Muse

Apparently, a person's name actually influences who you grew up to become. Like, if your name's Dennis, you're slightly more likely to become a dentist. It's true. You're attracted to things that sound like your name. And, like, Larry's are more likely to be lawyers. I thought about it. My name's Joe. One letter away from joke. I was like, oh, my goodness. And the more you look for in the world, the more you see it. Bernie Madoff? Don't give that guy your money. Last name's Madoff. I looked up the guy who started Craigslist. First name's Craig. That's spooky. Wow. What are the odds? Andre the Giant was seven feet tall. Yeah, last name was the giant. TBTL. Ask your question? Well, possibly. um the hell am i doing here is that the question what was the question sir the man or beast that i run from ain't been born and his mama's already dead i think we're pretty heavy on the bad news right now so maybe just sprinkle in some positive a spoonful of sugar and such sometimes people

say that my head is too big for my body and then i say compared to what i'm the president

of rap music and i need to work with you right away all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl stinky the show that just might be too beautiful to live my name is luke burbank i'm your host oh my god he i made it coming to you from the hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where I was losing my mind this morning trying to reorient my audio setup. I spent like a half hour dinking around with this audio situation. There's a waste of time to do that. Because once again, the cat got in here and turned a specific knob down. This wasn't just random chaos. This was strategic, my friends. What an idiot. She turned down a specific knob that is the knob that allows me to hear my friend and the co-bro of the show, Andrew Walsh. And it took me a half hour to figure out what the heck was going on. Speaking of technical difficulties, she probably did it while I was at the Apple store yesterday trying to get my laptop fixed because of some cockamamie Apple update. This is after spending over two hours on the phone with tech support. I'll tell you what happened with that. From my point of view, it's a beautiful story. I love your story. I had to basically lie to the Apple intake system to talk to an Apple genius in person. Oh, by the way, I'm here. I'm in person for episode 3717 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Which is where we have arrived. Today, all of the top stories are business news. From American public media, this is Marketplace. As everyone knows, TBTL is the place in the American public media broadcast family. where people turn for their business news, including a Bank of America analysis that finds Bed, Bath, and Beyond has resorted to some very extreme measures to try to save money, including turning the A.C. off at various stores. It's going to be very hot, going to be very uncomfortable for everybody. Also, Airbnb has permanently canceled big parties. I'm an activist and house party enthusiast. And, of course, the knights and the wenches at medieval times in New Jersey are trying to unionize. So we'll try to get through all of this if we can. Plus, do the Blur's Day, because it is a Thursday. We'll do all this with the help of this young man, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew Walsh, and he is joining me right now.

Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. I had a little panicky moment right before you were introducing me because I wanted to quickly fire off a, not a tweet, a text message to our, you know, sports thread where we talk about the Mariners and the Twins and what have you. But it was one of those things where I wanted to send my message and then include an image to go along with it. But I wanted to send the message first, then attach the image because I don't like it. I don't know how it appears on your end when I do that. But if I do it all in.

one message sometimes it's confusing the picture comes first whatever but i did this thing where i sent the message out but then i realized oh i don't have the image ready it didn't save correctly to my computer and i was looking around for it and there was a chance that you were going to introduce me on this show and i would not have time to find that image and send it uh until two hours later when we're done once i introduce you then it's hex empire time then it's hex empire time well no i mean in all seriousness like that game i play hex empire requires no brain power at all it's just like doodling in the background as opposed to trying to find an image save an image attach an image like if anything this is a statement to how much i pay attention during the show despite the fact that you are somewhat put off by me playing a game called hex empire i'm really not i just think i i think it's funny that the other day we heard it boot yeah no sometimes

that does happen i totally understand what you're saying though which is it's not a distraction

It's actually helps your brain focus. Uh-huh. Exactly. It's again, like when I sit in the meetings when they were in person meetings, I would I'd be a big doodler and, you know, probably didn't look super respectful. But I also, you know, nailed some pretty, pretty nice doodles. Good caricatures. You would draw your boss on a surfboard. Her head would be enormous. The bikini was an HR violation. Oh, God. That must be an interesting skill to have, to just break out outside of your professional job.

Right, exactly. Like, you work in a corporate environment, but you used to be that person on the Santa Monica Pier who drew caricatures of people. So your doodling is really interesting. What? One guy's an old-timey strong man.

I feel like somebody must have already done this in television sketch form or skit form, maybe. feels but it feels like it has some potential it seems like a court artist or what would you call it a court illustrator courtroom illustrator yes they don't allow cameras in and so then you see the photos from a grisly murder trial and they're all just like caricatures it's like

the guy is the guy is super muscular he's holding his wife on his shoulder she has like farrah

faucet hair um that actually that i feel like that actually would be a fairly a fairly funny sketch i feel like it's out there i feel like i'm stealing that from somebody there's no way

i'm thinking of that for the first time here oh well i think that we may have we may have invented something right here right now i was gonna say listen if if you're feeling slightly discombobulated this morning that's really on me or more specifically on the freaking cat it seems like i'm doing this to be funny or just to sort of inject her into yet another episode of the show but legitimately when i came in here this morning to dial you up a bunch of stuff was a miss like uh on my computer there was like the just stuff was was out of sorts because she had she'd knocked over my clock as you know i'm surrounded by clocks here like it was clear she'd been running around on this table but what was truly unbelievable was that the specificity she turned down this one knob that is the fx knob on my audio board that for whatever reason and i don't you can't diagnose why it is that that's where you're coming in on my board but she turned down out of a like one two three four five six by one two three four five six what's six times six 32 or 36 36 never do math on the radio out of all of those knobs she turned one of them all the way down to zero and it's the one that i need to not have on zero to hear you that is malevolent well the worst thing about that story is you sent me a picture

of your board while you were trying to figure this out and then when you did figure it out and it turns out you couldn't hear me when the fx knob is turned down it's driving me bananas why you have your board set up that way i can't even well i know how you would set it up that way because now I want to get Holly Woo Mike in on this with his professional audio brain. I don't understand how you have this set up. But again, that's not my problem. We're talking to each other. The show is fine. You fixed it. It's working. But now I want to know why. Why?

Listen, I agree with you that that's a weird setup. And I don't know why it is that way. But what I know is that she literally turned that thing down.

Because she's trying to sabotage my part of the show. It could not be more obvious.

she is trying to sabotage the system this is real hand that rocks the cradle type of stuff andrew this is like rebecca de mornay moves into the house supposedly as a nanny but has has nefarious intentions this cat also is it true that she dialed you on ipdtl yesterday The system that we use to talk to each other? Because I did not come in here. during the baseball game and like dial up that computer system there'd be no reason to no sitting in my in my office picture me i have two laptops one in front of me that i do most of my work on and then another one that i mostly just use to connect with you uh so we can do tbtl it's mostly just kind of an audio uh component essentially but every now and then if there's a mariner's day game i will open up another tab and i'll put the game on there and maybe watch that in the background and i was doing that yesterday um while i was doing my performance reviews by the way or review i should say which um i think the quality of my answers to how uh tbtl stands up to the values broadly of apm i think it will be reflected in my answers that's probably more um i was paying more attention to the baseball game than my review process but uh anyway i heard some ringing going on in the background like somebody's cell phone maybe in the broadcast booth i couldn't quite figure it out i'm like maybe a maybe a listener is sitting near the broadcast booth and their phone is ringing really loud and it kept going and it got to the point where nobody commented on it uh in the broadcast i was like something weird is going on then i'm like wait that sounds like the ringing sound that our ipdtl program makes when you're trying to dial me in the morning so i switched over i'm like oh yeah i still have a tab open where that program is running and there it is ringing me at like what 1 32 o'clock in the afternoon i'm like i don't think we have an impromptu tbtl emergency and if so i don't think you would ring me on ipdtl as a way of doing it although that did run through my brain for a second i was like are we supposed to be doing some recording right now that i've forgotten about then i was like no it's bubbles the cat she's feeling lonely you're probably not there she wants to do a podcast with me

system no you know what i was also working and watching the baseball game and playing with her endlessly yesterday i gave her a ton of attention we have all you know a whole series of games we play with the laser pointer until she gets bored then there's this feather thing that's on a long stick that i have a whole pattern that i do like she had a really fun afternoon because two things were happening andrew uh the baseball game was on and i was talking to tech support at apple for two plus hours trying to fix the situation with my other laptop that uh that wouldn't send email yesterday and let me tell you it was frustrating because i got a person on the other end of the line who was perfectly pleasant but was uh clearly reading i think just working through a kind of a checklist of things and felt to me like they i don't want to say that this that this woman didn't know anything about apple computers maybe she did or you know whatever the software maybe she did but i don't think we were diagnosing a problem that demonstrated her thorough knowledge of the product i mean there she did say a couple of things here and there that may and she spends all day on the phone with people who are having computer problems she obviously has absorbed some of this but it was basically like okay um your email will not work we'll go go to the apple now go to systems go to preferences and she was just walking me through all these things that i had already done yeah you gotta start with the most basics you never

know who you're working with you know from their perspective yeah that's that's fair but it didn't

feel like she wasn't like oh you know what this happens a lot here's what's going on and i was explaining to her i was like the i can still receive emails in this email program i can go to the web interface icloud.com and send and receive emails it's this one thing and i think it has to do with these hiding of my hidden email system that apple has just launched which is complete pos as far as i can tell but i felt like i was trying to explain to her that it's some little setting somewhere that just needs to be switched and i don't know what that setting is And she was like, we need to, um, we need to erase and reinstall all of the operating system on your computer. And I was like, do you really, I go, how long does that take? She goes up to an hour and a half. I go, do you really think that's going to be the fix? And she like goes, well, we've worked through this, that, and the other. And, um, you know, she didn't make a very compelling case, but I, I couldn't really like, I couldn't present an alternate theory other than I just knew it was, we did not need to wipe my computer and start it over and then she was also do you have your external hard drive with you for saving all of your data i'm like have you met me and she was like no you just called an hour ago i'm in texas i have no idea who you are and that's why you go to your secret

hiding place where you pull out the the hard drive i gave you that has the i don't know first eight years of tbtl uh saved on it and you're just going to clear that out so you can quickly

back up all of your drop but i can't even this is so boring but i can't even do that because this macbook air the outputs on it are like it does not have a usb usb drive out or anything like i couldn't even i'd have to start by going to the apple store and buying a dongle

to even make it so that i could you know what i mean like i even if i had the stuff i couldn't get it off of the computer so i was like what are the chances that this will actually wipe my computer we won't be able to bring it back she went pretty minimal and i said let's just go for it so we did but it took forever and so while i'm making small talk with and we're screen sharing and she's popping onto my screen and popping off and apple has some setting now where if you're screen sharing with them but you start to put a password into something it automatically pauses their screen sharing so they can't see your any password that you're putting in but then you have to readmit them so it was just like it just took forever and at the end of all of it it still

didn't work and i was like because i was kind of like listen i don't know exactly what you're describing with your computer but it sounds like a mess and it sounds like you've had a bunch of messes over the past couple of years you've made some messes no um and so honestly a full if you're going to take the time to do it a full wipe sounded actually you've made a mess and now it's time for a full wipe i'm sorry about my words today um but it's actually that sounded good or dump talk from i was like that sounds good to me like let's just let's just wipe that thing clean and start afresh but the fact that it didn't work is very demoralizing to me right now i will tell you

there was a part of the process that was kind of fun and that you would have really enjoyed, Andrew, and that was disk utilities. Oh, yeah, I know about disk utilities. So when I turned it back on after, like, you know, hard resetting, she had me. I mean, thank God I am somebody who has four fingers total, Andrew. There are people who don't. Because at some point, I'm like, okay, now you're going to go control, command, F, and while you're doing that, you're going to hold down shift, and then when I tell you, you're going to hit the power button. it's like wow this is takes a certain amount of dexterity yeah to do this yeah but after we did all of that stuff and like got into the like lawnmower man setting on the computer where it's just a green three-dimensional grid or whatever like then she's like go to disc utilities and then we i ran basically first aid on all of the different discs i guess i don't know computer stuff whatever i got my computer got a very clean bill of health considering the websites i've been

to it's quite shocking and not only a clean bill of health but also it's working or it's not working

well there were no like viruses or or there were there weren't any issues everything's everything got a green check mark everything was very healthy but that was all as i suspected unrelated to why my email wouldn't work and so status of email as we speak well so here's what happened so after i do this whole thing with this gal it's still broken and so i was like all right well thank you i'll have to figure this out and so i then go online and i go to the apple website and i'm like i need to just put this computer in front of a smart computer person who's wearing a blue shirt i need to take this to the to the apple store but here's the thing andrew they do not want you bringing do not bring software don't bring software problems to a hardware fight like they do not want you entering that big glass cube of the apple store with some problem with your email they want you to come in there if you spilled coffee on your laptop or if it won't turn on because every time i would accurately report the problem in the apple website trying to set up a genius appointment it would shunt me away from physical contact so it's a what's your issue and i would say uh apple id not working email problems and then it would like immediately take me out of the of the part of the web page where i could make an appointment with a human being to see me and so i was like okay it's i'm taking evasive action here i just told him that the computer wouldn't turn on but it's it's it's very smoking on the highway this is never making it back over the mountains then i complimented them on their baby that was on the way so again i can't overstate this they everywhere on the apple website is like we can't wait to help you with your hardware problem and like hardware is like bold underlined like they are saying the only reason you're allowed to come in here and talk to one of our quote-unquote geniuses is if there is a physical issue with this because they think if it is software then someone on the phone in texas can help you with it so i was like computer does not turn on computer is smoking first i said it's not going to cut it and they were like well i'm sorry we're now i'm just sinking deeper into our rental car fiasco but anyway so i had to lie to them and then i went but i got an appointment yesterday which was slightly amazing so i went into the store and i sit down and i open the laptop up and it's not even the genius who's going to help me it's the intake person and they said hey I just want to get some info on what's going on.

So I can put this, you know, in the system for your genius. I said, great. I said, well, here's the issue. This email doesn't work anymore. I go, the email itself, my iCloud works, my passwords work there, but there is a disconnect between my interface and that email system. And the guy goes, can I just look at this for a second? And he just scrolls around and he just gets into some screen somewhere and he just checks this one thing and he just like, he basically moves it to a, he connects something that was disconnected. even though by the way in my defense he explained it looked like it should be working when he looked at it but he just out of an abundance of caution kind of went into the system and double checked it and sure enough it wasn't working even though the indication was that it was that makes any sense yeah yeah so i would have never known to go in because there's this thing that basically there's literally a green light that indicates you're connected and the light was green but when he went further into the system it was not connected he connected it i am telling you andrew i was in the apple store for under three minutes oh my god and it's totally working and fine all i needed was a human being who is smarter than me to look at it for two minutes right right right and also

probably just being able to put it in front of the person too and not okay walk through this okay do a screen share i mean i've done that before both professionally with colleagues at apm who are are in the it department or i've screen shared with i think uh dell representatives before and you know usually you know it it can work out but there's nothing like just like here take my computer fix it right although for me i like i will say that i like seeing it like i want to be that guy right like i want to be the person who found that that button like you just know the inner workings well enough that you just go in and you just check a bunch of stuff even though you're not super hopeful then you find and you're like oh yeah weird glitch here it is like i i actually am glad i'm glad to know that kind of stuff so i don't want to just hand my computer off but there is something about that experience that seems like it's gonna i don't know produce

better results i just feel like once again andrew i was totally right like i knew that this screen sharing situation with the help desk was not gonna work i knew we didn't need to reload the software and i knew if a smarter at least as far as computer stuff goes person than me who works for apple could just get eyes on this it would be fixed in five minutes and i had to lie to apple i was i was like basically i was like i hope that the when the genius finally emerges and says so the computer won't turn on and then i say to them no it turns on i just needed to see you i was like i hope they

don't kick me out or something yeah i actually expected it to go in that direction that they were going to say listen sir i'm sorry this isn't what we do here listen the news story would the

news story would be man burns apple store to the ground i'd be doing i'd be doing my part of the show from the multnomah county correctional center or whatever today but again i just feel like for so many of these systems they have tried so i was okay i was at the bank the other day and i was at a u.s bank which i have an account at but i needed to get money out of u.s bank i need to get cash out of us bank and then walk it across the street to chase bank because i was buying some stuff for this house project and it was a fairly substantial purchase and i needed to buy it from the chase my chase card for boring reasons i don't have a card for the us bank account it's just a savings

account is it weird going in there now knowing that you don't do wait wait don't tell me from the chase bank auditorium do you got to keep your head low i get looks there's a certain there's

You know, it's hard to pinpoint it, but there is a certain emotional distance now with the tellers. I can feel it through the line. I go into this U.S. bank and I say, hi, I need to withdraw some money. And the woman says, well, that's a fairly significant portion. I'll see if I have that, you know, in my till or whatever. I mean, the amount of money was $4,000. So I was like, and so she goes, well, do you have Zelle? And I was like, I think I do. And she goes, well, you can just Zelle the money from your U.S. bank account to your Chase account because both banks use some system called Zelle. So I was like –

It's a Zeller's market. Okay, that's a show title. How did I become the guy who just interrupts people to shout a pun? I used to hate puns. Now it's like the only thing I provide on the show.

Yeah, right. And how is this our job? so i'm sitting there at the window and this woman was very nice by the way but it's like instead of just giving me the money she's with her very long fingernails tapping away on my phone trying to help me download the zelle app so that i can just take some money i have in one place and move it to another place where i need it to be because that's what i have a debit card associated with and i was like and i said to her as this was all going on i was like they're really trying to put you out of business, aren't they? really trying to get rid of all human interaction and she's like no they'll always need us and i was like well maybe but you're at this moment i mean i didn't say this to her but i was like you're basically just telling me that i can use an app to do this thing that i do on the fairly regular which is physically walk into one these banks are literally across the street from each other andrew i walk into one i take some money out physically walk it across the street because the reason is it before i knew about zelle the transferring of it takes like three four days it it's hung up in the tubes and it's like gone from one account but hasn't hit the other account so i've found that it's easier to just literally physically walk it across the street and deposit it as cash yeah which sounds totally like something my granddad jack kelly would have done uh the guy who kept all his money in a mattress or something but by the way uh couldn't get zel to work i ended up just getting 4k from her and walking across the street what why did zel not work it doesn't matter it doesn't matter it has to do with um because i already had an account set up at chase and had to do with what it was associating with my phone number boring details did you have the fx knob turned up bubbles had come into the bank the night before and climbed on the zell button turned it all the way down it was something it just had to do with it just had to do with the permissions and trying to send myself money i think it's easy to send other people money but if you're trying to send from an account to an account that already exists i don't no point is i just did it the old-fashioned way i got the money eventually and i walked it across the street but it's just in at every turn i was like this lady too i said she was nice but on the other hand she was kind of a little bit like a little bit no fun so i was we're chatting because i'm waiting for the zelle app to download and i said i go yeah you know it's so hard to get human beings on the phone anymore you know i go especially like for for xfinity because you know this andrew you've been down this road it's a real nightmare and she goes well i live in i'm lucky enough to live in the suburbs so i just have an xfinity store that's a mile away so i just go in and i was like that's not really the point of what i'm trying to say to you like i'm certainly she's

agreeing it sounds like her tone was a little bit off because she's kind of saying the same thing it's like yeah it's a pain doing the it's a pain doing it by phone so just going in i guess that

is a form of agreement it felt all i needed then was like a yeah instead of a well and also i thought it was funny when she was like i'm lucky enough to live in the suburbs i was like okay cool um i hope everything's going well in beaverton or whatever and the other thing i didn't want to tell her is my apartment is one block from an xfinity store so the burbs don't have a monopoly on brick and mortar xfinity stores but i just didn't feel like litigating that you point to

yourself and say hey the burbs don't have to live in the burbs thank you do you call yourself anywhere do you ever always referred in your no in all seriousness do you ever because i'll talk to myself sometimes right and i call myself the burbs no um but you know i may i might have nicknames for myself i don't know right now do you ever in your head in a goofy moment or if you're working on a project and you're in hour five and you're sort of muttering to yourself do you ever refer to yourself as the burbs no i don't not that i remember i would well the thing is andrew it's available you can refer to yourself as the burbs if you'd like to okay sorry to interrupt that was a serious question i mean a very almost too serious get back to your word

place uh you're a real zellig real zellig like figure on this show andrew okay let's take a quick break because uh we do have some top stories and some blurs days to get to oh and i was trying to keep the show at exactly 60 minutes today because i had to take the cat to the vet just a real checkup her next round of vaccinations um and uh it's like she if she doesn't get her vaccination it's on her for turning the oxen for turning the fx knob down it was like you really you're really gonna delay the start of the show cat which then may delay us getting you to the vet so you can get your life-saving well she's probably an anti-vaxxer

probably right she's probably like you know what i'm sick of this dual treatment of citizens i'm sick of this vaccine segregation andrew she's just been doing her own research she's just been

watching she's been watching some dale big tree videos on youtube i don't know who that is but i'll figure it out from context becca's got friends you know there's becca's incredibly healthy just eats really well exercises and is friends with a lot of people who are also very very healthy and in the kind of like super like do yoga community and stuff or people whose bodies are they treat their bodies really in the opposite fashion andrew that you and i treat our bodies right yeah and there is a like kind of sort of super health left wing vaccine skeptic people that's where it kind of started right it kind of started from those sure back in the day right right with uh with all the people yeah so there's sort of that and then some of those there's a guy named dale big tree apparently who's got all kinds of bullshit videos on youtube that this one particular friend for a while was forwarding to becca until becca said if we're going to keep being friends no more dale big all right uh let's take a quick break and then when we come back we'll do these top stories here on tbtl hello and welcome to top story this is going to take uncharacteristic focus from us andrew to see if we can get to all three uh top stories here sometimes we don't even get to one and we're going to try to get to all three but in the next half hour because i have to uh see if i can get the cat to the vet to get these uh shots despite her conscientious objecting to it um okay in new jersey the employees of a medieval times are trying in lyndhurst new jersey are trying to unionize um because they say there are a lot of unique occupational hazards by the way a really good piece in the huff post by dave jameson on this topic um basically they were saying that when you get a bunch of people in new jersey or anywhere really drunk around a bunch of horses and falcons and people in serving wench dresses as the memorable scene from a cable guy will remind us of uh janine garofalo working there people get weird for one thing there's a guy uh named lord cedric who is cited in the piece who has to get on the mic occasionally and gently admonish the overzealous crowd saying, please, my lord, don't bang the plates because people get drunk and they start banging together these goblets and like heavy plates and it spooks the horses.

Oh, God.

Yeah. People also try to grab the falcon. There's a falcon that flies around.

Can you describe? So this is not like just a fair that pops up once a year for two weeks or something. We're talking about permanent places, but they're big enough because I've never I mean, I guess I've seen that scene in Cable Guy, although I've never seen that movie in its entirety. But like, these are very good. Is it? Yes, I would recommend. It's dark. Yeah, I remember me saying that I just like I when that movie came out, I had such a distaste of Jim Carrey. Like, I just just seeing him, his stupid mug on the TV would make me angry. So I probably avoided it for that, although I did like Janine Garofalo a great deal. Anyway, I yeah. So I can sort of picture that scene. But I mean, are these are like these must be huge outdoor places that are permanent structures. They're indoors. They are indoors, but they have horses.

They have horses. It's like it's like a, you know, it's like a dirt, a huge dirt floor ring where there's jousting and all kinds of medieval things. and you're sitting in, like, a stadium. I mean, a small stadium.

Almost like maybe when I was a kid, we would go to the circus. I'm almost picturing it like that.

Like that, but you have tables because they're also bringing you out, like, oversized. Like, you know, at the fair, people get the, like, Flintstones-ass-looking. Turkey legs. Yeah, turkey legs and ale, goblets full of ale. Flegons of ale and turkey legs and things like that. I think there were nine of these in America in medieval times. Have you ever been to one? I have not, but I have watched the movie Cable Guy a bunch. And I've seen it in other pop culture. It shows up in movies now and again. But apparently it started out in Spain. It's still owned by a family who started this whole idea in Spain of medieval times, and they brought it to the U.S. And there are, you know, like I said, I think there's about nine of them. The only one so far that is trying to unionize is this one that's in New Jersey, though. They voted on a union a while ago and it barely it barely failed. I don't know. I can't I don't understand. And I'm not trying to judge people, but I don't understand why any group of workers would ever not vote to be in a union. I mean, one thing is that apparently the Medieval Times Company has they've retained a three thousand dollar a day anti-union strategist. Well, I mean, what does the anti-union strategist do? i mean probably intimidate people unfortunately like because otherwise like i my guess is the anti-union strategist comes in and tells people if you unionize half of you are going to have to get fired because it's going to be so much more expensive they probably just try to scare the employees but it's like whether you work at a starbucks or a medieval times as an employee you benefit so greatly from unionization i don't understand again i'm not i'm not blaming the people that vote no because they probably are doing it out of fear particularly when you go But, you know, talking about farm workers and people who don't have a lot of leverage, I'm sure that they're made to. believe that if they vote to unionize they could be fired or they could be fired for even trying to unionize i mean i think there's a lot of intimidation that goes on but uh they're thinking that this vote is actually going to be they're going to join let's see what is the union again they're trying to join the american guild of variety artists which is an afl-cio union because the other thing that they're the people at the medieval times are pointing out is a lot of them are trained actors a lot of them are like broad like actors who are trying to make it on broadway But before that comes together, they're working at the Medieval Times in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. Oh, wow. Because there's acting involved because you're in character. It's the Medieval Times. There's people juggling. There's also the people riding horses. That is an obvious skill. There is a falconer. There was an incident that happened, by the way, where let's see if I can find this on the fly. The employees recounted a well-known incident during one rowdy Saturday night show when a drunken woman in the crowd made her way up to the throne and tried to grab the microphone attached to the queen's face, requiring the queen to fend the woman off. Animals.

A police officer was in the castle on duty, the worker said, but he was trying to control a different part of the crowd that was getting out of hand.

Oh, my goodness. Save this behavior for airplanes, people. Come on.

Not medieval times. Would recommend, by the way, Chris Hayes' podcast this week, Why Is This Happening?, where he talks to a writer for The Atlantic about why it is that everyone is freaking out so much. And it's a very interesting conversation, speaking of, like, plane meltdowns and, you know, just all of the ways that we as humans, or particularly Americans, are just behaving especially badly of late. And they talk about something called high-stress, low-reward situations. so you're renting a car high stress relatively low reward and if it's taking too long and if then they just say we don't have the car it's like you freak out there's a potential to freak out and like there's we have so many more situations like that now which are very stressful but they're it's just going to a restaurant potentially or whatever which is not to make excuses for people that are freaking out but there is something energetically that is going on with people in america uh and one of the things i talk about on chris's uh show is the whole flight thing and how people are just i mean incidents on flights are just through the roof in terms of

people getting hauled off and zip ties i'll just listen to it but answer me this question is any part of it or do they discuss it all in an idea that um people seem to be emboldened in thinking that they have certain rights that aren't really rights in other words like there's It seems to me that there's a bit of entitlement, too. I mean, there's some terrible customer service out there, but there's also like this this, you know, and I unfortunately I associate it also with some of the terrible things, the terrible politics we see in this country and the rallies and those people who think that, like, you know, everything is their God given right. Like it's it's my God given right to say that you can't say that on Twitter or what have you. Is that part of this at all? The sort of weird entitlement of Americans?

I don't remember that coming up but they were sort of talking about your stress battery like being stressed I mean they were they were saying that like all of this comes back to being stressed out like these public meltdowns and that you sort of have this like battery you know that's I don't know I don't know exactly how the analogy works if the battery is filling up or the battery is draining but like we're just all walking around so much more stressed Yeah. And so many more situations are more fraught than they ever were because of maybe lack of staffing or supply chain issues or safety issues or rules. And again, none of this is to say it's OK for people to have meltdowns, but it's not a coincidence that everybody's melting down more or that, you know, there are many more public meltdowns than there used to be.

Sounds like a good listen. I have unfocused. Let's refocus.

Okay. So it sounds like the Medieval Times employees in Lyndhurst, New Jersey are going to unionize. And that sounds like a good thing for them. I also think we, I don't know, maybe we have a TBTL event at a Medieval Times.

I was kind of wondering, I would like to go to one. It seems like something that we should, at the very least, at some point, if you and I ever have the opportunity, I don't know where the nearest one is. I'm going to find out right now. Maybe you and I should just go.

I'm sending a raven to figure out where the nearest Medieval Times is.

I'm sending a raven to my other laptop, which is in the other room, to Google it for me. I do feel like if you and I buckled up and went to – would that involve you and I dressing up? I don't think you have to dress up and cosplay yourself, right? Oh, but I would. You would. You would encourage that for part of our experience.

I would encourage you to. So these are the places that have medieval times in America. Atlanta, GA. Baltimore, Maryland. Buena Park, California. That might be the closest to us. chicago we get to chicago sometimes dallas lyndhurst new jersey the one that's unionizing myrtle beach south carolina

Orlando, Florida, Scottsdale, Arizona, and then Toronto, Ontario. So these must be all of the medieval times in North America. Interesting. Okay, yeah. Put that on the list of things to do. For me, it would really come down to, are they nice to the animals? Now, there's a photo in this article. There's a photo of one of the guys who works with the horses. His name is Purnell Thompson. He's a stable hand. And I will say, there's a photo of him with the horses. and pernell looks like a lovely person and he loves horses he's always been really interested in horses my guess is that pernell is taking good care of these horses good um like you know i have i have real reservations at this point about horse racing which i have been to that's how you used to love going to the racetrack yeah i really did because i don't think i gave it any thought what the what's really going on for the horses and how dangerous it is for them and how many horses have to be put down because of injuries and um at the time it just seemed like a fun thing near my birthday to get drunk and get a party bus and wear seersucker um but you know you can do all of that and go somewhere where horses aren't dying yeah is what i'm learning so i'm kind of i think i've i'm sort of not really a horse racing person anymore but i i don't know if jousting is bad for these horses or not maybe they kind of love it like maybe the you know maybe the stable hands are taking good care of if if i felt like the animals were being well treated i would totally hit up a medieval type okay we'll look into the human employees i couldn't care less about don't mistreat the animals humans you scab yeah right all right uh analysts accuse bed bath and beyond of scaling back ac in stores to save money as sales plummet bed bath and beyond andrew has been in free fall i had no idea i love bed bath and beyond i love the pattern

this bums me out too i was reading i didn't get through this whole article um because i was just doing other things today but not that it's some huge uh long read but um i was thinking about it because i think that listen there's a bed bath and beyond near me and it's kind of bombed out at this point it's not like a happy place it's not terrible but i think that you described one time when you were moving into your old apartment um you went to a mall and didn't you go through the bed bath and beyond from hell or something it was a total bombed out landscape and like

well it was me out yeah there's a very sad mall in the portland area i think it might be called gateway mall and it's i think the bed bath and beyond was actually on its way out it seemed to be what you had was a home depot that was you know normal you had a i believe a hospice place which you know obviously that's an incredibly serious and an incredibly hard thing to go through but the hospice center being adjacent to the bed bath and beyond was weird and then the every other store in the mall was closed except these guys that had clearly bought a bunch of like nba merch but kind of down market nba merch and they had set up these you know sweatshirts and hats in this you know kind of area like when you're walking through the mall where you'd see a you know orange julius or something but there was nothing in the mall except these guys it made me so sad and then the bed bath and beyond was out of beds they were out of baths they're out of beyonds like because it was the kind of thing where we're not refilling our stock yeah which they mention in this other article is a big part of the problem for bed bath and beyond they missed out on something like 175 million dollars in sales last holiday last christmas because they didn't have stock like they just couldn't get things so they couldn't sell them and somehow they did this analysis or someone did that figured out that cost them like 175 million dollars of just not having the things that people walked in wanting to buy yeah yep and already you're probably

just getting decimated by um online sales but like for me bed bath and beyond it wasn't like a place i was always excited to go to but when you did go in there like it would always smell very nice you go over to the towel section and everything is very soft and it's just like it was always a very inviting atmosphere for for a retail experience and like the fact that now these things they're just like all right cut the air conditioning and now you're walking around this place that has like half filled shelves and you're like sweating a little bit of that that gross inside sweat

and and their bed bath and beyond by the way for the record claims that they have not instructed any of their stores to turn the ac off but bank of america the analyst claims that they've conducted store visits uh at various locations and have found the air conditioning to be turned off so So it may not be the formal policy, but it could also be something where the store manager is under pressure to hit some certain number at the end of the month. And if you can't sell more salad spinners, maybe you can make up for it by spending less on the AC or something.

I don't know if you have an answer to this because, and again, it was mentioned at the beginning of the article and I should have read it. But so I did think it was interesting that this wasn't a formal policy thing, but something they're accused. of doing by analysts at bank of america is the idea here that the the bank of america is a major lender that is like kind of investigating the the the business the chain that they're lending money to that's their interest in this why is bank of america going around throwing stones uh i believe

that they're either an investor in them or they're advising their you know clients as i mean there's some obviously some reason that bank of america wants to sort of figure out the financial health of the bed bath and beyond situation now another thing that was kind of interesting bed bath and stock actually ran up when all of that game stop shit was going on they were one of the companies that got like pumped up by these nut cases yeah you know only to then have the bottom totally fall out because again the the move was let's let's pump a bunch of money into something that is clearly not on a very successful financial trajectory like physical video game rentals and so somehow bed bath and beyond was caught up in that and then the other thing that i thought was interesting because i mean what what i know as a person who gets divorced frequently and relocates is the first thing that greets you at your new mailbox is some giant ass coupon from beyond you're right and it's always like how could it be 70 off what's that business model And why are there four of them? This thing is like a menu at Denny's or something of Bed Bath & Beyond coupons. And that's because they, not unlike JCPenney, have kind of gotten into this spiral where basically everything was always on some kind of crazy sale. And they're sending out all these coupons to everyone when they move. And it was – but that's a financially kind of a – again, that's sort of a tough model if you're making all your – if you're enticing people into the store by basically selling things at a very low profit. So they hired this dude from Target. And this is remember when pennies hired the guy from Apple, the guy who had been in charge of the Apple store about that got hired by pennies. And he came in and he was like, OK, the new J.C. Pennies, no more 90 percent off on slippers. You know, if you've ever walked through a penny, it's like how 110 percent off. Does that mean we'll pay you? Yeah. Yeah.

And this lasted for a hot minute. Remember, they they retracted it almost immediately.

Yes, because it didn't work because everyone walked into pennies and they're like, I don't care that there's somebody in a black turtleneck. I want my slippers for one hundred and twenty percent off.

And also I come in here. Am I just getting life confused with Broad City or are there people who are just like huge bed, bath and beyond heads who like gamify it? No, I swear. Actually, I think one of the guys in the Levitard show is heavily into that, too. and like a candle there's a whole culture of candle sales at bed bath and beyond or something where you wait for a certain time of the year and then like it's it is almost like they're paying if you get the right combination of candles they pay you or like i believe i absolutely believe

that's a real thing but so basically bed bath and beyond pulled the jc pennies they got this guy from target and he was like okay no more coupons and no more super deep discounts and then people were like uh excuse you yeah this is why we come here this is why we walk through a hospice mall because we want we want to get a colander for four dollars like and 40 off and so again that also apparently was really bad for their business model it's just you sort of it seems like when you're what what we've learned is if you are if you're not a prestige company and i don't i mean i again i i actively love going to bed bath and beyond do not please don't misinterpret this as me not liking these stores i love them but they are chaotic that's the whole idea and like if you are a chaos store where everything is marked down and they're sending out coupons you really cannot suddenly rebrand yourself as an upscale store you are not um you know at that point what uh design within reach or uh what's a what would be a nicer like home goods store that someone might go to yeah you just can't make that switch and pennies pennies cannot rebrand themselves as aritzia uh you know or some other like higher end clothing store you kind of are what you are but they always seem to want to bring someone in to just totally reimagine what the store is going

to be about and it seems like it doesn't work yeah that's interesting you don't do do you remember bed bath and beyond as being one of these chaos stores in the beginning because it's funny i mean you're right about that and that's kind of what they became but i and maybe i was just like you know young and not really paying attention but i always thought of bed bath and beyond is actually a very calming store to go into again like yes one of the best not like a tj max exactly yeah or

ross dress for less or what have you like yeah oh you know i need a one neon yellow soccer cleat size 14 i know where i can find that item underneath some puzzles at ross

Puzzles and next to a weirdly huge amount of Ralph Lauren polo cologne. Like a bucket of Ralph Lauren polo cologne for some reason. And a putting green for dad's office. I will tell you, though, dude, the impulse buys at like a TJ Maxx or a Ross because they snake you through this aisle. Remember, I had to go I had to go buy T-shirts when we were in Denver because I packed incorrectly and I ended up going to like a Ross. Oh, my God.

I was going to say to you, one of the last times I bought white T-shirts was at that Ross dress for less in your old neighborhood. You remember that one? That one down in Mount Baker? You were talking about a chaos story. Right. I remember going in and being like, oh, wow. OK. And I think I you know what? I don't even think I achieved. I don't even think I unlocked purchase white T-shirts. i think i walked in and just like homer simpson's dad walked right back out you did get a bucket of

of sauvage this is before we knew johnny depp was problematic no but like um i i was buying those t-shirts and also that was where the clerk was really down on seattle did i tell you about this it was so weird no he was like he was like oh where are you from or somehow i said i had to buy these because i'm visiting i didn't have enough t-shirts and he goes oh where are you from and i said portland and he goes oh i'll tell you that place is just going to hell isn't it and i was like it's a weird energy from the ross dress for less guy or the tj max whichever one i was in and i was like well it's actually pretty great i go there are some parts of it that definitely need some love but he goes well i mean what about the part where the police can't go and i go i think you're thinking of seattle and i and i go and that was a thing but also i don't think it was as it was not as chaotic as like uh fox news was trying to tell people and he goes well didn't someone get shot and i go well didn't someone get shot in denver probably yesterday like right like this is a city there are things that happen you know but i thought it was hilarious how little

definitely a fox news when i went home to cleveland ohio uh all of my family like my aunts uncles and everything they were just like i would tell them that i just bought a house you know a modest house for an immodest price what you had to actually right but then but you know they're like okay yeah hot market but then also like are you okay there you know like they didn't specifically say that but that was kind of the underlying thing of everything because they're all feasting on fox news and you have people like jason and tebby here and in seattle who go on fox news and say that seattle is dying and then all of the conservatives around the

country believe it's a liberal hellscape but what's funny is this guy didn't even have the right city yeah well he was like portland's a hell hole because they have the place where the cops aren't allowed and i go those you're not even talking and it did not move him no it did

not move his needle one iota that was the crazy facts didn't matter as far as this person's opinions of the world i mean i like i understand that you know what i mean like i'm not making fun of you there i'm just incredibly frustrated i've been shadow boxing for i mean i just it's

just it's just but it's it's wild to be in them because sometimes you can't sometimes you can't hit him with as obvious of a factual discrepancy as this was like sometimes it'll just be they're having a feeling and they're they're throwing out things that they saw on you know bad facebook and you can't like you know from your days of trying to co-host with john curly you can't like disprove all these wild claims because you don't have the counter evidence at your fingertips this was one where it was very very clear that he wasn't even he didn't have the right city yeah but Don't stop. Doesn't even trip him for a second. Doesn't even, he didn't even, like, he didn't even take a moment to go, oh, well, huh, if I'm thinking about the wrong city, maybe some of my other, you know, presumptions are worth whatever. Here's my point. They snake you through a long ass, I would argue that's the longest impulse buy section, probably by design. Like, it's not just like, you don't just get in a line, you go through like, it's like you're at the tsa and every step you take is burt's bees uh a kind of a cool fan that is out that just charges on the usb and then like the most random shit and i want all of it like i don't know they have me totally figured out with that that long snaking impulse bisection um okay last one really quick before we get out of here because i said andrew we're gonna do all oh wow okay i was

pausing because i thought for sure that you're going to go to blurs day but okay well you thought i was just being no but there i was trying to be yes all i want to say well again bubbles has been

very clear the her anti-vax status so um you know maybe she's going to get out of it today um airbnb has made permanent its party ban now the reason i bring this up is because remember when we were in denver i spent a lot of time on the show complaining about the rules at our airbnb be. And you, I thought, took probably a more measured approach. You said, well, maybe these folks have been burned before. It turns out.

guess this is a whole situation so uh a while ago i think during the pandemic uh airbnb announced a ban on all like large parties at airbnbs but it was a temporary ban and now they've made it permanent and they put the ban in place i guess because this is a whole thing that people are doing particularly people of a certain age you rent an airbnb and then you just throw a massive

party there yeah and neighbors don't like it either yeah aside from just damage to the place that's renting it out some people are just buying these places in you know spring break style destinations and they just rent them out and they just become like rotating party houses and the people that live next door like as you said excuse you yeah no that would be a bad situation i guess

the reason the only reason that i wanted to highlight the story is because Maybe I was a little hard on our Airbnb host And also maybe we shouldn't have thrown that rager No, I stand by the rager I regret nothing

All right.

I know that you have to get that cat to the vet, but let's get through some of these blurs days. We have quite the list today. Mary from Madison says, I would like to wish my husband and TBTL influencer, Petey, a very happy blurs day as we will likely be listening on our drive back from michigan the day after his big day i hope you had a great day happy we could celebrate with a trip and looking forward to the next year to come happy blurs pd and those were the blurs days for today okay all right that's literally it um we had one that's it those are the blurs days i could have done three more top stories bubbles you're getting vaxxed that's right maybe that's the universe saying that that anti-vax cat of yours needs to go to the vet that is okay so yeah that was a little taker yeah but uh hey

you were really underselling that you said to me before the show you were like the blurs are a little light today so i can probably handle it by myself it was literally one person pd

congratulations pd congratulations i think that's the the the first time we've ever had a single blurs day also i think it's the first time that the intro music lasted longer than the segment

itself yeah well happy blurs day pd it's your day i'm getting excited andrew because i am on the portland pickles website because tomorrow night becca and i are going to the portland pickles oh

the ball game nice baseball game the old ball game for some reason i was like i was thinking pickleball because you're talking about pickleball earlier yeah i know i have been for a second yeah lot i thought you're gonna say that you're on the pickleball league that's where i for some reason i thought you were going with that but no this sounds um less participatory which is more my speed enjoy that sounds like a fun team this is more watch dissipatory yes exactly they also have

really good merch by the way oh yeah i would advise you go to the go to just google portland pickles and go to their merch page yeah they have some really great hats they have this one that's super simple uh it's the it says it's called the official league tiny pickle dad hat and it just says let's see uh hold on um i'm trying to read it says raise the chairs and then it has a picture of a pickle that must be raise the chairs must be some portland pickles saying or something yeah but um i'm gonna get me a dad hat so you're going tonight did you say tomorrow night tomorrow night okay very excited but i'm already i'm already getting amped so all right that's gonna do it for today's show thank you everyone for listening we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you until then have a great thursday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all I've never been a person that had friends, and so my friends were two imaginary white cats. Power out!