Muse

I need a little treat for the gang, something to win their affections back.

Back? Why is that, Michael?

Well, I ran down Meredith in my car. Oh, did you do this on purpose? No, I was being negligent. But she's in the hospital, she's fine, recovering nicely, tiny little crack in her pelvis, but she will be...

Did this happen on company property?

Yes. It was on company property with company property, so double jeopardy. We are fine.

I don't think you understand. How Jeopardy works.

Oh, right. I'm sorry. What is We're Fine?

TBTL! Before we go any further, I need to know if there are any hidden recording devices in the room. I will find out if there are. I'm sure you will, but there's none, because that would be stupid of us, and we're not stupid. Silly move. It's a no.

Well, that should take care of those two evil geniuses for a while. I hope that they've learned their lessons, that computers are built by people, for people, to help people, not to control us. Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets?

www.this and www.that. Let's www.explainit.

I just might have tacos tonight. It's in material.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

I'm so excited about this show.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

You know, you gotta eat that microphone.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is, uh, it's actually, the temperature has dropped by about 10 degrees from yesterday. But that still means it's going to be 90 degrees. I just love our cheetah! It'll be toasty outside, but inside it is, of course, climate controlled. And the only real impediment to me hosting the show today, of course, is...

Time for cat massage.

The fact that the cat bubbles is just going absolutely ballistic in here. I was holding her throughout that entire intro package just to try to calm her down. It's like she wants me to pick her up, but then as soon as I pick her up, she's deeply unhappy with the situation. Anyway, let's focus on the task at hand, which is episode 3739 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

The other day on the show, we were playing some audio of Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Sesame Street. And the reason that it was going around the internet was because she says a bad word in front of Elmo. What I was struck, though, by was the fact that the Muppets, and yes, I have learned they are called Muppets. I was calling them puppets on Twitter, and my girlfriend corrected me through text message. She wouldn't just like, you know, get out there on Twitter and roast me in public. She's more conscientious than that. But yes, they are. I guess they're all Muppets if they come from the mind of Jim Henson Studios. Anyway, I was curious about why it was that the Muppets stayed in character even in between shots. Because I don't know. It just struck me as odd. Well, it turns out one of our listeners is a bonafide director of videos and commercials and projects often using puppetry and stop motion animation and all kinds of cool technologies and art forms. And she is going to explain why it is that the Muppets stay in character in between shots.

Can you can you verify? Can you give me some four one one?

That'll be fun and informative. Also, Australia is back at it again.

Australia is a wonderful island.

With the getting mad at people for bringing things into the wonderful island, someone's been fined almost $2,000 for failing to declare two Egg McMuffins that were in their luggage. And also, Australia is back at it again with the kind of cheeky government officials. Remember when Johnny Depp and Amber Heard brought those dogs into the country? Boy, that was a simpler time. That was what we knew them for. Just all kinds of noise and weirdness happening out in my apartment. I don't even know what the cat is up to. But they were in trouble for bringing some dogs and not declaring them. And there was an Australian governmental official who seemed to take great joy in getting in the media and making all kinds of wild proclamations. Well, there's a different Australian government official who's really picked up the mantle, taken the torch, and is now making silly comments to the media regarding Egg McMuffins. So we will get into that, plus emails and V-mails. And this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is, among other things... My rotten soldier. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning.

Good morning, Luke. We just blew through nap time, didn't we? Wow. I feel like I've lived a lifetime since I spoke with you last. The truth is I didn't do a heck of a lot since I talked to you last.

No, you did. I saw it on Instagram. Yeah, I did do one big thing.

You did an incredible job of trimming your hedge. I get into a state, an all-encompassing state, when I get into a project like this. because this weekend I did tackle a project that had been more and more necessary, which was to see if I have the proper tools and the proper physical ability to fully trim the hedges that surround our house. Yes. And these are really wide hedges. That's the thing that was kind of bothering me. So even if I get up on a ladder with my little electric, I think they call them hedge shavers. I'm pretty sure that's what they call them. And if I could welcome new sponsor, HedgeShaver.com.

Are you tired of spending too much? I'm just going to keep making that joke every day on the show. I believe I made a version of that joke on Friday's episode.

Hedgescaping. Brought to you by Hedgescaping.com. Men, are you trying? God, I am so out of it. I can't even. This is going to be a terrible show on my end. I need to shut up right now. Would you like to solve previously unsolvable problems and trim your hedge at enterprise scale? Thank you, Luke. Boy, I started to riff and I just like I just fell on my face there. Yeah. So it's been a weird weekend because, yeah, I just was like, OK, the temperatures are a nice breezy 90 degrees. How about I choose this weekend to go out there and see if I can spend two full days cutting back these massive hedges? The good news is I'm standing on my tiptoes on a ladder with an electric hedge shaver and going through one electrical cord before I had to buy another one because I totally cut right through my 100-foot extension cord at one point. With the trimmers? Yeah, because these are not battery-operated. This is one of those plug-in ones. And you didn't electrocute yourself? No, I did not, no.

That seems like that would send a tremendous shock through your system.

Um, no, let's see the, um, the handle of the machine I'm using is plastic. So yeah, and it must just be such a common thing, right? I mean, how many times have in your life, have you seen one of those, um, extension cords that looks like a rosary, like a huge rosary chain with like beads of electrical tape all over? Cause it's been cut into so many times by doofuses like me. I think that they would have to, you know, we'd have a lot of, we'd have a lot of dead home gardening, not so enthusiasts. Boy, I am really struggling with my words today. And so anyway, it feels like forever since I've talked to you. I really got into this project. I guess maybe I was up late last night, but on Friday and Saturday night, I worked until like 10 o'clock at night on that thing. And so it took it out of me, and that's what I've been doing, and I feel like I've been in a cave of work.

It turned out really well. I've seen pictures on Instagram. I think you texted me a photo. I have a lot of questions, though. First, did you just use the hedge trimmers that came with the house?

No, we didn't have anything that came with the house. But Genevieve, when we bought the house or knew that we were definitely getting the house, Genevieve had this period where she was super excited to move in, but there wasn't a lot to do yet because we didn't officially own it. So she started buying a lot of things off of Craigslist. She was on a mission to get a ladder. So I was on a ladder that she got for free off of Craigslist. I believe she got that done in Federal Way maybe. And then I was using hedge trimmers that she bought for $10 off of Craigslist. And I can't remember.

And those worked. Those were sufficient.

Well, yeah. They are, I believe, 18 inches. And today, or I'm sorry, yesterday I was at Lowe's and I just poked my head. Because I think we're going to need to upgrade this tool. Like, first of all, I want to get a battery-operated one and a longer one as well. And I probably should get a taller ladder, too, because this is a – you know what they say about free – you know what they say about ladders, never pay too much. Don't overpay for a thing that could endanger your life.

Exactly. We actually have – I want to say we're probably the only podcast in America, certainly the only public radio podcast, that literally has an introduction tape about ladders. Yes. So you'd think we would know what we were doing. But this, okay, so this is the nature of my question, and I want to make sure that I'm not sounding like I'm being critical, but, like, that hedge is so intense, and my thought was it might be something that needs, well, let me just tell you that, and this is no surprise to you or the listeners or Vives or anyone, if I had that hedge and I was going to try to trim it, And the first thing I would do is I would go to Lowe's or Home Depot and I would probably overpay for their biggest piece of technology that does that kind of stuff because I would be thinking.

I don't want to try to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon you know I don't want to try to like do this very intimidating task with anything less than the best that technology has to offer whereas if you're going by way of the secondary market let's say I was wondering if you might have ended up with like a ladder that could have would have been better if it was a little taller and hedge trimmers that might have been better if they were a little burlier but then you got such a great result like it just turned out awesome so I guess it all worked out but I was wondering if you were thinking at some point boy i could use an extra six inches on these trimmers so that's just that

many fewer passes i have to make yeah you nailed it because when i was looking at um sort of window shopping at trimmers at lows i saw that the standard one is 22 inches i don't know if i said that and ours is 18 so a little bit of extra um a little bit of extra length on that thing would go a long way because again if you can picture this like i'm up on a ladder and when you're when you're looking at this hedge from just like you know ground level you can't quite appreciate how wide it is until you see it from above and so if you can picture me on a ladder and it's not a very tall ladder and that's kind of the problem but like i'm like two or three steps up on this thing and then i'm reaching as far as i possibly can with my left or right hand and i can't even get two hands on it if i'm trying to reach to the middle of this thing right uh i can just get to the middle of it and then i have to take my ladder all the way to the other side and then get get it from the other side as well you can't reach across this thing just like reaching on your tippy toes on a ladder as far as you possibly can from both sides just i'm just able to clear the the kind of the middle part of it the widths of it and so um i do think that i want to get a better one but the thing is i didn't want to buy any equipment until i kind of knew the score right like i just and

that's where you and i are different and that's why i'm the the owner or the previous the former owner of many pieces of equipment that i barely used like i like to buy the equipment long before

i know this and now that i mean and again it was it it it didn't help that my weekend to do it was the hottest weekend but i won't be here next weekend because we're supposed to hang out with some friends at a cabin and um this is how this is where i am now in my life i'm just like oh god can't hang at the lake next week i have shrubbery to like i'm so mad that i can't continue because i have more shrubs that i need to cut back but the thing is they were they were getting really bad like we moved in here and it didn't occur to me how quickly these things were going to grow out of shape like they had them you know whoever was putting this house on the market had them nice and square when we moved in and that was just in march you know um or when we looked at the house i guess that was march and then um and now here it is not even quite six months later and they were getting shaggy man like to the point where i was kind of embarrassed like i don't want to be the neighbors who have the big shaggy hedges that that aren't uh that aren't uh you know attractive so um i was like well i and i'm standing on my back porch and this is one of those things where just you're looking at and you're like no this just this can't stand this can't stand i gotta i gotta take care of this tomorrow and then tomorrow became tonight because originally it was gonna be a saturday project but it was like friday around 4 30 i get the newsletter out and i'm just like you know what maybe let me just see what's involved here let me just grab the ladder and see it's involved and the second you start pulling on that string or orange extension cord you're just like uh the second you start cutting on that extension cord yeah exactly you're locked in yeah and so you know i was like okay this is doable like some parts were much harder than others i've already gone into too much detail but for various reasons um certain parts are much harder than others but all doable and so now i am excited like and these hedge trimmers are not they won't break the bank the ones i was looking at were about you know 140 bucks or something like that but if i want to get the battery one that means i'll have to buy an expensive battery and a battery charger which those things will actually that doesn't come with that price up too much i don't it might come well it might come with a battery but usually not the charger i could be wrong about that because a lot of the batteries are interchangeable for various for various products you know i mean you can slap this thing your head yeah i don't know because i had a um

a weed eater or a what are the other names for that that we learned whipper snipper a whipper snipper i had an electric one and it seemed to come with everything i needed but maybe that was just that particular brand and i mean i can't speak highly enough of not having to deal with that extension cord yeah yeah any amount that you pay for a battery operated situation and they also make them with all kinds of extensions you know so that you could be you could actually just be in your basement and trimming the hedge right it does seem like there should be some sort of drone solution to this thing doesn't there yeah no it feels like they should there should be a device that is basically like three blades okay two blades going vertically and then one that's running horizontally and you just set it to the width you want the hedge and then you just run it it just goes it's on wheels and it just goes down and just like cuts there i mean i think that's called a brush hog like the house that i'm working on because it's kind of out in the middle of nowhere you see i see like hand

made science someone's offering something called brush hogging my dad used to borrow one from a friend i think i've talked about the orange kaboto tractor that we used to mow the lawn with but that was like an actual tractor and the attachment that he had on the back was a big um like a you know bladed lawn mower thing that would attach to the tractor um but you could take that thing off and the tractor could do anything else right and so he would he would borrow a brush hog from i can't remember if it was a neighbor or somebody who would work with and then that's the thing he would use to like kind of blaze paths in our back is it paths or paths electrician i'm in my head about about those ths now but he would like kind of uh make these paths in the in the weeds in in our far far far backyard property for us to drive motorcycles through and whatnot i just i'm and

you're already on the road to this but i would say if this is something you're gonna have to do every six months it's and and again i don't think i'm convincing you i think you already made the decision but definitely you should get the right gear because you're going to be doing it a lot and it's going to you know save your you know back pain and all kind and safety like yeah it's you could have careened into that hedge in the middle of the project and then where would we be today well this show would not be getting on the internet i can tell you that much yeah you'd

have probably if i were not here today you'd probably have a better show but it would never

see the light of day and that's the irony there it would just be me like they say if you if you take 70 Luke's and you let them type on 70 laptops, you will finally, you will get some kind of a podcast recording, but it will never make it to the, how many monkeys are in that experiment? Is it 70 or is it seven? You know, I don't know. Cause when I started saying it, I was like seven monkeys on seven typewriters and eventually they'll write all the works of Shakespeare. But I was like, that doesn't seem like enough monkeys. No, we need more monkeys. We need, if we're going to get like Hamlet, we need, we're going to need more than seven monkeys and seven typewriters. um speaking of expensive equipment i broke down and bought a very expensive litter box this weekend andrew and it's i i don't even it takes nine weeks for them to deliver the litter box it's like buying a car or something um and uh it's weird because you know i am not the greatest with um spending and decision making and as we have already established thus far in the show i tend to you know if i think i'm going to need something i usually justify it in my mind and then i have a couple glasses of wine and i purchase it online or i go down to the hardware store or whatever but i have had the hardest time pulling the trigger on this litter box because it's like i'll just say it's like six hundred dollars but bubbles for a cat that's she's young and she's physically not that large she goes to the bathroom so much i don't know what the average output for a cat is but she is really a cat is an angel that poops in a box she is prolific and i was at some point this weekend i was just you know dealing with that situation again and i have this other thing called the litter genie which is kind of like a containment box to put you know all of the stuff you scoop out of the litter box so that you don't have to bag it up individually each time but

it like seals it off have you ever seen one of these um i don't think so i think i i've definitely It's weird. I was delivered an ad in Instagram this weekend for the new fancy litter box that you just got. And I'm trying to figure out, is there some connection between you and I that, like, you bought this thing and now the Internet's like, hey, maybe Andrew wants one, too. Those guys talk to each other a lot.

I wonder if because I follow you on Instagram or I interact with, because I liked your hedge photo over the weekend, I wonder if it's able to go, well, this person who liked something on this person's page purchased this, so maybe we'll cross, I don't know. Well, you know what?

I also posted a picture of my cat, not on the grid, but just in my stories. I forgot I kind of had a cute picture of Professor Bananas, so I threw it up in the stories. I wonder if the algorithm is like, oh, here's a picture of a cat. we should advertise an expensive litter box to them. Anyway, this is that big round thing, right? It looks like it's out of the movie. What's the space movie where they're all in the round spaceship? Is it?

I don't know. 2001. Yeah, that's exactly what I was trying to think of. Thank you. I was going to go. It was going to be Spaceballs or 2001 A Space Odyssey. That was it. Those were two guesses I had. I'm glad I went with the correct one. My brain is so bad. I almost said, you know, the one with the music. Well Isn't it Thus Spake Xerathustra Isn't that the name of that song

You always say it but I'm never sure It also has the Blue Danube in it as well

Yeah I think I'm also probably confusing those two Pieces of music but yes It looks kind of like an orb And I guess the way it works Is After the cat goes to the bathroom It has all these sensors and the cat gets out of the litter box And then the whole thing rotates It's kind of like the way that like a dryer. would rotate yeah and in doing so it then filters out uh the offensive matter and that goes into a drawer type of thing that's sealed and then you just empty that drawer out periodically the world's worst drawer just like just like oh yeah that's everybody's least favorite comes from opening that drawer so because i have this other thing right now that's called the littered genie and it's like a little kind of looks like a garbage plastic kind of garbage pail but it has this very complicated system of like a plastic bag and of course you have to buy the official plastic bags from the company because they're like a certain kind of proprietary shape the like the dispenser they come out of and you pull this plastic bag down you tie the bottom in a knot and then every time you scoop the litter box and you and you put the litter in there you pull this like spring loaded shelf out that allows the stuff to go down into the bag and then it closes and it seals it off but then that thing fills up over time and so then you have to go in there and pull out this huge bag of the stuff cut it with scissors tie off the top and then repeat the process so it was somewhere in the middle of all of this on Saturday where I was just like this is gross that I was like if I think about how many times in my week i'm dealing with this related to bubbles if i were to monetize that or if i were to say that's that's you know i would pay a dollar every i would pay a kid a dollar to come deal with this so i only after 600 times of not dealing with this will have paid for itself

well that's the funny thing about all of this and i wonder if like life just beat me down well no i mean obviously i know life just beat me down in a lot of ways but um like when i was uh when i was young and i had my first indoor cat this would be alex alexander francis walsh was his full name but just alex we can go by alex here um and i was about 13 14 years old when i got him and me and my dad were living together in lakewood ohio and um all of my other cats prior to that had been just outdoor cats out on the farm right and so now we have we have to deal with a litter box and i was very happy to have alex but like me and my dad neither one of us liked the idea of having this litter box in our small apartment but it was just the reality but both and this is trigger warning for uh waste alert but like we did not believe in scooping I think both of us were just like what you expect me to scoop shit after a cat we would just like you know let the cat go to the bathroom for a couple of days and then just dump the whole thing out and just like refill it with fresh uh litter like I just had this thing in my head like I'm not scooping after a cat that's

disgusting that had never even occurred to me it seems like a move i would pull yeah kind of

i use one bag of litter per day but that that was like what like that was 30 some years ago now and like i've had cats in my life since then and like now it just seems so straightforward to me like the good news is here where we live uh we have a very very out of the place way um for the cat to use the litter box like the litter box is back in this like kind of furnace room we have we just leave this little closet door cracked a little bit and it's totally out of sight out of mind but like once a day or maybe once every other day like i just go in there we have a good scoop we have a big metal scoop and we have good um uh litter that clumps up really well and it takes me i mean listening to you describe using that litter genie just now it occurred to me that that sounds like such a bigger pain in the ass than me just grabbing my metal scoop and scooping this thing it takes under 60 seconds like scoop scoop scoop throw it in the bag and then i take the bag out to the garage um i almost wonder if that liturgy was i mean did it really save that much time

well here's the thing i live in an apartment so if i were if i don't want to have bags of cat poop in the garbage that i'm also using to throw away other stuff in my apartment like you walk it out to the garage i'd have to walk all like down two very long hallways in this building to dispose of it or it's just living in my house in my apartment oh yeah i wouldn't do that but i really didn't want to deal so this seemed like the better solution and it has been i really just think some of this comes down to um you know this cat is a bangle i there i mean she's just i think barely like only a couple of generations from like living in the wilds of indonesia or something and she just goes to the bathroom a lot and it is pretty pungent so if i don't you know like and so after i've scooped it then there's the whole kind of just residual odor which is how i've gotten to buying these like 35 candles from rudy's which i'm burning through at a rate of about one every five days i'm spending like 200 a month on candles trying to trying to mitigate this whole situation rudy's barber shop rudy's barber shop really they're in the candle biz now they have they sell candles and one day and it's called like um what is that paulo santa everyone's really

into this like wood that you burned it has kind of a sage type of smell to it and uh i bought one it said 60 hour candle and i thought okay that should last me for about a year and then uh about four days later i'd burned all the way through it because i would forget that i had lit it and it was just going a lot and it also smelled really good um so then i was like so then becca's picking up like cheaper candles at trader joe's for me but they they sell out apparently trader joe's sells out of its candles in like one day because everyone's hip to the fact that they're pretty good candles that are reasonably priced so i mean there's just all these cascading effects from the fact that this cat insists on defecating and urinating and so i'm hoping that uh and i did another uncharacteristic thing andrew because i'm so finicky if i wanted the black version of this litter robot the litter robot four it was going to be an additional two to three week wait oh Versus getting the white one And I did want the black one more I liked the look of it better but I was like screw that I gotta just get this thing ordered and get it on the way So I actually bought one that was less Aesthetically pleasing to me So that I could get it faster

And it's on the way now though right? Or it's all set up? It's being hand crafted somewhere

Artisanally hand built in Portland No I mean the thing is I could have gone on Amazon And purchased the version three of this but this new this version four literally came out this month like it comes out August 1st I think like today or something and I was doing all this reading because I thought if it's significantly better then I don't want to buy the three like you know if they've actually like added some bells and whistles and some kind of more sensors or whatever so I waited around to get the latest one they sell in a color I'm not that jazzed about but whatever I just got to get something going here because I feel like a significant portion of my life is dealing with this cat's waste.

Can I share something with you here? You were asking how many monkeys at how many typewriters? Well, it's called the infinite monkey theorem. Now, this I have I have some dazzling deets here. This is I almost want to submit this to that website. The depth of Wikipedia. I can say depth, depth. Say it. I want to hear you say it so I can model myself.

The depths of Wikipedia. Yeah, that is hard to say. That is hard to say.

there yes um okay so i'm going to read to you a little bit from wikipedia here and then i'm going to describe this caption which is amazing so uh it says the infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text such as the complete works of william shakespeare so in this case luke it's one monkey but infinite amount of time right got it okay now by the way i don't like

that line almost surely i mean they surely will like it's not almost because if it's an infinite amount of time for the monkey to do it it will happen eventually it says in fact the monkey

would almost surely type every possible finite text in an infinite number of times however the probability that monkey is filling the entire observable universe would type a single complete work such as hamlet is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low. It's a lot of information. Okay. So here's what, here's the takeaway.

Like say they give, if you give them a billion years, they still probably won't do it. I mean, you want to talk about mega millions. That's anybody win the ultimate mega millions price. By the way, I did buy a ticket and I did win $2. Congratulations.

So here is what I want to tell you about. Cause all that is kind of interesting. It's also, I kind of sped through it, But this article on Wikipedia is illustrated with a black and white image. I believe it's a photo or maybe a photo illustration of a monkey on a chair behind a very old fashioned typewriter, apparently typing. And the caption is, well, I said it's a monkey, but it's not as a chimpanzee. And the caption is, let me wait. Hold on. The caption is it was the best of times. It was the worst of times. nope the caption is we can only eat what snails eat no um the caption is the caption is chimpanzee probably not typing hamlet that is how um wikipedia has uh illustrated this a picture of a chimpanzee probably not typing hamlet okay i think that's a pretty safe bet yeah but so it

gets to the infiniteness of it right because if you i mean this is the whole idea of the multiverse as well right is that if if the universe is infinite which we think it is right because there's not just a brick wall at the end of the universe that says like you know now we're done with this like if the universe is infinite then that means that there are infinite number of possibilities so that there is a version of everything we can think

think of uh that exists i guess somehow right i mean that's the idea of the of of kind of the multiverse that's the idea of the multiverse but i don't know do we take that as a given i don't necessarily take that as a given to me it's like if you if we agree that something is infinite that means that means it's not finite and if you can't if if if it goes on infinitely then that means everything is possible right i mean it's kind of hard to wrap your mind around but i don't know how there could be an alternative to that if if we agree that things are infinite but i don't know like where the other version of this show is the the version where you fell into the hedge and i'm solo hosting with bubbles like that's happening somewhere in the multiverse yeah because of the infinite nature of things but um i mean you're talking to a guy who can't pronounce the word depths this morning so i'm probably not the right guy i'm not i'm not the right guy and this is certainly not the right morning if you've heard the first part of the show for me to be tackling this isn't the right day for us to take on um what i don't even know what quantum physics i don't i literally don't even understand the area of study that we're currently messing up it feels like what i mean it feels like yeah that we're messing up is it is it like are we talking about astronomy here are we talking about physics like brian green would know that's all i know right isn't brian austin green from 90210 i thought there was an astrophysicist who was like a pop uh is it is a brian green do i have his name yes i believe andrew you're being hard on yourself you just pulled a brian green in another universe i never get that i want to let you know i got a text message from from our upcoming guest who says i'm sitting in my car with the air conditioner on but i will not talk through the bluetooth i promise now this is a person who gets it thank you yes they do because they are a professional creative type that's right Our friend Kat Solon, the director, and maybe animator. I'll ask her if she would consider herself to be an animator of sorts. Anyway, we're going to talk to her about why does the Muppets stay in character in between shoots or in between filming. Coming up in a moment right here on TBTL. all right let's thank some donors of the day these wonderful generous folks are making tbtl possible with their financial support talking about folks like irene parkhill In Seattle, Washington Thanks, Irene Kathleen Jones is also in Seattle, Washington We agreed the other day, Andrew This is a Seattle, Washington-based program Yes Even though I'm down here in Portland And I think the first three donors are really bearing that out Because Gail Schrebers is in Edmonds, Washington Which is pretty close I think we can still count it in the sort of greater Seattle area Hey, Edmonds, that's where the whirly ball is, right?

uh yes yes okay quick update on that because you and i mentioned a whirly ball on the show the other day and we said oh yeah seattle has one of the only two whirly balls in the country well if that were ever true it's no longer true because i got a text message from my friend in cleveland who had been at the cleveland whirly ball not all that long ago and um my brother-in-law in atlanta sent me a photo of a whirly ball place in the atlanta area so i was thrilled to hear that the sport of whirly ball is thriving i'm also i'm trying to think because it's off of aurora right i believe edmunds make its way all the way over to aurora is it off of aurora maybe i'm not sure anyway congratulations by the way to the whirly ball corporation for all of their success yes i mean if only our podcast could grow at the same rate speaking of chicago one of the other fine cities to host a whirly ball concern Andrew Sam Charner is in Chicago Illinois and is supporting the show then Bill Sonnenberg is in San Francisco California I don't know if they if they have a whirly ball yet if they do I'm sure it's a very cool one what with everything in San Francisco being so cool and then Robin Schmidt is in Fall City Washington it's an absolutely beautiful part of the world Fall City Washington is that waterfalls is that what that refers to you know probably somebody was asking us internally andrew if uh if was it issaquah and sammamish if those were considered suburbs right yeah of of seattle um this is for somebody that we work with who is trying to accurately describe something and i think fall city washington is out towards uh that way east and i'm guessing that it probably does have some kind of uh waterfall situation or something because i mean why else would you well name it maybe a clumsy citizenry just like falling over all the time it's a place where

Everyone's wearing those motion-activated, like, air inflation safety devices. Have you seen these? I don't think so. This is a growing technology where you wear kind of, like, imagine, like, you know, the kind of life preserver that if you pull the string, it inflates. Sure. Because it has some kind of, I don't know, mechanism or chemical. Imagine you're, like, wearing shorts and a tank top that's made of that. but the way that it activates is when you fall over it realizes and it just inflates like an

airbag before you hit the ground and then what is the practical purposes of this for people that

are older falling really major issue oh wow and a lot of times what will happen is someone is relatively healthy but then if they take a fall their mobility is impacted and then once they're immobile then a lot of other things start to kind of um you know mount in terms of bad health effects so if you can keep people from hurting themselves and becoming immobile they can stay healthy longer and part of that is to wear these body airbags the only thing i'll say is they don't seem like they have enough air to me to like like i want them to i want you to turn into the michelin man you want to be cartoonish i want it to be cartoonish because the amount that these things inflate seems like it would go from like shattering your hip to breaking your hip like it doesn't they're it's not that puffy you want to see it like go from just like falling over to

bouncing up into the stratosphere exactly so you go from this is terrifying to

and right now that's not it's probably not technologically possible but i was watching all these videos of like people standing around in a lab while some poor sumbitch has to like fall backwards to do the ultimate trust fall wearing his outfit and then it inflates it but again pretty minimally i feel like

some knucklehead's gonna use this at like a gender reveal party or something where like they fall over and it pops and then it's either pink or blue

What is that? Tannerite? Is that the stuff that is That the guy burned down half of the West with Because he was shooting at it for his gender reveal Anyway, all that is to say thank you to our donors of the day We really would not be here without you Thank you so much

Hello and welcome to Top Story

Alright Andrew, let's bring in our special guest I just realized I have the perfect drop for her Even though it's mildly offensive No. And it is.

The cat is an angel that poops in a box.

I don't think the cat does that, but I couldn't avoid it. I couldn't hold back. Cat Sullen, welcome to TBTL. Have you been on this show before as a guest?

I don't think I have. I've been on After These Messages, a very popular podcast.

You and I have communicated directly many times because, among other things, You also lived in that weird apartment building yard for a while, I think, when you were working on a project, right?

Yeah, I lived there twice in two different apartments while working on a TV show in Portland.

And so you really were like, you had all the inside information on life in the yard, as it were.

Yeah, the pre-COVID yard. Yeah, I did. I don't know that I'll ever go back there. Yes.

This is how the chain of information worked there. Luke would say something on the show about the coffee machine in the common room in that apartment building. Kat would text me with some dazzling details about said coffee machine. I would then text Luke that information. That's how it worked for a while there. Yes. It was very efficient. No, it's great.

um so uh and and cat you have directed i before we brought you on the show before the break i said i was going to ask do you consider yourself to be an animator no because you're using stop motion

and puppetry and things like that right yeah yeah i so i i started out directing by doing a lot of animation specifically stop motion and puppet stuff but live action puppet stuff and back then when i started i had to animate myself and i had to also build all the puppets myself and do the production design myself and now as i've gotten you know grown up in the industry uh i can't say I've gotten more successful. I'm older in the industry. Now I can hire people that are way better at those things than I am. And I'm actually, like, not a good animator. I'm animating something right now for a little pitch. And I just, I, like, it's, I'm like, oh, I'm not supposed to be doing this. This is not the part that I'm good at. but but so i so i really am a director and i i direct the animators we on my tv show i direct the animators the way you would direct the shivering truth that you're referring to yeah the shivering truth yeah is the show yeah right but i also i was on your website

today because i was refreshing myself with some of the stuff you've done i guess andrew mentioned this recently and it completely went in one year and out the other um which by the way seems like a thing that i could see happening in one of your videos that happens probably happened You've probably done that on something, right? I'm sure.

We have. Yeah, yeah. That's perfect. You don't want to see what comes out.

It definitely seems like your brand, particularly on Shivering Truth. But I was amazed to see that you directed the video for the Bright Eyes song at the bottom of everything, which I think was probably the first song that I heard from Bright Eyes and that got me really into that guy's music. and i'm like watching the video and my mind is being blown because you directed this and it's got like terrence stamp in it and evan rachel wood and that's that was so cool like how do you get terrence stamp general zod from superman to be in a music video um at the time i i was uh

i was sort of still i was living in portland working at different animation companies there and i had already made one video for connor for um bowl of oranges and that video i had made completely by myself i had animated it i had built the puppets i had shot it in school while i was still in college in chicago but then the second video which was at the bottom of everything because of the reputation of the first video his like his team was like really excited and jazzed to make the second video and um they were helping me cast it and they had me go talk to his manager at the time who is like hollywood manager like not music manager and um that guy actually eventually became my manager for a while but um they he i sat down with him and he was like so who do you want to be in this video and i was like oh i mean there's this character that's You know, I said, I said, he's like, what did I say? He was like, who's the guy that plays Gandalf?

Oh, is that Ian McKellen? Ian McKellen.

Ian McKellen, like him or the guy that plays also Dumbledore. Like I said, like that guy, but like younger and a little more intimidating. And, and my, the manager guy, Brian said, oh, so, so, so Terrence Stamp. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, someone like Terrence Stamp would be really, really cool. He's like, no, no, Terrence Stamp. And I was like, if you want, if that's possible. I didn't understand at all that it could be. And then they had me go to Sundance because Evan was interested. So they had me go to Sundance to have lunch with Evan to get her to do the video. And that was it. they both just showed up and did it and it was like we actually shot that on like oscars day and like terence we were like terence don't you want to watch the oscars he's like i don't need to watch the oscars i don't need to care about that it says something like i watched once with lauren bacall that's all i needed oh my god i have no stories that involve the time i did something with lauren mccall i'm sure he went to like the it was like someone like that like something oh my

gosh were you intimidated to direct him like somebody that you i mean you you this is pretty

early in your career right yeah it was the first time i'd worked with humans um yeah it was uh yeah he i was intimidated and i but it was funny because my version of intimidation is not like to recoil. It's embarrassing, but it's to start talking faster somehow and start being more effusive. And he grabbed my hand at one point and he's like, Kat, take a deep breath. It's okay. And I was like,

I'm not nervous. I'm just excited. And he's like, no, no, you're nervous. I was like, no, I'm fine.

Well, it turned out great. And I've always loved that song. And now I love the video even more knowing that that uh you're the one who uh who made it now what i really want to find out from you though is why the muppets stay in character in between takes because i find that slightly uncanny but i i heard by way of andrew who again is my main link to you cat that you said

there's a decent reason for it well so okay it when you were playing i was listening when

have i lost both of you guys or just cat i'm still here but i think we might have just lost

cat cat we i don't know if you can hear us cat but oh

Well, yeah, Kat just texted me and dropped call, so stand by, Luke. Okay.

Please hold while I try to locate the person you are calling.

Hmm, this is very fancy. What the hell? This is really weird. Oh, it's like a ring back. But this didn't happen the...

Data Center United, May and Zoom?

Oops, I think we have the wrong number. My apologies.

And don't worry. Okay. Bye. You speak with Data Center, eh?

No, but thank you. Now we know how to call the Data Center. This needs to be the Easter egg, Andrew. Please tell me you're still rolling on all this. That was the weirdest journey ever. Okay, I must have hit the... I must have dialed the wrong number there. Wow. That was like... You called a different dimension. We were just talking about General Zod, and I was like, oh, shit. Literally, oh, my God. How did I call General Zod? That was wild. Were you rolling on that? Still rolling, yeah. That's, I want to, we were doing a whole episode on what the hell that just was. You opened a time portal. What's that?

Hello?

Hey, Kat. Sorry about that. We just went on a whole journey in trying to call you back. Oh, my gosh. I kind of called the wrong number by not pressing the right button, and I swear we just called a different dimension. I am dying for you to hear the audio later, Kat, of what happened when we tried to call you back. It was the weirdest music I've ever heard. I thought this was your, like, outgoing – I thought you had, like, a ring back, you know? It used to be, like, you'd play a song for you and the phone would be ringing.

That was so cool.

But it was so intimidating, the music that was being played. We were just talking about General Zod, and then suddenly this guy answers in a British accent, and he's like, you called the data center? Oh, I thought that was a French accent. Maybe. I don't know. It was wild.

I love it. Oh, my God.

It was seriously like Andrew opened a time portal. It was so crazy. Chills.

I'm really happy to be talking to you all, but I don't love phone calls. Like, it would be nice if that could happen all the time when people call me. Right?

Well, what Andrew thinks it is is because this company that makes the software that we use for this is based in the U.K., and so you have to add a plus one, and if you don't do that, you're just dialing within the U.K., and that's what happens. So your number in the U.K. is crazy.

Wow, cool. Oh, my God, that's amazing. I love it.

oh my god okay okay but the thing uh that i was really curious to get your uh kind of experience on an expertise on cat is this idea of like puppets or you know muppets specifically staying in character even when the camera's not rolling is this something that you've dealt with as a director like when you have someone doing a puppetry yeah so so actually so to take it back

to like when you played the clip on the show i had already seen it on twitter and i was like what is like what's it gonna be like what's the thing that is like that he noticed that i didn't notice you know what what the hell is it good it worked i was trying to intrigue the listeners with that i'm glad it actually worked at least on you edge of my seat and then i i was like what what could it be and then when you said what it was I was like whoa because to me that's like totally normal like to me them staying in characters completely normal and almost all puppeteers do it and I I think it's because because I've okay not to brag but I've met some

muppets in person like as in a like a muppet like you met the muppet itself and there was somebody with like sticks who's down below operating the muppet i'm not saying that for sure i i'm saying

i met gonzo and i met miss piggy and now i met them separately they weren't together when i met them i don't want to cause any drama yeah the rumors of world yeah the rumors of those two yeah way to steer clear of that yeah so something that happens when you meet a muppet like a real muppet not just um there's a lot of puppets these days that look like muppets because the muppets were so excited exciting and new and fancy um and no one had ever made puppets that looked like that before Jim Henson did and something that happens when you

meet like real muppets like the real characters is you never ever you don't ever see them and and and they're not in character you never see them like just laying in a box like you never see them even when they're out of the box and there's an arm on them they won't just like be there with like a person another person's voice coming out or like just dead on an arm like Like, there was something that Jim Henson, he had a rule that either him or, like, Frank Oz or whoever, the early Muppeteer puppeteer people, they all had some sort of rule that if the puppet is out, if the puppet is up, that's a very common, like, in the puppet production world, you say puppet up, and that's when the puppets are alive and up. It is a lot. They are in character. So it was, like, a big, I think, part for him of, like, just maintaining the world, the reality of the world, and, like, making sure that people believed that Muppets were real and were, like, to establish the character. and i i i also like when i first started doing puppet stuff i was like come on like this is so cheesy like why are the why like like can you just talk to me with your real voice please like like you know like being a little frustrated or a little annoyed by it but now like after it's been many years i'm like i'm like no this is just how it is and this is what it's supposed to be and it is when you're shooting actually awesome because if julia we drive this hadn't swear thorn on those uh in that in that uh outtake they could have also used that material so they could have they could have used that in the show if they needed to so it's great in some ways because you get a lot of extra footage that sometimes when you're rehearsing with puppets like it's really hard to get them to because puppets can't they can't like reach for something grab it and then pull it away you have to plan every tiny little thing and so sometimes when it's just people playing in between shots that's the best stuff you're getting because there's no nobody's

worried about making sure the gag works yeah right so they're a little bit more at ease as it were or something so the outtakes end up being actually pretty useful yes but at first when i

started doing it and i started working i was like what is this i don't like this weird now it's

totally normal and it's normal that makes total sense by the way now that you say it that way as far as the like the reality of that world so that everyone involved particularly the other like live actors just are regarding those muppets as you know alive things they don't have to like keep doing a mental shift i mean it totally makes sense yeah exactly yeah this is something that is

now kind of universal around the world of puppeteering but it started specifically as a

henson muppet universe thing that's what i think i i don't know for sure because i've you know i've never been a henson puppeteer so i'm not sure but i'm i'm fairly sure it started with henson and And that it then became, you know, it's now universal. Because most puppeteers at that level, like, most puppeteers that are on a show like that, like, they've worked at Henson at some point. Even if this is their first, they, like, they're not, it's very rare to hire on a puppeteer to that kind of gig who hasn't worked within Henson before. um so yeah it's I think that that's I think that that's like where it's I think that's where it came from but it was so shocking to me that it was I was a shock to me it's yeah have you ever

worked cat with a puppet that's actually really annoying and they're just in character the whole time because like their character is designed to be kind of a jerk and then the puppet that just you're just like on set with an like an asshole all day no but that would be really funny i love that idea kill this problematic puppet well because you know the puppets have all kinds of different personality traits and sometimes they're there like it would probably be more fun to hang out with like oscar the grouch than yes big bird even though big bird is nicer but big board big bird no offense has less to offer me in terms of conversation but like the puppet's personality is also part of they're going to stay in character of the person you're basically on set

with i guess yeah yeah i was thinking about it a little bit with with that clip because that would have annoyed me like if if if elmo had said to me like oh you can't swear i would have been like, shut the fuck up, Elmo.

that's a different doll I believe there was a shut the fuck up Elmo doll can we use some asterisks and go and shut the bleep up Elmo as the show title possibly strong contender

I'm sorry also for my own swearing I also have a problem with it

well you make different kinds of shows then obviously than like Sesame Street

I do do some I do do some other kids shows nowadays but not Sesame Street I haven't done Sesame Street

Do you feel like puppeteers I mean this is kind of a parallel question to what Luke was asking before Do you find that people who are puppeteers have a certain personality type like in radio I feel like morning people who wake up at like 3 o'clock in the morning and get on the air at 4.30 and do the morning shift like that is a personality type I don't know exactly how to describe but every morning radio person I've met is just a click different than everybody else. I would assume that puppeteering might be similar.

It is very, very similar. They're also, I mean, not to just like, it's very similar. There's definitely a personality type, and they are people who love to perform, who are really good at performing, but it is like, they have a performance gene that I don't have, that I really admire, and I kind of wish I had, but it's it's like this fearlessness of just like put putting it all out there and being all out there another thing that's like so kind of unspoken but is really crucial is they're all really patient with like the the physicality of puppeteering is really difficult and and you have to like you know as a as the director producer writer whatever who's someone who's not has does not have their arm in the air or is not like crouched under a table in a tight space trying to act and also like do physical stuff, like act with their voices and physically act at the same time while crouched in a tiny space, it, it's, you don't necessarily, you have to, you have to be really conscious of that. Like you have to tell them when they can relax. Like you can't expect them to have their arms up in the air for like, you know, while you're like framing up and setting your focus and everything like you know like if you don't you have to know right away when they come in you have to be ready to go and you can't like like because they the physical labor involved is so insane like I can't and you really don't want to like accidentally injure one of your puppeteers because then you have a shoot day where your puppeteer can't come to set and you know and you're missing a whole character because literally like you can't to replace when you have another puppeteer inside of a puppet it's really weird

like if it's it's noticeable i mean you actually have the voice if this is a character that has a voice but you're saving the even the physical movement is different and it makes the puppet

appear different on screen yes totally and you can tell you can see it in the footage even if you like overdub with the person even if you put the real voice in you can see the you can see the difference and it's and it's obvious it's sort of like when you can tell if a character is like slightly broke it if someone slightly broke in a scene you know like a real actor you can

a real actor sorry a human right like jimmy fallon in every snl sketch yeah yeah exactly yeah

it's like all of a sudden he's a new puppet i have another quick just practical question

do the puppeteers have a video monitor of what is going on above ground as it were

yeah they do they each we try to get them each their own monitors so that they don't have to like crane their neck or twist their body in an uncomfortable way so they literally we try to set up a monitor that's like as much like neutral right in front of them as it could possibly be and um but then it's also flipped it's because it's a monitor it's like it's flipped horizontally so you they have to you know like get the get their bearings of like where left and right is and essentially everything is backwards for them but it's yeah it's pretty

amazing so what's the latest with the shivering truth you've done two seasons are you uh working

on a third uh we are currently not working on a third we um i i mean i i absolutely love collaborating with vernon and love working with adult swim uh the pandemic sort of put things on hold and that's sort of all i can say sure about it um but i i mean i'm not not to say that i wouldn't uh do a third season at some point um in some way uh or do like a feature thing with, with Vernon, you know, um, I, Vernon is the show creator, the writer and show creators, Vernon Chapman. Yeah. Chapman. He's, uh, we're really good friends. And so, yeah, I mean, I hope, I hope someday we can do another thing, uh, and we'll see if it's more shivering or what it is. Yeah.

But you also seem to be Tierra Wack's go-to person for making videos now,

right? Yeah. I love, I, um, I love her so much. I, i really feel really lucky that they found me and wanted to make things with me uh right now we're working on some other we're making some stuff up for the future um and she's just she's the coolest i i might get to go see her in philly this weekend for adults home fest um and people should come to that if they live in philly okay it's it's gonna be really fun oh that's cool so this is like a con for adult swim basically it's yeah it's a festival it's a music festival that adults and puts on of their favorite like current artists uh working right now and um they also like they like i think they put it on the network as well i think they like shoot it and put and air it um it's really fun it's a really fun festival it's it's like kind of a small one but it's it's really cool very much adult slim in that way one more personal question

for you before we let you go um because i feel like i feel like you might have sent me a message one time revealing this although i i could be wrong about that but does it annoy you i i have a tendency to refer to anything that's animated as a cartoon does that annoy you because

i know it annoys some of our listeners so that doesn't really annoy me i think that's kind of cute i i sort of i i i personally to me that feels like kind of like it kind of feels like old-fashioned in a way that i like um i the thing i don't like is is is when i'm like introduced not as a director and it's not that I it's just because I've worked so hard to get to this place and so sometimes with animation people just think it's like oh it's animation it's cute and it's crafty and it's something you make alone in your house you know and it's like no it actually like it takes a lot of work in a real team and it's way harder than it than like live action and you know so when people don't discern the amount of work that goes into animation that's where I get a little and so sometimes there's like dismissive language like like i don't think of cartoon as one but i but like actually it's even more in the weeds like i get a little annoyed when people call all stop motion claymation because it's not all claymation or like or stop action when they call it stop action animation that's not a thing that exists it's not real because it's not motion it's not stop action right yeah yeah exactly you're creating motions from individual stopping it yeah there is something there is a style of animation called pixelation and that's when you are animating something that does move on its own but you are breaking up the motion to create the sense of animation so like if you have like a person you know and they're gliding along the sidewalk instead of taking steps that's pixelation oh interesting there's different yeah there's different kinds but i don't expect everyone to know all of it

well it has been really cute this has been really informative cat um and uh i just like yeah this is it totally makes sense now as it relates to the characters staying in character um so i appreciate

the explanation i love that you noticed that it's so cool and yeah it just makes a ton of sense now

So is there anything you want to promote Or other than Adult Swim Fest in Philadelphia Anything else you want to mention Places we can see you or see your work

Yeah, go to Adult Swim Fest in Philadelphia My show Shivering Truth is on HBO Max There's two seasons And I apologize in advance It's amazing and intense

It is great

And then, I don't know I'm on Instagram and Twitter, just my name, Kat Solon, and I love this show.

You really forwarded an interesting idea on Twitter the other day saying, I'm paraphrasing, but it was like, there's too much pressure for people to have kids, particularly people who can become pregnant. And I think you said something like it would be nice if it was just more normal to get married at like 55 for the first time.

time if i would have waited i mean i golly the time and energy and money i could have saved if

i waited till 55 to finally do it i know i was saying you know i did think of you when i posted i didn't but i but thinking of it now am i your most divorced friend you might be you might be up there i think you might be yeah did you ever meet elizabeth taylor

because if not, then yes, it's me.

No, but I'm sure Terrence Stamps did.

There you go. We're like two degrees. Two degrees of separation.

As we let you go, I want to give a more like kind of full voiced – because your Instagram is open for anybody to follow, right?

Yeah, it is.

Okay. I just want to give a more kind of a loud promo for that too because I was thinking about it when you were talking about how difficult it is what you do and like we see the final product and like you say, somebody might say like oh yeah i like your oh i really like your little cartoon pictures but no if you really want to see like the immense amount of production and teamwork and sets and everything i love your behind the scenes stuff and you share a lot of that on instagram so people can find it

there yeah there's a couple in my highlights yeah uh behind the scenes stuff my story highlights

yeah awesome not sure well kat thank you thanks for doing this i don't know if you turned the ac off in your car if you're running it but if you turned it off i'm assuming you're in la probably

Yeah, I am.

Are you just like roasting to death somewhere in the valley right now so we can have good audio?

Yeah, I'm getting a little. I'm glad the audio is good. Yeah, I am getting a little warm. Okay, okay. They might have to call the paramedics on me.

Okay, we'll let you go because I know how warm it can be down there. But thank you so much. We really appreciate you. Thanks, Kat.

Thank you. It's nice to talk to you too. Have a good rest of your day. All right, you too. Thanks. Bye.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man.

it's not from a female boy we have the smartest most interesting like listeners you know we don't have a lot of them but the ones we have you mean we don't have a lot of listeners yes exactly a lot of listeners but the 10 listeners we have are all like really fascinating people i know that was

really fantastic it was also just good to talk to cat it had been a while but um hey i have a voicemail i want to play for you here luke came in a couple of weeks ago um actually i could be wrong here i could be hanging this uh anonymous listener out to dry but i think that this is exactly the kind of audio that cat was avoiding by getting off of bluetooth but i still think it's worth sharing and this uh this is a voicemail that is related to our i wouldn't say obsession but the the the ongoing topic of comic sans the font and when it's appropriate to use it and when

it's not hi lincoln andrew um i'm calling you from nashville and i'm going to remain anonymous but i was just listening to an episode where you were once again revisiting the uh theme of comic fans and papyrus fonts and it made me think and i think of this every time and so i thought i'd tell you uh my dad here in town i'm in nashville is a he's a man of 75 years he has practiced law here for i don't know 40 years he's a highly regarded attorney in his field he's like the go-to guy legally for his subject matter he's a named partner at a firm and what do you think the fondant that he uses for all his professional correspondence comic fans i kid you not all of my dad's legal correspondence goes out in comic sans and i think he just wants to convey you know i'm i'm a lawyer and i'm i am powerful and important and wise but i'm also friendly and i'm a fun guy and i think that's probably what he was thinking but i kind of think it's a boss move to just be like yeah what i charge xml per hour and yes i use comic fans i just think he came to a point where he was like you know what i'm gonna use the phone i want but it it tickles me to no end and every time he sends me an email i'm like yeah we're dead still just rocking that comic fan anyway i thought you all might enjoy knowing that so um just i guess i would say reconsider to the Comic Sans. Okay, talk to you later. Bye. I mean

that's an interesting, that's a strong case actually. Case and an interesting argument and definitely an interesting perspective I would say. Having said that, you find yourself in some sort of situation where you need legal help and you reach out to the best lawyer that everybody recommends to you and the first correspondence you get back is in Comic Sans. Doesn't that affect how you, the client, perceive the person that you just hired but I think this is the caller's point is that their father is

such a qualified lawyer and is so well regarded that basically they can do this with one hand tied behind their back that hand being called comic sam right yeah and and i do like i do actually think it's an interesting idea that like if you are someone who does have a lot of power and influence and it could be intimidating it's a way of uh trying to be less intimidating and Certainly not like trying to like overdo it with the like, I'm from serious, I'm from serious law firm incorporated. And, you know, like, look at how awesome I am. It's more like I'm going to be folksy. Like that's that is a real like kind of power move that, you know, because I mean, I've speaking of being your most divorced friend, I have had a lot of dealings with lawyers in my time and with opposing lawyers. and the move is when they send a letter about something it's like they are just it is so intimidating and threatening it can be you know because it's like they want to get the best outcome for their client and so they're not going to send a letter that's like hey if you don't mind could you do this they're going to send a letter that says these are the absolute worst possible consequences and you're going to get them on this date if x y and z isn't done like i would love i certainly as the person as the other person in the mix i would love it if the if my, you know, the people that I'm dealing with legal issues with had an attorney using Comic Sans. Maybe even throw some wingdings in there. Well, you know, Andrew, I'm glad that you mentioned webdings because the guy, Vincent Conner, I just went to Wikipedia, I was doing some research on Comic Sans. The guy who invented Comic Sans or is, you know, I guess credited with it. He also is apparently part of Either he created it or he was part of the team That created Comic Sans Trebuchet MS Webdings And something called Marlet Which I don't know if that's a font or not But Webdings have always And will always be the most confusing thing to me But now I'm looking at And are Webdings and Wingdings different by the way?

I guess, no It looks like they're the same thing I always called them Wingdings by the way Until I saw them written out as Webdings Yeah, because I always called them wingdings, and then you said webdings, and I was like, what the heck? Have I been wrong? And now I see, according to the first hit on Google, it says, wingdings and webdings are Microsoft dingbat fonts.

Let's see. What is the purpose of it? It must just be, so, I mean, I guess, let's see here. An unusual character. I mean, these look like basically like early emojis. like they're just kind of a you know it's a it's a looks like it's sort of a visual language so that you could transmit a message without actually writing it in letters and there is there's some

sort of difference i don't think we're going to get to the bottom of it right now but if you look at the article on wingdings on wikipedia oh boy the very first um not even the first description just at the very top it gives you a little warning not to be confused with webdings and then webdings goes to another article now i don't know if that's somebody being like super nerdy about it i mean they are both some sort of font weird picto fonts created by microsoft but it looks like they were created at very different times i mean one was around 1990 i just remember

writing papers in college and going through the fonts trying to figure out how do i what can i do that will make this seven pages i wrote look more like nine pages yeah and you just get deep into the bowels of like the font thing and then you start seeing something called web dings or wing dings and you're just like what in the holy hell is that what am I doing I guess

you could use it as a code like back in the day you could you could probably just write a secret letter to your friend then highlight it all and change the font to web dings or wing dings send it to your friend and then they could translate it back by changing the

font back to something readable that is the ultimate power move is if your lawyer is writing

and webdings that's what i'm telling you that is now that's a lawyer i can trust right there

right there all rightly uh i think uh i think we've we've done some quality work here on yeah

monday yeah i i've oh man i know you always say don't worry about it but that beginning of the show man i'm thinking about how bad i sounded at the beginning of the show today and i can't edit that out it's all intertwined i'm uh oh is there any chance you want to redo the top of the

show and i'm awake now if you host live wire for me i'll do the top of the show you really want to

mess around with that huh it's funny we were on a hundred and how many wait you guys are on hundreds of stations huh i wonder how many would drop i wonder how many would drop after zero and

zero i think you'd be great at that show um but uh do you have to read um there's some reading there's a late reading involved okay do you speak wingdings yeah that's the whole script i don't know why they do the script in wingdings but they do um i thought it was fine and also

I'm just very excited for the listeners to get to hear what the hell happened when we tried to call Kat Solon back. That was a sonic journey. When I called a Frenchman in space. Yeah, that'll be interesting. And, you know, because the shivering truth, because Kat's show is very, like, it's really intense, you know, and it has, like, kind of dark themes and stuff. I was like, I guess this is just her ringback number is just really like intense, almost droning like tone music or something.

But I knew that it was different because that was not what I got the first time I called her to get on the line. So, yeah, I thought we were I thought we were just breaking.

Can our listeners figure out who that was that we called? What was that that we called?

I mean, the thing is, I could probably call it again right now, but I don't want to. I think we've hassled that poor guy.

Exactly. Also, I don't know emotionally if I can hear that music again. I know. It's very intense. All right. Maybe I'll do some Googling. I'll see if I have any answers for you tomorrow. Oh, nice. Okay. All right. Well, thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do stop by for that. Until then, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. Stay cool if you're somewhere where it's still excessively hot. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

no no no i don't mess with computers okay ever since i died of dysentery on the oregon trail i was like no thank you i'm done with this power out