Muse

You know, Roland, when you said you found a grill, this isn't exactly what I had in mind. What did you expect, Johnny? Benihana? No, there's no dials, no tanks, no side burners. I mean, I wasn't expecting a built-in wine fridge, but this is nothing like what I'm used to. Come on, Johnny. You're talking to a grill master.

Do you know that I've been given three different aprons because of my barbecue skills? Let's see. I've got license to grill. I've got working grill. Oh, and I have grills, just want to have fun.

Just so you're aware, this has nothing to do with me not knowing my way around a grill. I've watched many a personal chef flip a burger in my day.

I've got the perfect apron for you. Poor little rich grill. I'll get it made up. T-B-T-L.

A lot of times in a meme war, it's all about speed. You've got to get to your memes quick. If you can't get to them quick, you're useless. They'll just keep blasting you with memes, and you can't fight it back.

I'm not trying to be disrespectful or anything, but I kind of feel like you're winging this and it's going bad. I hope it feels good. You hope what feels good? I hope it feels so good to be right. There's nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there? How about, like, pranking an animal? Sure. Punch an elephant. Sure. Done. I'd punch an elephant. You cannot prank an animal. With him out of the way, I think we're just going to be 360 spins and slam-dug pointers.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a special Labor Day edition of TBTL.

I'm not even supposed to be here today!

The show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. Right over there, my friend, Andrew Walsh. Hello.

Hello, Luke. It's an exciting day for me, because I have had a little pile growing next to me the past few weeks, a pile of packages that have arrived at the TBTL P.O. box. And, you know, we were on tape for a couple of weeks, and, you know, we can't do the what's in the box segment every single episode. so I've been really I'm looking at some of these packages and I feel a little bit like a kid on Christmas morning. I was thinking

that. So you sent me a picture yesterday saying for the Labor Day show let's do a what's in the box and you had a picture of all the stuff and I thought I'm so happy for you I mean I'm happy for both of us because it enriches the show from a content standpoint but I feel like you get a little charge every time you drive out to that postal operation and check what's in the box. I mean, it must feel

really fun. Yeah, you know, that reminds me. That's like a solid medium. No, it is really fun. I enjoy it, but something happened to me yesterday that I'm just realizing I could tell you about. So I've rolled into the post office up there at the edge of shoreline like a baller several times now since we got this PO box. And you even noted on the show a while back that my excitement for being the custodian of a p.o. box is maybe slightly outsized maybe my excitement is bigger than bigger than a bread box if you will um and it's true i are very excited about it i've never had a uh p.o. box before and i always forget the french word i always ask you to remind me of this the little home away from home where you're a piece on the side p to tear i consider it my little p to tear if i could remember that phrase even though it's just a p.o. box you know it's kind of got one of those old school like quasi postal ornate facades to it and i put the key in and it feels very old you gotta kind of like pull it open it's just the whole thing is very satisfying and i've told you before that if um if even though i got one of the bigger boxes sometimes people ship stuff to us that are too big for the box the packages are um and usually when that happens you'll find a little key in the po box and this just feels i mean it feels like you're in the game of Clue or you're in some sort of a mini scavenger hunt it's a scavenger hunt exactly like okay now I gotta go find this other box and open it with this key what's in there oh another key uh that hasn't happened yet but I'm looking forward to it someday well I'm gonna mail you a

key but in a huge box that they have to put so you'll open the PO box you'll find a key you'll open the other one you'll find another key it'll be the key to the city of shoreline if I want to

across the street this this um this uh p.o box this post office that i go to is in seattle it's just on the very edge of seattle so if you cross the street you're in shoreline by the way the p.o box is p.o box 33687 seattle washington 98133 um anyway so i

love going there it's pretty fun i feel like i say like kind of a kind of a high roller right and um a vip yesterday these and i were eating lunch in the area i like to go to that um pho place that's right across the street called um it's right across 145th there it's called tic tac pho yeah or pho tic tac which by the way all right quick aside quick update on that i thought that was tic tac pho because some people call it pho and i thought it was like a play on words, tic-tac pho, but somebody wrote in and said, no, no, no, it's pho tic-tac, and it's got a little clock on the sign, and tic-tac is like the French-Vietnamese way of saying tic-tac, I think. I can't remember if it's more of a French thing or Vietnamese, but obviously those cultures mingled. So anyway, the idea was probably more like, hey, you can come in and get a quick lunch. It has more to do with tic-tac. Right, it was probably saying it's time to have some pho. Or time to have some pho. Oh, girls just want to have pho would also be a good pho name. Anyway, so I was wrong about that, and somebody corrected me, and I found that interesting. All of that is to say, Luke, yesterday, Vives and I are having a quick lunch there, and I'm like, ooh, I didn't even tell Genevieve where we were going. I just got in the car, and instead of, you know, kind of going right down Aurora, I pulled into the post office, and Vives, without missing a beat. This is how you keep things spicy. Yes, Vives, without missing a beat. P.O. boxes. She had the exact reaction I wanted. And she said, oh, good, we're going to check out your P.O. box. She knew my game immediately. And then we go in there. I'm like, ooh, get ready. And I open up the big P.O. box, and there's only one thing in there. And it's a big pink slip of paper from our boss, Beth Perlin, telling me that we're fired. No, it's a big pink piece of. I should have done that harassment training module. Dang it. A big piece of paper that says, we have a package for you. It's too big to fit in this box. you have to wait in line like a schlub i'm like what there's no scavenger hunt key so then veves and i get in line and the people who work there are very nice and actually a mom and daughter were in front of us and they were a lot of fun to kind of goof around with the little girl was eating cookies and making faces at genevieve the whole time um so it wasn't a bad experience but like we rolled in i thought it was gonna be like hey yeah come you know come see my p.o box baby but But instead, we're just like waiting in line for like 25 minutes while I waited to get a packet. Well, maybe maybe 15 minutes. But the windshield factor was 25 minutes.

I know this isn't how it actually works, but I've often commented for something that is always described as in decline, i.e. the postal service. It sure seems popular when I go to the post. Yeah, right. Good. Yeah. It is not like it is not like people are not availing themselves of the service. There's always a line. It always seems packed. Yeah. it was packed and again i maybe the problem is they'll take a piece of paper across the country for 40 cents yeah it's still a pretty good deal they still used to be one of my stand-up comedy jokes back in the day was people complaining about the postal service and i'm like try to find somebody else who'll take this to tampa for you for 11 cents yeah what do you think let's do

a little quiz let's have a little extension of the summer games here what do you think a current day stamp a letter stamp what they're often forever stamps now anyway but what would it cost

this uh would this will indicate a how kind of uninformed i am on what i am on what anything costs and b that i don't mail enough thoughtful thank you letters to people because i am going

to guess it's 44 cents it's a banana michael what could it cost ten dollars um i believe it is now if i'm doing my googling on the fly correctly it is now 60 cents 60 cents does that kill your joke because anybody would go across the country yeah i mean cents to deliver what killed my joke was i

wasn't good at delivering it or standing on stage and feeling confident so there were a lot of other problems with my budding stand-up career but um yes 60 cents i remember being a kid though and hearing that the price of a stamp was going up and that was big news that was you know before we had people trying to overthrow the government or you know undermine democracy back when we didn't have a lot of real big news i remember it being a thing price of uh stamp will go up on friday it'll be

24 cents or whatever well do you remember from our youths from our youth our collective youth um the big uh what's it gonna be the old elvis stamp or new elvis stamp or not old you're like young elvis or old elvis and like i feel like the post office did something that marketers are really good at now but they did it way back in the day which was like they had their i don't know customers or the population vote on it and they created all this intrigue about it i feel like a lot of morning talk shows were like what will it be old elvis or young elvis like they really got people

interested in that yeah i was very into stamps you know i was a bit of a philatelist when i was

in grade school and you also collected stamps so that's interesting absolutely the one time my mom

caught me, and that put an end

that real quick gonna go blind um yeah i was in the stamp club and i was very yes i wish i still had those stamps i had some stamps from grenada that were quite colorful i was very into the like stamps that were from other countries that had either kind of a unique actual shape to them because they're not all just a rectangle um and uh yeah i had a book you know with that kind of like i don't know what do you call that contact paper what's the kind of like sticky paper that

can peel up like an old photo yeah i don't think that's contact paper but i know exactly what you're talking about the photo you pull open the clear you pull the clear sheet off and then you place the stamps or whatever you want to preserve down and you i had some of that too much later in life in my 20s actually i started scrapbooking a little bit right before i got the internet i'm not even

joking and we would trade stamps so stamp club would happen on like it would be like a friday towards the end of the day and all week i would be so excited for stamp club wow i didn't know this about you this was the burgeoning gambler in me though because basically what i thought was these stamps are going to be worth millions someday these are collectibles they're mint they've never been they've never been mailed anywhere and uh and so and i'm going to trade for some other ones that are going to be even more valuable i felt like i was really wheeling and dealing with like chin hung and my fellow classmates at daniel bagley elementary school

is it true that a lot of people just joined stamp club because they wanted to to get like impress people yeah and just like get to make out with people yeah i'm thinking about i'm sorry that

i'm um i'm taking this on a tangent away from what's in the box what's in the box i had i was thinking about how much i looked forward to the book fair as a kid oh yeah and also stamp club and i was like god what a nerd like i don't really i don't consider myself to be particularly nerdy But if you were to just like line up my interests in third grade, pretty hardcore nerdy. I mean, come on.

Book, book fair. That was, first of all, you could get things other than books. Everybody loved book fair, right? Couldn't you also sometimes get fun little erasers and other kind of pencils and doohickeys like that? Often the kind of erasers that really did not work as erasers at all. I mean, they worked great as little rubber snoopies.

snoopies they were perfect as erasers probably not they would set the book fair up on the stage in the lunchroom so we had a bagley there was like a a stage and then they would wheel the tables out you know i guess you could we never really had we had band practice on that stage as well another chapter of my life that i've very very fully documented on this show wanting to learn the transformers theme song that mr morrison came around and played uh and so year one my parents actually rented me a nice trumpet like a fancy one and then I totally didn't stick with it and then the next year I wanted to do it again and they were like we're not getting you a trumpet so they had a free trumpet it was like the poor kid trumpet oh and I used that my second year

boy I don't remember that story I knew that you had an electric guitar for a while or you had a guitar maybe it wasn't electric and and you were learning some songs on that I don't remember you playing the transformer trying to i didn't ever learn it when i was when so mr morrison the band

teacher at daniel bagley elementary school he would kind of come around like the one of the first days of school and kind of i guess he was recruiting kids to be in the band and the way that he impressed us certainly impressed me was he played the transformers like the cartoon transformers transformers more than meets the eye he played that on trumpet and i was obsessed with transformers so i was like i must learn trumpet so that i can play transformers theme song so that was like fourth grade i think and that was the year that my parents were like okay well we'll go to cannelly keys and we're gonna rent you a trumpet i remember it was just beautiful and like you know we didn't i didn't get to do a lot of extracurricular stuff that had any kind of cost associated with it um like if i played sports it would be like i'd have to you know beg my mom to go halvesies on the cleats with me or whatever anyway point is uh yeah so then i did probably band for like two months and i found it's very hard to play the transformers theme song it turns out so i quit and then the following year he came back and played the transformers theme song again and

i fell in love all over again god you just he really knew how to push your buttons i am really surprised here that i cannot find anybody who is playing the transformers theme song on trumpet on the internet i found literal sheet music for it for that exact thing and i found a kid here now this is exciting for us i i'm a i say us i'm a former trombone player and of course our friend gus is a current trombone player when are we getting our jazz band i know here's the here's the trombone version looks like this kid is going to introduce it too i have obviously i have not heard this before i've i assume that the audio

quality is going to be rough. Let's see if this kid's got some energy. Give it to me here. Alright, this is how you play a Transformers theme song on the chumbo. Please don't be pranking me, kid. Okay. Stick with it. Are you hearing it in there, Luke?

I'm hearing, no, because you know what I think? That's probably from the movie Transformers. Oh, goddammit. Like with Shia LaBeouf. I'm thinking, hold on, I'm just gonna do this now. I don't even need a trumpet. Ready? Yeah. Have I mentioned it's a holiday and we don't even have to be here? To the listeners.

We're doing this as you were doing, I was getting a note from spotify as you were doing that they're saying we got to pull this down that's crazy

because this isn't even out on the internet it's a it's called it's called a spotify pre-crime they just know but that's also by the way that shows how old we are when i say the transformers theme song and you you and i both immediately think of the cartoon from the 80s but that thing has lived an entire that franchise has lived a whole other life as a live action film that anybody under the age of 30 that's what they think of when they think of transformers yeah i saw the first

transformer movie in the theater i remember my friend i feel like it was a i feel like it was a weekday because it had that really good like playing hooky feel to it but i don't remember but i feel like me and my friend beverly went to see the transformers movie because i think she grew up being a big transformers fan of like the cartoon and the toys and i i had some of the toys i mean you know i liked the cartoon i was a kid in the 80s and i liked that stuff but i don't It seemed like she might have had a more nerdy addiction to it than I did. But anyway, we went to watch it in the afternoon, and I remember really hating it. I just remember Optimus Prime saying, put it in my chest, and he was like talking to a blue cube. Are you sure? Were you at an adult movie theater? Let me see. I remember Beverly was passionate about it. Now, I think there's some blue cube that he wants people to push into his chest. Oh, sure. I could be wrong.

But are you talking about the cartoon? No, no, I'm sorry.

I did talk about the live action I'm talking about yeah I'm not talking about the cartoon

which I believe that's the matrix right like before there was the matrix movies I think at least in the cartoon lore I believe that there was something called the matrix oh that was like this kind of special glowy thing that Optimus had and then when Optimus dies towards the end and they he hands the matrix if that's what it was called he hands whatever this like sort of essential energy source is he hands it off to rodimus prime oh right like a really shitty like hot rod semi truck that i had by the way because i like to jump on things right when they're becoming uncool i traded some massive amount of my toys for a rodimus prime which is like just but it's like buying at the wrong time because rodimus prime never became a thing is is

Did you say that that happens at the end of the cartoon movie that came out in the 80s?

I think so. There's something where I know that Optimus has, like, whatever that thing is, that glowy thing you're talking about, which I always called the Matrix in my mind. Yeah, I think you're right.

I'm looking at it here. The Matrix of Leadership might be what it's called, which is a real—they really knew how to snag the kids.

Exactly.

I'm pretty sure that we— All right, kids.

First, we're going to do some HR. We're going to do some cybersecurity training. And then, if you're really good, we're going to tell you about the Matrix of Leadership.

I promise you, Mike Ressler right now is in an office at American Public Media headquarters writing something called The Matrix of Leadership. But I you know what you're saying makes sense, because our friend Camaro Kev was over here a few months ago, and he was schooling me all on the background of the G.I. Joe movie. Again, these are the 1980s cartoon big screen features, the G.I. Joe movie and the Transformers movie. And, of course, both of them were supposed to be a way of introducing new characters so that they could sell more toys. And Rodimus might fit exactly into what we're talking about here. That's exactly what it was.

But it was like it was an abject failure in my memory. Yeah. Like it wasn't like I came back to school after the summer and everyone was like, we can't believe you got Rodimus Prime. Right. It was like nobody cared. Everybody was over the Transformers at that point. They were about to go dark for a few years before getting rebooted as a live action thing.

I want a Rodimus Prime t-shirt. I feel like that would be, that would really be carving out a very specific, of course, I'd also feel like a total poser because I'm only relearning about Rodimus Prime now. age 45 oh my god i'm i found the original i'll tell you what's in the box my dignity i can't it's been locked away for a long time now here's the thing transformer original g1 1986 autobot leader rodimus prime selling for 129 dollars whoa on ebay so i was actually on to something and just didn't realize it. If I would have hung on to this Rodgers, I'm going to send you a picture of it, okay? Back to the stamp collecting. Maybe it can even be the show pic.

Like you if you had held on to that.

I know. Although this guy like has the book and everything. You can tell this has been like, somebody was collecting this. Yeah. Whereas I was not very good at keeping things pristine as a kid. That's good. You were playing with it. You were enjoying it. I was, yeah, carrying it down to Donald Whitehouse's house and then, you know, doing whatever. Most of what we did there was smoke cigarettes, watch rated r movies on hbo when his parents were gone and try to make our own skateboards oh we got really into this mode like he he had a um like a skill saw and uh we got really into trying to make our own skateboard decks for a while wow and taking our wheels off of our skateboard our trucks okay off of like a functioning normal skateboard and then making our own skateboard deck out of plywood and then screwing our wheels onto the new skateboard deck and you're making it a plywood

which means even if you weren't handcrafting these, they're just markedly worse.

So much worse and would break and were less good to ride than the skateboard. But it was a thing. I was like, I come down there and this kid was like a few years older than me. And and and, you know, he was like doing this thing. So I thought, well, I guess that's the cool thing to do. So let's just go ahead and make this thing measurably worse.

Yeah, definitely. but the thing is were you guys talking about this while you were making it or was it just implied that you guys were more like makers not takers and you're just like hey listen Nash I could just take a skateboard from Nash but I could make my own

I think honestly his dad left a sheet of plywood around he probably got the saw down off of some kind of shelf he wasn't supposed to be that was the family the White House is that everyone in the family had a water bed what? everybody that's excessive like i know right they had like he had a couple of sisters uh obviously his parents and uh and he had a water everyone they had like a whole family set of waterbeds brought in that's weird and i remember just thinking that was the height of luxury they also had that's why your dream is to live in the stall house with a waterbed uh-huh they also had this was probably the only time i remember actually seeing this they had one of those living rooms that no one ever went in that was all covered in like vinyl yeah yeah yeah then one of those living rooms that was covered in vinyl and then everyone just hung out in the tv room and then it makes you wonder like when did

they unveil that stuff like what was the occasion was it just like family over for a big holiday was it like when somebody brings their boss home for dinner right it wasn't for when luke wandered

down 77th street uh in fact i got the feeling that their parents were kind of over me like it was like uh he's here again did you ever have friends where you could tell their parents didn't really like you oh they're gonna say did i ever have that feeling about you and it's like well

we have been doing the show for a while um honestly no i'm very likable um well you actually are very like no but i didn't have okay here's the thing i didn't have that many friends you know like tim casada was my closest friend for a long time and his he lived with his parents and his grandparents and they doted on him and they were so sweet to me and also i was just like raised to be like super polite around adults so i think they just really liked that very polite vibe you know um and yeah all of my other friends parents some of them i remember being maybe slightly more intimidating but i don't remember a parent i think his dad drank beer which scared me wow

you know um and i i we got to take a break here and then get to what's in the box but i've told this story a trillion times but i was real by my pretty much my best friend growing up with this guy named peter williams and i was almost like a member of their family i would just you know go on trips with them and and uh like just i was there all the all the time but i remember a couple times where uh they were going to red robin and peter's like okay i'm gonna go ask my mom if you can come to red robin with us and and then he comes he goes in and then he comes back and he says okay my mom said you can come to red robin but no one's getting soda yep the math was a great way to make friends one luke equals five fewer sodas that's gonna that's how we're gonna pencil this out that's getting you in prison man so being like so uncomfortable at red robin because I felt like I was really dragging down the Williams family budget. Yeah. And also, like, from the parent's standpoint, looking at you as a budget item, and then the other kids and everybody being like, I could be having soda right now, but instead I'm looking at this kid.

To this day, hasn't forgiven me. Anyway. Okay. Let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, we are actually going to find out what is in the box here on this special Labor Day edition of the show. Stay with us.

What's in the box? This is my box. This is my box. I never travel without my box Oh, what's in the box? In the first drawer I keep my magic stones Oh, what's in the box? Licorice, licorice Black sweet licorice Doesn't matter if you have

One ass cheek and three toes I will beat your ass What the hell? I decided to just throw that in Oh, well, that did not Sorry, I was actually just trying To move some stuff around On my desktop

And I just fired that

But it actually timed out

I'm glad it was an accident though Because it sounded really weird On my end And I was like That's a strange editorial decision on your part. No, sorry. Yeah, I was dragging

these. I was trying to drag these files to throw them out. But I mean, I think Dan Campbell, right? Like that's the message there. You just can't you can't. No, he's unboxable. He's absolutely. Now, it was pointed out to us online and I noticed this the other day, you know, the Seattle Mariners also have a what's in the box

segment. Seattle Mariners.

Do we have a lawsuit on our hands? Can we sue them or we might

I told you I don't know if we said this on the air or not or if we're talking off air but earlier this week I decided to try to watch some early TV episodes of the comedy bang bang TV show something I'm not super familiar with although I've seen some in the past and I think it was episode two or three where they did a skit called what's in the box and I was just like oh no if you look if you look at the timeline there they beat me to this by like 10 years.

The Mariners one, I believe, is They make the Mariners reach into a box And feel something And try to guess what they're feeling Oh, that's exactly what they were doing On the TV show, too

Well, would you like to reach into this box And tell me what you're feeling? Let me reach into this box I want to do a little Like I told you I'm kind of like a kid on Christmas Because a couple of things Based on the shape of the packages I believe I know Basically, like one of these is from Gallatin, Tennessee. I won't read the entire address for obvious reasons. There's no name on the outside of it, but it's a cool little package, and I'm quite sure, take a listen to this. I'm quite sure this is going to have a cassette tape of some sort in here. So my interest, obviously I'm beginning with this one. This piques my interest already. But this thing is wrapped up in packing tape in a way that is going to make it, probably by tuesday's show i'll have this thing open it is packaged really well a lot of bubble oh oh look at this okay so still more questions than answers this is the bubble wrap coming off of the tape now this is a basf cassette tape so i was expecting this to be like a store-bought tape of some musician or something but this is like somebody somebody dubbed something for me And it looks like a relatively new cassette tape, given that it's 2022. And the only writing on this cassette is a label that says on the spine. Somebody wrote Hopkins 1977 in very nice handwriting. And then inside is typed these words. I hope there's no swears because I haven't pre-read this. One side is a professor with a British accent giving a lecture on a poet. The other side is all me and it's all over the place. I hope you hate it What? Now I need to find a way to play this Is it worth me grabbing my boombox Out of the other room and just playing this for you Or do you want to Maybe we revisit this at another time Yeah why don't we revisit it

Why don't you listen to it And make sure that it's you know Appropriate for air or whatever And then yeah maybe we can play it Down the road at some point So this sounds like someone sent you a cassette tape Of a spoken word production

Yeah it sounds like it's a professor on one side maybe it's just something that they found and wanted to send my way it's a professor talking about a poet according to the description and the other side says the other side is all me and it's all over the place hope you hate it exclamation point so that's interesting wow um

i'm excited i wish those basf ads that they used to run when you were kids those tv ads and they were like at basf we don't make the television we make it sharper we don't it was all these things like we don't make the floor we make it stronger like like a ballet dancer or something was and i was like what the hell does basf do and why do they need ads i don't i don't know these ads at

all i'm gonna i'm gonna try to find one here on the fly at basf we don't make the cooler We make it cooler.

They control the weather?

We don't make the jeans. We make them bluer. We don't make the toys. We make them tougher. We don't make the water scooter. We make it lighter. At BASF, we don't make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better. BASF.

Luke, okay. Years later, I have the same questions that you had as a child. severance vibe yes which is on my list of things to do this weekend i'm not joking that sounds

ominous that i mean i assume that they're in are they in like petroleum are they in plastics or

something is that what basf does that seems like it yeah but i remember even as a kid thinking

who who are you like is this so that i'll make sure to choose basf products in my industrial in my industrial planning as a nine-year-old yeah right why do i guess it's just like kind

of brand reinforcement they are a german multinational chemical company which is just like oh so a mom and pop all of those words it's like each word compounds on the next one a german multinational chemical company located in a rock shaped like a human skull in the middle of the pacific ocean all right let me nothing sinister about that i got another box here um this one i'm quite sure it contains a book it's from looks like liberty express which i don't know if liberty

express now unlike leah michelle i assume you can read um tell me the background on that spoof what are you talking about there is this persistent internet rumor that uh the performer leah michelle who was in oh glee yes and now she's on broadway and she is replacing beanie feldstein in the on funny girl on broadway yeah and she's also had some allegations of being not a great um co-worker on the set of glee from some people that were on that show with her but for some reason this rumor has persisted for years that she cannot read and this is one of those things that's only funny because leo michelle comes from a tremendous amount of privilege you know yeah uh so it's it's sort of punching up i guess in the way that people making fun of leo dicaprio uh is also okay because you know he's got a lot of privilege going as well but the funny thing was she did some big interview and she addressed the rumors of her not being able to read and her answer was totally not exculpatory her answer was i showed up every day for glee and i knew my lines every day for glee wow which is not the same as saying i can read yeah like if somebody asked me can you read I would just say, yeah, I can read not an answer that you give. I mean, that's like Aaron Rodgers saying he was inoculated or inoculated. Yeah, right. Whatever word. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's a weird kind of parsing of a response that is only led the Internet to continue to speculate that Lea Michele, in fact, cannot read. I'm sure she can read, by the way. You do.

You are sure after even after that answer, because the way you just I just can't imagine.

And I cannot imagine a universe in which this person would be illiterate based on the advantages offered to a person who grows up, you know, in the United States with resources and also who is an actor and has done thousands and thousands of words of dialogue. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. Like, that would be – so, again, it just – it would just be so – it would be so unusual if she was somebody who was illiterate. And it would also mean that someone then would have to read her all of her lines and then she'd have to memorize them from the person reading them to her. Her actual line of work makes it seem even less likely. Yeah. She might, in fact, be illiterate.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I'm trying to find this joke from Zach Galifianakis. Remember his stand-up special, The Purple? I think it was called The Purple Onion. Live from The Purple Onion. Live from The Purple Onion. Yeah, yeah, here it is here. But he has this great joke that I won't be able to recreate here to anybody's satisfaction. But like he just does like a very quick imitation of a snobby illiterate. And he just like the camera closes in on his face closely and he just kind of takes off his glasses snobbishly and says, I told you I cannot read. Anyway, it's something that Genevieve and I say to each other a lot. I'll try to find it for tomorrow's show. This next package, I have a couple more. I definitely want to get through here because one of them is is big and I want to close on that box. But I would say this to the listeners. feel free to leave a note you know I keep getting these packages that are complete mysteries I don't know who they're from or why they're being sent but I did receive a book here or we received a book I don't want to make this like my Christmas day here Luke and leave you on the outside looking in like a Dickensian orphan but this is once again

My snotty little nose pressed up against the glass. You're going to clean the cold out here, Andrew. Can't I come in and have some porridge? Bah humbug. I have a book here that was sent to me via Liberty Express, which apparently is just a distribution center. Sonic Wonderland, a scientific odyssey of sound by Trevor Cox. Are you familiar with any of these words? No. He's David Attenborough of the acoustic realm. It says, this is the story of Trevor Cox's investigation into the sonic wonders of the world. In the Mojave Desert, he finds sand dunes that sing. By the way, I can read. I just want everybody to know. I'm reading this. You show up for TBTL every day, and you know your lines. That's right. That's what's important. In France, he discovers an echo that tells jokes. Whoa. In California, he drives down a musical road that plays the William Tell Overture, et cetera, et cetera. All right, I'll check this out. That sounds pretty interesting. anonymous person but please let me give you some credit i we do this so that we can give you guys credit so it's fun not so that i can just like fill my bookshelf with wonders um but i do appreciate that that's cool are you ready for it i have two more here luke yes how are we doing what's in the box you don't feel uh you don't feel stressed about time right now no we're doing okay okay here we go another book this is in an amazon package so it came directly from amazon okay this one has a note it's even like they wrote a note through amazon and amazon printed it out and put it in here this is what i like this is from listener nicole oh it goes by nicky i'm sorry nicky says hi long time listener from the radio days hot dogs on the mind here's your new hot dog book for what's in the box best nicky in bellevue washington right across right across the pond i always say across the pond it means you're in bellevue or redmond uh and in here is the great american hot dog book recipes side dishes from across america by becky mercury if i'm saying that name correctly so this is so it's like a bunch of different hot dog recipes it looks like it is you got the new orleans remulade dog do i say that correctly remulade sounded new orleanian to me isn't that like a is that like a jelly remulade is that's what that's where i've seen that word before a kraut and slaw dog in florida georgia has the earmuffs has the dinglewood style scrambled dog now i have i have bad news for you andrew remulade is a european cold sauce based on mayonnaise oh okay all right so it's not it's not like a fruit i always thought of it was like a um like a marmalade kind of like a marmalade or something yeah what's the word i'm looking for there's a word that starts with ch that's like often a um uh it's like a purple jelly that i would sometimes put on the outside of pork if i was grilling pork and i'm blanking on the name of

it but anyway i don't think i've ever seen that word i'm probably describing it incorrectly this is driving me bananas i used to use it all the time i haven't made pork loin in so long because Genevieve Stop Eating Pork. You got Troy Teenie Weenies from, I assume that's New Jersey. Anyway, I will continue to go through that on my own time. Would you like to know the final thing I have here? This is a big box. This is what we waited in line for yesterday, by the way. Genevieve made her new, listen to this, this is big. This is, I'm going to say about, let's see here. This is a United States Post Office box. So I'm trying to figure out if it says, like, what size it is, if this is the medium size. But I'm going to say it's about a foot square. And this looks like this is from listener Catherine in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which kind of maybe gives me a clue here. Because there was a listener in Michigan who, for years, and I don't know exactly why, do you think it might be a Mackinac peach? Do you think it might be a Mackinac peach? It's just a Mackinac. Oh, you know what? It was a boxing glove that just punched me in the face as I opened it because I said Mackinac wrong. Yes, indeed. You know what this is? This, my friend, is one, two, count them, three, four, five bottles and one can of Faygo. Wow. We were talking about. You could have a gathering. Yes. You've got a gathering of the Juggalos worth of Faygo right there. Because I don't this might have even been spawned by an after these messages conversation, or maybe it was you and I talking on the show about the gathering and Fago. And I must have said at some point, I've never had Fago before. I don't believe even though I grew up in the Midwest and listener Catherine, who didn't include a note, but did have her name on the outside of this, I think was appalled by that notion and has been wanting to send me Fago for. years now and we finally have a p.o box here are the flavors start with the basics grape which is honestly one of my favorite flavors of soda and i don't drink it enough orange me too you like i feel like you stop drinking grape soda when you're like as an adult no one drinks grape soda but it's like the greatest joy in life when you're a kid oh it's so good oh i can't wait to put these on ice um there is an orange a grape a moon mist yes i remember talking about this we were going through all the flavors moon mist uh cream soda which my god man i haven't had a cream soda in so long and when you think about it that's got to be near the top of my list of soda flavors do you like yourself a cream soda no i don't never have never will too sweet it is very sweet just something about it i was always disappointed when if that was the last one in the you know cooler like all the other stuff was gone because for me the hierarchy would be like um sun-kissed right

like an orange soda yeah i would be so into i could get down with some sprite or some seven up grape soda very much so but then the cream soda no thank you huh i do love a cream soda what i would like to do is maybe try someday mixing i i don't know if i can do this soon but someday i could work up to it mixing a cream soda with a root beer that sounds like an exciting flavor combination to me also if you like to just smell your fego andrew they do make candles which are for sale on Amazon oh my goodness I think that would just make me thirsty I can't think of anything I would want to burn less than a Faygo original jazz and blues berry scented candle what about a they have those man candles now what about those have you seen that no but you know what I'm going to get my haircut at Rudy's and I'm gonna I may have to plunk down another $25 on one of their sal whatever it is i forget the exact name for it santa something like candles that are 60 hour candles that i love but i just burn it and then i just let it go and then it's like three days later it's gone and that's oh you got you've told me about that that's very intriguing to me i might look for those the next time i'm there i need you to do something for me before we wrap this up there's two more flavors in here one is red pop classic fago um i think that's a based on a strawberry flavor um but then one of them here is called rock and rye can you look up what the flavor of rock and rye is this isn't a can i bet you is it possible does it have alcohol in it no i don't think so fago just because i again i don't remember which show we were talking about this on but if you go to fago's website they just list all kinds of banana flavors well maybe even literally a banana flavor but they have a zillion different flavors and i think this is just one of them although i know rye is of course a a type of it's whiskey adjacent right because there's a place called rock and rye in bellingham that carrie and i used to go to a lot but their thing is they have oysters and they have whiskey i mean they have a lot of things but the rock and rye i think the rock there is referencing an oyster and the rye is referencing a whiskey you know what i think the rock and rye might be a little bit like i wonder if i wonder if it's like moxie that they sell out in new england which is a very medicinal taste because i'm reading a little bit about this here and it looks like this it comes from its roots might be uh from the you know it might have medicinal roots well this is what the internet is telling me fagos rock and rye is a light vanilla creamed soda with a hint of semi-tart cherry flavor oh that's not at all that sounds way better than what i was just describing well i am i am legitimately excited about these fagos for real i they're warm now obviously they've traveled many miles to get here but i'm gonna cool these oceans of time to be with you they certainly they certainly did so thank you everybody and for those of you who um i don't know your names thank you for sending these i will i will share these with luke oh yeah luke i guess you need to lay claim to one of these

fagos if i'm being well just maybe like i don't know keep keep one of them in uh do you have like a you can have a cream because you guys have all that room now are you getting a freezer for your garage no but we have a refrigerator freezer downstairs now it's kind of smaller but it's like we have a beer fridge downstairs and so we have like you know the top part of that is just a standard freezer um but yeah would you be mad if i drank all these but save the cream soda for you so you could once again the last thing in the ice chest is the cream but you know what it would be part of a pattern with you it is of doing everything you can to ruin my day look at Me Withholding. Gotta clean up in here now, Luke. It's like, that's the thing on Christmas, right? It's like, it's fun, but then you have the wrapping all over the place, and I immediately, I can't enjoy any of the new toys until the wrapping is all put away. You're meticulous that way. Yeah. I kind of like the destruction. It was fun. You know, Rudy really liked...

wrapping things i've never seen a dog that like would unwrap presents but she would do it very daintily with her teeth you'd give her like you wrap up a toy or as we used to call it a guy you wrap up a guy stuffed animal of some kind you give it to her and then she would just delicately with just like one of her canines like the top and bottom teeth you just kind of tear at the corner of it and kind of pull it apart and then get her guy out and be very happy wow wow

Hey, I just had an idea, by the way. I'm going to – our friend Jen Joyce suggested I do this a while back. I will try to take photos of these GIFs and post them to our Instagram page. Smart. And if anyone knows from that social media, it's our friend Jen Joyce.

Exactly. I see her on TikTok all the time. She's very savvy about those things. We've got to thank our daily donors. These are the folks keeping us in business on this Labor Day. Jane and Ross Johnson Out there in Everett, Washington Thank you, Jane and Ross Robin Laughlin-Aaron Is in Stevens Point, Wisconsin Thank you, Robin Alicia Nicholas Now that is a name that I've seen for many years And I may have been mispronouncing it in my brain this whole time It might be Alicia, right? I think it's Alicia

I think it's Alicia, and my apologies, Alicia, I know you've explained this to us before, and we met Alicia in Florida. Yeah, and that's where she remains, Atlantic Beach, Florida.

Thank you so much for being with TBTL all these thousands of years. Nicole Spahich is in Worcester, Ohio.

Nice. Ohio Light Opera, I always got to shout it out. That's where Ohio Light Opera is based. i i like my opera a little heavier yeah i know you do but see if i if i have a big heavy opera oh my gosh i'm down for the night you know absolutely you just like pass out on the couch

yeah uh allison wall is in shoreline washington where all of our mail goes now by the way yeah well just across the street just across the street now if you want just a snapshot of the difference andrew between you and i i have a mailbox here in this apartment building that i haven't checked for three weeks and i have a mailbox at the house i'm renovating also haven't

checked that in months well you know the truth is i rarely check the mail here at what do i say mail funny i rarely check the mailbox here at home because it's usually just like flyers and you know it's never fun stuff but the listeners are sending us fun stuff so i'm more motivated to drive out there and open this up. That makes sense.

Also, we've got to thank John Weed in Mill Creek, Washington. Thank you to John and all of our donors for today for making TBTL possible. I guess that's going to kind of wrap things up here, right? On this Labor Day, we went almost an hour. I feel like we've more than satisfied the absolute minimum we could do for this to be our job. I'd say we're working-class heroes. you know here on labor day for sure yeah are you doing anything we're recording this actually uh before it's actually labor day are you doing anything fun for the labor day weekend um by the way i can't believe i just said that to you i wrote a tweet the other day that seems to be getting a fair amount of attention that was the most nervous i get for public speaking is when the trader joe's guy asks me if i have any fun plans for the night yeah and i just did that to you got any fun plans for labor day well i actually do have a busier weekend than usual

um usually the usual weekend is i just lock all the doors and play darts all weekend but i actually do i have three social events uh in three days now i know it's a four-day weekend but i'm thinking monday might be my recovery day got some friends coming over for a casual by the way i believe it's a three-day weekend well i'm taking i i'm i'm retroactively taking last friday off as well Yeah, no, you're right. It's a three day weekend. So I do. Yeah. Oh, OK. Well, I guess you count Friday night. We have some folks coming over, which was last Friday, I guess. Saturday, I'm going to the Saturday. I'm going to the University of Washington, Kent State football game. Of course, we're going to have a rivalry in the family. golden flashes and huskies squaring off the golden flashes have traveled to the pacific northwest to face off against the huskies so so of course i am a um a very very very proud graduate of kent state university and genevieve of course is a very very very proud employee of the university of washington so will our relationship be able to withstand this we will see and then yes sunday going all the way out, all the way out to West Seattle for an end of summer barbecue

with some friends. That's very social of you, Andrew. I know that sounds like I'm patronizing you, but that's usually, in my experience, like

Like three events in three days, that's a busy weekend. No, that is a lot.

It is a lot for me, which is why I'm very glad that Monday is a day off because we can sleep in and relax and I can recover. I can hide under the sheets like my cat does and she lumps it up and recovers from social activity.

Still my favorite part of the day, hanging out with Bubbles in bed right before I get up. Because the second I open my door, she's in there. Yeah. And then she likes to hang out. And I told her yesterday that she's my best friend. Is that weird? And I meant it. I think this cat is my best friend in the world. Is that can you have that? I mean, can you be best friends with an animal that has zero idea how to speak English or even like the basic details of like what a human would understand?

I don't know, Luke. can you be best friends with somebody who's standing right in front of you podcasting with you every day and that person doesn't even notice you

I mean if you got a little cuter Andrew if you did this thing if you did this thing where you walked on my chest I can feel you purring I need to put your little nose against my nose if you did that more then maybe we would be best friends

oh sure now you say that yet I do that to you when we're in an RV trip across the country And suddenly I'm persona non grata. You know, I say the bananas a lot. I often say you are my favorite cat. And it's like I feel emotion behind that when I say that. Of course, we still have another visitor in the house, another feline visitor that we've been pretzel pretzel who who's been staying with us while her owners are overseas. And that's been a trip, by the way. I know people are sick of cat talk, so I haven't been bringing up too much. But like the slow integration of her into our family over the course of the past two and a half weeks and her her and Professor Bananas slowly, slowly, slowly getting acclimated to each other. It is a really interesting process to see. But the truth of the matter is Bananas is always my fave. Now, if we end up getting another kitten, which I I think we're going to probably sooner rather than later, then I may need to change that language up a little bit.

Mm hmm. Bubbles is going to have an exciting Labor Day weekend because we're going down to Salem, where Becca's family has this big kind of like three day camp out every Labor Day. And but so she's going to get to hang out in this field with me because of her new harness situation. And also, if she wants to go in the house, she can because she there she can play with Holly and Cleo, two tuxedo cats, which is rare for her to get to be around multiple other cats.

Oh, wow, that is fun. I wonder how they'll all get along. Usually someone goes hiding for a while. It takes a long time for cats to...

I think Cleo is the hider in that thing. And there's also about five standard poodles that are living on the property, so she's going to have an action-packed weekend. She's going to need Monday off. Yeah, no kidding, just to recover, right? Yeah. All right, that's going to do it for today's show. Thank you for listening, everyone. Hope you have a fun and restful Labor Day. We're going to be back here tomorrow with some more imaginary radio for you. So until then, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Now I'd like to do a character for you. This character I've been working on for a while is called The Pretentious Illiterate. Here we go, The Pretentious Illiterate. I told you, I don't know how to read. The word abbreviation sure is long For what it means I think the word for abbreviation should be Dead I have a lot of growing up to do I realized that the other day inside my fort power out