Muse

Hi. Hi. Where's Stevie? Um I don't know but she will be back in 15 minutes. What are you doing? I'm checking the mail. Did you know that you can still get mail? Yes I know about mail. No but I'm talking about like mail mail. Like a little man in a uniform with his satchel full of letters traveling door to door.

Um, that's a mailman, and he comes to your house, you pay him, and he gives you your stuff.

I think it's free delivery.

I don't think so. How far into the 15 minutes do you think we are?

TBTL!

The faces may not look familiar, but the voices, this zany radio team, have developed a unique style of frolicking on the airwaves. I don't read

the newspaper. I don't watch news on television unless there's a cat

involved. Do you have any music, Carl?

I have the internet radio.

I love internet radio.

You've come to the right place, because I have that.

Here I've been talking with the most intelligent people in the world, and I never even

noticed. Actually, you know what? I can email you. Or, you know, you can email me at splet2 at spletnet.net. Splet1's my father. I mean, I'll be sad to see him go. It'll be nice to get my hands on that handle.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. I'm so excited about this show. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Well, I get knocked down, but, you know, I get up again, man.

Coming to you from Bismarck, North Dakota. To all the haters and the doubters who said, we would never do the show from the second largest city in North Dakota. Mama, we made it. I got to do a little exploring this morning. Went down to the state capitol for a little jog. Some very beautiful grounds down there at the North Dakota state capitol. interesting though the um the capitol building is not like a lot of other state capitals that i've seen which tend to be not super tall but kind of um spread out you know think about like kind of congress capitol hill things like that um that's not the scoop here in uh north dakota It is a tall building. In fact, at 242 feet, it is the tallest building in the entire state.

Now that's interesting.

And I endeavor to keep exploring this city over the next few days. I'm out here doing a TV story. I'm also feeling grateful today that somehow I found myself in the one part of the country where the temperatures are relatively mild. It's your lucky day. I know so many folks out there are dealing with just extreme heat conditions, so wishing you the best. Here in Bismarck, waiting for my phone weather app to load. It's taking its time. I'll report back when I know what the temperature is going to be today, but I found it to be actually relatively pleasant this morning, which was a huge relief because I'm going to be in like a suit jacket being filmed, trying to talk to people. And that never goes well when it's like 100 degrees outside. It's about 3,735 episodes into the show as of today. That's right. That's the episode we've made it to. Let the fun begin. My journey getting out here to Bismarck involved some sky jinx. I'll tell you what. Sky jinx. I witnessed something in Portland, which was the largest payout I've ever seen to people to get them to not get on an airplane

and people just came out here and was getting hella money by the way current temperature

here in Bismarck 71 degrees it's going to get up to a high of 78 a very tolerable 78 degrees and then I also had an interesting experience at least interesting to me on my flight from Denver to here to Bismarck. So I went Portland to Denver to Bismarck. And each leg of the journey had its own intricacies that I will tell you about. Oh, and we're debuting a new segment today, What's in the Box? Where Andrew goes to our TBTL post office box, gets things, brings them back to his studio, and then we open them live on air. We have no idea what is in the box.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

So we'll do that. as well coming up here on the show oh speaking of andrew the longest running cobro of the show maybe known best for his drawings of the tall ships he's my good time boy oh explicit ooh and he's

Joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Looks like a mix of clouds and sun today in beautiful Bismarck. Chance of a stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. I have highs, Luke, near 80 degrees to your 78. This evening it will get cooler, dipping into the high 50s.

A rainstorm moved through last night. Was it a good one? Yeah, it was one of those, you know, when you're in a place where there can be some humidity, when you get one of those summer rainstorms. I was, so I got in, I got to the hotel about 9.45 or so. And I am, you know, I often talk about being surrounded by clocks on the show. I am surrounded by food options in this hotel that I'm in. I mean, I can see, I'm not exaggerating, probably 10 places. I'm right across from an Olive Garden. I'm looking at a Wendy's. I'm looking at something called Sticky's Garage Burgers and Brews. But everything was closed. I think everything was supposed to close at 10, but they were just kind of calling it good at about 9.45. So I asked the guy at the front desk, really sweet guy, what my food options were. But I later would learn, Andrew, that this guy, sweet as he was, has apparently never been to Bismarck, which is surprising considering he works at the front desk of a courtyard by Marriott. Oh, there's a Taco Bell I can see as well.

In other words, he's maybe living outside the city a bit, and he hasn't really tasted the local cuisine of Wendy's and Stickies.

Oh, God. Wendy's and Stickies sounds like something that we probably shouldn't talk about on the show. Oh, wait, it's Stickies. I'm sorry, did you say that? Stickies. Oh, I thought you said Stickies. No, no, no. I think I missed. Oh, okay. I think I said the wrong thing, because that's a little ways away from me. And also, by the way, the sign is like in a cursive script, the sickies part. So it's a little – that is straining. That's at the outer edge of my eyesight at age 46. It does.

But I'm looking at that sign. I don't want to be rude, but, like, it does raise the question, what is a worse name for a place that serves food? Sickies or Stickies? Yeah, like, honestly, at least with Stickies, I was thinking, like, oh, it could be like that – what is it? Like Nashville sticky fried chicken or something like that. Yeah, you're thinking hot chicken. But sticky could also be a chicken kind of a thing, right? Yeah, but what could a sickie be, though? I mean, sickie is just like they're coughing on your food. You don't want that.

Yeah, it's not – it isn't enticing me. But anyway, when I got here last night, I asked again the very nice guy. I was like, hey, where do I – oh, there's a Ruby Tuesday, by the way. I'm just going to keep naming restaurants, Andrew. I forgot about Ruby Tuesday.

I'm glad it's still around.

I said here in Bismarck they've got one. I said is there anywhere I can get some food And he goes yeah I think everything pretty much closes down The other thing the reason that I now realize He was probably not to be trusted was I said I'd also forgotten deodorant And I said and I asked him if they had any And all they had was secret And I don't want to be overly gendered about my deodorant But you know secret has an extremely Specific smell And it I think my mom must have Worn it when I was growing up It is very feminine to me But it's like pH balanced for a woman But it is, I believe it's strong enough for a man Oh it's strong enough for a Burbs But it's pH balanced for a woman It just, if it would have been any other Quote unquote women's deodorant I probably would have been fine with it But I've worn Secret before in a pinch And I'm smelling it all day Like it's an extremely specific fragrance And so I asked him Are there any drug stores nearby Where I could go buy some deodorant He goes, I don't think so So this morning Andrew when I'm heading out down to the state capitol to go on my little jog, I'm leaving the parking lot of this courtyard. Next to the Olive Garden is a CVS. Oh, you wanted a drugstore. Oh, you wanted a national chain that sells deodorant that is literally 200 feet from the hotel. Haven't heard of it. So that's why I... And then also, I ended up down at like this irish bar called murphy's which was the last place selling food at like by this time 10 10 at night you don't like irish bars can i say that can i be blunt about that you yeah it's expressed it's not really my now if i were in ireland i would certainly you know check out the local scene but an irish bar in a town that i don't know to have a particularly strong or interesting irish culture it's just not something that really speaks to me it also doesn't provide me with a ton of food options right if i don't generally eat meat so i had some uh some nachos hold the almost everything and i took a lift though because i thought maybe i'll have a drink and i don't want to i'm not trying to get in trouble with the bismarck pd so i get in the lift i'm coming back and now it's it's all of 10 45 you know an entire 30 minutes has elapsed for this whole process And I'm talking to the Lyft driver And I'm just noticing everything is closed And I go, is this pretty typical for Bismarck? Do they really kind of roll up the streets at about 9pm? He goes, yeah He goes, if you want action, you've got to go to Fargo Which, I don't know if those words have ever been Yeah, they have He was like, this is no Fargo, my friend

Yeah, I'm sure the Coen brothers have written that line into a script Whether or not it made it

It was hilarious to realize I mean, what he was saying in a nice way was buddy you're mixing this place up with fargo the bright lights in the big city that is fargo

north dakota that reminds me when i was in um and now i'll forget the name of the town i think i was in i was in um michigan applying for that job which they did offer me yeah and i was in interlocking but i couldn't believe how rural it was and i was like no no i want to graduate college and live in a bustling place and they were like well traverse city is is like right is right here so i remember going to Traverse City and looking around and keep in mind like I grew up in the country like I'm not but I I wanted to move someplace that had some sort of action I remember going into a record store in Traverse City and you know nosing around a little bit and then saying hey I'm just kind of visiting you know where's the nearest city and the guy looked at me like I was speaking a different language and he was a young guy but he was just like you're in it and then I was like no but I mean where's the biggest city and he's like well Grand Rapids is like five hours away I don't know it's actually five hours away but i was like oh no this is it like there's no cleveland nearby the thriving metropolis of cleveland but i was just like well there must be a cleveland right

right well that's i'll tell you what it's it's always better for me to be in a sleepy town versus a hopping town but i'll be honest with you i figured we're in the dakotas there's you know a fair amount of like roustabouts you know going like a number of the dudes on the flight with me had like hard hats and boots on you know they were carrying their hard hats and they had boots on like they were going out to like work in the field of some kind i assume some kind of oil business or whatnot like it seems my guess was that bismarck was going to be kind of rough and tumble and kind of like a place that was built on a lot of sort of physical labor and and sadly probably extraction of natural resources and that there would be card rooms and saloons and basically i thought it would be dead wood oh okay and it's just dead which is a totally different experience i'm also not in love with the fact that and i'm not trying to um yuck anyone's yum regarding bismarck i don't love that the it appears that what they do with the billboards here when they don't have any advertisements you know what i mean so it's just a placeholder is just a blue lives matter flag oh wow i like oof that's a i've seen it like two or three places now i'm like oh that's the placeholder okay well and then oh i also realized by the way i was i'm doing these loops around the capital and i didn't really know where i was going or whatever and i was trying to i was on this little path and then i hit this fence and i i wanted to get around this it was a low gate i wanted to get around it to continue on this this path and so i sort of walked in the grass and skirted it and then i realized i was trespassing on the grounds of the governor's mansion where christy gnome lives good that real nightmare governor like like she is bad news and i was like oh man it's amazing a sniper didn't take me yeah like i feel like if there's a governor who would would have people taken out from a football field away it would be that person christy gnome i always wondered what do zip ties feel like around your wrist yeah i almost found out this morning i was like now meanwhile jay insley will just invite you in talking to you about uh you know electric vehicles right well you know we can cut chop it up regarding the ingram rams state championship football or basketball team of the 19 whatevers but um yeah it's just uh it's an it's interesting because oh and the other thing that i realized is i have been here before one time andrew because remember when i was doing that kind of impromptu cross-country road trip uh where because i lost my id in new york state and then just started driving west and i would kind of do the show from various places i i um got off the uh the the freeway here i don't know exactly what it's called in this part of the world but it's basically the big sort of east west it's i-90 in washington state it probably turns into some other things as you kind of move east but anyway i got off in bismarck and i went to this starbucks which i also went to this morning by

the way and my really specific memory of that was going through the starbucks drive-through as I had just hit play on this podcast that had randomly showed up in my feed which was Jesse vs. Cancer which is a show by I think a friend of mine now Jesse Case, a really funny comedian great Twitter follow and a person who when he was recording the podcast initially had been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and had a pretty bleak diagnosis and I

I remember sitting in the parking lot of that Starbucks in Bismarck, hitting play on this podcast and hearing this person who's, you know, younger than us talking very, very genuinely, but also having a lot of sort of humor about it of just kind of where what he was facing. And the thing that made me feel so happy this morning is that Jesse has been in remission for years and is living a great full life. And despite, I mean, that was years and years ago when I listened to that first episode, but he still does the podcast on occasion. He makes all kinds of great music, lives in Nashville. And there would have been no way that I would have imagined sitting in that parking lot listening to Jesse's initial episodes that, I don't know how many years later it is, probably six years later, five years later, that Jesse would be with us and would really be thriving. So that was all kind of a nice, weird, full circle moment involving the Starbucks in Bismarck.

Yeah, that is – I think that podcast is – I was trying to look here. I think that podcast is still going, right? I think he's still even doing the podcast.

Yeah, he kind of – I think he does it – I think he took a little time off. What was amazing was – I mean I was always just in awe of that show because Jesse is just so interesting and he could also just hold – he could hold the mic and command the space and be very interesting just by himself. He didn't ever have guests and he would do the show sometimes, you know, I mean he was getting extremely aggressive chemotherapy and radiation and things like that and there would be times where he would be doing the show with his eyes closed because if he opened his eyes he would feel really nauseous from all the treatment he was getting. So he would just be lying there with his eyes closed, just talking for an hour, and it'd be riveting. And it really put in perspective how much we should be able to, the two of us who aren't undergoing any kind of treatment, make an interesting hour of podcasting. That should be within our abilities if Jesse can do it and was able to do it under those circumstances.

Well, I'm going to do that right now by totally changing the subject and talking about something so tedious and boring. I want you to close your eyes, Andrew, before you say the next thing. But you mentioned, you know, 90 going east to west, and you said it might be called something different in different places, but I don't think it is. That's one thing that I've always really enjoyed is that, like, I'm trying to figure out how close 90 actually gets to Concord, but, like, I know 90 goes as far east as Albany and, you know, obviously as far west as Seattle, and it's really just, like, the northern part of the country's east-west corridor, and there's something comforting about that. Like I grew up in Cleveland, we would hop on 90, you know, anytime I was leaving New England, like Concord or Boston, we would eventually be on 90 heading west somewhere, you know, and to know that I took 90 all the way out to Seattle and it was still 90 there. There was always a constant in my life. Like, I don't think that Jesse would talk about this on his podcast. But for me, there's something I don't know. There's the only place I live that wasn't like kind of 90 adjacent, I guess, was L.A. the only problem is the map calls it 94 here oh okay so it's not 90 there

i must just shift but i know what you mean because i as a kid had the exact same thought i was and i would ask my dad about it i would be like if i just drive on this dad like if i were to just start going towards bellevue on i-90 where would it end and he'd be like probably the atlantic ocean and i actually really thought that was a cool thing too that these there was a consistency to this and that's why i don't understand why it would why would it randomly i mean are you sure

that's the same that's the same exact because i'm looking at maps 90 goes you know across the country east to west are you sure that it's called 94 there and it's not just a different highway

there it looks like they call it 94 83 but i'm guessing what happened was because i had been in minneapolis previously um somehow i'm sure that i got routed on whatever that road is because of the what ways or at that time who knows map quest was telling me to do based on where i had been so all i know is that the only reason that i'm even and i don't want to drill like i'm not trying to dig in on this i'm also confused because you're confused i'm also confused because last night i was looking at the map i was trying to figure out where i could go for a jog here in bismarck and i was trying to like also by the way bismarck the only state capital named for a foreign leader named for otto von bismarck as an attempt to get more germans to come live in this part of the world but anyway can i just jump in and say something because people are going to be

frustrated yet you're not 90 doesn't go that far north 90 goes east to west but it goes through south dakota and that doesn't go all the way up to bismarck so so i think when i was different east

gotcha okay that makes that makes much more sense so yeah because i because i was coming remember i'd stayed at steve nelson's house and and was i'm sure that it was just more efficient for me to take a what is it what i say it's called 94 up there yeah that is funny that you ended up up that far north if you were coming from well because think about it if i was in minnesota it

wouldn't make sense to dip all the way down to south dakota so it probably just had me running along the uh the higher you know the northern part the north of dakotas yeah maybe i'm looking

at the map it looks like you should have taken 90 i don't know why it did that you went pretty far north to go up there but maybe for some reason it didn't want you on 90 again we're talking about a road trip you took in 2017 i think actually is that right now maybe actually it might have been around that time huh 2016 or something man world holy moly no it was so long ago i had started out

in um chautauqua new york you know it was early in my days of doing tv stories for cbs sunday morning like as in like where they send me and a crew out and they wanted in fact you know it may have been it was no it was probably like the second story i did and i worked with our friend john goodwin actually it was about adult summer camps oh yeah right trend of adults doing camp and there was a camp in wisconsin called camp wanda wiga that we went to it's very funny andrew because now i'm i'm old and crusty and um intractable like i would never agree to do a story like this in the manner that i did it like because i had to fly to wisconsin for camp wanda I had to fly to Beacon, New York for a music camp, and then I also had to go, I think, a different time to Chautauqua, New York, which is up by Buffalo for this kind of—it's not even an adult camp. It's like a community of people up there. I would have been like, I'm doing one trip to the producer. And by the way, that wasn't John's thing. It was a different producer. John was just covering for it. But it's so funny to think that in those days, I was like, yeah, I'll fly across the country three times. Now I'd be like, this better all happen in one day, people.

But then you would compromise on two or something. Then I would, yes, I would start with one, and then it would end up being six. Yeah, and I won't do more than seven. Yeah, from St. Paul to Seattle, this is terrible. Jesse would never do this. From St. Paul to Seattle, you do have a choice. You can go up north, like you said, and it does take you pretty far up north, up to 94, and that saves you an hour. If you take 90, you kind of got to go south. It's like St. Paul is kind of right between the 94 or 90, and so you have to choose one, and you did choose the quickest one, so you were right.

Do you know the other thing that – well, I can't take any credit for that. That was literally whatever computer program told me to do it. But the other thing that I remembered about pulling through Bismarck was when I went to that Starbucks, it was – this is – you know, actually, I'm almost regretting even getting into this line of conversation because I don't think this is how we really talk about people anymore or cities or looks, as it were. Although I did bring up hot chicks on the show yesterday. Yeah, right. It's a whole new era. Maybe that's my new – what I do now, Andrew, when I'm doing the show with you is I have sunglasses on. but they're kind of way down the bridge of my nose. Do you push them up every now and then? Like I'm at a swimming pool. No, I pull them down based on the hotness I'm observing.

Oh, then you look over them. Okay, yeah, sorry. I'm still learning how to be a cool.

You have much to learn about the 1980s movie genre that I'm now entering as a 46-year-old. No, I remember pulling into that Starbucks and being struck by the intense physical attractiveness of everyone who worked at the Starbucks, man and woman. like they were all out of they looked like they should have been on like 90210 or something and maybe it was just that particular crew that day but i was like and this was i spent 20 minutes in this city i pulled off the freeway i got a cup of coffee i downloaded jesse's podcast had a sip of coffee and pulled out of town but one of my takeaways was wow there's something in the water here what is going on at this starbucks and every person is like extremely attractive who works here just kind of like again just shockingly so and i realized i went back to that starbucks today still pretty much the case i think that starbucks is the place to go in bismarck like i wonder if it's i mean they've got to have a couple starbucks but it was that you could just tell that everyone who watches the bachelorette goes to this starbucks like it's there was people in like jeeps that were like colors i've never there was a woman in a jeep that was a color I've never seen before and she was very done up and getting a coffee that was you know had many steps to it and like that I could observe and like it just seemed like if you're part of a certain I don't know if it's social class or if just you have a certain set of interests in Bismarck you're going to this Starbucks because it's like you're not going to go to the Menards and get a cup of coffee from the like machine there you're going to this Starbucks because it feels like you're connecting to some larger cultural experience I don't know.

Outside of Bismarck, if that makes sense. And since you asked, and I don't even want to really get into this too much, but since you asked, if you did want to drive from Traverse City, Michigan to Seattle, you would also take that similar route and you would go right through the Twin Cities again and get on 94. And in fact, you'd even you'd have a brief layover. I don't know why it's a layover if you're driving in Green Bay, where apparently Aaron Rodgers is really speaking of looks. And when I say look in that way, it's L.E.W.K. I think we all understand that. Have you been following the Aaron Rodgers on Twitter? Like he shows up for like he shows up for camp today and he looks like, you know, he's got that long hair and a beard type of situation. Like I haven't actually seen it. I've only heard people talking about it, and then I saw, like, Nicholas Cage references. There are a lot of Nicholas Cage references on Twitter today, which I now realize have to do with the Aaron Rodgers appearance at summer camp. Summer camp, not right. Training camp is what I meant to say. Oh, you got summer camp on the brain. Yes, exactly. That would be, God, maybe I would have been better at football if it was just like you go to summer camp, you make s'mores, practice archery.

The internet is saying Aaron Rodgers shows up at summer camp looking totally like Nicolas Cage from Con Air. Yeah, that's what I was hearing. That's what I was, okay, oh, you know what? Well, there's so many phases of Cage.

Right, yeah, yeah, phases of Cage. Yeah, I mean, we used to get those VHS tapes. We would pass them around. Oh, my God. Oh, God, dude.

I was too afraid to watch those.

Were those real or were those, like, fake? I never actually, I'm just joking, I never actually saw those. Did you actually – did you tell me you did past this?

No, I was way too afraid. I heard when I worked at Dick's Drive-In, I heard tell of – and we're referring to something for our listeners who are younger than us. There were these videos called Faces of Death, which were kind of legendary, and they supposedly showed people actually dying through various accidents and such. And I don't think – and the story I heard was like, you're not even allowed to rent this. like it's not even you can't even legally show this but it'd be like someone's older brother would have like a dubbed copy or something but i was like that is not for me man like i don't i was not interested that that just even hearing about that scared me you know what a couple of

things so first of all i made that joke because i always forget that it's faces of death when kids were talking about it and i was a kid i always heard it as phases of death like phase which is weird because as a kid you would think like face would be a more accessible word but for some reason I always thought it was phases of death and I don't think it was until I was older that I realized people were saying faces also I was not like in a situation in grade school where people were inviting me over to watch any kind of movies anyway so I can't say that I like ever turned it down but I did not ever see the appeal I would hear of these things and be like that sounds awful like that doesn't sound like entertainment to me but I was also not

a kid who was into horror I'm still not into horror of any kind And I just don't – I'm pretty sunshine and lollipops, actually. I'd fit in really well at the Starbucks in Bismarck because I'm just not into – personally, I'm just not into the macabre generally. That just doesn't speak to me. And so at least that's been one consistent thing in my life. Okay, Andrew, we should take a quick break. But then when we come back, I do want to just quickly update you on my trip out here. And then I'm very Speaking of the macabre intro I'm very excited to play What's in the box That is macabre More critically Here's the new intro package Yeah

What's in the box We really Yeah I'll tell you about it later We put down a lot of money To have somebody produce An intro for us And if it doesn't work out I'm going to be a little bit bummed So we've got to figure this out

Well we have a lot of explaining To do to Beth Perlman Exactly yeah And not to mention Joanne Because that's going to go Right up the chain Yeah it is Right up the chain So alright Quick break and then back with more TBTL in a moment. Let's thank some donors of the day. They're making today's episode possible. We sure do appreciate folks like Robert Lau in Dallas, Texas. Hot in Dallas. Yeah, I know. You heard the pause in my voice. I was like, oh, that's going to be very, very toasty there. But then I thought, Robert knows it. He's in Dallas. And Robert may not hear this for weeks or months. It might be snowing in Dallas.

So do we not want to give him our top tips for staying cool in the extreme heat?

Bro, I heard that this morning. So I'm here in Bismarck, obviously. But I was listening to KUOW on my phone for, like, to listen to Morning Edition. because it was already, well, actually, I guess I just didn't have, I just. I was too lazy to figure out what the public radio station was here. But I was listening to KUOW, and they literally got on, and they said, it's a heat advisory, and the county is recommending people drink water and stay indoors where there's air conditioning. And I was like, those were the two things I cited yesterday on my slightly snarky tweet.

I can see the far side cartoon of a skeleton dried out in the desert, and it says, why didn't anybody tell me that I just needed to go inside where there's air conditioning.

Our point, Robert, is stay inside where there's air conditioning and also drink some water. Make sure you hydrate. Same advice for Wayne and Christina Kirkendall. They're in Mill Creek, Washington. Oh, there's a creek there.

They can hydrate. That's good.

Yeah, exactly. Just go down, put your head in the creek. Make sure you're doing it, though, above. You know, there's a thing with creeks, like, where if the water runs over, like, do you remember, like, hiking and hearing that you're not supposed to drink if there's a stream? I don't know why this stuck with me from one of my few backpacking excursions as a kid, like with my dad. But if you're on a mountain trail, but there's a stream, like there's a waterfall, and the stream is running down, you never want to drink the water that's downstream from a pathway where people or horses might have been walking through it

because you could get hoof-to-mouth disease. And just all kinds of nasty stuff. Yeah, I guess the further upstream, the better. Yeah. Ideally, I don't know if Mill Creek's got one of these, but I'm picturing a water wheel situation. It seems like because it's a mill. Yeah. It seems like that's how they're powering the mill. It seems like you get your fishing rod. I didn't say fishing pole. You get your fishing rod. You roll up your pants. You go and you try to catch some bluegill down by the mill.

Now, that's feeling I'm getting strong Tom Sawyer vibrations. Are you going more Norman Rockwell?

I'm going the kind of the paintings that I used to have hanging on my walls in my apartment. I had an apartment that was like the cheap wood panel. It's ironic because I'm talking to you from a wood paneled room now. But like the old school wood paneling that you might see in a VFW hall was in my living room. And the only furniture I had was stuff that I had inherited from my coworkers or whatever. So I had a big overstuffed chair that one's grandpa would sit in, and I had maybe three or four of these little paintings, like those mass-produced paintings that I would find at yard sales. Of kind of like bucolic scenes that are just kind of like from yesteryear when it was simpler. And they were always in kind of balsa wood frames or some sort of dark balsa wood frames, if that makes sense. And I would hang them, and Genevieve said, like, the look in here, like, it's not good. It looks like it looks so this is when you and Genevieve were dating.

Yeah, you you had this going now. OK, wow. OK. All I can say is, wow, many, many questions. So this was I these these paintings or these wall decorations were hung with a certain level of irony on your part.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I didn't know what I was doing. So I had been dating Genevieve. She was pretty locked in at this point. So this is already my second apartment for you. I don't know how long I lived in my first apartment one or two years but we must have been dating for at least a year if not a couple of years and then I moved in this other apartment it was this I won't go into it now there are a lot of problems with this apartment it was probably the always by far the grossest apartment I lived in it was the one where I couldn't control the heat but the thermostat was in my apartment so I had a bag of peas in the freezer that I would throw on top of the thermostat cage in order to affect the temperature in my apartment and everybody else's apartment by tricking it into thinking it was colder outside like that's what we were working with so there was something about this old man core that I liked I didn't call it that but like I definitely liked the wood paneling I had this old chair and couch it again just look like you know it was grandparent type of furniture just because that's what I had I was not I was like 23 or something maybe 24 and then when I would go to these garage sales I love going to garage sales but there's nothing like going to a garage sale and not really you just have money burning a hole in your pocket so you start buying things and i just started buying these water wheel pictures i just the only reason that i'm that that is

surprising to me is because i also know that in high school you know you you started to develop uh appreciation for various kinds of music and i'm assuming some kind of visual things in your life like i just you weren't somebody who kind of didn't have an opinion on probably photography and movie posters and things like that. So the water wheels, that just surprises me that you just didn't have a bunch of things more related to what your kind of pop culture taste was.

Yeah, I just think it was frivolous. I think everything in my life was just sort of frivolous as far as design is concerned. You know, like I was living by myself. I was just kind of like a, you know, it was just a place for me to. And yeah. And I also just like kind of got into, I think, like collecting things. Like once you see one and you kind of laugh at it, then you see another one, you buy it. And then and as far as like, you know, I mean, I know you were just throwing examples out there. But like I would much rather have even today, I would rather have a weird wall of like old water wheel pictures than a movie poster, probably. You know what I mean? Well, of course.

I mean, now, believe me, if you go to – probably if you go to Amy Sedaris' apartment, I'm sure that just – there's an entire room that's just paintings of water wheel mills and cricks. There's a whole, like, you know, I want to say kitsch and collector kind of culture. like that's i mean here's what i had i had this giant blown up poster that was then glued to this like fiberboard or something of the cover of a dexter gordon jazz record called dexter blows hot and cool where he's like holding a saxophone and just enveloped in cigarette smoke i had never heard the record i was gonna ask i didn't want to be like i still don't think i've ever heard the record but i was like when girls come over when hot chicks come over and see this thing on my wall they're gonna be like this guy is into something cool like i was very but then they ask

you about it but then like that's always my fear of well yeah i mean but i mean what you you hang this thing up like and they're like okay somebody's gonna ask me about this this this says i'm an interesting person that's why i'm hanging on the wall so you just like the way it looks when you're

there by yourself yeah i did actually just like the visual but yes you're right i mean i would have been in big trouble if someone asked me what's your favorite uh song off of that album or whatever but nobody the thing is nobody ever asked me about they were too busy making out with

me because of how cool i was okay are your sunglasses where are your sunglasses on your nose right now like how high way down barely on like almost falling off the tip of my nose uh thanks waiting christina this is a silver plated the the first track off of dexter blows hot and cool. I like it.

I actually do like this music. Like, it's taken me a lifetime, but I would actually listen to Dexter Gordon now, probably. I would also thank Brandon Lucian in Milton, Washington for donating today. Thanks, Brandon. Well, donating this year, but we're thanking Brandon today. Also, we're thanking Annette Streak in Brampton, Ontario. Oh, cool. i don't think i've ever been to ontario to the province of ontario i've been to ontario

i've never been to toronto i don't mean to brag when i say that but i have been to ontario i'm just looking up now i've been to toronto i mean toronto is like across the lake from cleveland right so i feel like that was a touch point when i was a kid although oh it is oh okay

so is it is it um what's the one that's across from detroit then because i remember being in detroit for the super bowl covering super being being tempted is it windsor maybe or something i remember being very tempted to go because it's so close to canada and to a part of canada i'd never been that i was tempted and i think i in my mind i sort of conflated uh toronto with whatever it is that's right across uh the border from uh from detroit but anyway um annette is in brampton And is doing great out there and is supporting the show Thanks Annette Mia Carr is in Painesville, Ohio Hey

That's gotta be, is that near where you grew up? I know, let me look up where Painesville is I mean it's a community that I heard the name Painesville all the time But I don't have any specific memories of like Hey, let's all go to Painesville Yeah, so that's up northeast of Cleveland I don't think I had a lot of reason to go to that That's what I used to say to the girls before we would make out Oh, come on You want to take a trip to Painesville? oh god that's just never mind i was gonna say something i was gonna try to turn that into an acne joke um i don't know why not at your expense but just keep it away from but i mean keep it away it would have been accurate anything dirty yeah that would have been thank you jennifer

evanoff as well in chicago illinois for supporting us today thank you to all of our donors of the day for making tbtl possible we just absolutely would not be able to do this uh without you hello and welcome to top story uh just quickly uh i mean i've already tweeted about this and kind of alluded to it a bunch during the show but it was a pretty interesting scene at the airport yesterday andrew in portland uh on my way to denver the flight was oversold And they were paying people $1,500 in travel credit, as in no restrictions. You can fly anywhere that Alaska flies or any of their partners fly. This is real money within the context of, like, no blackout dates. Just we're giving you. you fifteen hundred dollars of free plane tickets if you just please will not get on this airplane

and this is and flying out of portland or is this a layover people flying from portland to denver

okay interesting so so the portland to denver flight and so they were they were like uh we are still looking for people who will take a flight tomorrow and uh and and so at first they it started at 650 it was like a um you know it was like an auction no one was biting at 650 and then it was 850 and then it was a thousand and no one was biting and then they went to 15 you can tell they just were like we we just have we just it doesn't matter how much money we lose on this flight we just have to now um come up with an obscene number and when they went to 1500 people started lining up people were like i got four people with me this one guy was like well i got my family with me they're like sure sign up I watched 11 people take the bump Andrew and that was before I got on so I don't know if more happened after I was on the plane but I stopped counting at $16,000 oh my god and they were and they were um also putting people up in hotels for the night which they often don't do you know so like you throw that on top of it the kid who really I thought pulled off a real magic trick was i say kid he was probably like 30 but anyone anybody under 40 now seems like a kid to me um nate bargetsy the really funny comedian who i love was talking about turning 40 and he goes it's just weird how he goes up until i was 40 everyone i was talking to was my age and then you turn 40 and then all of a sudden everyone's younger than you like how does that work why is everyone all of a sudden he's like i'll be talking to someone and i'll say like oh that was in 93 or something it'll be like oh i wasn't born yet and he goes can i talk to your

where's your dad can i talk to him i know like my dad called everybody kids and i mean he would have these exact conversations back in like the 90s i remember him saying like well you know i went uh i had to go to the other shop the other day and uh talked to the kid behind the counter nice guy well kid i mean i call him a kid he's 37 i'm just like dad everybody's a kid to you and

now i totally get it but what happened why where are the 46 year olds i feel like i i used to be younger than everyone and now i'm older than everyone yeah i don't how demographically i

don't understand how that works yeah you're older than me i mean that's the one thing that gives me a little yeah but i used to be younger than you i know that's the strange thing that i can't i can't

figure out the kid next to me when they went to 1500 he walked over and he was like uh i forget exactly what his conversation was but he was the first one to bite and they gave him the travel credit and then i heard them kind of mumbling amongst themselves the people at the front the front uh whatever the check-in thing and uh and then after it all went through and everyone all the other people had gotten their thing or something they went up to the guy and they said do you actually just want to take a flight on united at 4 p.m now this is where it's like 2 p.m and he was like yeah and they're like and we got you in first class he goes do i still get the credit they're like yeah oh so this kid got fifteen hundred dollars in travel credit and upgraded to first class on a different airline and all he had to do is wait two hours for that and go walk to the other gate that's the ultimate move yeah friend united is probably one of my

least favorite airlines to fly on i don't even know exactly why i just know every time i get a united flight i'm unhappy for some reason but like well i do think the legroom i think it's one of the worst uh airlines for legroom i think you're absolutely right and so my first leg was

alaska alaska was the one that was just printing money for people and then i got to uh denver and then i had to switch to united because there were no alaska flights from denver to bismarck so there i get on a united flight and you are so right i even paid 13 out of my own pocket to be in an exit row to have a little more legroom and it was still extremely extremely tight and this was the thing on that flight andrew that was weird usually there should be two flight attendants there was only one yeah she was doing her best but it was like you could just tell that they've made some they've decided or because of staffing shortages like we're down to one flight attendant and at some point midway through the flight i needed to use the uh bathroom and so thank god it was number one i don't think i've ever gone number two on a plane i think i have not i have i think i would try to do everything in my power to not go on that particular journey but i i go to the to the restroom back of the plane i open the door there is so much toilet paper coming out of the toilet andrew it was like a porta potty at a music festival on the last day oh god like it was like no the plane had not been cleaned or serviced or whatever like it was a disaster in there and like i didn't really know what to do i was like i'm peeing so i'm not going to make the situation measurably worse but also like i just had never seen that on an airplane yeah that's

yeah that is rough i mean it must like you said like the staffing shortages it's really i mean everything around us is different i mean i'm even thinking listen you're in bismarck and i understand that like we don't know from bismarck and i'm sure it's a town that always rolls up the streets early as they say but also you're in bismarck in the hopefully the tail end of a pandemic but it's still a pandemic and we're still just seeing all like life is not normal it's not at least the normal that we knew and i don't know if we'll ever fully get back to that normal that's what

the lyft driver actually said to me last night the guy that said well this is no fargo but he said yeah you know when the pandemic happened everything just started closing early or just having irregular hours and he goes it's just never gone back to what it was before that's what i was thinking

when you said like it was like well they just decided to close up early and it's like it makes sense these businesses are that always operate on shoestrings anyway and shoestring budgets and margins like suddenly they're kind of like well it doesn't make sense for me to pay these folks here for another like four hours if no that happened to vives and i when we first moved to this neighborhood we're actually moving in and there's some i don't have to get into it but it's actually the um was it the restaurant that your uncle got into a fight with another family member it was that when you and i were talking about like the restaurant on the corner of aurora

and 125th that was right it's like 125th street cafe now exactly street exactly yeah it used to

be a black angus yes that is the same place and you know it's like an old school family style restaurant um and uh and that is you know it's probably seen better days but um you know it's not a chain or something and the first time these and i rolled up there um we were moving it was like i don't know eight o'clock at night or maybe seven o'clock or something we just needed something to eat um and uh they were like we're i'm sorry we're just closing up early you know this is like three months ago or something like we're just closing up early there's just not enough business it's like yeah that's that's kind of the that's the world we live in now and like other generations have had it harder you know what i mean like it's just like it's just interesting the only reason i bring that up is not to say hey we're no martyrs but just to say we i have grown i have grown up and and grown into middle age with just certain expectations about society and american society that may fundamentally be different for the rest of our lives you know you're right and the thing

is it's survivable but it is a different way of going through the world like the cvs that i learned is well i'm looking at it right now andrew you'd have to take a train a plane when i walked when i when i walked uh in this morning to get this deodorant uh it just had a handwritten sign on the like you know the automatic opening and closing doors that just said like these are our hours and it was all just written by hand and then it also said this store will be closed from one to two every day for lunch break uh-huh like that's unheard of four years ago you would just never close a cvs yeah for lunch yeah they have probably a one person working there exactly yeah and they have to be able to have lunch so i mean and again that's not gonna like ruin anyone's life we can all adjust it's fine but you're absolutely right i think i think that we were very i was very spoiled with just assuming everything should be accessible all the time because there's always going to be enough people who are standing behind a counter somewhere just waiting to help me out with whatever i need in that moment and we just live in a slightly different version of that

and it's taking me a minute to fully adjust you know i'm you and i were talking on the show a few weeks ago when we were to we should actually i should not ramble on here maybe we should open a package or two but um a couple of weeks ago a few weeks ago you and i were talking about subway And their menu changes or whatever And I went to Subway and I ordered a sandwich Because I did it for the show and I love the show But I told you that The line was pretty slow And the fellow who was making the sandwiches The sandwich artist if you will Very nice guy But just like And again very nice But like making the sandwiches at his own pace And not being phased at all By the very long line that was building And eventually somebody would come out from the kitchen Like his co-worker and this guy would like come and he'd like try to catch up he'd help like burn through a few people on the line by quickly slapping together some sandwiches while my guy just kind of was very methodic and had no hurry to him at all and again I didn't begrudge him that because I was like I kind of respected him like good on you like and somebody wrote in and said yeah I mean that's kind of something that that uh workers are doing now saying like we're not being paid extra we're we're still making the same wages and it's not my problem if the employer here isn't hiring enough people we're gonna work to the degree that we feel you know what I mean it's not like a yeah it's not like a hey I'm not showing up or I

I'm I'm not going to show up because or I'm going to strike for better wages. It's just saying that, like, I'm going to work to the degree that you're paying me to work. And if there's a long line, that's on you to get more people in there. And I kind of like that because, again, this guy was doing his job. He was not being obstinate or anything, but he was making sandwiches at about the rate a human being makes sandwiches.

Right. The Ace Hardware in Portland that I tend to go to kind of in my neighborhood has a printed sign that says everyone is short staffed. Please be nice to the people who actually came into work. Yeah. Nice. It's just some good perspective because it's I mean, it's doubly unfair if the people who actually are showing up and having to work harder and often with longer lines of kind of more burned out people. It's that thing that I keep thinking about since I heard about it on Chris Hayes's podcast, these kind of high stress, low reward situations like ordering a sandwich or buying some deodorant. The people who are actually coming in to work a job and deal with that are the last people that we should be berating.

right now you know i will say this now i get pretty snobby about like people not showing urgency and like and this goes just this is just i'm not even saying i'm right here but it is something that i think i got from my dad probably like whatever you're doing show some sort of urgency if people are waiting on you and i don't even mean like i'm not even talking about workplace anymore because what i want to transition to here is forget about labor shortages and labor rights when i'm in a super long line to get gas at costco as i was this weekend and have you gotten gas at costco before do you know about this whole it's like a whole culture i know that it's a culture

it's like my parents are as you might imagine deeply in that culture i assume gas at costco is four cents a gallon it's it was like but i'm not willing to wait in the line for it yeah i only i think of it as this mythically cheap gasoline that i've never personally well i've never had

a costco membership so actually do i have the receipt right here i can tell you it was like it was under five dollars but it was like i don't know four here it was 479 so you know but in this

economy that's probably saving you like 50 cents a gallon maybe 60 cents a gallon i don't know man

genevieve just tells me like go because genevieve is obsessed with the costco and the costco savings we never touch the stuff when i say the stuff i mean just the costco stuff in general our entire lives and now she has like these special credit cards that i'm supposed to go to costco and fill up the tank and pay with these credit cards and we get certain cash back and da da da so I just I'm like okay cool she does she does all the hard stuff I can I can abide by these rules so anyway I'm in line and they're you know pretty long lines but I'm not in an especially big hurry but you can kind of you wait in these lines but there are two pumps per line sort of so you're always watching two people kind of filling up ahead of you and like I just feel like the least we can do is show urgency even if there isn't even if there isn't an appreciable time difference i watched these two men get out of their cars they were probably i don't know they're older guys i'm going to put them maybe 15 years older than me just coincidentally these two older guys and these guys got out of their cars slowly walked to the pump one of them fished through his wallet forever looking for his because you got to flash your uh you got to flash your membership card looking for the membership card the other guy is just like reading all the prices i'm like dudes you've been in line for 15 minutes you couldn't get your membership card out like i just can't imagine and again you said like you you wouldn't have the cojones to not show urgency in some of these situations right like again even if you're not even if you're not actually saving time by looking like you're in a hurry at least look like you're in a hurry to the people behind you because there was maddening and that's a totally

different situation because those people like you know in Oregon uh you are not allowed to pump your own gas is that still a thing when you yeah yeah very much so because when I drove through Oregon

a guy came up to pump my gas I'm like oh I forgot I can't do it he's like actually the law changed

you can do it but my boss likes me to uh I don't well I was going to say I have in all the time I've lived there I've never been allowed to pump my own gas in fact I asked once because there was a long you know there's a lot of people in one attendant can i pump my own gas and they said no but the other day i pulled up to this i'll just be honest pretty sketchy chevron which appears to just exist for people who are kind of going through it to just hang around and bullshit and buy you know cigarettes out or something but i went there and then the guy who worked there who seems to be pals with all the people that are going through it was just like it's self-serve

for the next 10 minutes and i thought oh oh this is really interesting yeah so i'm on a press release here it was a covid rule it probably had to do with social distancing and so the complete suspension of the ban on self-pumping went away and it looks like late 2020 i clicked off that page but now there's a map and there are there are chunks of the state where self-service is totally prohibited at all.

times there are places where um during certain times between 6 p.m and 6 a.m you can self-pump and there are other places where it's like up to the retailer or something so you know so maybe and

i don't know if which which zone is portland in because maybe those people the the dude running the service center or whatever you want to call it the gas station maybe that was a completely legit thing i just thought he was sick of pumping gas which i was like hey i'm not mad at that i'll pump my own gas i grew up doing that it's not like it's scary to me but um but but yeah all i was going to say is if you have someone who's working at a at a gas station and they're running around trying to pump the gas and they're taking their time because there's only one of them i'm cool with that if you're just a citizen and you're at costco and you're holding up the line because you're taking your sweet ass time i got no patience for that pandemic no pandemic i don't

care yeah i was just like come on you're really gonna be looking for your card now like what were

you doing in your car andrew i can't wait any longer to find out what's in the box okay you

went to our p.o box and got some stuff right i did um this is the thing we were talking about maybe calling this segment what's in the box i guess that sticks and of course that is a famous line from um the movie seven it's it's a let's face it it's a very grim part of the movie it's when brad pitt is yelling what's in the box um which you haven't seen so you don't even quite know the grimness of it but we're like okay is that too grim but i also think it's worth pointing

out that it's a fictional movie it is yeah it's not it's not a person in a historical documentary it's not even the guy yelling oh the humanity when the hindenburg went down you know it's like this is not real people gwyneth paltrow did not pass away i assume is that what's in the box

yeah that's not i mean not in our box not in our box no but in the movie we don't know you want to be clear well that's a really good point and so anyway i i was running this by um you know beth our boss and some other people and and i was just like i really want to make a snazzy intro we should hire a producer for this also listener elizabeth suggested some music and sent in some music so we hired um some producers these are people who used to work at wondery um and now uh they work for tbtl to really kind of like kind of splash up our image a little bit and they went into the studio for a while put their heads together and came up with this intro this is my box this is

my box i never travel without my box oh what's in the box in the first drawer i keep my magic stones oh what's in the box licorice licorice black sweet licorice black sweet licorice

have some uh so that's our new intro for what's in the box where's my hold on we've got i've got something here for that.

I am loving it, Jerry. Is it true that you still can't say licorice? Isn't that why it always comes up on the show? Because you call it licorice. That's from Amal and the Midnight Travelers? Amal and the Midnight Visitors? Is that what that's from? You're pretty close.

It was called Amal and the Night Visitors. And the Night Visitors, okay. And it's basically like this Giancarlo Menotti little operetta. It's a Christmas thing. It's this little kind of shepherd boy who's, I guess, do we say lame anymore? Like as in like has a— Oh, good point. I don't think we do. So he uses a crutch, and he and his mother are living a very poor life. And then the wise men who have seen the star that indicates the birth of the Christ child, they come through, and they stay with Amal and his mother. And Amal's mother steals their gold. she sings a song called all that gold i wonder what rich people do with their gold etc and then she admits that she stole the gold and then i think then they they give her something for her honesty and then i think at the end somehow um oh yeah yeah uh amal uh is not disabled anymore and then i then he sings a song look mother i can dance i can sing i can walk etc and um but But the This Is My Box is one of the wise men showing Amal all these wonders and treasures like black licorice that are in his box. Yes.

Licorice. Licorice. Licorice.

Have some. So that's our intro. That's amazing, Andrew. Thanks to your listener. Well, I'm glad that listener Elizabeth suggested that song. It also takes the edge off of the Brad Pitt part. That's what I felt. Exactly. That's exactly how I felt. So, all right. I'm going to do one minute. We got a lot of postcards here. Do you want me to read you a postcard? So I went to the mailbox yesterday for the first time, to the P.O. box, and I thought there'd be a couple of things in there. And I sent you a picture, Luke. It was overflowing. In fact, in the P.O. box were two keys, two other P.O. boxes. It's not leaking. It's overflowing. Do you ever get this? So I ordered a bigger P.O. box because I thought, oh, well, people will want to send packages or whatever. But it turns out if a package doesn't fit in the P.O. box, they just put a key in the box, and then you open that key to another locker, and your stuff isn't there. So why would anybody get a bigger P.O. box? I'm paying too much for the P.O. box is what I'm saying. I should have gotten a little guy.

They do that in my apartment a lot, actually. So, yeah, same thing. They're like larger boxes, and then, yeah, you just got a key, which is so fun. It's like a real kind of turducken or what's it, matryoshka, of just like boxes, but then larger boxes. You're opening different things. You're using keys. It's very fun.

I got a postcard here, and I'm impressed with this one. Do you remember, Luke, and I'm sure you do, do you remember that TBTL, this podcast used to be a radio show on Cairo Radio, and then at one point your boss said, you know what, we're going in a different direction for the station. And you said, what does that mean? And they said, well, TBTL is going off the air. And you said, well, what else is changing?

Well, what they said was, yeah, they said, we're going to be doing some lineup adjustments. And they said, we're taking TBTL off. And I said, what else is being adjusted? And they said, that's it.

Anyway, during that time, listeners gathered outside of Cairo Radio to protest during your last show or to at least support TBTL. And there were a bunch of signs taped to the brick wall that said, save TBTL. Cairo without TBTL is not awesome. Anyway, listener so sweet. Michelle, our friend Michelle, somehow took a photo of those protest signs and turned it into a postcard here. somehow michelle has postcard making technology and she writes on the back of the postcard save tbtl and the thing is michelle is concerned that i was showing a lot of interest in the post office lately and talking about what if i got a job at the post office and michelle doesn't want that she says do not dump the tens and take up public service as much as the public needs you at the post office wait you don't consider this a public service right shell exactly the tens need you more your imaginary friend so i thank you i appreciate that and i appreciate that so wait let

I'm trying to understand this. So it's a postcard that features – the sort of picture side of the postcard is of those signs. Yeah, it's a photograph. Oh, I love that.

It's a photograph of the signs as they were taped to the wall back in 2009.

I would love to have one of those and then put it up in my studio to remember that – well, first of all, just remember how amazing that night was. I mean, that was totally unexpected. it like and i will say for a show i wonder what our bosses i know they probably didn't even hear about this or find out about it but like for a nighttime am radio show that was again not exactly killing it in the ratings to actually have i've never heard unless it's some sort of like howard stern situation i've just never heard of people showing up with signs to be like you know don't get rid of this thing or we loved this thing like that's extremely um flattering and that was an amazing night like that just really made us feel so good so thanks to everybody who showed up for

that that was we were not expecting that not that it's a contest but when um the andrew walsh show had its last show a bunch of people showed up and said what's the andrew walsh show so i had that too um i uh we got two things here now we gotta go i think let me just open this one thing yeah so i gotta we have i'm sorry i couldn't open everybody i got a giant one here that's really heavy i don't know what's in there but um i know that time is not on our side right now so i'm gonna here's the thing we got two packages that were both sent from topeka kansas they both look exactly the same they're in these ups bags there's something in here the the the person who sent it um sent it to golf man and then used our po box so it confused the um it confused the mail carrier because the mail carrier put a big red question mark over that um but it didn't make it into the proper box i love the sound of this package opening books and this is very um i'm i'm i'm on the edge of my seat oh they're covid tests um they're two packages of covid tests which we're really well stocked on covid tests in my house but this is you can always have more because um i kind of do have a little bit of hoarding that goes along with covid tests these days i know i actually

you know of supply next time i pass through seattle i would uh i would be happy to grab a couple of those yeah andrew because even though i have a few i i feel like this world we're living i really when i got those ones from joe biden yeah i was like well this is hilarious because this was the easiest government program i've ever worked with and i'll never need these like isn't it ironic that the the one thing that our government gets so right and is so streamlined is totally unnecessary and of course i've used both of them now yeah at various points

Genevieve has done a great job of, like, kind of any time there's an opportunity to get another one, whether we can get our money back, you know, buy it and then get the money back from the government or just get them sent. Oh, I didn't know that was a thing. Yeah, she's been on top of it. Can I mention one thing, by the way? No note on those, by the way. Just sent two golf men, and it's two packages with two COVID tests each, or two COVID test boxes each. By the way, the government ones don't try.

you necessarily which is i guess you could say somewhat ironic like you don't need an app no the government ones which is funny because i mean they must have decided look if we're sending something out that then people will think is tracking them and it's coming from the government that's going to be a bad look for us so they just made it you know sort of a conventional you you swab yourself you put it in there it tells you yes or no and i like that that's all i want i don't want to have to download a different healthcare app and scan some QR code bullshit. Yeah, you know,

all of them, I've taken a couple of different brands and I don't know exactly what the origins were, but the instructions always say download the app and follow the instructions, but you don't have to. I've never done that. Like, you can just

follow the instructions. I don't think the government one even mentions

an app. Oh, really? Okay. Have you done the Biden ones? I thought I had and it always says, like, it mentions an app, but it didn't force it. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe they just, like,

They'd like it because, of course, from a public health standpoint, it would be useful for them to know what's up. But I just took one of those the other day, and I was very pleased that I didn't have to do any Internet shenanigans for it. I could just – it was actually right before I went to Austin because I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to super spread at Mike Frizzell's memorial. And I was negative, obviously, but it was an easy process.

You know what just occurred to me, Luke? I need to give people the address of this thing, and I don't have it in front of me right now. How are we going to do that? Can you stall for two seconds and then we'll get out of here? because I can't do this segment without telling people how to send things to the P.O. Box. Absolutely.

Unfortunately, I'm out of Bismarck dazzling deets. I already said it's the only state capital named for a foreign leader, Otto von Bismarck. I will tell you that I am here in Bismarck. I'm actually going to a town across the river called Mandan, which is about 15 minutes from here. Isn't it the coach of the Detroit Lions, Mandan? Uh-huh, yes, and it doesn't matter how many times you knock him down, he will bite your kneecaps as he's coming back up. I'm here because I'm doing a story about the sort of organization that—how do I put this? They run something called the National Calendar Day. Oh, yeah. It's basically this website where you can go, and it tells you today is national whatever day, and it can be multiple things. And there are there are actually a few different groups that try to do this because this is not in any way sanctioned by the government. There are 11 federally recognized holidays. These are not that. These are just this is just some people with a Web site that I have decided and they allow, you know, National Ice Cream Day, National Popcorn Day, National whatever day, a chiropractor day. but they're just the most popular one and since they have a huge emailing list they're really able to drive a lot of social media like if they go like it's National Avocado Day you'll just look on Twitter and avocados will be trending because they've just got that much reach now so even though they have no official authority from the US government they in effect do get to set the agenda of what day we're quote unquote celebrating and that's happening in Mandan North Dakota

right across the river from me i'm almost to the address no just kidding thank you for that um we have um here's how it works if you want to send something to the p.o. box you can send it to tbtl p.o. box 33687 seattle washington 98133 that's 33687 seattle washington 98133 if you are shipping something using a non-usps carrier then you need the full address which is 929 North 145th Street P.O. Box 33687 Seattle, Washington 98133 We got a card here with Max Hedrum on the front of it which is very much my vibe and in very clean type written letters is some fanfic which then includes a link so I can read the rest of the fanfic later I don't know if that's going to get steamy or not Max Hedrum, they sent us a Max Hedrum postcard Yeah, it's really cool looking

I'm so into Max Hedrum I never even understood what it was But I was obsessed with Max Hedrum when I was a kid. Just because he was in those – it was Coke, right? Was it Coca-Cola commercials? I think it was – it was definitely Coke or Pepsi, but I guess if I don't know, that worked.

Yeah, exactly. It was one of the Colas.

I feel like it was Choice of a New Generation, right? That would sound like Pepsi, but I don't know. All I know is I was – I just was absolutely entranced. And then there was, like, a Max Hedrum movie of some kind, which, of course, I was never allowed to see that movie. And I was also very young at the time. I was probably, like, seven or eight. But any time he would come up in pop culture or they'd have him, like, interviewed on The Tonight Show or some weird shit, I was just, like, riveted. Speaking of being riveted, Andrew, I don't know if I'm going to have time for this. It depends when our shoot wraps up today. But I may swing by a Bismarck Larks game tonight. Oh, wow.

you have time for that uh i don't know yet it depends on how long the shoot goes but yeah there's a um i the sense that i have is that they are um they're kind of like the portland pickles um out in portland where it is a team made up of actually college players who are off for the summer um so it's not you know like single a or double a these are not people that are in a major league system but they're very good baseball players they play college ball and then when they're out for out of school for the summer then they usually play in these leagues and very the cape cod league is one of them that's well known so uh yeah i might swing i might come through and see a bismarck larks games night and if i can do that i'll give you a full report tomorrow yeah

that sounds good all right so thank you everybody for sending all this stuff in i still have many boxes to go through here but hopefully none of them are perishable we can go through them

yeah thanks thanks for sending thanks for sending uh all that stuff in everyone that was really i mean that's pretty fast turnaround from getting the p.o box to having it overflowing it's not

leaking it's overflowing yeah it was quite the it was quite the deal i also have a letter here that i sent myself to make sure that the um post the the p.o box was working you're joking right no i forgot that i had done this and what i did was and i love that and i i'm not going to open it now because i remember now what's in it but i um i printed out an image like a stock image of a mail carrier like a um a cartoon stock image of a mail carrier carrying an envelope and then i photoshopped the actual p.o box i i had too much time on my hands one afternoon so then i i actually photoshopped the address of the p.o box on the letter that the mail carrier is holding and then i printed it out i folded it up i put it in an envelope with three no i'm sorry with four 20 cent stamps and mailed it to myself so someday i'll open that up did a little test on

the system to make sure that it was working and then you went to that level of detail for the

letter you were mailing to yourself i did figure like well look i could just mail an envelope to myself but that's no fun like you should make it something that you can like what if nobody had sent us anything i need to open something right now right so anyway yeah well um seems like the po box is working so that's why i open like this really heavy thing later and just tell you later

what's on it or should i just open it really fast just open the yeah because i kind of want to know you said i mean do you think you can open the heavy thing and tell me about it in under five

minutes yeah oh i hope so i mean this thing i'm not joking this thing is heavy um i'm gonna say it's about three feet and i have not i honestly have not opened this yet so i have no idea what's in here i'm surprised at how heavy this is one thing i've learned is i think if i'm gonna keep I mean, maybe things will slow down a little bit after the initial excitement and rush of getting a P.O. box, but I need one of those little mail bins, little white mail bins that people carry letters around in. I need one of those.

Yeah, I used to steal so many of those from KUOW. Yes, that's what I needed. I used to have tons of them in the mail room, and then I would use them to carry the ill-gotten books, the review copies that I would take home. Yeah, those things are quite useful.

The box is open. And I still don't know what this thing is. It is super heavy, and it is totally wrapped in bubble wrap. It's like a... I'm not joking. Is it like a desktop computer or something? I can't get this thing open.

This is so fun, though. This is great audio. I'm not even kidding you.

Then you get off the bubble wrap, and there's more protectors. Whatever this is, somebody wanted to protect it.

What's in the box? This is my box. This is my box.

i never travel without my box okay now i'm opening this up and this is can you see what it is like is it still opaque oh my gosh you know what this is oh my gosh holy cow this is beautiful and who this is for me they sent it to me they were trying to send it whatever it is if it's beautiful they were trying to send it to me this is amazing this is a box set of two hard copy books that are tall that say the complete far side volumes one and two 1980 to 86 and the second volume is 87 to 94 I mean I'm talking about these are big beautiful books Luke BBBs as we say yeah I just slid my sunglasses down the nose I mean these are this is incredible I don't see a note by the way big beautiful books is a good show title i'm still looking for one dude i don't see

no does it say does it say who sent it we need to thank that person well i know this is huge you

can have one volume and then i'll at one year mark we'll switch and yeah oh that's a good plan that's a good plan um is i want the funnier ones i see that it comes from i will cut them out Dude, you cut it out again Uh

I see that it comes from Phoenix, Arizona, and I know that we have some Arizona 10s, some of whom we've met. But I think that this address is just the shipping place, the UPS store.

Hey, if you would like to identify yourself as the person who sent us that lovely gift, please let us know so we can thank you. Or if you'd like to remain anonymous, that's also fine, too. But thank you. What a sweet thing. Yeah. That's cool.

Luke, just one of these books. You know how in the Game of Thrones TV show you're familiar with that? Sometimes they go into a library Sam, is it Samuel I think goes into a library And he pulls a huge book These are so heavy These are by far the heaviest books that we now own Wow, okay I stole a considerable number of books From the Citadel Library What? You have a drop?

Yeah, I don't know why

I have that one too I have no idea

I know it's a very strange thing For me to have here I stole a considerable number of books from the Citadel Library Wow

Anyway, okay, we'll leave the segment there

I don't know if that's a good segment, honestly I love it, Andrew, honestly Just the sound of you struggling with the bubble wrap Legit fun Like, I think it's good audio It's like, we don't know what's in the box And then we find out What's in the box, I think it's good

Yeah, maybe I'll tweet out a photo Of these things later on today I'll make today's show pick, the big pile of mail I sent you a photo. I was very surprised to have such a big pile of mail. But, okay, I think we're like 15 minutes past, like, your cutoff for today. So we've got to get out of here.

Yes, we should wrap it up because I've got to go over to Mandan for this little film shoot. But we'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Try to stay cool. Stay hydrated. Stay indoors where there's air conditioning. Go Mariners. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

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