Muse

You've talked a lot about what Tyann thinks. More proof of what a loving and attentive father figure you are. But what about what you think? I mean, I don't know.

Let's say you love the Counting Crows, and they break up. And then the fan site, Crows Nest, says that they're never going to get back together again. And you accept that.

I'd be a tough pill to swallow. I'm a Duritz head through and through.

Right. So you adopt a Counting Crows cover band, and you raise it as your own, and you love her, and when she plays Mr. Jones, it's almost like the real thing.

And then the real Crows get back together. You're going to go see them, right? I'm logging on to Ticketmaster.com right now.

You get it.

TBTL! is what we experience real or is reality a computer simulation constructed by an advanced alien race for more our sports reporter jim caputo i have a lot of booboos and i know how

to dink them as i what i love to think about this is a it's a puzzle and each of every one of us is an interval piece that puts a big picture in which we're all together it puts a big picture The show lets us to see the big picture. Yeah.

I could really lay him out quickly. With him out of the way, I think we're just going to be 360 spins and slam dunk points.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Quite frankly, it sucks ass.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Your voice is like a combination of Fergie and Jesus. Coming to you once again from the Olive Garden District here in beautiful Bismarck, North Dakota.

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

The weather is absolutely spectacular. And I don't say that to rub anything in. I know that it is roilingly hot in most of the country. And yet somehow, for reasons that I don't fully understand, it's like 75 degrees and no humidity in Bismarck, North Dakota. Almost a reason in and of itself to move here or at least stay here for a couple of days, which is what I am doing. I found out, by the way, that North Dakota is the 50th most visited state in the Union. So that would mean it is the state that has the least visitors every year. The guy who told me this said it with a big smile on his face and was very proud of that fact. Um, so, uh, I guess if you are looking for, um, a Menards, an Olive Garden, a Ruby Tuesdays, and low humidity, you can get on over to Bismarck, North Dakota. Become one of the few to visit this fine place. Uh, we've arrived at episode 3736, as in 3,736 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Much to talk about on this Wednesday, including Dave Sims, the Seattle Mariners TV announcer. They confused the living Tweedle out of a Mariner's draft pick.

Hey, Lloyd, do some delivery for the truck to the airport.

We will play you the tape. Also, we've got food news. Welcome to food news today. Including the end of an era. Klondike has announced that they are discontinuing the Choco Taco. I might have tacos when I go home. I'm not quite sure yet. sometimes you know it's i don't know being being outraged about a food being discontinued is not really a personality sometimes these sorts of things are ginned up just to make you know talk show fodder i am genuinely lamenting the end of the choco taco despite not having had one for probably 20 years of my life also uh in food news there is a mustard shortage in france and um People are ratting other people out for buying more than one jar of mustard at a time, which is prohibited in many places. We'll play you some tape on that. And we'll say hello to this young man. He's always spicy. He is the longest-running co-bro of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I have, I don't know if we can even possibly do this, but I have four, I believe, quick things that I really feel like I need to get off my chest here at the top of the show. They are all sort of listener related, but they cannot, they simply cannot wait for the end of the show when we do emails and V-mails, okay? So, with your permission, I will barrel forward. Granted. Thank you. Yesterday, we introduced a new segment called What's in the Box? What's in the Box? Uh-huh. And we'll see you next time.

We opened some mail and packages that were sent to us at our new P.O. box and several notes. First of all, this is the one I got to get off my chest right away. Nobody has called me out on this, but boy, do I feel the fool. I didn't feel like I did my best performance during that segment. I think I need to make that better in the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed that segment. It was a sonic journey. Plus, I found out I'm getting one half of a beautiful Farside cartoon collection.

It turns out you're not. more on that in a second but for starters yeah we have to give it back no um but for starters at the end of the segment i was so flustered that i said luke i'm doing this segment about our p.o box and i don't have the address in front of me can you stall while i go digging through my emails for the p.o box where people can send stuff to us and i knew as i was saying that something seemed wrong about that and it wasn't until after the show as i'm cleaning up my desk that i realized there was a giant a giant pile of mail sitting next to me where everything in that pile each item by definition

of having arrived at said PO box would have said PO box on it that would have been a place to find that that would have been it was you didn't drive to the post office walk in and go like crouch near the box to get the exact address Luke I was

so embarrassed about that i went back to the tape to see if i could edit that part out oh but while but whatever you said oh when you were kind of stalling for lack of a better word you were explaining the cbs story that you were there in bismarck on and i thought that was interesting so i left it and i took a bullet for you oh don't ever feel like you have to leave something in

that's embarrassing to you because i was in any way making a point or being interesting well while

you're in bismarck you know it could come up again while you're there and so it seemed weird for the for the story arc of the show for me to cut out the reason you're in bismarck so anyway that was funny that was on me thank you everybody who almost wrote to make fun of me but didn't i

appreciate i appreciate you holding back follow-up question have you considered or have you already just posted somewhere in your office the po box so that it's just there as a visual reference even maybe put up one of the pieces of mail that already has it on there although there's like technically two addresses depending on it what mail service you're using so that slightly complicates it but would you consider printing out and just posting that info so you've got it right

there for reference i am going to do that i have um i can't do it of course until i get it laminated so i've ordered a lamination machine that actually as i was joking it sort of sounds like something you would do like you're so dedicated to it that you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna get a lamination machine and laminate it um i haven't done that yet but i also need to get it on the website i have a meeting about that tomorrow to see if we can uh get that information out there for folks so i will be smoother on that hopefully in the future also um the big beautiful far side books the giant books luke i cannot i can't even tell you how heavy you said they were heavier than

my couch they're heavier i was like how does he know what my couch oh i've been talking to yes

um they're very uh heavy that came from listener dan who had emailed me and said he was sending a housewarming gift uh my way i believe that makes sense i don't know exactly uh the origins of the books but he did say in his original email a couple of weeks ago um that he wanted to send me something that has been cherished for years and it comes from a smoke-free sausage loving environment so i appreciate that although there seems to be no sausage grease on the book so that's perfect as well um so dan thank you for that i'm sorry that i'd forgotten about that email that came in and finally and this one is kind of on me too i closed this segment by telling you i got this and i was opening it live on the show so that was the thing like i couldn't figure this stuff out and try to be just somewhat coherent while i was opening it um but uh it's a card that has max headroom on the front of it which by the way genevieve says i say genevieve says

i should say it more headroom but he says you're saying it like it's your spell you're saying it It hits my ear as, like, it's H-E-A-D-R-U-M, Max Headroom. Right, but isn't that kind of a joke? But it's Headroom, right? Because isn't that the...

That's how it's spelled, and that's the joke. But when he says it, he doesn't say Headroom. He says, Max Headroom here.

Huh.

Well, that's okay. I think that's a compelling argument. Let's just take a listen. But he talks so funnily. Right. But the origin of this is, there's a reason.

Still alive out there?

Good.

this is oh my god all we need is the final syllable

and he's not this is like something we would do to torture the audience we just want I've never wanted somebody to finish their name this is astounding

Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max

Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max, Max of his name it takes four minutes and it's very annoying and a lot of glitching around the name

max i think though that he says it like i think that's the joke i think i think that if you emphasize the room i've never heard him say like max headroom i always thought it was like the joke is you know you say it max headroom but then you see it written down you're like almost like it's

a last name yeah that's sort of being i believe you on that i listen if there's intention behind it i'm i'm totally with you like i i support you saying that it isn't like you you didn't you're not just doing that sort of it's not like how i said again i think is much more fun than electrician

and i really mean that okay well speaking of intentionality so we received this card it's got max headroom on the front of it and then inside it's all typewritten by the way and it's not signed by anything but it's a short story that begins to the victor go the spoils and i could tell it was some sort of fanfic and then like the first two paragraphs are typed out on this card or or printed in something that looks like old typewriter like um what would this be what would the font be the typewriter for calibre courier courier courier you're right courier um and so anyway and then it says to finish this uh fanfic you can go to fanfiction.net slash and then it's a complicated address and um i was just really confused for the three listeners who don't know

what fanfic is do we need to kind of give a short explanation of that it's you know what hardcore

fans of any kind of product like let's say star wars or what's the vampire one the kids were really into twilight twilight or what have you people which is i believe how 50 shades of gray

started correct that's right yes i believe that woman was writing twilight fanfic and it evolved into Fifty Shades of Grey. Or vice versa. I do want to be clear here. Or she was writing Fifty Shades of Grey fanfic and it turned into Twilight. One of the two.

I think you're right on the first one, but also fanfic is just like hardcore fans writing stories in that universe and sharing it online. And then there's another version that is kind of explicitly explicit. Right. And that's slash fic, right? I think so. Yeah, I've heard different names for that. So I want to make that clear, too. Don't get those confused. So this isn't like sexy Max Hedger. If you have any slash fic about us, though, just go ahead and slide into our DMs with that. And so this is like a couple of paragraphs of a story that I wasn't able to follow. Then it continues at a website. And then I saw that the person who sent this in, whose name is Dan. I'm sorry. Whose name is, oh, Michael, I think. Mark. Mark. Mark. Sorry. Mark. Mark. Dan Markle. He sent this in because he was responding to a joke that I made in a newsletter. a newsletter a couple of weeks ago i wrote the types of things we will accept and the types of things we won't accept in a tbtl p.o box and one of the things i said we will accept is max hedrum fanfic i forgot i wrote that i was just i was making a listicle so somebody saw that was inspired and i'll tell you what knowing that i've now gone back i've read these couple of paragraphs and this afternoon i will go to this website and finish reading that because i'm excited about it Now, that was three things. Those were three things. I said I have four. And I believe there you promised four. I promised four. I threatened four. Here's the final thing. And then I promise I won't talk the rest of the show. I won't belabor this. But two shows ago, I told you that I found out I was not a finalist in the New Yorker caption contest with the cartoon of the two people hiking up a mountain together. And together, they had a house on their back. And my caption was, and remember, we can only eat what snails eat. it was a joke about paleo diet kind of culture and lifestyle and i got an email the shortest email i've ever received from doug the other day and it just said snailio diet and i think i mean where's the goddamn bell okay doug is absolutely right that if i had and i don't even know if doug was challenging and doug just probably thought hey that's a funny play on words i'll bet you if i had written in the caption they call it the snailio diet we can only eat what snails eat i'll bet you more people would have gotten it i'm not saying it would have been a finalist but it might have gotten more that you were saying that it was a little little niche niche niche yeah there's a niche and maybe i go back and forth depending on my mood i grew up

calling it niche but then as i got into adulthood the day.

heard smarter people than me which is by the way everyone say niche and so i started you know i used to work for a guy who you know like when you say a click like a group of people that are kind of insular he called it clique oh that's not right and i thought huh i don't it's ross reynolds by the way who says that really very very smart oh one time he said that to me and it's lived

as they say rent free in my head for the last 20 years is it click or clique i'm gonna get him on the show and ask him anyway i think the snailio diet punch-up is a great punch-up doug thank you

that's it in fact you might have even gotten away with just saying not even putting the second part on that you know the snailio diet we can only eat what snails ate you might even just you know you might have been able to get away with them just saying you know something to the effect of like uh we're living snailio that's not how you should put it but you you might even have been able to just shorten it up and maybe get even more reaction because of its brevity maybe although that's an issue that i have with my with my tweets i never leave it yeah i never leave it alone because i'm worried i was thinking about this yesterday actually andrew because i was having some dinner and a person walked through the restaurant who had a let's go brandon t-shirt on which um they seem to sell of a lot they seem to sell a lot of here in north dakota and then underneath it says f joe biden and i thought like you know i love that that they're too afraid they're afraid that that people won't understand that they're trying to say f joe biden it's literally the same thing it's literally that's what let's go brandon means of course but if you notice it if you see it on a bumper sticker or a whatever a t-shirt it usually also clarifies the point that by this we mean screw joe biden because like heaven forbid someone missed the joke it's like have some confidence in your hateful t-shirt yeah let it lie just go let's go brandon and if they don't get it they don't get it but like i just love it it's so worried to me it's so like i want to make sure that there's no ambiguity about what i'm trying to say here it like it just seems especially it seems just cowardly to me for something that's supposedly like really sticking it to the guy but also uh you do know what the joke is right you understand i'm being sarcastic you understand i'm trying to say something else here it's almost like those

people who voted for him and support him in that way are the dumbest mfers on earth it's almost

like that and by and you and you're referring to the previous president um yes joe biden yeah yes of course because we were talking about biden and you said voted for him right i just in case we have a new listener although if we did they were probably put off by um this audience frankly it

sucks ass you got one on that you got one of that i know that's it i wanted to say i've got five things to say at the top of the show and the first one is if you're a new listener or somebody who stop playing that drop if you're a executive at american public media who's listening to this podcast for the very first time um that is not usually the tone of the show i assure you

speaking of uh my dinner with olive garden last night i uh i did walk about 60 feet from the hotel to the olive garden and just have an absolutely delicious dinner andrew i don't i don't know the last time i ate at uh at olive garden god i don't by the way i'm looking at the sign and 14 i believe it's just olive garden too it's like uh isn't the band the eagles actually just eagles or something oh it's not the olive garden and also counting crows is just count to uh harken back to the intro tape today counting crows is they're not the counting crows that would make no sense that would be foolishness they're just counting crows although it is the smashing pumpkins which is something that i always enjoyed that is old billy corrigan um zigging when everyone else zagged but so i was at olive garden last night which i'm just staring at right now and i really was kind of looking forward to it because i am a sucker for that particular kind of salad that they have that's like all you can eat and all you can eat breadsticks in fact i just went i went for the soup salad and breadsticks all you can eat that's what they advertise i got luke it's been

so long i mean honestly i think the last time i went to the olive garden i was with tony and his dad in and we are in canton ohio because that's where tony was living at the time with his mom or something and like i remember we would get excited about breadsticks and that's all i remember i don't even know what my go-to order was but i always hear about them it's like bottomless breadsticks and bottomless soup right and you use if you fall into the bottomless soup and salad you use the breadsticks as floating devices so you don't drown in the bottomless soup

yes um i and you know what it's great you don't even have to order the pasta because frankly like you know some some breadsticks some salad and some soup that's usually i'm good you know what i mean that's a meal to me and it's like and this is turning into an ad for olive garden but i think it was like nine bucks for all you could eat soup salad i was like mark i guess but yeah i mean

Yeah, maybe that is a regional thing. I know. I was like, this is super great. Here's the problem, Andrew. I can only eat about two breadsticks anymore. Yeah. Like, I'm entering that phase of life, or as you know it, the phases of death, where I was so full midway through the second breadstick, and I was mad at myself because I wanted to eat, like, back in the day, I could eat ten of them. Also, they were tremendously salty, which I love salty things. So if they were too salty for me, that is really telling you something. But it was very, I mean, it really kind of scratched the itch I was looking to scratch, which is I really like that salad. It's just a bunch of kind of, you know, iceberg lettuce and some mealy tomatoes and some vinaigrette on there. And I had some soup, some kale soup and two breadsticks. And it was absolutely delicious. And I enjoyed it. Now, as I was walking out of Olive Garden, a guy said, hey, I need to go inside. He had two dogs with him, and he said, I need to go inside because these dogs are just running around the parking lot. I don't know who they are, and I need to find out if they belong to someone in the restaurant. And I was like, okay. And I'm sitting on this little bench, and these were the two cutest, most adorable dogs that I've seen in a long time. They were just like – and they also – I didn't think they were strays because they both had just gotten haircuts. Like their fur was really on point. One seemed like kind of like a Havanese, like kind of like what Momo was but maybe a little bigger. And the other one was, I don't know, some kind of mix. But they were small and cute and so friendly. And they both just kind of jumped up on my knee. I sat on this little bench and then I rubbed their heads. And the guy was inside Olive Garden for probably three minutes. And in that three minutes, I made the decision to adopt these dogs and fly them back to Portland by way of Denver. Like I had I created an entire life for me and these dogs and bubbles. And then the guy walked out and he said, oh, they're just some ladies getting her food in there and they're her dog. She said that they're fine because they weren't on leashes or anything.

Wow. Wow. But they were running around. They weren't just sitting on the sidewalk.

Well, by the time I got out there, they were kind of in the like vestibule or whatever you call it, like the entrance area. Not quite inside the Olive Garden, but – so I didn't see them running the parking lot. But they also were – they weren't like sitting at attention like they were trained to wait for their owner. They were somewhere in between running wild and totally well-behaved, but they were so cute. And it was amazing how in the course of – I'm not exaggerating – three minutes, I went from not knowing these dogs existed to being like I would die for these dogs. And I went bringing these dogs back to Portland with me to, oh, they're someone else's dogs. Okay, I'm walking back to the hotel now. Yeah.

Would you have split them with me? Like, I give you one of the far side jokes. You give me one of the dogs. Was that ever an option?

Well, it turns out that those dogs were a housewarming present for me from this lady that was in Olive Garden. So, take that.

Hey, can I tell a little story here about my own experience at a chain restaurant yesterday? And I want to make it very clear. Like, this is not a huge deal. I don't want to come off as like a grumpy old man here. Wait, one quick moment. Could we do our break

Get that out of the way I really want to hear this story

It's just unrelated to the Olive Garden thing Do you think people will be able to remember

What we were talking about on the other side of the break

No I just feel like I don't have the momentum anymore We can just I'm going to go I'm going to go get my Far Side books You do your break I'm going to read those Wait no I wasn't trying to tell your story

I just thought it would be I thought it would be nice to tell the story without thinking, oh, we're kind of pushing the break long. But if you think that's going to ruin it, just tell me the story.

OK, I'll tell it as quickly as I can, because that's how people like me talking fast and rushed. And I did this to myself. No, it's not that big of a deal. But I went to Denny's yesterday, a place that I don't go all that often. But it was a situation where I had to pick up Genevieve from the airport. And I was like, her flight was coming in around eight o'clock or whatever. And I was like, you know what? I'm just I kind of have, as we were talking about before the show, sort of a donut hole in my day. and I was like why don't I just go down to the airport area I just got a new book yesterday and I'm gonna sit at the counter at Denny's and um because I just happen to know there are Denny's around there and I'll just get something and I was like picturing like I just want like chicken fingers and fries something like really basic right I just don't I can't explain it I don't often do that and I'm not getting a lot of tons of chicken fingers these days but it just seemed like the right thing to do and I get there and I sit at the counter and of course they're short staffed and the guy who's kind of running everything has a long line and he's a real sweet guy and I'm trying to show my appreciation for his situation while I'm there you know what I mean he's a little bit stressed and I'm kind of indicating with him that he can take his time and that everything's cool and I order my food and I get chicken there was no way just to get chicken fingers and fries right like I could get chicken fingers I don't know. as a meal and get a whole bunch of sides with it and I was like I don't want a bunch of sides I just want fries or I could just get the chicken fingers I'm and I I didn't want to get into negotiating with this overworked guy you know um and so I'm like all right I'll just I'll just get the chicken fingers so it says chicken fingers with your choice of dipping sauce so then he comes over and he takes my order and he says uh just the chicken fingers I'm like yep just the chicken fingers and he said and for a dipping sauce ranch barbecue I said barbecue he said great and he takes my order takes a little bit longer than usual for chicken fingers but again that's okay we live in a pretty strange time um but then they finally come out and listen they're totally edible but i just had this moment in my head of just like casually reading my book and having some finger food but they come out and they're all soaked in barbecue sauce somebody took the chicken fingers and tossed them in barbecue sauce and then he set down a dipping sauce of ranch next to me and i it was just like one of those things where it's like i like barbecue sauce and these are totally fine and they were fine but like it just changed everything like the fact that like i couldn't just like kind of like you know reach over and grab a chunk of a chicken finger and like kind of nibble on it and you know just like take them home later for whatever i don't eat it went from being a nibbling food to a fork and knife bowl of chicken and like The irony was that you couldn't eat these fingers with your fingers. Exactly. In fact, maybe that was a thing. I ordered the chicken fingers, and he corrected me and said chicken tenders. Maybe I should have seen that. But I did look at the menu. It did say dipping sauce. It said choice of dipping sauce. Like, what if I had chosen a ranch? Would they have come out totally drenched in ranch? Wow. What happened back there? I need you to go back and do that this afternoon as an experiment, because that would be a

bold move. Anyway, again, it's such a small deal. I think that somebody in the kitchen probably felt like they were going the extra mile there, like they were being helpful. Or maybe the head chef there or whoever's training people is like, this is the special touch that we put on things. A lot of other people just sent out some dry-ass chicken fingers and some sauce to dip it in. We're actually going to toss the chicken fingers in the sauce in like a stainless steel bowl to fully and completely coat them in this, which our customers will love. And they'll keep coming back for this special treatment.

And for me, I almost like I wasn't I would never like send it back, but like I just I had that feeling of looking down at them. I wasn't like super hungry either, which is actually good in this case if I was like really looking forward to something. But it was like I just had and this is my problem. Like I go to places like this, not even looking for forward so much to the food, but just for the for whatever experience I'm looking for in that moment. And I know it's a Denny's. It's not like I'm going there for the ambiance, but like in a certain way, I want to be able to scroll on your phone.

you want to scroll on your phone or read your book and mindlessly eat chicken fingers as opposed to having a fork and knife and dining on this wet substance

now that you can't touch with your hands and then the flight came in early so then I'm like the food was just so then I'm like sort of eating them as fast as I can and I'm like I don't even want this what am I doing so I ate two of them and I took the rest home should have saved that for after the break what are we doing here Luke geez Louise

we're going to a quick break And then we come back. I want to play you this audio of Dave Sims, Mariner's announcer, just absolutely terrifying, terrifying a prospect. I think maybe our number one pick in the recent draft. I'm not sure. I can do some research during the break and tell you where this person falls in terms of the Mariner's farm system. But the audio is pretty entertaining. We'll play that. Plus, do some top stories coming up in a moment here on TBTL. thank you baby hey let's thank some donors of the day these wonderful people are making today's episode possible i had the experience earlier today andrew that i often do when i'm out on these reporting trips where i'm i have to sort of explain to someone that i also do this podcast uh because you know it's like i'm leaving the shoot and there's all the gear is still set up And the camera and the lights and stuff And I feel kind of flaky So I will sometimes explain it by way of saying I'm so sorry to have to leave But I do this podcast And I got into a conversation about it And the person asked the natural question of Do you get paid to do it? I said yeah it's a job How does that work? And I said well These really nice generous people For some reason Despite the fact that sometimes I play Inappropriate audio drops to start the show They donate to the program And when I'm talking about the donors of the day To someone who's not in the world of TVTL I'm reminded anew of what an amazing bunch of people We have supporting the show And how lucky we are that this is a thing So I want to say thanks to Mary Jacobs In Kirkland, Washington That's where I get all my genes I saw this TikTok feed, Will It Kirkland You know like

Will It Blend? Remember that David Letterman bit? No. They had a, or yeah, Will It, I think it was Will It Blend, yeah. They had an industrial blender, and they would just put things in to see if they could blend them.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, and I believe the two women, they had these two kind of almost like Barker's Beauties kind of game show style models that would stand on either side. Or maybe it was Will It Float? But anyway, the two women that were associated with the bit Who were just kind of like presenting it Like on Price is Right or something They had these Like angle grinders Like some kind of industrial grinder And then they were wearing like metal belts So they would grind the grinder on their metal belt And they would just shoot sparks So this is not a letterman

Am I looking at the wrong It was turned into something else It says, Will It Blend is a viral marketing campaign Consisting of a series of infomercials Demonstrating Blendtec line of blenders And it's all of the Right, maybe it's

Will it float? I don't want to go On the internet here because I might interrupt our connection But I think if you google It's like will it something, but the funny part is What I really remember are the two Models that would stand On either end of whatever the stage was On Letterman, and then they Would have these grinders that they would Grind on this piece of metal they were wearing So they would just shoot a tremendous Array of sparks, which was just the most bizarre and unrelated element to the whole bit i am thinking here that there's a chance

that it started as a letterman thing that then this other viral campaign so i'm on a i'm on a huffpo piece called david letterman invented the internet you punks uh and it's listing all these things that became other things and number six is breaking stuff blend tech was a viral sensation for years on youtube with their will it blend series um but letterman busted stuff to see what would happen first with stunts like tossing objects off a warehouse roof oh okay well anyway i i'm not sure what i was looking at though yeah sorry i totally thought that sentence

oh no no i i hijacked us by saying will it kirkland because what these folks do is they take kirkland brand alcohol as in costco alcohol and then they do blind taste tests to see if they can tell the difference between the kirkland brand alcohol and the fancy stuff yeah which is an interesting because you know there's always that rumor yep that it's secretly kirkland uh vodka is gray goose yeah right which i just find those rumors to be so funny i mean um and i've heard that from like 20 people in my life so it's definitely making the rounds all of that is to say mary jacobs is in kirkland washington thank you mary lisa peteck is in rent in washington where they also probably have a costco will it rent eric smith will it rent on i do think the

Letterman's thing was float, by the way. You're right about that. It was float?

Yeah, and they have like a big tank, right? Can you see a picture of the ladies with the grinders?

All I got is a... Dave, it's a cheap... No, it can't be! This is not going to pay off. The item that we're floating or sinking cannot be the item we're playing for. Okay, Dave, we're playing for a monkey!

R.I.P. Alan Coulter, by the way. Yeah, what was his role on that guy? He was the announcer But they just wrote him into so many He was just a real quirky dude And they wrote a lot of bits for him

Anyway, I don't see the spokesmodels yet

Eric Smith is in Bainbridge Island Or on Bainbridge Island, Washington Where Pickleball was invented Where I recorded a story That is now two weeks after the New Yorker piece But we did get a profile of Sandy Duncan On the TV show this weekend

What's up with Sandy Dunk?

Will it dunk? Will it dunk? We can't get a story about the fastest growing sport in America on television, but we are catching up with Sandy Duncan. Anyway, I'm fine. Everything's fine. Laura and Charlie Peterson are helping me feel fine with their donation from Seattle, Washington. Thank you. Megan Dahl is also in Seattle. Thanks, Megan. And then Emily and Clark Griffith are in Estes Park, Colorado. Absolutely beautiful country out there. Jump off to all kinds of wilderness and recreating there in Estes Park. So thank you, Emily and Clark. Thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible. We can only do this thanks to y'all. Hello and welcome to Top Story. I had one job during the break, Andrew, which was to look up the name of this draft pick Who is being interviewed by Dave Sims During the game I think it might have been last night And I want to say his name He has one of those white guy names That every baseball player is now named It's like Colton

Cole Young is the name I believe the drafting happened yesterday

yesterday so he must have and he showed up at it right out of high school by the way so this is one of those amazing things i didn't get to listen to most of the game yesterday i only got to see the exciting uh conclusion which was amazing but uh yeah i know everybody was really excited because this kid like basically just wrapped up his high school season then gets drafted and then was like at the at t-mobile park yesterday just like i don't know like i don't know like what do you call it shagging fly balls during batting practice oh fun oh my god what it's like jp crawford and he's just like a new mariner

absolute thrill I believe we drafted somebody named the Vanilla Missile have you seen this situation

no but I'm clearing my cookies right now just for having you say that

I believe we drafted a guy who he's a pitcher and he's tall and he calls himself the Vanilla Missile and I think he has merch

I'm looking this up right now it's not Walter Ford is it yeah yeah it might be ford the vanilla missile he calls himself i hope that he didn't i believe

he refers to himself as the vanilla missile that's not how nicknames work that's not how any of this works okay so i call him burbs dave sims is interviewing cole young and this it's a short piece of tape but basically dave sims is trying to ask him if he's kind of following the playoff race but he just says do you follow race and you can just hear what cole cole young encountering his first major fork in the road as a professional athlete cannot trying to figure out how to answer that question from dave sims take a listen to this how close have you been following

races and whatnot in the major leagues um i mean what do you mean by races like no the right you at the pennant races and whatnot oh yeah i mean i i look at them will be uh team standings like

every single day again it's a short piece of tape but just listen listen to the gears turning in this kid's head as he thinks dave sims is asking him what he thinks about race and baseball how

close have you been following races and whatnot in the major leagues um i mean what do you mean

no the right you know the pennant races and whatnot oh yeah i mean i look at them will be

nobody's ever been more relieved to just talk about the wild card race did you did you mention the dynamics here too because i uh cole young is his name right he's a young white kid right and

dave sims i am assuming but i don't actually know you know what that's a good point i guess i don't know cole young's race i'm pretty sure yeah cole young sounded kind of like a i don't know a white kid name to me yeah whatever that whatever that means i don't know what that means but um and dave sims is in fact black so i guess that is also an element of this i don't know if i wonder if cole young even knows that though you know what i mean if he's didn't grow up an ems fan he's got a headset on someone's talking to him but you can just hear him trying to figure out how am i going to answer this diplomatically how am i going and he must have also just had the thought of like damn they don't mess around life comes at you fast i get signed today i'm shagging fly balls and now i'm being asked to weigh in on race of course in seattle it's just like oh

Seattle just wants to divide There's two woke in Seattle You know Did you not see this Luke Because I was picturing often when Dave Sims Is interviewing somebody he's got them up In the booth with him and they Do that shot where it's like Dave Sims and then his co-announcer whoever that Is that day and then like the Person they're interviewing will be kind of in between The two of them and they'll all have headsets On and they're chatting and Dave Sims always Has like the best style He's just got like these hats

He does have pretty good I think Dave Sims has pretty good personal style Particularly for somebody his age A lot of like nice crisp sweaters You know Or like some kind of like pull zip up thing That's over you know a nice shirt Yeah Dave Sims has some swag

And he will often wear like a Kind of a golf style hat Or what do you call it a pappy hat What did you call it A Jeffy cap is that what you used to call it Or just Jeff cap just a jeff every time this comes up i do that but yeah one of those like kind of golf caps but like with like really popping colors he had on a yellow ensemble the other day that vives and i were both just like wow he looks in but it's but it's also not over the top it's just like this casual pop he's got anyway so there is a chance that and this maybe would even be more intimidating that like this young kid is just like sitting between these two adults i don't think he is no

but actually you know i don't know for a fact because the clip i saw this clip online that's how i saw it and uh the clip the the film the video of it was it just was the baseball game was happening and then there was a chyron that said cole young mariner's draft pick so i guess that doesn't actually tell me anything because maybe he was in the booth with them and then they were just showing the game yeah they decided to put his name on the screen so so we knew who who they were talking so you know what that's also

it's totally possible he was in the booth with them and again i didn't see this i'm hearing it

now for the first time but what you just described sounds like that what they'll do is they'll show the game and they'll put in the corner the voice you hear but then every now and then they'll cut back and you'll kind of see you'll see the three people who are kind of chatting in the booth i happened to just see it with whoever's guest was the other day it was a former assistant coach of

the supersonics who's now the head coach dwayne casey that was a great interview you were watching Yeah. Yeah. That was really good. I was listening, actually. I think he must have gone over to the radio side. Oh, OK. I was I was here. I was I think I'd landed in North Dakota and was listening to the game on my phone as I was driving to the hotel. And they were talking to Dwayne Casey. And it it filled my heart with such joy because Dwayne Casey is associated with the real kind of like prime era of the Seattle Supersonics, the Gary Payton, Sean Kemp, Detlef, Shrimp, Sam Perkins. I could go on. People don't need me to. Like Dwayne Casey was an assistant coach during these really great years for the team So it made me so happy to hear him He sounded like such a sweet guy as well And then it made me feel very sad that we don't have a basketball team

I believe it So that's always interesting They'll have these folks as guests And sometimes, yeah, they'll go and do the TV interview And then they'll go and do the radio interview later And so I'm interested to know if we heard the same audio Or if you heard a different interview I don't know if you remember if it was Dave Sims interviewing him but were they talking at all about how nervous he was to throw out the first pitch at a game a while back? It was very humanizing. And he said he even saw, I guess who was, is it Sean Payton? Sorry, I'm not a basketball person. Sean Kemp? Sean Kemp. Sean Kemp. Well, if you put them together, though.

Sean Payton is the coach of the New Orleans Saints. Oh, right, right, right. In the sports realm.

Right, right, right. But I think it was Kemp, he was saying that he's like, I know Kemp really well, and I was watching him throughout the first pitch on TV, And I could see how nervous that guy was And it was just like a really humanizing part of the interview Talking about how nervous people are No matter how much you've achieved in life At whatever it is you do Even in the sporting world You're still nervous walking out on that field To throw that ball

Yeah I'll never get another chance To throw out a first pitch at a game Why not? I don't think that's true I don't see the Luke Burbank brand Expanding rapidly I see my waistline expanding rapidly, but that's a totally different matter. But, yeah, I really wish I would not have let the haters and the doubters get in my head about that pitch, telling me I was going to short hop it. Because then I threw it way too high. But if I would have just followed my heart and my experience, having been a—now, I'll mention very terrible, but I was a pitcher in high school. And I could lob the ball over the plate. And for some reason, I assumed that I had forgotten everything I knew about lobbing a baseball over the plate. And all these people were telling me, you're going to short arm it. You're going to like you're going to bounce it up there. That's what everybody does. It's further away than everybody thinks. And I just went into this mode thinking, I guess I know nothing about throwing a baseball. And so I overcompensated. I would really like another crack at it. Maybe the Portland Pickles will let me throw.

Oh, absolutely. Do you see that the person who ordered the pizza for Mitch Hanegar during a game got to throw out the first pitch? I think a Travelers game recently What are the Travelers? The Arkansas Travelers It's like a double A team for the Mariners I want to say I follow them on Twitter

Could she have sent Mitch Hanegar I don't know an ankle brace Or something that would help him play Baseball So tired of Mr. Glass I'm sorry It's weird that that's where my anger goes With this team I feel so let down Every day that goes by That Mitch Hanegar continues To not play baseball for us Not like he wants to be injured Obviously but it's just like It makes me so furious and irrationally So again he doesn't he would like to be Out there contributing but it just somehow It feels like he's letting us down to me

Which is not fair I know we just talked about this Recently but I have a question for you after What you just said about your first pitch and you were saying People told you hey you're not going to expect The plate to be as far away and so you feel like You overthrew but I thought I remembered Like you were going to you know

ballparks right i mean you yeah josh kerns and i went to my old right little league field at lower woodland park and threw the ball around and that's a regulation that's the same yes and a mound like i exactly like people what people were telling me was no matter what you've done no matter how you've prepared no matter what your lived experience is you will be so nervous in that moment and i will tell you i was shaking i see i was vibrate like i was i was having that kind of nervousness where you feel like you might kind of collapse a little bit like you're just not totally in control of your body um and so that was what i was and what people were saying was that that level of nervousness is going to make your body do something you're not expecting so i made the decision to really like overcompensate But then my body reacted Basically as directed And so I was trying to throw the ball Five feet over the head Of the catcher and I threw it about five feet over the head Of the catcher although luckily he was tall and stood up And caught it

And also we re-watched that recently it's not as bad as you think He wasn't like flailing around to try to stop

No I mean it's not like 50 Cent Or Gary Delabate Who threw out a really bad first pitch And they will never let him forget it on the Stern show I mean, it's not going to go in the annals of, like, really terrible pitches, but I just wish I would have thrown, you know, something that would have been in the EQC tracer box.

I could have nailed the EQC tracer. That would have been great. The one thing that separates our show from the Howard Stern show is they have a producer who threw a bad pitch, and they always make fun of him. And here we are in the second segment in three weeks where I'm telling you, oh, Luke, your pitch wasn't so bad, buddy.

That's why people mail us Farside Handsome Farside books Because they love us Because we have cultivated a community Of love and support As opposed to roasting each other I am legitimately feeling Sad would be overstating it But maybe a little disappointed Andrew That they have announced That they are getting rid of The Choco Taco Which is in case there's someone who hasn't had one or seen one it's you know like an ice cream treat but instead of a a cone like a sugar cone it's sort of in a taco shape and then it's coated in chocolate there's ice cream inside the taco and uh for whatever reason the company klondike that uh i assume they're owned by unilever at some level but uh actually they are unilever the parent company of klondike which makes the choco oh my god i mean there's about a 50 50 chance right

Everything is owned by Unilever One of us is owned by Unilever We just don't know which one

And it's up to the listeners to try to figure out They announced that they are Eliminating the Choco Taco To make room For other products And the Well there was a couple of waves to this story First people were posting over the weekend Pictures of like a tombstone With a Choco Taco on it And saying R.I.P. Choco Taco But it seemed like it might just be a rumor. In fact, at one point, Snopes declared it to be untrue that the Choco Taco was being discontinued. Really? Yes. So Snopes was wrong on this. They were loud wrong because, in fact, the rumors were true. The Unilever has now weighed in on it saying, yes, we are getting rid of the Choco Taco. The guy who invented the Choco Taco, this guy from Philadelphia named Alan Drazen, was a manager with the Philadelphia ice cream company called Jack and Jill. And he said he was inspired by the popularity of Mexican food, so he invented this thing, the Choco Taco. Now, this is what I hadn't thought of until I read this quote from Alan Drazen, which was that – and this is going to go right into sporkful territory. We should call Dan Pashman for this because it has to do with consuming food and, like, what part of the food is consumed along with the other parts. Basically, if you get an ice cream cone, you eat the ice cream, and then you eat the cone, which is probably dry or maybe has a little bit of melted ice cream in it. But the Choco Taco is so genius because every bite is cone and ice cream. And I hadn't even thought of it that way, but that is why it is so delicious to me because you don't just like eat the ice cream and then you, again, you're having a tasty but somewhat dry cone. It's all interconnected in the experience, and that seems to be kind of the killer app for this thing. I'm really surprised. I mean, obviously, Unilever ran the numbers, and they just decided for some reason that this was not the most profitable thing for them to be doing or they think they can make more money with other things. But Chris Murphy, a senator from Connecticut, said he was going to – let me see if I can find the exact quote for me. It was actually kind of funny. He said, tomorrow I'm introducing legislation to invoke the Defense Production Act to mandate the continued manufacture of Choco Tacos. Please call your senator and demand they co-sponsor. And then Alex Ohanian, who's the co-founder of Reddit and also Mr. Serena Williams – I'm sorry, Mr. Venus Williams. He's married to one of the Williams sisters. um he uh reached out to uniliver and said i'd like to buy the rights to your choco taco and keep it from melting away from future generations which it seems to me like if they're going to get rid of it and someone else were to buy the brand or buy the rights to make it i feel like i just feel like that was a pretty popular treat like are you surprised that that's they're eliminating it

Well, here's my.

Here's my relationship to the story. I have never had a Choco Taco. I've heard of them before. I didn't realize how beloved they were. I had heard of them like I'd heard of other treats, but, like, I don't know. I grew up eating drumsticks, which actually, as a pre-made, I will say, your argument about, like, the distribution of cone material and ice cream makes a lot of sense. I hadn't thought of it. I thought you might not.

Welcome to my TED Talk, the distribution of cone material.

I thought that you might go the opposite way because you and I are both people who don't like to get done eating something and then feel all messy and have our hands and face sticky. And I thought maybe the Choco Taco was like a more messy version of an ice cream cone because the way it's built. I will say drumsticks, the prepackaged ones, do have ice cream all the way to the bottom. And they fill the very tip of the cone with a little bit of chocolate. So you get to the end of the frozen treat and the last bite. Drumsticks are the shit. I love drumsticks so much. I haven't had one forever, but we weren't a Choco Taco house. But having said all of that, I didn't realize how beloved they were. You know, I almost wonder if drumsticks go away. Do they have the same sort of is the same uproar going to happen? Because I feel like there must have been something somewhat culty about these that suddenly everybody in my timeline is decrying these things that I've never had. And it feels like their childhood is being taken away. And my third question for you, having not really read much other than people's laments over this, is there any chance that Unilever or what is the Klondike company, is there a chance that they would never get rid of the IP for this because it's one of those things where now every other summer or something they can say, it's back for the summer, and it'll boost sales again, and then maybe it'll come back for good at some point. But this really could be a marketing thing that is going to, like, get everybody, like, thinking about Choco Tacos and how much they miss them and blah, blah, blah. And then eventually they're going to bring them back for a limited time and they won't be able to keep them on shelves.

I mean, here's what I will say. Certainly Unilever has looked at the numbers, right? Like, it's not like they're just deciding we don't like to make money anymore. So for one reason or another, either it literally wasn't profitable or they think, like you said, that kind of some artificial scarcity could, you know, it makes more money for them to sell them, like you said, every other summer and they sell a bunch of them or something like they clearly have some plan in mind. I mean, their whole thing is making profits. So they've got, you know, they're doing this for some reason that makes sense to them. but yeah I wonder if the outcry let's just say that they decided we're going to get rid of these because we don't actually sell that many of them or they're expensive to make or something I wonder if the amount of internet attention it's getting is actually has them reconsidering it in any way or like I wonder if they expected this level of attention about the end of the like maybe they totally expected it and that's exactly what they're trying to do or maybe it caught them slightly by surprise who knows

Yeah, maybe. And again, I'm still not totally giving up on my theory that they might be crazy like a fox here. You know what I mean? Because people were maybe sales weren't great, just like maybe a slow, slight decline. But by getting rid of it and generating this amount of energy, now everybody's thinking about it. And then you can kind of withhold for a little bit. And then you bring them back and everybody's going to be really excited. One product that I think I'm the only person who really cares about this, but I finally did some research the other day. I studied something out, and I realized that my worst fears were coming true, which is, you know, I'm a man. I have a pretty narrow. I'm going to just keep on saying I'm a man. I have a pretty narrow. I have a pretty narrow lane as far as what flavor potato chips and those types of snacks are concerned because I don't do sour cream and onion. I don't do anything that's going to be called like cheese or chili cheese or anything like that. So for potato chips, I like them straightforward, like a regular ruffle is a good chip for me. But as far as flavors are concerned, I'll go, you know, if you can get some of those ketchup chips or pickle chips, I'll try those. Those are a little bit more of a Canadian thing. But I do like barbecue chips, right? And, you know, whether you got your barbecue lays or whatever.

I get my regular chips and then I dip them in barbecue sauce unless they toss them all pre toss them for me.

I do not like. But one of the chips that I really liked In fact, Vives and I bonded over these When we were first dating Were Barbecue flavored Fritos Now I want everybody to calm down for a second Because there are some people who are saying They still have them and they're like honey barbecue twists now And I'm like, yeah, I know that Fritos have a product where it's like It's not And then... the shape of a Frito anymore it's like a weird it's like a spiral chip that destroys the top of your mouth after you eat like two of them and they're like flavor blasted with this honey barbecue stuff I'm not talking about that I'm talking about regular shaped and regular sized Fritos that had barbecue flavoring on them and I used to get those as like it was one it was you know it was one of my options in the rotation right and at some point I stopped seeing those And I don't buy tons of chips, so I just sort of figured they flew off or just sort of like kind of, I don't know, went off the radar for a little bit. And then the other day, I was like, I haven't had those in years now. What the hell is going on? And I looked it up, and they were discontinued. I think sometime during the pandemic, they were like straight up discontinued, and nobody cares. There's no uproar about that. There's no future where Fritos is going to bring back the regular barbecue chip. That's something that had no cult following at all. and i think i'm the only person who cares yeah exactly yeah yeah it sucks when the thing that

you like you have no constituency yeah there's no outrage you need to get into things that are

more popular i need to yeah it's really posted in my instagram story is like rip barbecue chips

it was like that was two years ago get the national day calendar people to make it national yes frito day you're in a position to do that right now this thing that this thing that i'm going to later today uh we're going to be we were filming earlier this morning or be filming later this afternoon here in bismarck it's actually in mandan uh technically which is on the other side of the missouri river i get very excited when i drive over the missouri river just because it's not a river that i have much experience with and it's so iconic i'm like this is so cool i'm looking at the freaking hey i'm looking at the missouri river over here i believe that's what lewis and Clark said that's exactly what I have the tape you know this national day calendar is this website where these folks you know it started with this guy who lives here in North Dakota who was basically just keeping a blog of like all of the different days like you know that existed like the president in 18 you know 92 was lobbied by the bittersweet chocolate-covered almond makers and they got him to you know proclaimed today is bittersweet chocolate-covered almond day or something so this guy just kind of was like going in and noting all these days and what day on the calendar they are and then kind of like researching them and just writing up these you know a little kind of history on like how did this one get picked and what's the story on this and then people started going to his website a lot mostly morning talk radio show producers looking for some kind of content and it just kind of you know started to get a lot of web traffic so now he has some people that work for him and then they got into the business of actually um announcing like new national days so app day is one uh autonomous vehicle day is one that one was not from a president 100 years ago that was more recent but anyway the people at rallies checkers noticed that national french friday was not on a friday oh that is an oversight f-r-i-d-a-y yeah and so they this is actually i have to say pretty funny of them so they just i mean they sense an opportunity to basically just do a big kind of media situation and get some earned media which is when you get people like me talking about your thing for free and so they started lobbying this guy to change Friday you know the National French Friday to be a day that's actually on a Friday yeah but this is what they did they started putting up signs all around Mandan North Dakota directly to this dude Marlo like he goes into the coffee shop where he goes and they have put up a banner inside the coffee shop that said marlo move the friday to friday that's great and there's like they have these digital billboards that they buy in the town he's just driving around this town of like i don't know 5 000 people with rallies checkers just menacing him at every turn to officially change the national french friday to be on a day that is a friday and so uh of course

They acquiesced and they're going to do it And now the rallies French fry mobile is posted up At this park and there's going to be a big Celebration and free french fries for everyone Which again all of this is a PR Stunt but it's kind of a cute one and pretty harmless I thought that was kind of clever that they actually Got this sign in his Coffee shop of choice like they must have basically Like stalked him for a Day or two to figure out what his patterns were

Yeah no kidding I do like That and again every piece of this just like everybody's winning right the people who i mean they want us they want they want attention for their calendar days as well so yeah good for them yeah no i mean it's again as long as we my

big thing with this story and i'm already talking about with our producer is like i feel like i'm going to start the piece by clarifying what this is and what this isn't you know because it's not like the U.S. government is an

announcing these days it's just some people in north dakota right and the reason that they quote unquote get to do it is just because they have the most web traffic on this topic so they're just kind of setting the tone because and they have a big email list of like millions of people and they send that email out every day so you know they've got the uh megaphone as it were for this kind of stuff and that's how they're doing it um but none of it is like official and also you can if you're a company i don't think in the case of this french fry deal the guy told me that that was this was not a business like nobody paid anything for this it was just a stunt but you know if you are a business you could reach out to these people and say can we make it national uh snap-on tools day i'm looking at a snap-on tools van andrew if you're wondering how that thought made its way

into my head um i wonder if the branding would kill that though because they don't usually associate with a specific brand right or maybe i think you're right well how do you know more

about this than i do well i think i think you're actually right i think what it would be would be like tool you know uh tool automotive repair tool day or something like that you're because usually like they did a deal with microsoft that was a paid thing but it was national solitaire day like microsoft got them to declare that it was yeah yeah because you know and so it's sort of like microsoft adjacent and it was just like a way for microsoft to be back in the conversation right even though no one's really playing solitaire anymore right right like so you're right it's that kind of thing it would never be olive garden day but maybe it could be bottomless

breadsticks day right right or although i could see like like a really entrenched brand like oreo could they get a national oreo day i did want to let you know that he literally brought that up in

the interview today the guy did oh really like we're starting a new thing called like iconic brand day and he's like oreo is one of them wow he made an odd analogy do you want me to do this

story i swear to god you are really read in on it i just that was just from the gut i want to tell you though that um this uh year national podcast day does fall on a friday and then after that the next two years it's gonna be a saturday oh and then a monday because the leap so but if we want to celebrate national podcasting day on september 30th we have to do it this year because it's a friday and we'll be doing a show i'm sure i'm gonna pick up a calendar they have lots of them

at the office and i'm going to bring it home and i'm going to hang it up in my studio and i'm going to circle national podcast day so that we can celebrate great and a happy podcast day to all

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from

a female all rightly an email or v-mail before we skedaddle i mean you had some stuff at the top You had some some listener response. I almost said fan response, but that just seemed that seemed a little a little over the top. I don't know if we'd call these people fans more like financial supporters and we have a business relationship.

I don't know if we have fans per se. Got a couple of I saw this kind of bouncing around on Slack and also got a note here from listener Rochelle who said or fan Rochelle who says Christy Noem is the terrible governor of South Dakota, not North Dakota. different state different governor's mansion so when you were running through sorry through the governor's backyard yesterday or whatever you were doing that would have been a different governor

although i don't of course how could i have not remembered that because they you know had sturgis the uh you know heart whatever the motorcycle oh right right rally thing rally rally during the pandemic and when it was known that it was going to be a super spreader event and uh you know Christy Noem was mentioned often in that conversation because she had basically no rules going in South Dakota. You think I would have remembered that, but I didn't. Sorry to North Dakotans for associating you with Christy Noem. And also Governor Doug Burgum, who is apparently the governor of North Dakota. Sorry, Governor Burgum. And sorry also that I trespassed

in your yard. I have some fun tape to play for you here. This is a voicemail that I just heard today for the first time because apparently there was a chunk of voicemails that I missed a few weeks ago. Sorry. And this is a good one, but it dates itself because Danielle is at an event that is a couple of weeks in the rearview mirror now, but this is a great story. Take a listen to Danielle.

Hello, Luke and Andrew. This is Danielle, currently calling from Centralia, Washington, where I'm waiting for STP riders to meet them with reinforcements.

Most people, STP is the seattle to portland uh bike ride and so it sounds like danielle is there uh waiting for the writers to come through somewhere so she can give them water and whatnot nice well hopefully you can

edit that out now there's wild noise um but uh i've heard callers call in to talk about like a fresh bathroom and there's nothing better i have something better i just went into a porn potty that was brand new. The toilet paper had never been touched. It was shiny. It didn't smell

anything except for like that stuff at the bottom that doesn't have any human anything in it. It was pretty amazing. So I found something better than a fresh bathroom. A fresh, fresh, just off the truck port-a-potty. Okay, bye.

That is exciting. I wonder if we say fresh, fresh, like was it brand new from the factory or brand new from the port-a-potty cleaning place? You know what I mean?

Yeah. Did it have that brand new port-a-potty scent? Yeah. Sounds like it did. I have a little air freshener tree that's brand new port-a-potty that I use in my car. I have had that same experience as the listener years ago at the Sasquatch Music Festival. I was there, I think. I remember you being very excited. And I was in artist camping. I think maybe that must—was that a year that I was actually performing there? Like I was doing—I did stand-up or something, which, oh, I want to—

I'm pretty sure I was there with you that year, and I think that was just the year that we were going around doing interviews. For the TBTL podcast, which I'm talking to you on right now. But I don't think you were performing. You might have introduced somebody, but I don't think so.

Yeah, I think one year I performed, and then I found out about artist camping because I was one of the performers. And then the next year I was like, I'm not going back to District 9. Yeah, exactly. So I just parked in artist camping again. Yeah, we all did. It was also the year that I had a parking pass somehow. Remember we were just ferrying people? because I had a parking pass associated with my car so I could, like, drive all of our massive audio equipment back to the side of the stage, which is a joke because it could all fit in a backpack. But they didn't realize that, so I had a parking pass. But what I realized at some point was that just meant me and anyone in the car could just drive to the backstage of Sasquatch. So I was just running people back and forth constantly. My point is, one of those times when I was an artist camping, probably that same year you're talking about, i was the first person to use a porta potty and it was amazing i think the reason that it's so great is because of how much you're dreading using a porta potty general sure because you'd

still sort of take a full bathroom like i going to the bathroom in a brand new clean bathroom is still better than going to the bathroom in a brand new clean porta potty right it's just that this is

more rare and the expectations the expectation though is so low yeah for what your experience is going to be using a port-a-potty that then when you realize i'm the first person to use it there's no uh gross odor there's nothing upsetting that i'm looking at as i am maybe staring into the void like the relief that washes over you is almost worth use you know it's almost worth the pain of the other times when you use a port-a-potty it's horrible because it's a an extremely um uh

what surprising experience yeah definitely and also i i feel like probably i don't think this can't be more unique but it's a unique experience whereas going in being the first person in a brand new clean bathroom is very nice but the you know you assume that whatever establishment you're in is cleaning that bathroom at least once a day so it's gonna happen you know 365 days a year if i'm doing my math right all right anything else before we wraps it up um you know what luke if you're not in a huge hurry, because today's Thursday. It's our last day to play voicemails. Today's Wednesday. Or today's Wednesday, I'm sorry, which means tomorrow's Thursday, and we'll do Blursdays, and then Friday we do Music Free Weekend. I'll bring you a calendar. So let me play for you one more voicemail, okay? This is a two-minuter, but we have time for this. We're going to get Ben's voicemail in here, and this is regarding surprise parties and what an absolute pain in the rear end they are.

Hey guys, it's Ben in Tucson. I'm in my final month of time bedding a full year's worth of pbtl and i just heard uh both of you talk about what a nightmare surprise parties are luke was sharing his story about his church uncle not getting to go to the restaurant he wanted a few years ago my wife's birthday was coming up and for some reason i decided i was going to throw her a surprise party with like entertainment and out-of-town guests and it was like a big deal and i had just managed finally to put everything in place and everything was going to go um you know as planned and she was going to be super surprised and it was going to be a great time and then like a week before the party she got a job at a non-profit that she had been trying to get a job at for a really long time and she was so excited and she told me i got the job and my start date is the weekend after my birthday and then that weekend they said why don't you start by coming and volunteering at our annual fundraiser it's a big event and you'll have so much fun and you can bring your husband and she was so excited that she had signed both of us up to come and work like as volunteers at the fundraising event so i

had to go on their website and like basically sleuth around to find out who would be her direct supervisors and email them and i introduced myself as the husband of the person you just hired and i had to say number one please do not um expect us to come and volunteer at this event and number two please do not fire her because uh this is actually me flaking out and she doesn't know about it and also number three please do not ever tell her that i uh jeopardized this new career for her in any way um and they were really understanding and everything worked out but just for that like one week in between those two events uh i think was the most consistently stressed out that i have ever been so yeah long story short um no surprise parties ever uh for uh anyone ever again because they're they are a nightmare and they will only stress you out all right thanks a Power out. Wait, wait, wait, Ben.

We need a part two. Well, I think I have a part two here because I was listening to that voicemail. I think this is what you're keying into as well here. He explained to the bosses, hey, listen, we're not going to be showing up to this volunteer event. But what did he tell his wife? How did he get his wife to not do the volunteer event? So I texted Ben this morning and he just wrote back like moments ago. He said, I realized I didn't include that very important part of the story. What happened was I ended up telling my wife, my wife, this is how he wrote it, that there was a surprise for her, but without any details. And then I gave her the gift that I purchased for her, and I told her it was a clue about the surprise, which made it clear that if she really would rather attend the fundraiser, I would scrap the surprise for her. then she unwrapped her gift which was a portrait of her favorite drag queen and she guessed correctly that the surprise party was at a drag show and she immediately said that that was her choice so we had a lot of fun and she ended up working for that organization for many years so did that make sense i'm reading that cold here but yeah he basically said listen i had to i had to like you can you can still go to that event but we do have a surprise for you planned that day

your choice it's interesting the way that ben revealed part but not all of what was going on because if you're asking someone to make a choice you generally like they'd probably want to have all of the relevant information yeah it was kind of turning into a sort of like let's make a deal situation do you want to go to this thing or do you want what's behind door number three right

right and also i mean it sounds like it all worked out it sounds like it all worked out which is good But, yeah, I mean, then you also have to tell your partner, like, hey, also, I was sleuthing around the website and I identify people that I think are your bosses and I emailed them and I've been in touch with your new bosses possibly more than you've been in touch with them.

That would I have to say, listen, Ben, it sounds like we're Monday morning, Monday morning quarterbacking you, which we don't mean to, because obviously it worked out and you're obviously an awesome, loving partner. So that's rad. But I wonder, let me put it this way. If Becca told me that she had been talking to my bosses at 8 p.m. about something, I wouldn't be totally sure how I felt about that. I mean, I wouldn't be mad about it. It would just be kind of an odd sensation, particularly at a new job, to hear that your partner was talking to these people more than you have. You're just kind of like, oh, okay I mean, again, it obviously all worked out But yeah, what a complicated situation there, Old Ben

Yeah, definitely

I call listener Ben Old Ben Old Ben

Well, that's your new nickname, Ben I apologize for that, but it sticks Better than Burbs It's my nickname

Tomorrow on the show, Andrew I want to run something by you Involving my rental car and a situation with Avis. Is it smoking on the highway? Never going to make it back over the mountain pass, Andrew. It's not up to it. It's not up to the task. It's not up to the task. That's what I told you. No. So remind me on tomorrow's episode to tell you about that because I am kind of genuinely curious. I feel like I know what your response would be, but I'd like to hear it from your bearded lips. Okay. I'm also kind of considering going back to Olive Garden for dinner tonight, but I have to sit in a different section because the guy who was the bartender who helped me, I was just sitting at the bar because I'm by myself, was really nice but very chatty. And that was great, but I don't really want to have another kind of like longish conversation. But I kind of really want more of that salad.

Oh, I wanted to ask you, is it a salad bar or do they just bring it to you and you can keep ordering? They bring you a giant... ass bowl like a family size bowl of salad with my favorite kind of um like tongs in there it's like the huge oversized fork and spoon that have handles on them they're like scissors yeah like scissors um and they but they don't fill the entire bowl up with salad it's you know it's like got probably a serving and a half of salad in there but you can have it uh refilled on an Unlimited basis Mr. Mr. Mr. I can only eat two breadsticks

I wonder how much I'd have to Modify that salad because I wouldn't want The cheese I'm sure there's cheese on it

There isn't cheese on it but they Come over with Like a cheese grater type Situation with a crank on it and they go Would you like cheese on this and I said yes I don't think it's on there initially Interesting okay maybe I could go for that I have to say like again And once every 15 years, nothing like some Olive Garden soup, salad, and breadsticks. Oh, man. I'm hungry. Thanks. That's where you're going. You did it. I'm eating a Choco Taco. I'm hoping that they haven't gotten the memo in North Dakota that Choco Tacos are discontinued. I'm looking at Dan's Supermarket, and I'm wondering if they've got some Choco Tacos over there.

Why don't you ask the guy at the front desk if there's any Choco Tacos in town? I was telling Vives about that yesterday. Oh, my God. you're looking for a drug store and it was like directly across the street and he's like nope

I mean across the street's an overstatement I mean it's almost connected to the parking lot it's a CVS and it was just kind of like I yeah I mean maybe it just didn't come from that direction I mean I could have also googled it that's the other thing I could have googled all of these things yeah at some point um but uh yeah that was uh that was eye-opening when I noticed how close it actually was all right that's gonna do it for today's episode of the program thank you everyone for listening. Thanks for being part of TBTL. We will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. Until then, have a great Wednesday. Please try to stay hydrated, stay indoors where there's A.C. And go Mariners. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. all the flavors of ice cream in the world wouldn't take the place of friends power out