried I signed up for an account myself, but then the article that I was trying to read was not available with free accounts. I tried, I think eventually I hope it's okay for me to say this Well, I'll put it this way I have somebody in my life who works At an academic institution And this person Helped me by using her Login to her Institution, I was able to access This article And I'm looking for it now It's called The Bear In American Speech It's an ape, I know, right?

That seems extremely relevant

to this conversation does it not it's called the bear in american speech by alan walker reed who's and i'm gonna hopefully say this right he's a conflagration no an entomologist am i saying that right or is that the bug one etymologist i think i said the bug one um and it was a it was a university of chicago published back in 1935 just looking at the way um the word bear has seeped into culture in um non-literal ways and other uses for it and it's very you know it's It's not a long piece, but it's pretty academic. But in it, I was just going through and trying to flag every time somebody in like old quotes would say bear, but it was spelled B-A-R. But I couldn't find anything that predated 1775, which is where that carving came in. Like I found something here from 1837. um somebody leaves a note you'll you'll sure see a bar fight somebody said talking about going out into the wild you you sure see a bar fight and that's not a bar fight like we think of it today but a bear like the ones i get into right exactly uh of course one of these days you're going to headbutt a bear uh and i think we all know that that that sometimes you headbutt the bar and sometimes the bar headbutts you by that i mean the mandarin gate right so anyway i Found some early uses of bar in like notes. People were leaving each other before heading out into the wilderness. But none of them predated that 1775 thing that you were talking about yesterday. So why would a 1980 movie change your mind on that?

Because my guess is Sissy Spacek, Oscar winner, Sissy Spacek. Did she win an Oscar for this film? My guess is that Sissy Spacek did an assiduous amount of research. And this is set in that kind of Appalachian part of the world, which is sort of Kentucky, Tennessee-ish. And I don't think that she—when I could only find two incidents of this, the Daniel Boone song, or the Davy Crockett song, rather, and Sam Elliott, that's when I could say maybe it just got into the song and then it got to Sam Elliott. But Sissy Spacek saying it this way, and she clearly studied the accent. She really tried to nail Loretta Lynn. I'm guessing she maybe even spent time with Loretta Lynn. It makes me think that that's really a thing. Like, it seems unlikely to me that she heard the Davy Crockett song and then decided to start mispronouncing Bear because of the song. Like, it seems to me this this ultimately it means you're right, Andrew, that this is and listener Jackie is right, that this is an accent in a part of the country. And I just haven't come across that accent. So I was wrong. And I'm I'm I'm man enough to admit it, Andrew. I was wrong. You're bar enough to admit it for whatever. I was going to say I'm I'm person enough to admit it is like saying I'm man enough to admit it like, oh, I see, because it's like, is that is that kind of a thing that where we're acting like there's there's some more virtue in being a man. I mean, even this abortion conversation is challenging for me because we really shouldn't say women anymore. We should say persons who are capable of being pregnant. Right. Yeah. Because there is a category, albeit, I would guess, statistically fairly narrow of people who identify as male, but who physically are capable of carrying a child. And I will just say I want to I want to respect the experience of those people. But God damn, it makes it hard to talk about this. Yeah, sure, sure. And we're in our ruts. I will say, though, yeah, I do kind of avoid that.

And I think I have for quite some time, actually, anything that's sort of like, I hate the phrase man up. I hate that phrase so much. You got to man up. Like, what? So I've kind of avoided that kind of stuff.

That's what you told me when I told you that I was having a hard time building my man cave at my new house. It's just time to man up.

Right. I said, I'm going to go think about this in my she shed. That's not a thing. And I want to let you know that Sissy Spacek did win the Academy Award for Coal Miner's Daughter. I wanted to announce that to the world. It's a Luke W Friday, but I'll take the W where I can find it on this Friday. I'll tell you what. She was also nominated for five other movies that she did not win. Can you name one of them? Carrie? Indeedly do, my friend. That was the very first one, 1977. That's interesting. She did win a Kids' Choice Award for Best Chicken Blood Bucket. Yeah, right.

For Worst Nightmares, given to people younger than 12. Is she in—Sissy Spacek is also in a movie that's like—was it the Peter—I always— There was that Peter Bogdanovich movie that had a young—that was set, The Last Picture Show.

Was she in that? Oh, I don't think that's Sissy Spacek. I could be wrong about that, but I do not see that on her list of—

She was in—I feel like Sissy Spacek was also in some kind of, like, West Texas prestige film that I remember being vague. Well, why don't you just tell me the other films that she was talking about?

Well, this is—you might be thinking of Badlands. I love that movie by Terrence Malick. That is—yeah, that's what I think of first when I think of her films. I don't— Did I tell you that his daughter once hit on me?

No, Terrence Malick's kid? Yeah. I was at the DGA Awards with our friend Nihar, and I was getting a drink, and this quite conventionally attractive person, woman, was talking to me, and we were chatting, and I was in a relationship, so I was not on the market, but she weirdly asked me for my phone number, and somehow in the conversation, she mentioned that her dad made the movie Badlands. Really? And that was the way that that movie came in. What were these awards? You said them, but I didn't. The Director Guild of America. it was one of those things where like I didn't I didn't rate enough to get into like you know the Oscars or the Academy Awards but they would like there was the kind of lesser the sort of lesser not that directing is a lesser skill but there's like the these other ones that are the kind of lead up to the Oscars and those were the ones that I was able to get on the list for including the DGAs Carrie you're right about the other ones I don't even know if you would have known

of the I haven't heard of these movies i'm going to list them missing which was her 1982 film the river which came out in 1984 i feel like i should know that one but it doesn't look familiar to me crimes of the heart

uh that's the one i'm thinking of even though i bet you that's not set in texas but i don't know why crimes of the heart wikipedia it was it called crimes of the heart wikipedia it is called

wiki.crimesoftheheart.pedia.

It's set in Hazlehurst, Mississippi in the mid-20th century. And it was based on a play. And I was thinking of Crimes of the Heart, which I obviously never saw, but something about it felt Texas-y to me. I see. That makes any sense.

I don't know why. And then finally, she did get nominated for In the Bedroom, 2001, which I feel like I watched, but I remember nothing about. Do you remember that movie, In the Bedroom?

No, I couldn't tell you anything about it I will tell you this though I did kind of want to go watch Coal Miner's Daughter after looking at these clips

Yeah, that's kind of a tough watch too I took it from that I don't know Loretta Lynn's back story But it sounds like that's a pretty bad She grew up very wealthy As you might imagine

Oh, Big Cole Oh, Coal Miner's Daughter No, her dad was one of the Koch brothers She changed her last name to Lynn That's her married name Her name was Loretta Koch, and she was the scion of a billionaire coal family.

Yeah, her family played in the energy space, if I understand it correctly.

Yes, exactly. They were vertically integrated and disrupting the energy space. And then at some point, after she got done at Vassar, she decided to dabble in music.

And wasn't her husband one of the kind of founders of BitCole, the cryptocurrency? Yes.

Did you see his TED talk Andrew I have not yet I'm saving that one Yes Well I haven't watched the whole Well it's kind of funny because I haven't watched the whole movie But I've watched about four minutes of it And my assumption going in Having never seen the movie was Because this seems to be sort of the arc of these kinds of films Is I was like I bet you that Sissy Spacek's husband Was a real POS A real you know misogynistic A-hole who She had to you know Deal with slash overcome slash Survive I would have just told you that was the plot Of Loretta Lynn I guess is who it's based on But the only part of the movie I Watched was Tommy Lee Jones Doesn't seem great but he also Is very encouraging of her musical career

Oh okay so it's not as cut and dry

Well again based on Four minutes and now someone will be like you should Watch three more minutes and then you see the part Where he really shows his true colors I was surprised in the in the tiny little view into the film i had that it would appear he did according to this movie buy her her first guitar and really sort of encourage her in his own fumbling way to to perform because he was very he was very proud of i guess her singing abilities when she actually didn't think she had it in her to be a singer which is the opposite of i assume the story was he was like you know she's like hiding in the closet trying to learn guitar or her songs and he's like stumbling around the house drunk yelling at her to stop with that racket but it it would appear that some dynamic in that relationship was different than i was expecting having not watched

the film yeah um it's also ringing it makes me think of another film from that era that i watched that was very much along those lines but i'm blanking on it so i'll end that train of thought right there but i will say this and this might be something we want to do when we come back from the break um something happened to me in my professional life yesterday oh yeah that i haven't even told you what it is yet that's that's the extent to what you know but i would like to tell you and the listeners that something has happened to me that has never happened to me before and it uh began with and ends with apparently a uh email i got from an hr department

okay well let's take a quick break and um i'm gonna fast forward this next no don't fast I can't wait to hear this news, Andrew, nor can the listeners when we come back here on TBTL. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right, Andrew, what's your big news?

So, you know how every now and then on this show we'll get into a conversation about the times we've been fired? And I've never been fired before.

Yeah, which is unsurprising to me because you I think you take your work very seriously and you over deliver. It would be shocking to me were you to ever have been fired.

Well, I think I can now say that I've been fired, not from American public media, not from TBTL. That day will come. But I got this note with the subject line Bonneville. employment from the HR department of Cairo radio yesterday it was actually a sweet note this is from the woman who runs the HR department there Maren who uh I think she's still there she's still there and she's Maren Brewstwin she uh she when I first so Cairo radio of course is the commercial radio station that Luke and I used to work at um and I was still on the books there as a fill-in host so i was a you know i was a full-time employee there for several years as a producer then eventually a host then i left but then when i came back to seattle they would hire me to do some fill-in gigs here and there and instead of making me a contract like a contractor they made me a part-time employee and then yes yesterday i received this email that says hi andrew hope all is well in your world i just want to give you a heads up that you will be receiving an official notice via snail mail from me about ending your employment with bonneville oh it's an official letter so it can sound a bit impersonal so i wanted to send this email i don't know if you were aware but you're still in our system for uh as an on-call employee but you haven't done any work for us since december of 2020 you're on call but we we don't we have not chosen to call you Yeah, I think I'm maybe off call, Maren. Yeah, right. So anyway, apparently the last time I filled in on the radio at Cairo Radio was December of 2020. They must have been, you know, must I think I did maybe a week or part of a week of holiday shows. That's the hardest time to get fill ins. But they have, you know, time moves on. I'm not part of that. I'm not part of that station much anymore. Also, I think that I turned some down because as that station became more and more either conservative or sort of like we're going to put a conservative. with a liberal who's going to try to keep up with all the lies that the conservative is spewing on the air in real time. I was just like, I don't, Andy don't play that. So I had, you know, they also didn't try to book me for those things very often either. They knew that that would not be my strength or my desire. But little by little, that place has changed. And so over the years, and so, yeah, my work there dried up, which is fine. But, I mean, somebody terminated my employment Like, is it fair to say that I have been fired now? I mean, yes, obviously Yes, so there you go Do you have a workplace dispute? Do you have a lawsuit? That's what, coincidentally, one of the producers at Cairo Who I talk to once a year, maybe, emailed me Actually, he emailed me something TBTL related I'm talking about our friend Jacob I don't know if you remember Jacob Rummel One of my favorite people at Cairo, he's a producer there

I just know him from the internet But yes, I know who that is

He's a hilarious man And he coincidentally emailed me yesterday Saying, and this is the email It has nothing to do with me being fired He didn't even know, I had to tell him about it He said I should sue But he said, don't know that you'll actually Appreciate this very much But I thought of you and TBTL While cutting highlights From the Westminster dog show today um so take a listen to this and see if you can figure out why you sent it

Heather we talked before what a big moment this was for you and this goofball as you said you just won the biggest dog show in the world what does this mean for you and for this dog

moving forward I don't even know right now I am so excited for trumpet um me as a breeder

his co-breeders. I'm just ecstatic. For those people watching at home right now thinking this dog is just absolutely gorgeous. What is he like out of the ring? And I think he's ready to have

a seat right on my foot. Well, as you saw him eating your microphone earlier, he has a lot of

attitude. There it is. That was the eating your microphone reference. Of course, you got to eat that mic um that's why jacob sent that to me um and that's when i he was the first first person i told that we are no longer um colleagues um and i was asking him if he thinks that i have a lawsuit

on my hands and he seems firstly i think that's actually a really really nice gesture from marin it is like very much considering how long it's been since you've darkened the door of that place and the fact that even when you were going there it was pretty irregular for the last few years For Maren to reach out to say, hey, you're going to get this letter, but just want to give you a heads up on it. That is, I mean, she's a very busy person. That's still a big company with lots of HR requirements, things that require her time. For her to take the time to do that, I think, is a really nice gesture. I totally agree. It raises the question, was it just does the system at some point tell Maren, hey, these are the people who have.

have a key card i did these are the people who have key cards that have not used the key card like i bet you that system can actually like tell her these are the people who have key cards but that key card has not been scanned in a year and maybe that is built into the system to just try to make sure that they keep track of these things because can you imagine with all that's going on in the world, Andrew, that somebody walked over to Maren's office, knocked on the door. I mean, maybe Maren's working remotely. I don't know what the deal is over there. But let's just go with the traditional in-office model. Someone walked over to the door. Hey, do you have a minute? I just wanted to check in to see if you could fire Andrew Walsh.

Probably my friend Brian Buckaloo. No, here's how I think it went down. I think that, you know, as an HR person and an HR department, you probably go through all kinds of various, I don't know, I was gonna say exercises, that's not the right word, tasks that include going through employee records of some sort, right, and just doing some housekeeping here and there. And maybe it's even tax related. Maybe it's like, hey, you know, the system might flag say, hey, you don't have to send the tax forms to this person because they haven't you know, I don't I doubt it was like literally the key card system. But I'm sure there was some sort of cleanup because I'm not the only one there. I'll bet you every now and then they do a little cleanup and they say, listen, these four people haven't. And I'll bet you Maren walked to somebody else's office, probably and said fire and my former friend, Brian Bucklew, who would be the person who would reach out to me if he needed to fill in and probably said, hey, listen, these four people are still on the books as employees, but we haven't used them in X number of years or whatever. You know, should we should we keep them around or not? And maybe some had a reason to and maybe some didn't. My guess is it was just kind of probably clean up like that. why didn't i get that email i was gonna ask you if you ever did because you were on well no you

were never an on call no i mean i filled in you filled in on the rare occasion i think i even did some night shows from port townsend i think you did too which i think was actually that was really fun like i think i would do another radio show if i could host it from the post office in port towns and i remember sitting there looking at the ferries coming and going and like you know cutting it up on cairo that was kind of fun but um i guess i was probably never on whatever list you were on as far as people who were technically sort of part-time employees yeah or they just

think i'm a better host and they don't want to fire me and then you're still on call um now i remember them when i moved back to when i moved back to seattle from la like i did like they're like okay we're making you a part-time employee and i even had to fill i'm trying to think i might have even had to like watch a security like an it security video or something like that so like yeah i was kind of like legit in the system and now i'm legit out of the system but you are

right i can take how do you feel about that all joking aside i know that like you weren't you weren't champing at the bit to to necessarily fill in there and like you said there's been sort of a bit of a drift at that station i think i think what they figured out was unfortunately the sort if faux populism of a dory monson goes over better with the roofers of america than the faux intellectualism of a luke burbanker and andrew walsh and so the shows tend to either be kind of more like that or like you said a couple of people that are sort of put together to i guess nominally sound like they're debating an issue um it just it isn't i don't feel like and there's so really awesome people that work over there etc but that the content has drifted a bit from i think what you and i were doing i believe the station is also much more successful than it was when you and i were doing our thing there it turns out but all of that being said

how does it does it sting a little bit i don't want to exaggerate for the sake of the show and the truth is i'm outraged what i say at the beginning of the show it's a mixture of um out over your skis you're outraged over your skis i'm hopeless and outraged um i uh no i'm not you know what honestly like i i haven't done anything for them for so long and it wasn't like no it doesn't really bum me out honestly again i hadn't done anything with them in so long in a certain way it's almost like okay good at least i know my status because um i can take that key card out of my wallet and uh loosen my belt a little bit because it won't be dragging my pants down it's a heavy key card it's made of pure gold i wonder if they want that back um keep that yeah i wish i could be more introspective about this no no that's like it doesn't it doesn't bother me that much I mean when I look back

at our time they're like some of my fondest professional memories are at cairo um some of the toughest professional moments i had were cairo too because i was hosting a radio show had no idea what the hell i was doing and there was some bad stuff that i was embarrassed about but also had a lot of fun there i made incredible friendships there i will always miss you remember we were talking last week um i believe it was last week about the the my money don't jiggle jiggle rap and we're um yeah can you remind me of his name jonathan louis theroux jonathan louis theroux no louis theroux um and he was in a radio studio in one of the clips we were playing and he was actually rapping on the air but they had those exact same like kind of extenuated arms and microphones which i think are like the re 30s which are like the kind of classic um microphone in a radio station and that's what we used at Cairo and like seeing one of the radio who was kind of grabbing it with two hands like kind of the microphone holder with two hands as he was talking and rapping into it reminded me very much of that physicality of it and there was something about literally that feeling of going live on the radio and adjusting that no matter who you are, if you're on the radio and you have one of those mics, you are adjusting it right up until the moment that you go live like you're just getting it just right in front of your face and i miss moments like that like i don't think i necessarily should be on live radio or that i have a right to be um or that that i'm necessarily good at it but there were those moments of live even as a producer too even without turning on my microphone like it was just a it was a fun place to work and i it gave me an opportunity that i just didn't have in a work culture that i just didn't have in public radio and it was so cool but i'm also not like oh damn i won't be able to fill in during the holidays when there's no news and also the last few times I filled in at Cairo was like during the pandemic so well that I guess December 2020 so it was one stint and I was doing it from my home studio which as you say is kind of fun in its own way and kind of a privilege but like it's not quite the same when you have a producer who's at their house another host who's at their house and you're at your house like there's something about being in the radio station especially for that kind of radio that really works for me

I hear everything you're saying and I agree that there's the physical space of being there is like 70% of the fun even though I just said I would host a radio show if I could do it from the post office in Bellingham so I know I'm a little I'm a little all over the map but I would say this if I got that email from Marin or if I got that letter from Cairo and I have not been in that station for much longer of a time than you and i have no interest in filling in you know christmas eve or whatever like i've done my time on fill in talk radio but i would feel something i would feel a sadness like there are so many things that i don't even want to do but if somebody told me i was officially done doing it i would feel sad for some reason despite the fact that i have no interest like Like, for instance, there's that show on KUOW Weekend Review that our friend Radke hosts. It's a great show. I used to be on that show on a, you know, every few months basis when I'd be passing through Seattle. Now, I think I was a bad fit for that show because I don't live in Seattle. And I don't know, I don't follow the news of Seattle as closely as one should in order to be on a show like that. And oftentimes, I don't have a take on it. for the same reason i didn't really like hosting talk radio i'm not i just am not that interested in debating the merits of a of a of a school levy or something you know um and i'm also not great at it but sometimes when i hear we so at some point so they you know i used to be on that show occasionally and then they would invite me on and they invited me on less and less and then eventually it was you know just not a thing where they were inviting me on anymore and sometimes when i hear that show i feel wistful that i'm not on that show even though i probably turned them down four or five times because of scheduling or other things so as to get moved off the list of people they would use so there are so many things which just speaks to my psychological damage that i don't i don't want to do that stuff but i also would like to know that they want me to do that

stuff well you raise something i'm going to try to explain something here that i'm going to be pretty earnest about i think i know exactly what you're talking about and and part of me yesterday yesterday when i got the note it was almost like my my brain wanted to try to be more maudlin about it sort of you know what i mean like because i i love slipping into maudlin town like that's that's that's that's my version of flavor country maudlin town um but um but i didn't and i was like okay that's fine and you mentioning like being on kow's weekday which is like

the live news weekly panel show which i love um i've never done that before there's a time when and maybe maybe part of is still a time where i feel like oh i wish not that i wish i could do it so much as i wish i could be better at it and then do it i and and a couple of times i've been on our friend trish murphy's show right yeah seattle now seattle now are we doing spots for that no i don't think so anyway um that is like kind of a similar vibe only it's a podcast and it's a little bit shorter form and it's a daily show just about what's going on in seattle now um every time i send them my tape though i accidentally call it seattle today and i feel like that is like a passive aggressive move and i need to double check i always get it wrong i'm always sending the producers of seattle now a piece of tape that i've accidentally labeled seattle today anyway the thing is i've been on that show well i guess i've been on with you once maybe or twice but then and you and i make a good team um but i've been on a couple of times with like just somebody else right somebody who i don't know like somebody from the stranger i've been on maybe three times and the thing is i'm not proud i'm not proud of my performances on those shows the second to last one i did ended up editing together really nicely and i got some nice notes from listeners of this show who said hey i heard you on seattle now um and you sounded great And I listened to it. I'm like, man, thank God they edited that because it did sound good and I was happy with it. But I knew what happened in awkward moments when it was just like me and let's say Chase Burns of The Stranger, somebody I admire and Trish and then a producer on the line. and there have been times where I've come to a topic on that show where I don't have enough to say and that's super embarrassing and so I try to fill with bullshit and it all just gets cut out anyway but I still am in this mode of like well you got to make the needles move and then other times I try to make up for that and I talk way too much the last time I was on the show like I think I could almost feel people's eyes rolling like why is this caffeinated guy still going on and I my point is this I sort of wish I were better at these things so that people would invite me on but the truth is when I'm invited on shows like this it just makes me feel really bad for a long time it makes me you know regret it and I just carry it around I'm like oh that's so embarrassing and like I was Veves and I haven't even mentioned this on the show like Veves and I were on our friends podcast they have a um my friend Ben uh Ben Harrison has a show um where greatest generation yeah that's the guy he does do the greatest generation but he's also got a show with um dan kennedy remember dan kennedy of the moth yes i'm laughing because i'm just

imagining you being on a star trek podcast i know right i'm like of course that wouldn't have been the one you were on like i would love i would love to hear you i mean i'd say the same about myself try to hang on a podcast that is about star trek the next generation yeah i mean that

would that would actually be that would be that would be potentially funny yeah um but no him and dan kennedy have another podcast called kpod k-p-o-d-d and it's more of an improv thing it's like they have created this world where they are um over the top kind of morning zoo djs in the late 90s and wow and and so that's like the format of the show but then there's you also as the listener of the podcast hear them off the air and they're actually like sweet guys who are struggling with stuff it's just kind of a weird thing that it's like they've created their own universe and it's It's delightful, and they have great parody commercials. It makes me laugh my ass off. I listened to a lot of it on my trip to Denver, on the road trip, and they asked me and Veeves to be on to play radio consultants, and this was like last week or something like that. And again, I think it edited together fine, and Genevieve is a natural. I mean, anytime you get Genevieve near a microphone, it's good news. But it was one of those things where it's like, and again, I'm very glad to be asked. It's like I always want to be asked, but then I don't want to do the thing. It's just like, well, you're having a party and you didn't invite me. Well, Andrew, you don't come to parties. I know, but I like to be invited, you know, like I'm I'm I'm honestly incredibly flattered when whenever anybody asks me to do these things. But then I do them and I just am just draped in shame afterwards. And especially doing this, like playing a character, which it was not I didn't play some huge over the top character. But I had to you know, I I always want to do a good job. I always want to meet the the people who've invited me on their show. I always want to I never want to let them down, you know, and it just it always feels like I do. And whether or not I do, who knows? Right. They always say nice things because nobody ever says like, hey, you really screwed my podcast today, Walsh. But it's so anyway, that's where I am. So all of that is to say, probably not opening up a live microphone on Cairo maybe is a good move for me at this point.

yeah i mean it's it's interesting because obviously like you're the co-host of this program um you had your own show on cairo there are there are a lot of outward indications that that would indicate to you objectively that you don't suck at this you know what i mean like if you sucked at this you wouldn't be the co-host of this show they would not have given you the andrew all show on cairo like and yet i know what you mean like there's a disconnect between like my fee my version of this is feeling like i will very likely be fired from all of my media jobs in the next two weeks and be and not even because of like uh you know getting quote-unquote canceled or something but just because everyone will all realize at the same time that i'm boring and that i have four stories um that's how i feel all the time it feels good to laugh like that's how i feel internally all the time and you know like people like becca say what's the evidence of that that everyone like what's the evidence that this is all gonna go away very soon or that people or that you're not good at hosting radio shows and i'm like the evidence is that i feel like i'm bad at it all the time but the but if i look at if i look at everything else i have to say objectively there must be some appetite for it because people hire me to do jobs where i talk into the microphone and people listen to this but but going from like understanding that intellectually to feeling it emotionally like i don't suck at this every second that i'm doing it that's the that's the that is a distance that i often cannot travel

yeah and you know it's funny because i don't want to make it sound like i feel like every time i crack a microphone it destroys me and i and i hate myself it's only like 90 percent of the time no um you know even on this show like especially this one because we're talking about something so serious at the top of the show and i stumble on words and and you know like i'll obsess over that and i don't know how the whole thing comes out but i'm you know i'll be the first one to say I'm probably not the right person to be weighing in Roe v. Wade being overturned. You know what I mean? Like, that's definitely not my wheelhouse. I don't know what my wheelhouse is. But I will say that, like, when I do after these messages with Genevieve, as we like to quote The Simpsons, I feel a sense of something that is less shame, I would say. Like, I like that show. It's fun. And I feel like, you know, I can host that. I don't have any and there are some shows are better than others and certainly there are times when I lose my train of thought maybe or I can't think of the right word but it's not it doesn't haunt me like for the most part that's a fun show that we do and I can take amount of pride in that if I can use that word or less shame as we say but yeah so it's not everything I don't want to exaggerate it but there is something about being on other people's podcasts where I just want I just want to be good I want to be so good on Seattle now that they can't not have me on but then if they have me on again it'll just be the cycle of the same thing you know right right it's like

the amount of the the amount of of of judgment that you have for yourself regardless of how it goes almost makes it not worth the the you know the honor of getting to be on a show or the fun of of listening back and hearing that it did actually cut together pretty well etc because of just the journey that you have to go on emotionally in advance of it and then it sounds like even more so see this is that's now where you and I are very different like I said I feel like I feel like I'm getting over on people and that I'm not entertaining and that this is all going to go away but I also do not ruminate very much on what has happened as evidenced by the fact that I have no memory ever of even what's happened five minutes previous on this show or on live wire or you know like that I guess I'm fortunate in that I don't that's not the way my brain works I don't go back and overly ruminate on things that I said on whatever appearance. It's kind of in the rearview mirror for me, which I guess I should take as kind of lucky.

Yeah, that's yeah. And there is if we're going to extend this conversation here, I do know that you have insecurities. We talk about our insecurities on the show all the time. But you also do have a confidence that I can associate with that. I think people who are really successful in, I'm just going to broadly say performing arts, but specifically here, this type of thing, like talking into microphones and almost, you know, not this safe context of TBTL for me, but like, you know, that you can just hop on a show and, and, and pretty cool. Like, yeah, I mean, you jumped on the, what was that Minnesota show? You hosted a two-hour call-in. Oh, the Carrie Miller show. Yeah, daily talk show where you took calls in a city that you don't even live in. I don't know. I mean, you do your research.

Just butchering names like Shakopee.

But it was fun, and people enjoyed it. And so you do have a level, or you can turn on a level of confidence in the moment that I think I really struggle with. I tighten up so goddamn tight in those circumstances. circumstances and you can almost hear it in my voice you can hear my throat like kind of tighten up a little bit um whereas i liked your move like i remember showing up at minnesota public radio and i knew that you were doing that shift and i walked by the studio and i can see through the big windows that you're like i think you literally did you have your feet up on the desk while you're taking phone calls maybe and i seems kind of think that's something that maybe well you definitely had a laid-back attitude and i think and listen this is your story i don't want to psychoanalyze you but my guess is that you are doing something that in order to put yourself in a position of confidence you you put on a cloak you put on sort of a cloak of confidence if that's the right word and you also you it comes out in your body language as well because you probably have to put yourself in a certain place in order to not tighten up the way i do i think you're probably

right i think un uh subconsciously in a situation like that i am acting like i couldn't be less Worried about it As a way of trying to trick my body Into thinking that I'm actually Couldn't be less worried about it Now Andrew Would it give you a dose of confidence To know that you And Hollywood power player Brad Pitt Share something

In common I thought you were going to say

Wynne Rosenfeld I guess Is Brad Pitt I'm talking about someone Who's almost as important Of a Hollywood power player As Wynne Rosenfeld Yeah I'm talking about one Brad Pitt I was reading this profile of him in gq which was getting a lot of attention yesterday because apparently brad pitt got this is not the this is not how you uh are similar to brad pitt but he owns this like vineyard huge estate in france i believe he co-owned it with his ex angelina jolie and i guess it's now um a quite valuable producer of of wine and grapes and rosé and whatnot but somebody basically like bamboozled brad pitt into thinking that there was gold buried on his estate and he kind of went nuts he said trying to find it like he got a metal detector and he was like roaming around this estate trying to find this gold i love that and then he later figured out as he told gq that this was just a scam this guy basically made it up to try to sell brad pitt metal detecting equipment or something like this guy had some business he was trying to get off the ground related to treasure hunting yeah right but that's not the thing that that jumped out at me this is uh directly from the piece by the way uh this was a very very very uh excellent profile written by somebody named otessa mosfeg who is a novelist in her own right and i think part of why this is such a great profile is because this writer otessa mosfeg is not just a magazine writer I mean obviously being a magazine writer is not an easy job But this is a person who comes to this profile With her I swear it's like 40% about her Which is an interesting way to get at this It's like she's very much in the foreground of this But I think it really works She's clearly a very talented writer But this was the part that jumped out at me Let me scroll back down to see if I can find this section Brad Pitt has talked in the past About a curious problem he has in social settings Especially at parties He struggles to remember new people Or recognize their faces And he fears it's led to a certain impression of him that he's remote and aloof, inaccessible or self-absorbed. But the truth is he wants to remember people he meets, and he's ashamed that he can't. He's never been officially diagnosed, but he thinks he may suffer from a specific condition called prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness. But I am aloof, though. When I tell him that my husband Seems to suffer from this as well Pitt goes wild nobody believes me He cries I would like to meet another So Andrew You and Brad Pitt Share face blindness and he would like to meet you Does that make you feel confident on this Friday

Um no that doesn't make me Confident at all although I do have a Did I tell you this story I'm out of ideas then There's no helping you Did I tell you the story about about me um my somewhat awkward encounter with my uh neighbor so there's a um there's a house next to us we have kind of one next door neighbor and I think I've mentioned this before I think there's two sets of renters um but in total three women who live next door and I think I've met two out of the three I'm not sure but the one I've had the most interaction with is this uh woman named Kelly who's a younger woman I don't know her age but you know significantly younger than me You also suffer from age blindness Yeah, well, I think I mentioned to you on the show That I tried to help her with her lawnmower And like, she's super I mean, she is super, super outgoing and friendly And we've said Aside from the time when I was brand new In this house and actually kind of You know, we interacted for quite some time On this one afternoon as I was trying to help her troubleshoot some stuff aside from that we'll say a quick hello every now and then I haven't really seen her in um quite some time kind of over the fence um tool time style but uh the other day this is when Genevieve was out of town and I was walking to I think I mentioned on the show that I I went to IHOP two days in a row one weekend and ordered the same I don't think

I knew it was two days in a row I knew you went once and they were overly apologetic about the

Wait, I didn't realize you followed it up. Oh, yeah, no, no, no. That was the second day. But, yeah, I went two days in a row, ordered the same exact thing both days, the artery clogger or whatever it's called. I don't think they call it that. Do they literally call it that? There's a piece of wood back in 1775, and somebody carved artery clogger IHOP. No, it's just like the, I don't know, breakfast sampler or something.

I just wondered if they were trying to be edgy because, you know, there are those restaurants that are like. hate that where it is gonna give you a cardiac infarction oh man i still i was well whatever i

stumbled on some for the for the other podcast i was looking for something i stumbled on something called like dad's candles and they're like candles that have like manly sense and the commercial that i found some radio commercial where somebody was like screaming about like just like oh god it was so Andrew you need to man up I need to man up anyway so anyway I'm walking I'm walking to the IHOP I'm totally in my own world right I got my big headphones on and I see some young woman walking towards me on this like little side street or something and I kind of notice her but I don't really pay much attention and I'm we're on opposite sides of the street and I'm just walking by and then I see at the very last minute and I think I hear her yell something and I'm not sure. And because I got my headphones on. But then I kind of turn and I see that she's saying something to me. And this is maybe going to sound cocky. It was like somebody that I did not recognize. And I'm like, maybe this is somebody in my neighborhood who listens to TBTL and is just saying hello or something. So I took off my headphones. I said, do you know who I am? No, I took off my one headphone. I kind of didn't even stop. I'm just like, oh, hey, what? And I kind of look at this person quizzically. And she just yells, I'm your neighbor. and I'm just like oh hey sorry Kelly then I just kind of kept walking and I like that's sort of living with me as well too because now like and I haven't seen her since then and I'll be honest with you Luke if I were to see her in the same exact situation tomorrow I still don't know if I'd recognize her I do have face blindness but I think hanging out with you has shown me something which is I also it may not be face blindness so much as me not looking people in the face enough You know what I mean? I think I have some issues with face blindness and and eye contact is part of that. And I, you know, in evidence would be that time you came up to me in a coffee shop in Chicago and said something to me. And I look now that was side blindness and told you to go away. And then I went back to my work and I had no idea it was you until you told me six hours later.

I wonder sometimes, although I guess the question would be – we would have to, I guess, track this based on gender for you. I have a theory that as this relates to your – how you relate to particularly to women, I think you want to be so far from coming off as being inappropriate or overly interested or just in any way fixating too much on someone that maybe you – like I actually do this on my jogs, by the way. Like if I'm jogging down the sidewalk and there's a woman on the sidewalk, I will go into the street and I will intentionally not make eye contact with them because I just don't want them to have to deal with processing a male person in their space or near their space, which is kind of an extreme response or reaction. But I just, you know, Becca's a jogger and I hear stories and it's just like I just want to be so far away from creepy that it's almost like antisocial. And I wonder if a little bit of this for you as it pertains to women is wanting to be so far away from creepy that you almost intentionally don't register them there.

I mean, I think I actually had a and now we're getting close to a conversation that we had the other day about me saying, like, listen, I don't need to compliment strangers, especially women in public spaces. And I just sort of make a point of not doing that. And that kind of that upset some people. A lot of women were calling in and writing in saying, like, that's that's not the world I want to live in. Oh, I slid into their DMs. OK, it's all good. But I do think that probably is as walking down this little side street, which is, you know, and again, I live off of a kind of a rough part of Aurora. And so some of these little side streets are nicer than others. And this wasn't a particularly nice one. There's a young woman walking.

towards me she's probably got earbuds in i've got my headphones on yeah i probably just thought give that person their space you know what i mean and don't don't and we're the only two people on the street it was you know it was morning i was going to ihop but um people do not go to ihop at night um but anyway so yeah i'm not saying that was a huge part of it but i almost guarantee you that probably something in my brain was like you know okay yeah don't don't do anything that would make this person feel unsafe in any way not that i think i'm creating an unsafe space for people But like you say, you just hear about so many bad interactions between women and strange men and the audacity of some men still blows my mind. And I don't see it firsthand because they don't treat me that way. But you hear stories sometimes. And even if they're rare, they're uncomfortable. And so, yeah, anything that I can do to physically kind of give somebody a sense of like, you don't have to worry about me in this situation. I just try to do that.

That's what I'm always thinking. And I'm not trying to be like pat myself on the back or anything. But I just want it to be I want this person, like I said, you know, typically women, although I guess this isn't only women. But, you know, I just want this to not be something that they have to do any calculating on. Yeah, exactly. Like, how am I going to handle this? Like, I don't want that block between as we're approaching each other for them to spend that block figuring out a strategy related to me. I want to just, like, if I could, like, have a sign illuminate over my head that said, leaving you alone, dude, I would so that they could just continue on their way without expending one watt of mental energy about what my deal is going to be. Yeah, exactly. So that was probably part of it as well. We're both heroes.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, let's do a little music for your weekend on this Friday, this sad and weird Friday. But here we are together So let's, you know Let's uphold the traditions of TBTL By playing some music for this weekend Let's respect, let's honor the precedent of TBTL Going back 13 years Although I actually don't know if this segment Goes back 13 years

I'm a strict TBTList, by the way Just in case you want to categorize me I am going to play a song By a musician

Just even hearing you say the word strict I just have so much I want to say We're not even getting into the gun shit From the day before I mean sorry This is not What the founders intended For music for your weekend

Nick Jarn is a friend of mine He's been on TBTL before I think Although I'm not 100% sure I consider him to be the breakout star Of the Andrew Walsh show That's right he was He was the producer of the Andrew Walsh show and he has great taste in music and is always on top of like the thing is when Nick puts out a little Spotify playlist sometimes I don't even bother listening to it not because I don't think I'll like it but because like I won't get any of the references like he's just impossibly in the know as far as new music is concerned especially in more of like the hip hop space but he did release a little or he shared a little Spotify playlist a little summer jams playlist and when i say little i mean it's probably up to like 100 songs now because he keeps adding stuff uh and i was sort of sampling through it the other day and i landed on this song that i really like and it's by a musician and i don't know how to pronounce her name but it's spelled u m i in all caps i want to say umi seems like probably a good bet umi and i know nothing about umi i just thought thought this song was a jam i heard it on uh nick's uh little playlist um but Then I quickly, just today, Googled her, and she's a Seattle musician. Have you ever heard of Umi?

I have not, but you know, we are looking for Seattle musicians for, we're doing Livewire at Town Hall in Seattle next fall, and I was just having a conversation with one of our producers about how we want to identify some Seattle musicians who might be interesting to have on, so I'm very intrigued.

Yeah, write this down. Well, I guess listen to it and tell me if you like it. It looks like, according to Wikipedia, Tierra Umi Wilson, full name, and has had some success, best known for a 2018 song called Remember Me. I'm not familiar with that song, but this is a brand new song by Umi called Whatever You Like. This was just released this spring. Take a listen to this, Whatever You Like by Umi.

We'll see you next time.

No, I got a habit of assuming you're the bad guy. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to crush your pity. For the ball, emotions get the best of me. Big heart, big heart, still dancing with your energy. Behold yourself, you know you got the best of me. Booker Luke

That is so good I'll tell you what I did during that song You sent an email to your producers. I started to, and then I stopped because I realized the producer I was sending it to is on maternity leave, and I don't want to bother her. It's great, though, right? Wait, who do I? Oh, my gosh. So good. Yeah. Then I was also trying to figure out, because this person, Umi, went to the University of Southern California. So then I was like, are they in L.A.? But then I looked at this album forest in the city, and she's sitting in front of what looks like a building in Seattle. So then I was like, maybe she's back in Seattle, so we can get her. I went on a whole journey dude But there's enough Seattle DNA there either way

That if you're able to work it out Then that would be great

That is a really good song Also there was something I was on her Wikipedia page She had a song I believe that was streamed on Spotify She's best known for her 2018 song Remember Me which has over 116 million Streams on Spotify So that's Also people want to know Is Umi the singer vegan Oh. It's another thing the internet is curious about. I'll click on that and I'll tell you. She challenged herself to be raw vegan for a month. Oh, okay. Since then, she's felt more clear-minded and connected to Mother Earth. So, in case the listeners were curious, is Umi a vegan she was for one month? And now you have something to talk about when she's a guest on stage. Yes, now I'll break the ice. Yes, exactly. I would like to suggest a Kurt Weill song. This is off of Watch My Moves. um did i i think i mentioned in passing that we interviewed him and he played a song for uh live wire and he is just the sweetest dude um but it was funny because when we finished the interview he said oh that was so fun thank you it was really great he goes i just did this other podcast which i i will i shall not name andrew but he would i know it no you wouldn't know it i didn't know about it either he goes i just did this other podcast where their whole it's like a shtick and their shtick is to be kind of mean oh no and he goes and he goes and no one told me that that was going to be the shtick and he goes and it was just like really hard to keep up with it it was just like oh my god i just wanted to give kurt vile a big hug because he's just such a nice sweet dude yeah that doesn't seem like the best fit no it doesn't it made me mad at this other

podcast which i then stalked on the internet and did you listen to any of their show i didn't i haven't that's just such a weird thing i mean i guess that's i mean we have restaurants where the shtick is we're mean to you so i guess i don't know why i'm surprised but like it just i'm just trying to figure out how you have that as your guiding principle as a podcast and you have kurt vile on the show and you don't see how that's weird and you don't tell them that that's

the vibe yes exactly well you know the reason why i was why this came to mind was because when you when you were talking about your friend's podcast i was like oh wait is that the podcast and then right it's not it's totally not yeah yeah but i did some i did some well because this other one is also um i guess somewhat improvisational because again they're doing characters so i was like oh shit if if it's andrew's friend's podcast that he was on where they were mean to kurt vile

i don't know what i'm gonna do but if they got kurt vile and i didn't know about it that would

have been something too i just love this guy so much and and ever after getting a chance to chat with him a little bit he was so just like exactly the way you would hope that he would be just super down to earth super like just chatting it up too like we had to say goodbye to him which was you know like we had to be okay we've all got places to be which is just a nice feeling when you feel like the person isn't like okay i gotta get on to stuff i really want to be doing like this is like sometimes we interview someone and you get the feeling slightly that it's kind of the last place they want to be um but that was not the feeling we got with this guy so i would like to play say the word by kurt vial off of his latest album which is watch my moves one two three fall

Thank you.

I wrote the words to this song Driving from Philly to Amherst I wrote the words to this song Sitting still in Saskatoon Words to this song Come and go and fly away Words to this song How can I sing to say When every time I grow into a man Chaos coming around the fence

All right, I'm going to jump in there just so we don't get yelled at by Spotify. yeah um but uh how this is why i'll never understand music andrew i love that song so much it's so simple it feels like i should be able to write that it's a very kind of mellow guitar riff it's just so it's so just kind of spare in its own way and yet i could never do that no like i could play those chords on a guitar i could sing those notes i could just My brain is not capable Of sort of Compiling that stuff In that order

Yeah it's funny I was Listening to something last night And I just sort of had that I had kind of a similar thought You know what It was Courtney Barnett I was listening to her latest record Speaking of collaborators And I was listening to that Maybe I even had the thought This is going to turn into starting to sound like an insult But like she's got a very kind of basic way of writing or she's got a song writing style that to me can seem, I think, deceivingly straightforward and simple and almost a string of consciousness. You know what I mean?

But I had this like your song could be like walk down the street and I saw my neighbor, but I didn't recognize them. Like it feels like they're just reciting the order of events from their day.

Right. and then and i was just thinking about it and it's weird because i did just get caught in this quick little daydream moment last night as i was listening to that record which i can't remember the name of right now um i was just thinking like yeah things take time yeah take time yeah i love that title um and i was just thinking if i were in a if i were like a fly on the wall like that beatles documentary get back and just like listening to her talk about songwriting with another musician or working out a song with another musician any notion that i have that she is a that this is straightforward or simple in any way is is out the window because it would be such a hearing musicians talk to other musicians about the songwriting craft just blows my mind because it's like it's like hearing people talk about magic in a language that i don't speak you know what i mean it's just like yes it's just a different world and the their knowledge of

production is always shocking to me because a lot of the singers that i like are not overproduced and so you you have this feeling and this is like anything good usually like it feels effortless but it's effortful but they've just you know they're like a duck and below the surface they're paddling pretty hard but above the surface they seem pretty still like you hear even artists who have albums that just sound like there's kind of very like they just walk into a studio started strumming a guitar and sang they start talking production with other musicians and what they used and how they processed it and the instruments etc i mean and you just realize oh shit this is on another level yeah like it's it's a little bit like david sedaris in that you read david sedaris's writing and it just also feels like he's just writing about a thing that happened to him when he was at his beach house and it just doesn't seem it seems like he just sat down and jotted this out in the course of an hour but of course his process is so he has such a process where he you know he he basically writes a bunch of stuff and then he tours it around the country and then he reads it in front of crowds and he makes notes as to what's working and not working based on the response from the crowd and that's his editing Thank you.

process i mean it's very rigorous to get to something that just feels like he was just kind of you know you want to talk about you want to talk about rumination andrew i know i've told this story many times on the show but i somehow managed to finagle a lunch meeting with david sedaris's book agent and in new york and this is one of and during one of my many attempts at becoming a writer one of my many failed attempts and i the the this guy this editor asked me like well what do you what do you see this book being or what do you want to do and i was like well you know i just thought i'd kind of write about you know me and my life and my observations and things kind of like what david sedaris does it he just sort of like put his coffee down and said well you know what david is doing is actually very complex just it just appears to be simple i was like yeah totally but of course that hadn't occurred to me listener i did not know that and so then i just pounded my second martini and then you just said so about that advance yes exactly i okay i know what i know what i'm gonna do with my per diem but what about what's that scene was that vince vaughn scene where he doesn't understand what per diem is i feel like that might be in there was like a weird sequel to swingers that it's it's not a sequel because it's not the same characters but it's john favreau and vince vaughn basically being the same people i think it was called made m-a-d-e like a maiden man or whatever yeah and it's again it's it sort of feels like it's in that it's like what would happen to these guys 10 years later but they don't have the same names and they're not like following exactly the same plot lines but there's a lot of similarities and i think it might have been that movie there's this great scene where Vince Vaughn clearly doesn't understand what per diem is but he's trying to pretend he does actually could be kind of good intro yeah I should look for that oh you know who else was in it Peter Falk and Sean Combs I remember liking that film a lot but of course that was at the time where I was very pro anything Vince Vaughn was doing I can't yeah I'm so

uncomfortable I you know what I was re-watching the other day um I don't know what journey led me on this i just have to watch this every now and then the tim robinson um snl skit where do we say skit i can never remember i'm sketch sketch i'm so self-conscious about that now um sketch where uh it's about the making of round ball rock and um and and with jason sudeikis exactly exactly and it's he's and so he's playing john tesh sudeikis is playing john tesh and tim robinson is playing his brother, Dave Tesh. And this is when Round Ball Rock supposedly still had lyrics attached to the music and it went something like, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-basketball. Oh, by the way, I was obsessed with that last Friday. I kind of got back into that. And then apparently I was at the Mariners game on Saturday with my friend Aaron and I was telling him, remember that skit? He's a big Tim Robinson fan too. And we were laughing our ass off singing ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-basketball and apparently the Jumbotron caught us for a moment exactly as you're singing a song about basketball. I mean, that's me, right? Finally, the moment, the moment I've been waiting for my entire life, all I've ever wanted, Luke, as you well know, is to be on the Jumbotron, and it caught me, and I was singing about basketball at a Mariners game. Did you see yourselves? Is that how you figured out it was happening? I didn't see myself. I think by the time Aaron noticed, it had already shifted, but we're kind of laughing our ass off, thinking, basketball give me the ball i wanna dunk it and uh and all of a sudden he points he's like we're on the jumbotron i don't think that it was focused on us because i immediately looked around like well where the hell's the camera um so my guess is we might have been in the background or something like that i'm not exactly sure i have i have a weird we need to go obviously but i have a weird

relationship with that sketch because i think it's very funny um but i i have to admit i feel very protective of round ball rock as a joke because a i was obsessed with nbc's coverage of basketball at that time like at the in the era when they were playing round ball rock that was also when the sonics were really good and i mean just watching the sonics play in the nba finals or even just the bulls play the knicks i have like a strong emotional connection to marv albert Talking as Round Ball Rock is playing I also remember a long time Ago maybe even on Conan or wherever Hearing John Tesh tell the story of Round Ball Rock and myself Like dining out on that story a lot You know the story of how he left himself a voicemail Message not a not a voicemail But like on his answering machine you know that whole story Right it's pretty famous so It's one of those things where I kind of feel Like almost like knowing About Round Ball Rock and also loving But also roasting round ball rock Was a big part of my personality For many years Almost like being into a band When not that many people were into it

And so then to see it on SNL, I was both excited that it was getting wider play, but also a little bit protective of like what I felt like was, quote unquote, my joke.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so silly. There are two really funny sleeper jokes in that, too. So the point is these two guys, John Tesh and his brother Dave, go into the NBC offices. And Vince Vaughn, by the way, this is why it came up. Vince Vaughn is one of the executives that they're trying out for. And of course, it's the famous round ball rock song, which John Tash is playing on the keyboard. But then you have his brother, Dave, who's just singing these absolutely ridiculous lyrics. And when the network executives ask them increasingly forcefully to separate the lyrics from the music, they react over the top, as you will see happen in every one of Tim Robinson's sketches, right? It's exactly the format of I Think You Should Leave. By the end, they take out tiny hammers that they brought with them, and they start smashing everything in the executive office, and they start pouring gasoline all over everything to burn the place down. And taking big mud pies. Too small a slice of paper. Here are my two favorite jokes. One, Genevieve pointed out to me, because before you know where the skit's going or the sketch is going, John Tesh says something like, Well, this is a song that was originally based on a poem that Dave wrote retroactively. It makes you think about round ball rock without the music and the fact that his brother Dave thought that that was the that that was going to be a poem. And then my favorite joke is is at some point Dave Tesh comes to grips with the fact that it's not going to work out. The song is going to be without words. But he says the world hasn't heard the last of Dave Tesh. Also, Dave Tesh is a really good name. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Dave. So anyway, Vince Vaughn was in that sketch, and even his small role in that, he just gives me an ick factor. I cannot stand the way he just holds physical space.

You feel like he would have bullied you in high school. And I'm not saying that as a criticism of you or whatever.

No, I don't think so. He doesn't give me bully vibes. he just gives me like sleaze vibes just like he just sleazes in and out of places again i'm not saying this is him as the person i'm just saying that maybe it has to do with that swinger sort of thing but like no he seems like a guy who wouldn't pay attention to me in high school and that would be fine but it's just more just like he just carries himself with this sort of like and again it might just be his face or whatever but he also sometimes plays these characters it's a smugness in a in a and just sort of a squirminess that not not he's squirmy but he just sort of A slipperiness, I think, is the word I'm looking for.

Yeah, I think your assessment is sort of right. And I guess I don't love the fact that when I saw the movie Swingers, I made it my goal in life to become Vince Vaughn's character. Literally taking up swing dancing, calling everyone beautiful babies. That's not true. But, I mean, yeah, we had very different responses to that film. Yeah. And I think your response is probably the better one. Okay. Our suggestion for music this week comes from listener Kristen in San Francisco. uh said hey uh this is uh just my kind of jam and maybe it's yours too i'm just entering the final stages of recovery from covid ah kristen hope you're feeling better uh and kristen says i'm feeling calm and joyful now like this song the song is by a band or a performer named jaguar sun and the song is called broken record and i do i i listen to the song and i like it and it's it does have a nice summer vibe so maybe this will um help ease everybody into the weekend uh that's going to bring us to the end of our broadcast week thank you everyone for spending the time with us we're going to be back here on monday with more imaginary radio for you again um really thinking about everybody out there in the country especially people who are having their bodily autonomy um really threatened by the by the systems in this country and i just want to let you know that that that we're thinking about you today it's got to be a tough day all right uh we'll See you on Monday. Until then, have a good weekend. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Air just changed when it's cold. Stair life under this face. Broken record, there's its spin. Can it change in its own time? I hope it can If it can I'll break earth If it's all mine I'll break earth

If it's all mine I'll break earth If it's all mine I'll break earth If it's all mine I'll break earth If it's all mine I'll break earth

We'll be right back.

I walk alone, check my phone I'm here up in outer space

Power out