Muse

Your son has clearly been brainwashed by the evil and charismatic Mr. Burns. Are you sure you can get him back for us? Absolutely. I'm the one who successfully deprogrammed Jane Fonda, you know. What about Peter Fonda? Oh, that was a heartbreaker. But I did get Paul McCartney out of wings.

You idiot! He was the most talented one! T-B-T-L Guess what day it is! Guess what day it is

It's Friday, Friday Gonna get down on Friday Everybody's looking forward to the weekend

It's people who identify as nerdy Rapping about the things they love Video games, science fiction Having a hard time meeting romantic partners

Losers in other words Who keeps putting Twizzlers in the fridge? I told, is it Sarah? Crystal Crystal does Okay well, Crystal

You and I are gonna have another Twizzler talk Why don't we go get a beer? I'll give you some advice, and we can have what the kids are calling a sausage mess.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Explaining how a show works means the show's already in trouble. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Wait a minute, who are you?

So back home at the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is going to be a scorcher today.

I feel warm and I'm levitating.

It's going to be like 99 degrees today. That's what they're thinking. It was 70, I want to say about 76 degrees today when I went out for my little jog. And all I could think was, first of all, how can the human body produce this much sweat? Didn't know you like to get wet over a relatively short distance. And also, it's like 76 degrees. To think about the fact that it's going to be 20 degrees hotter than that was very—my mind is trying to understand that that's a real thing. But I guess I'm going to find out on a very personal level coming up this afternoon. I was lucky because I got to spend the majority of this week in beautiful Bismarck, North Dakota, where it was remarkably mild in the temperature department. But I'm back in Portland, and I'm now living, along with the rest of you, some very, very hot temperatures. So I hope you're doing okay wherever you are. Hope you are ready for episode 3738 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

The Mega Millions jackpot is at $1.1 billion. That cash could really get me out of a couple of jams. And this chicken finger restaurant, who knew? You could have a whole very successful national restaurant chain. That's whole thing is we're going to sell you chicken fingers. It's called Raising Canes. These are the best Cajun chicken niblets I've ever had. They are spending $100,000 on Mega Millions tickets. And they say, they claim that if any of the tickets win, whatever money they win. So let's say that they win the $1.1 billion. Which, by the way, ends up being about $678 million after taxes Which is kind of like, that's a lot of money But I was sort of surprised It's funny when you're thinking about $1.1 billion If I were to win that, I'd be pretty stoked And then when I found out I was only getting $678 million I'd be like, huh, that's kind of a rip-off Anyway, the Raising Cane's people Say that if any of these tickets are a winner That money will be spread equally amongst every single Raising Cane's employee. But the mechanics, the practical mechanics of buying that many lotto tickets, it involved the CEO standing in a 7-Eleven. They already did this once, by the way, and didn't win. The CEO or someone who works for them having to stand in like a 7-Eleven waiting for 50,000 tickets to print out. All right. We will get into that coming up. Plus, it's a Friday, so we'll do some music for your weekend as well. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew Walsh, and, of course, he is my good-time boy. He's joining me right now. Hello, my friend. Okay, hey, Luke, I need to do something here at the top of the show, okay? I need to clear something up, but we need to do this my way. I saw a tweet yesterday as I was traveling back from North Dakota to Oregon. I noticed you posted the show, which I was glad happened because, you know, we have to do that for our job. But then you tweeted out that you had made a mistake that was going to live with you for the next 24 hours. I was dying to just text you and go, what? What's in the mistake? Well, yeah.

thought I had made a mistake I I made an assumption on yesterday's show that I figured might be a wrong assumption I didn't realize it until I was posting the show I'm like oh my god and it's something that we talked about in in at great length and in great detail and that's why I want to say right here I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do this my way okay I'm gonna Sinatra this I can't crawl back into this conversation again I already belabored it far far too much on the previous two shows

Does this involve the P.O. box still?

Sort of, yes. So here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say a statement here just to clear something up. Now the end is near. I'm going to say something here just to clear it up. And so if you've been playing along at home, this will make sense to you. If the following statement makes no sense to you because you're just jumping in to listen to this show or you're a new listener, trust me, it doesn't matter to you. I'm not giving you context for this because if I start to give you context, we'll get into the topic again. And I don't want to get into the topic again I just want to say this Here, okay? This is for everybody who's been following along At home Listener Mark Did not write Max Headroom or Headroom Fanfiction And send it in to us And he didn't write all of the other fanfiction On that website He found that fanfiction And he thought it was funny and he sent it in to us But he is not the author of The Max Headroom fanfiction That's just randomly online And if you want to read it There will be a link in today's newsletter Along with some fan fiction of my own

Did you Just when he sent the link Did you kind of figure that that indicated That it was something he had written Again

Okay doesn't matter does not matter Yes it was sent in He found something online He put it in physical form in a card And sent it to our P.O. box Along with a link to the rest of the story Which was online when you receive something From a listener like that you assume it is Their own art but it was not his Own art and he never claimed it was I just assumed but that's what I wanted to get down

To his listener mark Like claiming is he stealing Valor from Max Hedrum fanfic

Right sounds like he's not He didn't mean to mislead Me but I was I don't know just a miscommunication it might not Be fair to say I was misled or Maybe that puts too much of the emphasis on on his actions and not enough on my own assumptions. And you know what you know what they say when you when you assume something, Luke, you make fools out of people, including yourself and your friends around you.

Yes. And anyone else who may have been listening to your podcast and then exactly kind of making their decisions based on that faulty information. That's right. Classically, I think what they say about assumptions. That's right. OK, well, I'm glad we could clear all that up. I mean, that would have been a hell of a coincidence, particularly on the Max Headroom.

Yes, exactly. So there's that. I will say, though, in all earnestness, because we were talking about fanfic so much on the show this week, I did write today's newsletter already. I got it done a little bit earlier than usual. And I did try my hand at writing fanfiction. I told you ahead of the show, Luke, what it is. I'm not going to tell the listeners. You can read this week's newsletter. But I did earnestly try to write some fanfic based on, well, a notable IP, we will say. And that'll be in this week's newsletter.

Nice. Looking forward to that. You got it done early, too. Do you have big plans today?

Well, I was going to ask you this before the show, too. We're supposed to record another show today, too. Is that on your calendar? We should do that. Yes, I have it on my calendar. And then after that, you know, it's a summer Friday. And, you know, it's a nice breezy 98 degrees or whatever. So, yeah, I'll probably just sweat through my clothes. Perfect.

Just a quick update on the return of the rental car in Bismarck, because remember, on yesterday's episode, I played a voicemail message from Stacy at the Avis in Bismarck, North Dakota, saying she was in a real pickle regarding the rental car that I had, which I took to mean that they had somehow rented me a car they weren't supposed to rent me or they were running out of cars. And I was somehow, you know, I didn't have, you know, sort of priority with them. And so I just ignored the call. And I will just tell you that when I returned the car to the airport, I brought them the keys and the mileage and all that. And then they just said, how was the rental? And I said, great. And they said, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being a loyal Avis customer. So that was it. Nobody said anything about the phone call I didn't have to lie I didn't have to make up an overly involved thing about my voicemail Sometimes deleting full messages Which you were totally right, Andrew You were totally right That would have been far too elaborate I should have just I was slightly practicing in my head Well, first of all Even though we pre-recorded Thursday's show To try to avoid this I still ended up running kind of late for my flight because I was trying to sneak a jog in in the morning in Bismarck. And I just took, you know, I just was basically taking longer to do everything. Like what happened was we were going to do the show, record yesterday's show on Thursday morning. And it was going to mean I had a razor thin margin between when we said no mountain too tall and good luck to all and when I had to be at the airport. And so we prerecorded the show, which then put me at great mental ease about Thursday morning. Then I was just like, oh, this is going to be great. I can get up. I can go on my jog. I can make a little and get a little coffee like this is just going to be perfect. So, of course, then I just like sit in bed, like looking at tick tock and doing whatever Thursday morning. And then I I get up and then I'm kind of just, I don't know, puttering around and taking my sweet ass time. And then I look up and I realize, oh, if I'm going to do this run and get to the airport, it's going to be cutting it as close, if not closer than I would have if we would have just done the show on Thursday morning. per usual so anyway i was a little harried as i was getting into the rental car a lot sorry if you hear a little bit of um distraction in my voice is because the cat has decided that a cat

is an angel that poops in a box i'm wearing these um these uh shorts they're like athletic shorts

they're from lululemon becca got them for me and i really love them but they have two they have drawstrings on them right and i never tie the drawstrings on shorts for some reason i don't know why it's just one of my cool guy moves and the cat is obsessed with the drawstring of course so right as the intro tape was playing andrew she jumped up to try to grab the drawstrings you know what's um right behind the drawstring the drawstring well don't draw me a picture my actual i'll take a photograph my actual junk which she sunk her talons into which was very distracting and now she's circling me again so i'm podcasting i'm holding a squirt bottle and i'm also holding my my my nether regions with my left hand in case she decides to go for me again wow that reminds me

remember we were talking the other well never mind i don't have to get into that you're in the middle of the story i don't have to retell a mad lib that i was scandalized by when i was a kid not a mad lib i'm sorry a mad magazine cartoon um so um wait where were we on this on the car

point is i was running kind of late for my flight i was stressing out it's one of those airports where they don't they don't have people outside like telling you what lane to go to it's a small enough airport that you like park the car in a parking lot and then you're supposed to like take note of what the mileage is so that you can tell them at the counter it's just the whole that process of returning the car has an added couple of minutes to it whereas like at a bigger airport it's just very streamlined you just pull the car up you leave the keys in the car somebody with this little portable scanner just comes out scans the car says was everything okay and then you're off on your way so i was just like this whole thing was starting to stress me out because i'm running kind of late and i've got to do a more involved return of the car and um so i was as i was walking into the airport i was practicing in my head just going acting kind of surprised when i hear there was a message left for me yeah that's all you gotta do oh really oh okay yeah i didn't get that um and so uh when i got there and i was all ready for my command performance i didn't need to because they didn't care about it all and then i did then i had the experience andrew of going from this is where you and i are very different you like to get to the airport very early and you like to just relax and kind of people watch and just not feel stress about am i going to make the flight or not am i going to get through security i most of the time drive to the airport in a complete panic because i've cut it very close now i have it down to a system in fact i don't think i've missed a flight for being late in years so i will i would like to say my system appears to sort of work but most of the time when i'm on my way to the airport i am looking at my watch very frequently because it's down to like a very tight window of time which again i have it all tsa pre-check whatever i've got all my systems dialed in but it's the kind of thing that if there were to be a car crash and then traffic was backed up i'm i'm totally screwed right so then i get to the airport and then the second time through security i become intensely angry that i'm there as early as i am geez like it's like i'll what i want to do is i want to walk on to i want to enter like walk onto the um jetway as they're closing it behind me sit on the plane have the plane back out of the parking spot and take off from there all within four minutes so yesterday i get to the bismarck airport i'm kind of stressing out i'm planning how i'm going to deploy my lie uh i don't have to do that i run because i'm flying on united somehow they did not um transfer my tsa pre-check number even though i called them and i was on the phone with them yesterday morning saying okay And you please put my TSA pre-check number on this flight, on this ticket. And they said, sure. I gave them all the info. They said, it's in there. Of course, it wasn't in there. So now I have to wait in a slightly longer line, which was fine. It's Bismarck. There's not that many people. But that's the other thing, too, is like the TSA line was totally empty.

And they had their whole own even like the scanner, you know, like you put all your stuff on the conveyor belt. Sometimes you go through pre-check, but then you just get cycled back into the regular line. And it's like, yeah, it's not that much faster. They just had two people assigned TSA people just to the TSA pre-check line. Like, it was the most Cadillac service you could get. And I'm standing over with the hoi polloi, taking off all manners of clothing and taking articles out of my, you know, my backpack and stuff I don't normally have to do. I get through all of that. I walk over to the gate. I realize the plane's not even boarding for 20 minutes. And I'm like, God damn it. How did I get here this early? So that's the thing for me. It's like I'm freaking out that I'm going to miss the flight and then I'm annoyed that I have to sit in the waiting area for 20 minutes.

Well, it's funny because I was thinking about this analogy yesterday when you were talking about whether or not you should call back. I thought her name was Ashley, but you're saying her name was Stacy at the rental car service. And I told you for me, I would probably call back only because it would live in discomfort in my head to like kind of have that that, you know, loose end hanging out there and just the unknown for three days until I return the car. Will somebody ask me about the voicemail or what have you, even though I was pretty sure I was with you, I was pretty sure nobody was going to ask you about that. And I thought that's very much like my approach to being in a rush. Like, I just absolutely hate the feeling of being in a rush. The only thing I hate more than that is being in a rush and being in standstill traffic on the highway. That is just the worst feeling. And actually, one time driving Genevieve and a friend to the airport, I wasn't going with them. But, like, they were going on a camping weekend. And they're both more like you. Like, get to the airport when you need to. Don't spend any extra time there. And then we got caught in a just standstill traffic jam in downtown Seattle. And I was just like, we're just watching. I think they might have had to take a different flight, in fact. But it's one of those things where I'm driving. Again, it doesn't really affect me, but I feel bad for them. But I'm driving. We're in a hurry. And they're both on their phones trying to call people at their, you know, at the airline so they can, like, you know, change their tickets or whatever. It's just like the worst. I hate that feeling so much. and that's why for me and again it's also because i have the luxury to do this but i'm not flying constantly every little second doesn't matter to me and so the feeling of showing up somewhere and especially when you talk about being late because you were like oh i can just luxuriate in my time and i can lay in bed and scroll through uh tiktok or twitter or whatever it is like i like i would much rather do that at the airport like with a cup of coffee and i can people watching scroll through tiktok they're like the idea of but i i will say i can also relate to that because i'm bad with mornings like i often the time i am rushing around is because i will get anywhere early except in the morning because i will stay in bed until the very last minute i

hate getting out of bed the thing that i did that was really ridiculous was so i realized i have 20 minutes i'm still i'm super thirsty because i'm still and i'm also by the way i'm still pouring sweat from my jog even though i have showered it's with this is just a cool feature of my body so that's just like a weird look in the bismarck airport but i'm kind of so i'm like i go get some water so i go get some water i walk around i go to the whatever bookstore thingy i'm just kind of killing time now i walk back to the waiting area and the only place that i can sit down Is one of those massage chairs There's two of them And a lady is sitting in one of them I don't sit in those They just creeps me out Too intimate Do you think it's unsanitary? I don't know

It doesn't make sense It doesn't make sense Why it wouldn't Well, you might be on to something

Because I Now, you know where they have those too By the way And I think you and I I might have been sitting in them While you and I were talking once They have those in the Minneapolis airport Yeah, I remember

Didn't you Did you sit You talked about this on the show one time Sitting in one of those chairs

uh well what so so i walked to this area and literally there's nowhere to sit but one of these massage chairs and then i'm like you know what my legs are kind of sore like i've been really trying to stay on my jogging tip lately which means kind of a certain low level of just a little bit of tightness in the legs and the calves and whatnot i was like yeah why not treat myself to this like massage thingy like that'll be better than sitting in a regular chair and uh So I sit. And the thing that I probably mentioned on the last time this came up on the show is a lot of these chairs, the ones in the Minneapolis airport are programmed. So if you sit in them, but you're not buying a massage, they start shrieking like a band. I forgot about that because they don't want people just sitting in their big ass pleather chair when there could be paying customers. So I sit in the chair and I'm like thinking at any moment, this alarm is going to go off. So I better I better put my debit card in here. So I order up 15, the smallest, the shortest amount of time I can order up is 15 minutes of massage for five bucks. And I, so I swiped the card and immediately begin to regret the decision because it's prod me and poking me. And there are rollers that are rolling on my back and it's like making my body contort in all these ways as like 50 people just sit there watching me do this.

Yeah.

Like, I'm the only interesting thing happening in the waiting area of this United Airlines flight.

Some old man points you and says, I'll have what he's having.

Of course. That was Rob Reiner's dad. Yeah. Famously. So, of course, I mean, I would stare, too, probably. Like, I am now the entertainment for this area. And I'm sitting there. And, again, it's like it's not really like I don't. How do I put this? It's just very embarrassing. And also it's causing parts of it's doing these rollers on my back, which is kind of making my abdomen kind of like it's making me stick my stomach out in a way that I'm not loving. And then it's shaking my whole body. I look like Santa. My stomach looks like a goddamn bowl of Jell-O. It's just like very anything loose on my body is jiggling.

There's nothing there's nothing more relaxing than getting a massage from a robot when you're tensed up like that just sounds terrible because you're getting more and more tense. And they're like, your body is fighting this machine

Then they go We're going to start boarding Alaska Airlines flight, whatever And then I look down I still have 12 minutes of massage I've paid for But now I have to board And I was just like, you know what I'm calling it on this $5 Absolutely The part of me that doesn't want to get ripped off Wanted to stay in that massage chair humiliating myself Until the very, very last moment When I could get on the flight Now let me tell you If I had that chair at my house, which is sort of a miracle I don't, if you know me and my weird tendencies. If I had that chair at my house and I was by myself, I would sit in it for hours at a time. It's not like I don't enjoy the sensation. It's that it was just embarrassing in front of all those people. But I wasn't not liking the physical sensation. so I kind of was I was torn between feeling humiliated and also wanting to actually get my calves massaged by this machine because it felt really good the other thing that was kind of funny the gal sitting next to me uh was a a woman maybe in her probably late 50s or 60s and she goes wait for the butt part they go huh there was for whatever reason a some kind of a prong that would come up it was not like a butt massage where there was rollers that would create the effect of like a masseuse massaging your buttocks let's say right it was just a prong that would just kind of go straight up and basically go straight up right into your backside i mean not like way way up but like i couldn't figure out what the massaging sort of aspect of this was like it wasn't like again it wasn't like something was needing you or kind of like relieving tension in that way it was just something that was pressing up into your butt hole it was like and Then it hit me. I looked at her. I was like, what is she? He goes, I don't know. So we kind of had a moment.

Did you put on the – you didn't then switch it to the Robert Kraft function, did you? Because that's really inappropriate. No, I did not.

But I was really thinking like what's the design of – like what is the point of this? It's not – everything else made sense from like the way that the rollers were working. The way stuff was happening was, okay, this isn't as good as a trained human being actually massaging your body. But it does have some of the benefit of that. And I can see what they were trying to approximate with these different mechanics. That one was only approximating someone putting a broomstick partially way up your bunghole.

I will say this. So this woman was also getting the massage next to you or she was a veteran. OK, so she was getting the massage.

She had gotten it. I think she had gotten it before I got there. See, it wasn't actively happening for her.

She was a veteran then. OK, gotcha.

She was allowed to board the plane first They were like anyone who's a veteran Of the massage chair wars or people with small children you can now board see even more so than what i'm about to say is you know i'm notoriously prudish but um i really like that this woman felt comfortable enough to turn to a stranger was and just say wait for the butt part i was totally i was very surprised because if if we're just going with kind of the way that this person appeared andrew not the person in the airport who i was expecting to have a conversation with butt stuff yeah right exactly but kind of just like you know fairly matronly nice but just i don't know not the person who i expected for that conversation so i was like you know well good for her for being for being open to this conversation which could be a little a little uncomfortable but um anyway so the good news is i made it here uh uh safe and sound and i'm ready to actually do the show with you now that we're halfway done. Okay, great. Fantastic. I'm looking forward to getting started. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about this Raising Cane's situation, which I think actually raises a bunch, so to speak, raises a bunch of interesting questions about corporate America and gambling and fun and risk versus reward and do chickens have fingers? So that's all going to come up in a moment here on TBTL. Hey, let's thank some donors of the day for making TBTL possible with their support. It is so appreciated that folks like Karen Meeker, there in Everett, Washington, keeping the show going. Thanks, Karen. Karen's been a 10 for many years and a supporter of the show for a long time, and we really appreciate you, Karen. Also we want to say thanks to Joe and Steve Blair Of beautiful Port Townsend, Washington The small maritime city of I was out in PT a few weeks ago for an event And boy I did not want to leave I think we talked about it I did the show on a Friday morning from there And I think you commented Andrew That you had sort of suspected That a beautiful Thursday and Friday In Port Townsend was going to have me sucked right back into that fantasy world and you did not buy a house there you did not put any bids on a house in port townsend i fought the urge but it definitely occurred to me um christine mellow is in wiley texas thank you christine heidi field fiedler not fielder fiedler the fiedler on the roof that's exactly right i bet you that comes up a lot for heidi i'm sorry heidi i just thank you heidi i gave you the joke that you've been

hearing your whole life i'm sorry fiedler fiedler thank you heidi fiedler lundenberg massachusetts i don't know lundenberg i don't either um thanks heidi patricia roe is in seattle washington thank you patricia and then denise stock is in export pennsylvania and they really just had a time in pa where they were just naming things for industry specifically pennsylvania right like a lot of places have them but doesn't it seem like pennsylvania has all of the cities named after industry they have city of industry which is in california that's right they also of course pennsylvania has intercourse oh right exactly pennsylvania which is really a um you know a notable a notable name for a city i got off that massage chair right before the lady next to me started discussing intercourse pennsylvania it was probably for the best for everyone all right thanks to our donors of the day couldn't be here without you hello and welcome to top story all right uh the mega millions jackpot is at 1.1 billion dollars which i was surprised by a couple of things today as i was reading into this one that's not the biggest jackpot they've ever had i just i feel like i'd remember if it got to a billion dollars but i guess what with inflation i mean i mean maybe a billion dollars isn't what it used to be yeah so i guess it's actually been higher than that before but that just see i don't know i'm old and so uh winning a billion dollars in the lottery or whatever it's technically called just seems unfathomable to me just as a number like you could build a football stadium with that amount of money but then again i think football stadiums cost like four billion now right yeah i um you know for me and this comes up every time we talk about this stuff like i just never pay attention to it as a kid i didn't pay attention nor do i as an adult so like the numbers i just always know them as ungodly numbers that don't mean anything to me because I'm not playing the game. And then it always leads to the conversation about how much tax is pulled out of there. And then and then you get into conversation. Like, what were you saying earlier? I only have six hundred and eighty four million. Oh, I was a little surprised. It is a big chunk. I mean, it's a big really was like, well, on the other hand, like, can you imagine spending six hundred and eighty four million dollars? Like, well, I'm getting a small house and massage chair first.

I'm buying the Bismarck Airport. Yeah, right. And then I'm closing it, and then I'm sitting in that massage chair all by myself with nobody watching me. Except for that one lady who's your bud now, your massage bud. But, yeah, I don't, you know, when I probably am saying a version of what I often say when these jackpots get to this level, and we talk about it on the show, which is, for whatever reason, this is not the form of gambling that happens to capture my imagination generally. like my relationship with the mega millions and on the lotto is like my relationship with marijuana i'm fine with it existing i go through weeks and months of my life never thinking about it and if someone had some i might do it you know like it's like if there was a pool like

an office pool you if somebody's like hey i'm going to the 7-eleven or the am pm absolutely then maybe you would say okay here's yeah here's that could be fun or if i'm in the store and i

look up and it's a billion dollars and i'd like have an extra five bucks in my pocket i might go okay i'll buy one of those but it's i would like if i'm at a party you know how i'm intimidated by

the process i don't even know how do you have to give them numbers you don't have to you can but

you can have the computer pick for you oh okay um so yeah you can just say i want twenty dollars worth of powerball the powerball and they will just and if you don't tell them numbers then they'll just type something into this kiosk and then it'll just they'll take your 20 and just a ticket will spit out that's got i don't know how much it is per game maybe it's two dollars a game or something but it'll just give you however many games you get for the amount of money you give them of like let's say it's 20 bucks then then you just get this little ticket and it's got all these numbers on i mean i just trust that that theoretically relates to something i could win but it's like that's about as far as my my knowledge goes but but yeah i mean i would also eat probably eat a gummy if i was at a party and someone's like these are really great pot gummies i'd be like maybe i'll have one so it's really the only in both of those cases between marijuana and specifically state lotteries or national lotteries these are the only two non-problematic relationships i have with gambling and illicit substances but anyway my point is i don't think about this a lot either something about the number being one billion though i was like huh so i am probably going to buy a ticket later today um although the thing that i always also say about this is the fun of buying a ticket is that you then kind of have this potential right you've got the ticket and let's say the drawings in two or three days then for two or three days you just kind of got this little fun you never know uh the thing is i think the drawing the latest drawing is tonight yeah so if i today if this afternoon after we're done recording our final summer game if i go down to the uh mini mart and i buy a powerball or whatever this is a mega millions i'll have about three hours of getting to enjoy the fantasy that i win you know what i mean i'm not maximizing if really what i'm doing is nobody wins tonight doesn't it always it rolls on right i thought that's well but my ticket doesn't count anymore i'm buying a ticket for

tonight's drawing oh right right right you got to rebuy of course sorry yeah so i just the amount

of time that i have where i haven't learned officially that i'm not winning but i have the ticket that amount of time it's a very it's a tight window today so it's kind of sort of makes it pointless if i buy a ticket this afternoon it's because i'm legitimately trying to win you know one in like 300 something million chances because of course the way these things work is The chances of Any person getting all of the little Numbers to come up correctly It is unaffected by how many people are playing the game The numbers are the numbers

The numbers are the numbers

But what changes is how many other people might get The same number You might have to split it with someone else Then you're down to a mere 300 million Which I mean at that point is even worth it

Yeah right

This though I think is a very interesting thing That this Raising Cane's company Is doing The CEO of the company, named A.J. Kumaran, did an interview with The Washington Post. By the way, this is a really good piece in The Washington Post by Maria Luisa Paul. So she basically details how this thing came together. So I think it was earlier in the week. So they do this drawing like every few days or something. This idea from Raising Cane's, this is in the Post piece, started last Thursday when Mega Millions announced that jackpot had swelled to one of the largest. in the game's history. That's when Kumaran proposed having Raising Cane's purchase the tickets. The company...

The company's general counsel, however, was less than thrilled with the idea, he said. I was wondering about that, yeah. Undeterred, Kumaran tapped his co-CEO and the founder of the company, Todd Graves, to finance the tickets out of his own pocket. We thought, okay, let's do it as soon as possible because how hard can it be to print 50,000 tickets? So I think it's $2 a game is basically how it works. So if they wanted to get 50,000 tickets They want to dump $100,000 into it That was going to get them 50,000 tickets If that makes any sense So this is continuing on with the CEO Let me tell you, it's nerve-wracking Being at a gas station with $100,000 in cash Kumaran said He munched on a hot dog While the orange and white tickets were slowly printed Twice the machine had to be refilled Something that usually happens Every two months or so kumaran said the gas station's manager remarked meanwhile other customers were complaining about the machine being taken hostage of course that's the thing like did they not did they place a phone

call to this gas station ahead of time and say hey listen this is what we're gonna do like you can't just like come that's so disruptive and potentially and also dangerous to have that much money i don't even understand like why wouldn't you at least just say i'm gonna go to one of these places and start with with twenty five thousand dollars or i'm sorry yeah twenty five thousand dollars and like get the first quarter of these things um and see how it goes it seems there's something weird about this that i'm not i mean i guess i have well you know me i actually find it

to be charming because this seems like an idea that i would have and then like they had the idea and then they just went like they went to according to this article um between getting a hold of the cash needed from four different banks and hitting up two 7-elevens in dallas the plan turned into a 10-hour operation so that was on monday okay so they did go to multiple okay that's good to know but still it's you know they were still dumb now i don't if i'm the store owner i don't care because i'm selling out all these tickets which also you know i get a cut of that on some micro level and also if somebody wins from my store yeah so if i'm the owner of the 7-eleven i'm cool with this i don't care who i'm selling my mega millions tickets to fine it's this guy from raisin canes but what i find kind of charming about this is how on a level uncorporate this is now someone's going to say this is all a pr push it is and they're getting a lot of earned media and you're probably not wrong about that but again i just it feels like it was a fairly if what he's telling the washington post is true it feels fairly organic like they didn't hire a pr firm to do this like stunt with this right like this was the guy was like it would be cool if we basically played the mega millions on behalf of our employees and then we give them the money if we win now so that was on monday they didn't win they spent a hundred thousand dollars on monday and did not have the winning ticket and so they decided they're gonna do it again um the the the and by the way all of the things they learned from that first run has now helped streamline the process for this next round that they're doing instead of going around town with stacks of money they were able to wire transfer the hundred thousand dollars to 7-eleven the eight-hour wait to print the tickets was still the same nonetheless yeah so they figured out the getting the money to 7-eleven part but the printing of the tickets just is what it is i guess yeah yeah

yeah that's what i mean like the for the first ones but again it does sound i didn't read the story so hearing you tell it at first it sounds like they walked into one 7-eleven and the very first one printed all 50,000 tickets and i was like that doesn't sound like you like you just wouldn't do that without calling first you know what i mean like sometimes i mean it's a pandemic i don't go to chipotle without calling first because they could be closed early you know what i mean like um and and yeah you're carrying around a lot of money and you could break the machine and what about everybody else is just trying to buy a hot dog or whatever just seemed like but um but okay like then they did it and then the second time around they're wiring money to corporate like this sounds much more legit and believable for a second i just was like what There's no way you just walked in But no I believe all this

Now the so basically They've they bought the tickets on Wednesday Tonight is the drawing and so at some point After the drawing is over Somebody from Raising Cane Corporate will scan All 50,000 tickets to see If any are the winner Which would break mega million streak Of 29 consecutive drawings without A winner now this is Where I think the actual interesting almost sort of Like labor relations aspect of this story comes up people have mentioned why don't you just give your employees the one hundred thousand dollars yeah well it depends how many employees do they have that's the big question you're asking the right questions andrew it turns out that a hundred thousand dollars is two dollars per raising canes as they call them crew member so if they win this is actually also kind of surprising to me though if raising canes wins this if they hit the whole thing and That's it. They walk with the 600-whatever-million after taxes. It's $13,000 an employee. Wow. Lower than I was expecting. Oh, really? Oh, that's a big chunk. I don't know. I just – I don't – I'm really bad with numbers. And it just – that number seems so – I mean, even $600-plus million seems so shockingly high. I thought – I mean, listen, $13,000, particularly if you work at Raising Cane's, it's pretty life-changing. Yeah. But it's – I just somehow – I guess I didn't know how many people work for Raising Cane's. They have like one in Portland Also I don't eat chicken fingers So it's a pretty big blind spot for me Also you must really Make some good chicken fingers If you've got If that's your whole thing The whole restaurant is based on this They don't sell anything else I bet they sell other things Every billboard I see for them Everything you see The chicken finger element is primary In the way like Pizza Hut sells cinnamon rolls But they're called Pizza Hut

yeah right exactly and it is like because i i was pretty unfamiliar with raisin canes too like i've i've heard of it i don't i've never set foot in one i don't think and so i'm on their website now you're right like the brand it is like on the sign raisin canes chicken fingers now i'm saying raisin but actually it is there's a g there it is raising canes i just assumed it was an n with it seems kind of folksy right yeah right um yeah they're opening these things left and right though

So, like, you know, Becca works for the what's called the Portland Business Alliance here. And I had to go. She had to take the giant scissors to a ribbon cutting at a Raisin Cane's. Oh, really? They gave her all these like gift certificates. She was like, well, these are lost on us. She also doesn't eat meat. It was like, huh, we've got to give these to a deserving person who loves them some chicken fingers.

Maybe you can scratch it off, turn it around and take them to Cane's Raisins, which is a vegetarian restaurant that emphasizes raisins.

God, that just sounds so sad. Every once in a while this whole not eating meat thing You really hear it for what it is Like Can you imagine a less A less appetizing thing That really takes me back to The Last Man Standing No, Last Man on Earth I think Last Man on Earth, sorry Last Man Standing is Tim Allen, gross Yeah, I think so

Also wasn't that a stand-up reality show Wasn't there a stand-up reality show called Oh, Last Comic Standing Oh, Last Comic Standing, okay, gotcha I never watched it

But yeah, this is, oh wow, this is really funny, Andrew Summer of Love lineup I'm looking I'm going to their website Look at what On the right side Of the Raisin Canes I saw on both sides The borders of the websites June 10th National Ice Tea Day July 13th National French Fry Day July 27th National Chicken Finger Day Who do you think Comes up with those days? The place I was just at In Mandan, North Dakota You know I interviewed The PR person For Rally's Checkers On Wednesday After we were done with all of our recording Because they had brought this french fry mobile to this town And it's pretty interesting You know For as completely and totally arbitrary As these made up national days are It's national chicken finger day It really drives business Like it's a thing That is just totally made up And has no importance in the world Except if we all agree that It's like money If we all agree that it means something Like and someone sees National French Friday She was telling me that they have to like Double their supplies Like the whole like the weeks leading up To National French Friday They're like getting all of their ducks In a row because they know that they're going to Like sell way more French fries than normal

Because but also because they're marketing It's a little bit different than money it's not like We all woke up and said hey it's National French Friday and it's on our calendars It's only because these companies Build promotions around it

I mean, sure. Same thing as if you do any big promotion on a day and you get enough you get enough publicity for it. Right. But I guess what I mean is on some level, the people who are saying, oh, it's National French Friday, I'll go get some French fries are buying into what is basically. And granted, it's being promoted, but it is at its core. It's not like it's not a legal holiday. It's not a federal holiday. It's not even a holiday. it's just a thing some people came up with but i mean my guess is that they're doing it though

because the french fries are probably like at some sort of scream and deal right like 7-eleven on on june 11th well this is actually interesting were you following this um 7-eleven traditionally gives away free slushies are they slurpees slurpees slurpees uh on on you know 7-eleven on july 11th and uh in the past you could just like show up in one per customer i think but now It's all part of like their rewards program Like if you sign up for the 7-Eleven rewards Smart actually It's kind of smart But it's also just like How unfun is that sort of But you know what I mean So like yeah People are showing up Because there are deals In the same way when Chipotle opened up In Kent, Ohio When I was in college And nobody had heard of Chipotle At that point All we knew was There was some new burrito place That was giving away free burritos

Right I don't think on National French Friday They give them away I think they're just being like Celebrate this day with us And they're also very excited The woman from rallies was telling me That she was like Oh it's going to be a real hot streak Because it's National French Friday And then it's National Brownie Day And then it's National Cookie Day And we have a new product called a Brookie Which is a brownie and cookie And you're totally right They're just pumping a bunch of promotional dollars Behind this and and that's raising the awareness certainly right but it is also just like it's interesting how many and i was interviewing people that were standing in line to get these french fries and stuff in um in north dakota and it's amazing how many people if they're like go on facebook in the morning and it says it's like national donut day they're like actually their behavior changes potentially like it's i think we want permission as a society at least a lot of us do like i know my sister hannah will like text us hey it's national siblings day love you guys i mean that seems like a really positive outcome that one's there's no there's no um you know money being exchanged for that it's just hey i love my siblings but it does seem to drive behaviors for for at least a semi-significant portion of the american population i hate to do this but um

looking at the actual press release that came out last week or i guess a week and a half ago from checkers and rallies um the iconic drive-thru restaurant chain known for its craveable food blah blah blah um greets this national french friday with unprecedented news it will forever more fall on a friday the second friday of july starting next year blah blah blah that's all the stuff that you talked about later on in this press release and again i know that this is a joke like but it's just i shouldn't even read this because i guess i'm just that's the joke i'm just telling the joke here but like somebody in this press release wrote these words this quote from um anderson who i assume is like the ceo or something i don't know the actual title um uh let's see marlo anderson is the founder of national oh this is marlo anderson somebody you probably yeah the quote is it's humbling to see our country unite for a common goal that they feel so passionate about but i suppose i shouldn't be surprised after all for the love of the fry is strong i in good conscious cannot ignore the voice of the people blah blah blah i'm just like i know that you're putting it on i know that that is kind of the joke but like it's also

like it's i don't know it's just so gross well you're not going to be doing the tv story now

andrew oh no very close probably remember like two days ago you were like you seem to know more

about the story than i did right well you've officially lost well i can't get you probably

don't want to go on the record i'm just curious like what is this person like what is this person like when they're not giving quotes like that you know what i mean you know um yeah i will say this

um everybody there was like very earnest in a way that i found actually endearing and i think actually this guy marlo who's um kind of in charge of this i found him to actually be really self-aware like i do think that in in that i think what you just read was intentionally like he's in on the joke yeah that the will of the people must be you know i think he's intentionally overdoing it there to be funny yeah yeah um because that wasn't his it wasn't like when i talked to him he was talking about this stuff in those kinds of terms i think he's kind of surprised at the whole thing himself i might i forget because you know we we pre-taped the show so i don't know how much of this exact thing i said but basically the way the thing started was he just started keeping this blog about like all the different kind of like national days there were that were some of them you know had been from a presidential proclamation some of them had been from some industry whatever he was just kind of this web developer guy who was wanted to for his own interest kind of put it all together and write these little histories of like this is why it was national whatever day and then pretty quickly like morning i think mostly like talk shows tv talk shows and radio talk shows started going to the website like every day because it was the one place that just had it all kind of like in the same spot yeah and so it was just it was just show prep you know and you and i can both kind of identify absolutely i can also weirdly i don't

know why but i feel like i can also identify with this urge to be like there's all these days out here let me just start putting them on my calendar like there's something there is i am like this in a way i think our friend um lynn who runs i didn't forget his name i was trying to figure out if i should say his name or not but you know our buddy lynn who runs marsupial gurgle and there there's a commonality among people like us which is wanting having this desire to put things in order you know and and as we consume them specifically when you think about marsupial gurgle like i can associate with that i haven't done anything near what lynn has done or with the stats that he keeps for wait wait don't tell me but i understand that desire to enjoy something but while i'm enjoying it, I want to categorize it in some way, and catalog it is more the word I'm looking for. I completely understand understand that and even though I can't think of an example in my own life I know that I've done that oh I I you know what I do it with my stupid game that I'm playing right now um uh I wrote a whole newsletter about this a couple years ago I played this game Hex Empire right which is like this very very basic flash game that is kind of like a world domination game that's simple and I just play it while we do the show here but I have a spreadsheet because you can play like games based on the number like and so i started with zero zero zero zero zero one then zero zero zero zero zero two and i now have a spreadsheet and every time i play one of these games i note what color i play and how many turns it took me to beat the game there's no need for me to do this but it's just something about like cataloging this that itches my brain in a way or scratches an itch in my brain in a way so i totally understand the origins of this i relate to that yeah and that

part of the story also to me was like that kind of endeared the whole the whole operation to me a little bit because it wasn't like this wasn't started by a um you know yeah some pr firm somewhere like it was just this guy who was kind of like you said sort of a completist on this and then people start like reaching out to him and being like you know uh like he said that he would sometimes not post anything it'd be like 11 o'clock at night and he wouldn't have posted the next day's thing and he'd be starting getting starting to get emails like where is it at which also again as a former talk show producer i can totally identify with that feeling of like also speaks

to the state of journalism in this country what are we going to talk about if we're not

if you don't tell us it's national chicken finger day tomorrow what the hell are we going to talk about so and so then it just kind of like picked up steam and then he had more people working with the other thing that's kind of charming is the people that he has working on this are all just normal people that he knew from his normal life like he didn't i mean these are people that live lived in north dakota and were not uh did not have backgrounds necessarily in media or and you know to be honest with you it really shows the website is charmingly anachronistic like it is definitely not i would not describe it as overly slick it's between the fonts and the kludgyness i mean it look very much seems like what it is which was a number of people working on a thing many for whom of them for many of whom were doing internet stuff for the first time in their life um as far as a job thing you know anyway so it is a very folksy thing and yes it's like i'm not i'm not the demo for it but um but it's i i was i i left with a with a really positive feeling and i feel like it is even though yes it is all at this point there's a heavy marketing angle to it it still was folksy enough when i was at kind of the like very i don't know the the place where it was all happening that it i left with a good feeling about the whole thing it doesn't seem like it's really

harming anyone that's for sure the big question is will i be eating chicken fingers later and if i am i mean i will definitely not be getting them at denny's where apparently a dipping sauce means that they toss it in the sauce before i mean those raisin canes chicken fingers look they look good

they look good on the website you know again and i wonder there's got to be is there a decent is there a decent fake chicken product here's the problem all of the like near meat stuff that i eat it's like it's pretty terrible like the ingredients like becca is a very very the term they would use not she but like people is like when you eat clean when you just eat a lot of stuff that's kind of whole foods and plant-based and not like completely engineered we were um like a while ago i wanted to get some veggie dogs and grill up some veggie dogs at my house and watch the baseball game with her and we're walking on the store and we're in the like this frozen section that's got all the fake meat products and i just like take these veggie dogs and i like hand them to her and i was like i go don't even look at the ingredients i don't even want you then she just looks she starts reading the back of the label and just the absolute disappointment on her face over what was in these things to make them seem kind of hot dog ish right was like i was like don't tell me you've said enough with your eyes i'm eating these you can't stop me i um i used to eat now this is

not this is not like a good chicken finger you're not going to get like the um the texture of a good chicken finger but uh for a super processed and i'm sure they've come a long way since then but But for a basic snack, Vives and I always keep Morningstar products in the freezer. And I don't know exactly why. We eat meat, but it's just kind of a simple – again, we don't eat them a lot. It's highly processed. It's not like – it's far from health food, obviously. But we'll have Morningstar grillers, which are like little kind of fake hamburger patties. But you don't think – I don't think of them as a hamburger patty. You know what I mean? It's not a substitution for a hamburger. It's just it's its own thing. And they also make little chicken patties that they have for years and years now that are like they'd be like the very basic kind of frozen chicken patty your mom might have bought in the 80s. You know what I mean? Only it's meatless. And those aren't those aren't too bad. I'll.

Well, I'm looking at these Gardein Ultimate Plant-Based Chicken Tenders, and I'm thinking I might have had these, and they were pretty convincing. Because, again, if you bread, if you bleach and do whatever ungodly process to some kind of plant-based stuff, and then you wrap it in enough breading, and then you fry it, I mean, it's going to taste pretty close to the thing that you're trying to make it seem like, right?

Well, the thing about chicken fingers, though, specifically, is I feel like a good chicken finger, it is very much about the texture of it. And I'm not trying to be – I sound like a goddamn snob. I'm not a snob about chicken fingers. And I'm just saying that, like, I like these little chicken patties. You know, I'll double them up on a bun because I'm always, you know, just trying to do what the doctor tells me. So I'll, like, double them up on a bun and just, like, slather them in barbecue sauce and sriracha. And cut some pickle slices, put them on top. Absolutely. Oh, that sounds delicious. Really good. But it's not like – again, I don't even think of it as chicken because it's just, like, highly processed. But when you think of like the kind of chicken fingers that you're seeing here on Raisin Cane's or whatever, you can picture yourself again, how I was imagining my dinner going the other night, like having those on a plate. And when they're cool enough to touch, you can kind of pull them apart, sort of. I don't know. Right. You know what I mean?

And there's like steam inside. Yeah.

Juicy and all that stuff. It would be hard to recreate that texture of meat. You know what I mean? And if I describe what it is, it'll just sound gross because we're eating animals. Right. But, like, whatever that texture is, it seems like that would be the hard part to recreate is the texture.

You know what helped me a long time ago kind of move off of eating meat and eating chicken, at least a lot of it? I still on occasion will have it, but pretty infrequently. I was having chicken fingers probably at a casino somewhere. That seems like the kind of thing that would be happening. And I did that exact move you're talking about where they're hot. They're breaded on the outside. You kind of almost break them open to let some of the steam out. and there was a tiny feather yeah yeah that was still in there like just hadn't gotten plucked and i'm not sorry i'm not trying to gross people out that i don't know what like you got a long list of things andrew that are kind of like just give you a just like don't sit right with you and even though i understand oh i'm eating this animal's flesh like i'm eating their body and their feathers were part of their body at some point there was some it wasn't even big that was why it got missed by whatever machine you know plucks these things but just seeing that tiny bit of feather still in the meat of the chicken finger i it really it it really put me off of it

i um this is a story that goes way back and it was like kind of um something that genevieve and i would joke about and tell our friends about for a long time so you know me i'm uh my tastes are not super refined um and when i sit down to a meal i like it to be maybe i emphasize uh quantity over quality or or I can be prone to doing that especially when I was a younger man and I was at my very very first job feeling like an adult but also feeling like a kid at the same time you know very early 20s and my first professional job I should say I'm working at New Hampshire Public Radio and there aren't tons of dining options um in Concord New Hampshire anyway uh and so you find yourself in these various um kind of uh patterns for going out for lunch and one of the things I was doing at the time as a pretty broke I think I was making $25,000 a year and I would go to lunch at this Chinese buffet that was in this not so great shopping center with the market basket which is the grocery store there and I don't know if this place is still standing or not but it's the type of place that like walking in or whatever like then I didn't even give it a second thought But like, I'm sure if I were to walk into this place now, as it was in 2001, I would probably maybe just turn. I'm sure I would just turn around and walk out. I'm sure it wasn't really a place that I would enjoy being right now. But at the time, I was just like, yeah, Chinese buffet, lots of food, not much money. I would never go there with every now and then I'd run into co-workers there and I would be embarrassed because it was like it was like real shame eating for me. Right. Middle of the day, middle of the day. Let me just go all I can eat Chinese buffet. And I always had a weird I always had a weird relationship with those places I have a weird relationship with food Because I'd be drawn to them so I could shame eat But then I would really feel the shame while I was eating And Often after like whatever number of Plates that I would get I would be full but you're like well

I want to say for the record I bet you did not Consume as much because I've eaten With you many times and you always say That you ate too much food and I've only observed You eat what is a normal amount of food so i bet you that you are not gorging as much as you felt like you were but even so the feelings were real to you i mean it's an all you can eat so i know that i was

i felt pressure to always eat as much as i possibly could right and so you're going back

in one of those places and i'm sitting on the massage chair i'm trying to eat all the food

trying to get all the massage I can really maximize the experience.

I remember like running into coworkers there and just like kind of feeling ashamed or like, or like maybe going up for my third trip or whatever. Anyway, there's a lot of shame involved in this whole thing. But anyway, I remember one time I'm there by myself. I have already eaten probably at least two plates and then I'm going up. I got to get my money's worth. So I'm going up for my third plate and I'm just going to, just going to end this meal with a few last breaded chicken wings. Right. And I do that. I bring it back to my plate. I'm already having all my emotions and, and, and whatever. And then I bite into my chicken and there is a feather in there and it was a terrible feeling. Just, just the most, I could not have felt more gross in that moment. And again, this is lunchtime. I'm going back to produce tomorrow's show. Right. And I'm just like, Oh God, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I pledged that day never to go back to that Chinese buffet, which was a promise that lasted at best two and a half weeks. Like, did you ever get the chicken again? I'm sure I did. I'm absolutely sure.

I mean, you know, I'm sure I was just a little bit more careful biting into it. Sure. And there's also an argument that you got that out of your system. In other words, not out of your system, but out of the restaurant system. Like, what are the chances of getting a feather in your chicken fingers? Fairly remote But once you get one Then the chances of getting another one go way down Especially, yeah, like getting struck by lightning In the same restaurant Right, exactly Yeah, you got struck by lightning and you survived You probably now have less reason to be afraid Statistically of being struck by lightning Than the average person who hasn't

Right, yeah Although, at a place like that You wonder, you know what I mean Again, this was not a top-tier Chinese buffet So you're like, where are they getting their chicken from And like, how common is it But yeah, and I just remember I remember running into Actually, it wasn't even a colleague Like, I remember feeling a lot of shame running into like, although she was there, too. I would like to point out that anybody you run into in these places, they're there as well. You know, I remember running into not a colleague, but my colleague's wife who was like really cool and just seemed like more. I think she actually ended up getting into farming and became kind of like a bit of a farmer herself. And so I remember like having dinners at their house where they were serving like like beef, I believe, that came from the farm that she worked on. And so she was like, you know, getting her hands dirty in that way and just sort of seemed like that real clean living, not in that way that you were talking, but just generally speaking, like a real clean living person. Farm to table. Yeah. Who was like smaller carbon footprint and way more seemingly sophisticated than me, like probably 15 years my senior or something like that, or maybe more. Actually, I'm in my early 20s. This is a family that they're they're probably in their late 40s at this point or whatever and just seem like leading the good life and like running into her at this Chinese buffet next to the market basket on Loudoun Road or Main Street or wherever it was and just feeling like so much shame. But then you're right like, well, why was she there if she's so great?

Maybe nobody should feel any shit about how they're having their lunch. um i don't the last time that i was at something that was like a buffet that i can remember was probably actually i went to a sizzler outside of sacramento california this was when i was there for a tv story and i had some weird window of time between when i was like done shooting and when the plane was taking off and i was trying to find something near the sacramento airport and they had a sizzler and i went in and i don't even know if i'd ever in my life been to a sizzler before this believe it or not i don't think it was because it was kind of when i was a kid it was fancy like we would never that was not the kind of place we would ever go and um and then when i was an adult it just wasn't appealing to me but they had it was like 19 bucks or something and it was they had a salad bar that was so awesome for what it was i mean it had everything

because it wasn't just salad right it was just like they call it a salad bar but it had

all kinds of foods in it exactly so this is what came with the salad bar first of all i could have just made the salad all day because we're not talking about health food here we're talking about iceberg lettuce and uh those like uh chinese uh like you know crispy noodle things and black olives drenched in ranch this is arguably one of the worst meals from a health standpoint a person could eat but it's just so good and then you can just like make this thing however you want it then they had a taco bar and they also had um unlimited like some kind of a soup thing they kept bringing me and they kept bringing me texas toast i was like god if i lived

near here this is a long time ago right this was no it's like three months ago oh oh i thought this

was like way back when you were living no this was like whenever i was when i was doing that tv story about this um ocean liner that the guy has in stockton california so ever long ago that was maybe four months ago but um i was like i i honestly was like this is maybe it was so much fun because that's not a typical meal choice for me yeah but for something that was kind of pretty like a once in a while treat to just be like oh man and like you know just dad every every sort of every high calorie bad version of everything that i like to eat was there available they had soft serve ice cream on the way out i was like i was in hog heaven man i believe it pretty great all right let's take the listeners to music heaven andrew before we get out of here um with a little music for your weekend uh what uh what are you what are you planning on playing for the listeners today i'll be honest i have not been listening to

a lot of music i don't have anything that's burning up my own personal charts right now i've been listening a lot of podcasts but i'm not going to just play a clip of a podcast i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to lean on the listeners a little bit here a while back in i'm going to say a couple of months ago in the newsletter and i should have looked up who this listener was um but you know we'll highlight a listener in the newsletter in the 10 of the week segment and people can fill out a little questionnaire if they want to be highlighted as a 10 of the week and one of the questions is what song would you end tbtl with if it were your choice but somebody's suggested this song which you might know luke i have a feeling that this was maybe was popular in certain circles as a summertime jam a while back it's a collaboration between the Nox and Powers. I think those are two individual duos here. And I think the Nox are an instrumental type of outfit and Powers offers the vocals here. And the song is classic. And while it's not exactly my kind of music usually, it really speaks to me as a real like summer song. It just has real song of the summer vibes to me. So this is from a couple of years ago though. I want to make that very clear. And this song is called Classic, featuring Powers by The Knox.

Oh, what a masterpiece, the way your eyes met mine feet. Like apple pie, caught in your energy. The future came to me, I see. It feels so busy. You and me, the magic.

Krista in Seattle suggested that song in the newsletter a while back.

Yeah, but real, real summer vibes, right? That feels like, that makes me lament no longer having a swimming pool. That feels very like it's the middle of summer and I put on the like, I don't know, um like neon indian pandora playlist or something and then it just like cycles through a bunch of very summery songs as the summer sun is beating down yeah that's a that's a whole vibe yeah um a song that uh i wanted to suggest is from a band called planes and planes is actually a duo it's katie crutchfield also known as waxahatchie and then a singer named jess williamson um and uh i'm just reading in rolling stone that uh just before the pandemic uh katie and jess had exchanged albums so jess had made an album called sorceress and katie had made of course saint cloud which is still in heavy rotation in my life and they both listened to each other's albums and they were just loving each other's projects and they said we need to collaborate and so they did and the band is called planes and they have this album that's coming out Called I Walked With You Aways They're going to be touring Oh the other thing is Of course Addy like Texted me this song this week And was like you got to check these out And I was like I'm already up on it Because why because I happen to follow Jeff Tweedy's son on Instagram Spencer Tweedy who's a drummer And Spencer Tweedy played drums on this So I was like Yeah way ahead of you kid I saw Spencer Tweedy tweeting about it Three seconds before Addy happened to send it to me As I'm reading these kind of reviews of it People are talking about how this is really Katie Crutchfield Leaning fully into her Lucinda Williams phase Which I'm all there for Because I love Lucinda Williams And I love that St. Cloud album So yeah Can we play the song Problem With It From this new album By Planes I did

out farther away I got a problem with it and I don't know how to say it's a pink carnation it's a hand hastily play the potboiler wearing out gave them something to kick up dust about If it was love you were after With a long shadow of doubt

If it's all you got Yeah, it's all you gave I got a problem with it If you can't do better than that, baby I got a problem with it Justified it in my own way I lost myself in it If it's all you got and it's enough, you see I got a problem with it

Also getting some Fleetwood Mac vibes. Oh, yeah. Which is never a bad vibe for me as far as music goes. So that's from Planes. I'm excited. It's the only song I've heard. It may be the only one that's out, but they've got a whole album and I am really, really excited. Plus, they're coming through, they're playing the Neptune in Seattle, Andrew. They're playing Rev Hall here in Portland. The Neptune.

Oh, yeah, the Neptune. For some reason, I was thinking Nectar, which is a very small venue. I was like, whoa, that place is going to be packed.

Is Nectar still operating? Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. Wow, that made it through the pandemic. I think we almost did a TBTL event at Nectar. I think I went and toured it once. Yeah.

Maybe it was Livewire. I don't remember. I shot a couple of, I ever tell you about this era of my, I think I can say this on TBTL.

When you were kind of – was it when you were making – trying to make films or when you were doing photography?

I was doing photography and I was hired to shoot at least – I did it at least once, maybe twice. I shot some reggae concerts there. Actually, the photos turned out well and I would rent a lens, but I will tell you that I was paid in marijuana to do those gigs. That's where I was in my life when I came out here. Yeah, it was quite a bit.

I mean, that's really on brand for a reggae show.

It really was, yes.

It was – So how does that conversation unfold to where they're proposing that the remuneration will be in nugs? Well, okay, I'll just tell you because I brought it up.

No, no, I brought it up. You feel sensitive. My relationship with this fellow was based on that. He was the man who provided me my marijuana when I came here to Seattle before it was legal. And so basically he had a couple of different jobs, but he was also like a promoter. So he would bring, like, these reggae acts in from, you know, from Jamaica, from other states, other countries, and he would put on these shows. And actually, it's not my kind of music, but it was, like, it was modern twists on it in a way that I enjoyed. So it wasn't bad music, and I appreciated what he was doing, and he was just very much on his hustle, and he was my dealer. And so he just kind of said, hey, you want to shoot these things for me, and I can, like, give you an out. So I'm like, yeah, sounds good.

Nice. I mean, maybe not nice. I guess it's technically illegal, but still.

I feel like I can tell that story now because it is legal, and it's like, okay, whatever. What are you going to do? Sue me? Sue me for what? Well, probably a- Sue me for what? An ounce of weed, I guess.

Our listener suggestion comes from listener Karen. Corin, right? Corin, yeah, thank you. Thanks a lot, spellcheck. Because you can see, I don't know if you can see on the show sheet, but it's auto, it's spellchecked to Karen. Sorry about that, Corin. I knew that didn't seem exactly right. Corin says, Hi, Andrew and Luke. My submission for music for your weekend is this song. My husband and I also play Wingspan, a.k.a. Bird Actually. And this song is a real banger for game night. Have you heard this song before, Andrew? I don't think so. I'm just looking at it now for the first time. It's called Birding. Who is it by? It's by, of course.

According to YouTube, it's by, and if I'm looking at this right, Sweatshop Boys, but S-W-E-T, Sweatshop Boys.

here's the thing about sweatshop boys i looked at a little listing and i was like oh obviously that can't be the person that i think it is but it is one of the people in this band i don't even think they perform anymore is riz ahmed the actor from the night before and from sound of metal which he was nominated for an oscar for i don't know any of these references i bet you do if you saw a picture of riz ahmed i mean he's a very big star these days he i guess was a musician before he got into acting. That's the only thing. You didn't happen to catch The Night Before with John Turturro and this guy Riz Ahmed? No,

but I'm a Turturro guy so I should check this out. Dude, it's Turturro

at his most Turturro. He has all kinds of anxiety and he's always itching his skin with a pencil eraser because he's anxious and because he's an investigator. Or is he the attorney? I think he's maybe the attorney representing Riz Ahmed is a guy who's basically wrongly accused of a crime in New York. And anyway, it's a really good show. I think it was on HBO. Extremely riveting. Would recommend The Night Before. The Night Of, I think. The Night Of.

I'm looking at the Wikipedia now.

The Night Before I remembered the name of the show, which was The Night Of. The Night Of.

So I was really talking about the previous evening.

Anyway. Okay. And then Sound of Metal. Also, he got a lot of sort of a lot of attention for as well. I think Sound of Metal is where he is A drummer who is losing his

Hearing that's exactly what I'm reading You were saying I was reading Those words as you said them so yeah So this is a song though that like

I'm just saying Andrew you and Veeves Playing birds actually listening to This song about bird watching which Actually slaps harder than a bird watching Song you'd imagine It would it's pretty Good I have to say like this is this almost Makes me want to play birds actually so thank you to Corrin for sending yeah there it is he

He rapped under the name Riz MC And was a member of the sweatshop boys Which earned critical which is a great name Too for an outfit by the way yeah although what does Sweat mean without an ace SW

I don't know but I'm guessing they just Wanted to look as much like pet shop yeah Exactly yeah so they went with that spelling Cool looking forward to hearing all right so that's we're going to go Out with it's a little sweatshop boys Here on a Friday edition Of the show that'll bring us to the end of our broadcast week Thank you so much for listening we'll see you on Monday with more imaginary radio and still then stay cool stay safe and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

me i'm fly swallow tailed gull i drop facts call me snapple i'm in the sky i'm a boat-tailed grackle i'm on the block like i'm coke or heron fit very colorful tricolored heron i'm with your girl tucked under the duvet she very beautiful she like a blue jay she don't like you she said you was a peasant she said i'm classy like a ring-necked pheasant now i made you a very special

dish it's spaghetti but instead of meatballs it's raisin balls they look the same but they taste very different there's more here you don't feel like you got enough no that's this is a good portion do you want to know what they symbolize uh yes so i'm the kind of gal who tries to make the best of things, and since meatballs will never, ever exist again, I said, Carol, get your hands up, grab some raisins, and you smash them into a ball, girl. I know we're not each other's soulmates, parentheses, meatballs, but if we give it a little effort, perhaps we can make it work, huh? Parentheses, raisin balls. So we might as well dig into the raisin balls, parentheses, life we've been given. You don't, these have turned. You might want to just eat around them.

Yeah. Power out.