Muse

Have you ever been in a gang?

I have. I knew it. Okay. Who are we talking about here? Crips, Bloods? Both.

God.

Yeah, them and a lot of kings. The Warriors.

Okay.

Newsies.

Okay, so dig this. You're on the street, and one of your gang disses you. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Alright, so what do you do to get them to make it right?

Well, see, um, in the gang world, we use something called fluffy fingers.

What is that?

That's where somebody really gets in your face. You know, you just start tickling him. Really? Yeah. And then he starts tickling you. You know, pretty soon you're laughing and hugging. Before you know it, you've forgotten the whole thing. Y'all can just go to church together and get an ice cream cone.

I would have never thought that gangs would be tickling each other.

Oh, it's effective.

TBTM.

Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is.

It's Friday. Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

You said you were going to go fondle your sweaters. No, I didn't. I said I'm going to have fondue with cheddar. I was thinking about making fondue with cheddar cheese for dinner tonight. No, Gene, that is not what you said. It is what I said.

Don't watch the news because I'm a kid and apparently every time, apparently Grandpa just gives me a remote after he watched a Powerball.

No, you're going to tell a story. I don't believe that I can bear to listen to another one of your stories right now.

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Today was the first time in three years my blood pressure's been normal.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Where's my royalty?

Coming to you once again from Hillham, Tennessee, where things remain absolutely beautiful. beautiful. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. Very excited to have arrived at episode 3,773 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. One thing I've noticed about this part of the country, at least the small town that I'm in, it's actually like a, I don't even think it's fully qualifies as a town, but the area I'm in, and you head down to the large town, which is called livingston tennessee is that the entire economy seems to revolve around two things one zero turn lawnmowers i have never seen more zero turn lawnmowers in my life they're constantly being towed behind trucks or people are sitting on them mowing their lawns or they're just parked in people's lawns and then the other thing is um hair salons if you've got cute hair i'm gonna say damn girl you got some cute hair hair salons with quirky names i want to run a couple by andrew also according to an article in gq magazine a good number of people spent the pandemic recovering from a surgery to lengthen their legs and therefore make them a bit taller we uh may need emergency surgery in the studio we will avoid the gruesome details of the surgery because they are in fact gruesome but the whole thing raises an interesting question about if you're going to explain to people while you're why you're three or four inches taller than you used to be turns out like 90 of the people who got the surgery say no so uh we'll get into that also i have been doing something extra annoying here in tennessee that hey want to hear the most annoying sound in the world that i think andrew would be cringing at a little bit speaking of andrew my friend who's the longest running cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions

of the tall ships he is raring to go on this friday damn fire at all back at it again with

the white van and is joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke i meant to tell you this i don't know if we're jumping in too quickly but let me at least um give you a little tease of what might be coming up later there is a hair salon in that qfc parking lot that we were talking about the other day that you think used to be something like family center

do you know what i'm talking about holman road food center another listener said that they

remember the word um family being on that sign somewhere too and you might not be losing your

marbles that's you know thank oh speaking of marbles

I want to talk to you also about how hard it is to play marbles at a competitive level because I tried yesterday and got smoked. But thank you to whoever reached out with that information because I really was, like, feeling kind of like I'm losing it because I've always – I mean, I believe it was called Arts Food Center, but I think it must have had family somewhere else on the sign or that must have – because I'm glad to hear I may not have made that up completely.

Unless it's a Berenstain Bear situation, I'm not sure. I'm going to try to find that email. Unless it's the Raisin Bran son wearing his sunglasses. Right, yes. But I did want to say that, and I have a photo of it here from Google Maps. There's a hair salon in that shopping center, and it looks like they might have just changed the name because it's on a temporary sort of sign that, you know, like not a professional sign that your dad, who we heard from earlier in the show, would make. Oh, sure. The breakout. Where's my royalty? The breakout star of TVTL, Walt Burbank. Yeah, this would be the temporary kind he might put up. It's like vinyl, and you hang it up, and it says, always hair for you, barber. And that is right out of Bob's Burgers, as far as punnery goes. Well, I'll just tell you this.

I mean, I was struck by, I don't want to say, I actually don't really know what the economics of this area are. It somehow doesn't feel particularly economically depressed to me. It's certainly a lot of the houses, I would say, are sort of on the smaller scale. In fact, I haven't seen, there's only a couple of two-story homes that I can remember seeing. A lot of, you know, relatively humble homes. But they are always on all of this land, just massive yards that then they're just constantly mowing. Like I told you, if you just, like, look, I can look out on the highway here, the Hill Ham Highway. and about every four minutes someone goes by in a big truck and they have a trailer and on the trailer is one of those zero turn lawn mowing things i mean this is really the lawn mowing district of america but then the other thing is i was going to say it's i wouldn't say that livingston is is economically depressed but it was it doesn't seem to have a ton of industry going on that i can there's not a big factory that i saw or a silicon valley type of tech startups going on but god what they have are a lot of hair salons and the one that i'm really curious about if you think this works at all because it struck me as odd i had to read it a few times it's called a head of time no hair salon oh geez so a right the letter a space h-e-a-d space of time yeah ahead of time hair salon cannot be late on appointment there gotta get there ahead of time no not at all they will absolutely charge you the full cost of the haircut ahead of time i just thought i don't like you know a cut above or there's one here called mains on main like it's on main street but it's m-a-n-e-s on main yeah uh and then there's lots of ones that don't even have cutesy names they're just like clearly probably a woman who cuts hair or styles hair from her home but they've got some kind of a little sign i just have never seen more more beauty parlors and salons in a very small town um uh like one it's like one

one salon per person do any of them take bitcoin do you suppose i only say that because it's you know like the type of area and i guess profession that would probably be late late to uh pick up bitcoin as current andrew i'm watching a zero turn go by i just want to mention that i'm sorry are you a little jealous i mean truck we're getting closer and closer to the realization to the reality of you actually driving one of these things across the country back to your place in washington no we're getting closer and closer to me just

moving to a farm in tennessee oh yeah because i'm not even kidding and i don't i know that this is a thing i do where if i'm enjoying a particular setting i just want to live i want to live there i want this to be my reality but i will say being on this farm because i don't think i've ever actually stayed on a farm for more than maybe ever like for a few nights or anything but i am just loving it i came back today after my little jog and uh the donkeys came over to say hi to me i gave them some feed they're named frank it's frank and i forget the other two one's names i can only remember frank's name but there's the mom and then there's the two kids from the mom and the mom is really brave and the kids are a little skittish but i'm kind of got it worked out now with them and then there's

is this beagle that lives at the house of the people that own this place this beagle was so excited to see me it came up on the lawn but then it stopped like i don't know 20 feet from me and started splooting it was so excited now it's not that hot here but it was literally have you ever seen a dog do that where they just get down and they are fully prost prostrate on the ground but

then crawling towards you have you ever seen this move i'm not sure i can definitely picture it so i feel like i've seen it but maybe not it was like this dog was so excited to see me but also

so subservient to me that it was like i am going to get on the ground i'm going to flatten myself completely out but then i'm going to army crawl towards you with my tail furiously wagging and there was just something that's how i approached job interviews by the way

uh-huh that's why i always that's why i really earned the respect of the staff at my last job and there were they didn't make there wasn't a clipboard butch yeah no there was not no there

was no recovery but even just like in the mornings i've been sitting out and having some coffee on this little patio and this house that i'm staying in it's it's very lovely um they've done a really good job with it but it's also nothing particularly grandiose and this little patio is just a little patio with some chairs on it but it's covered and it looks out just on some kind of like some nature and i don't know man having a cup of coffee maybe it's just because i spend most of my time in an apartment in portland and i don't i have a balcony but it's not really conducive to going and sitting out on in the morning and i mean the weather is pretty perfect out here but it's just it sounds hokey but that there is there is a slow pace out here that at least for this week i am finding

extremely inviting i believe that yeah i mean reality sets in anywhere of course i think you're

Oh, you mean like last night during dinner when the guy sitting next to me at the bar showed me his really awesome picture on his phone that was somebody wearing a T-shirt that had Let's Go Brandon written in such a font and tilted sideways so that it appeared to be Chinese characters?

Oh, just a weird injection of just racism into the Let's Go Brandon? Or am I misreading that? I'm sure that helps

I'm sure, I mean, yeah He was like, I don't know your politics And I was like, well, anytime you start with that

Oh God, how many wonderful conversations Have begun with those words With a stranger

Yeah, it's like, I don't know your politics But I just, I've been reading Madea Benjamin lately And really doing some deep thinking On progressive politics No, that's never the follow up to I don't know what your politics are but like he like he's like i don't know what your politics are but uh i gotta i gotta laugh out of this and then it's like some guy wearing a t-shirt some facebook meme or whatever and he's wearing a t-shirt and it and it says on the t-shirt in in very clearly written english letters this ain't chinese or something and then you're looking at a shirt that appears to have chinese characters but if you turn the phone sideways you can see that it says let's go brandon that's

brilliant you know sometimes i so for instance that give the maga people enough credit sometimes

i worry so clever in the words in the words of uh drill from the internet from wint from twitter you absolutely 100 do not have to give it to them i think that might be his pinned tweet was it on this show that i went

no this is years ago this was a professional this was a professional argument i got in in the newsroom and it ended with me kind of getting really flabbergasted and yelling no i don't have to give it to him what what it was something for new hampshire public radio it was a actually i don't want to give out maybe too much it was it was a series that one of my colleagues was working on and he was getting i think some pretty frank conversation everybody was very excited about it from somebody who was an ex-con somebody who had served time in prison right but now this guy was like really charismatic and talking to my colleague and telling all these stories but he's one of those guys Luke and I think you'll you'll know it maybe a little bit like the when you and I met that hot dog vendor who was a little bit too ready to talk into a microphone like this guy was just like a little bit too ready to talk into a microphone like it just it and we just kept on relying on him so much as a newsroom he was such he became kind of a source for a while and I remember just thinking like this guy's in a show this guy is very much in a show i mean i'm not saying he's lying but he's in a show and i just remember somebody being like well you got to give it to him and i'm talking about this source and i remember just being like no i don't have to give

it to him so what does that even mean you got to give it to him for overcoming or you got to give

credit maybe was is another way of saying you well you got it incarceration life or something yeah well you got to give him credit you know he's really made something of himself i i don't know what the end of the well you got to give him credit was but i think i remember my friend josh just being very amused by somehow like this was my tipping point this is what kind of made me apoplectic in the newsroom me just yelling no i don't have to

give it to him anyway i think i think you're right no no i think we're in agreement that we don't have to give it to the maga folks over there clever and casually racist uh and just basically mean-spirited uh you know let's go brand and stuff i will say you know i the first show that i did from here i we talked about how i didn't see that many you know outward expressions of of trumpiness here or i saw less than i was expecting i've certainly now picked up you know picked up more of that uh both in seeing you know a few bumper stickers and flags but you know like as in like a trump flag but not still not that much overt stuff but i also don't think there's one person i've spoken to no that's not true there's one person i've spoken to who i think probably has my politics and it's the guy i interviewed yesterday who's like the chief folklorist for tennessee and was responsible for this marbles tournament um kind of uh for you know making it a thing in this state park and whatever and um just talking to him and and kind of like hearing the kind of terminology that he used and everything i was like okay this might be the one the one person i've interacted with who uh maybe i have the same politics as but everybody else has just been you know perfectly nice but if there's even the slightest sort of a moment of i guess i don't know political reflection what have you it becomes clear that no this is deeply

deeply red territory out here i mean i have a question for you that i feel like i kind of don't even want to ask because i don't want to put myself in this awkward situation but so you're at the bar guy says i don't know your politics are but take a look at this i got a i got a real kick out of it or whatever he shows you the photo and then you say and do what he goes i don't know

your politics but uh but but you know i thought this was pretty funny and then he shows it to me and then he turns it over and then he explains the joke to me he goes see it says let's go brandon and i go yeah i got it yeah that was my response that's it i didn't laugh i didn't laugh i also didn't like go sir you have offended me yeah you didn't pull out your gloves and slap them i forgot my slapping gloves did you leave it god you're supposed to be in your bag with your extra mixer i know how dare you do that d'artagnan um i i didn't i was somewhere between playing along fully which i would have felt really crummy about myself if i would have like back slapped and been like that's a good one i was somewhere between playing along fully and being like do we do we really want to like unpack this right now you know it's like i don't have it in me in this part of the world with a lot of the folks i'm interacting with to i just don't feel like i'm going to change any minds so i'm mostly just trying to stay off that topic which is maybe a bit of a surrender from me the other thing i'm doing that i you would you would detest andrew is i have probably said y'all more between y'all and folks i've said sentences that were 80 comprised of the word y'all and folks are y'all folks gonna be like i am i am like that person who goes uh and like does a study abroad program and comes back and is calling the the trunk of the car the boot and the elevator the lift like i have fully slipped into some bizarre southern version of myself that just it makes me feel like i'm connecting with people more or like you know we're filming this thing yesterday and there's a bunch of folks there and again my guess would be we hold different political views etc and i'm in a collared shirt that's like pressed and i just i'm feeling very i'm feeling very much like a yankee and i'm wanting the people we're interviewing and everything i just want it to be smooth and somehow this is like it's like an alien when that uh the alien like comes out of like the alien breaks out of the person that's like my this southern version of luke comes bursting out of my chest hey y'all folks gonna be um seeing those folks down where y'all are uh hanging out it's like who even is this person it's the and is it completely unconvincing that's really see that's the biggest worry not just that i'm a sellout which i am but that it sounds to my ear like i'm kind of fitting in and i'm not like i'm not you know yosemite sam or something but i'm definitely deploying y'all and folks a lot more than i would in my normal life and kind of just mimicking the general

pace and tone and whatever of the of the the accent that i'm around but if i'm i also might just be doing it horribly you know what i mean i might just this might just sound so wrong to the ear of the people who actually speak this way uh on a daily basis well how long is the

piece of straw coming out of your mouth as you talk and does that good bounce on it um listen i don't want to be the guy who's on the record saying oh you shouldn't you you you're a phony if you use either one of those words they're actually as listeners have pointed out like many times like they're really handy like y'all a plural of you all is a very handy thing to have actually and folks is good because you don't have to get locked into like a gender identity or anything folks I use folks a lot I don't know if I still do because it is kind of folksy but I feel like there was a time where I was using folks a lot in emails maybe when I was booking guests or whatever folks is just a it's a quick easy word to use that that uh encompasses everybody it's a good they're both really handy words i think my hesitation is more like if i am using them myself especially with y'all um it feels like it does feel like i'm it doesn't feel natural coming it feels like an affectation and i you know i mean that that's my driving principle in life is hopefully not to be too affected is that the right word or to be putting on any kind of errors whatever it might be to be uh as Holden Caulfield would say a phony um unfortunately that book got to me early and it never let go like so many so many young men of my generation but um anyway yeah so that's it but I don't I don't know have I really given you you a hard time about that probably I'm kind of a jerk but like I don't know I don't want to be on the record discouraging people

no no you haven't no you were you i don't think you have it in you to actually be a real jerk about things but i think when we were driving through texas oh it did become a bit of a bit i was leaning more into i was i was i was feeling very texan in a way that was probably kind of inauthentic i think that's just part of my although i don't know if i went to the northeast would i start being very flinty and saying you can't get there from here i don't it's weird i don't see myself or if i was in boston would i be like you know pack the car and by boston yacht like i don't buy whatever hava i don't think it's weird i don't think i slip into the vibe of of every place that i go but i think inside me somewhere there is a person who wants to have that piece of grass and his teeth and saying oh yeah uh i also think it's really cute everybody says granny around here like oh my granny made that and it's not like i feel like we we don't say granny enough like the the there are some really cool um quilts that are in this airbnb and the guy who owns the place was telling me oh yeah my granny made those and then my wife's granny made the ones that are in the big bedroom and i've heard other people saying granny a lot and like that's kind of charming to me i think i i think i'm enamored with kind of a certain southern you know patois or whatever that that that's why i that's the one that i fall into but were i in other places you know i'm not gonna i'm not in chicago i'm not gonna start flattening my a's out

and saying da bears unironically or will you you mentioned um the boston accent and then you and then you did the boston accent but i might beep that out no that reminds me of a huge embarrassing moment of yesterday's show that somebody pointed out but i can i can sort of explain it but i made a mistake in yesterday's show if you can believe it that i find embarrassing and then i can sort of explain it in a way that gives me some cover but then it also makes me look even dumber so we were talking about jay allison public radio producer jay allison yesterday and you mentioned that when he or somebody refers to him in the credits of the ted radio hour they will say he's on Martha's Vineyard now yeah it's I think it's the moth but or the moth okay yeah and I um you know I maybe he's on Martha's Vineyard now but I always knew him as a guy from Cape Cod I feel I could be wrong about that I thought that maybe he's on Cape maybe he says I'm on Cape Cod I thought so and then because I said you know I made this comment like oh yeah well you know you live out there everybody makes it out to Martha's Vineyard at some point like somebody knows somebody with a house i didn't meet none of that meant martha's vineyard and i said you could get there on a bridge which you cannot none of i was referring to the cape the whole time i think that one of us misstated something but i'm still picturing jay allison on the cape and saying things like you can get there via bridge now the thing is the cape cape cod is not an island it's a cape right so that's and i believe so maybe that's the thing but i'm pretty sure that j unless he's moved that was jay allison's thing there's like a famous i think like kind of a fishery or like a research, an ocean research.

place on the cape yes and i'm pretty sure that he has a studio or used to have a like a home that was turned into a studio around that area that kind of became iconic at least in my world

so this is really on me because i am the one who injected martha's vineyard into the conversation and you're exactly right uh it's i'm 90 and actually by the way the cape cod thing i'm back to i'm back to not forgiving jay allison for calling it on the cape instead of on cape cod i'm i'm on cape cod it's like i mean i guess you are technically but i'm i'm then by that

definition i'm on hillham tennessee right now no because cape cod has various cities and

communities in it it's a land mass but is cape cod an island no it's a cape well that's the thing i feel like we usually say on when we're talking about an island i'm on bainbridge island i'm on martha's vineyard i'm on fire island should i keep naming islands i could probably name like four

more but i think like a cape i mean it does make sense you would say i'm in pro i'm in province town i'm in p town which is on cape cod you wouldn't say i'm in p town which is in cape cod

you would say on cape cod but okay but i guess to me i feel like on is usually it feel on feels natural when we're talking about an island in feels natural when we're talking about any piece land that's not an island i'm in seattle i'm in washington state i'm in tacoma should i keep

naming cities i could probably name four more but that's the but that's the fallacy in your thing you're naming cities and cape cod has a whole bunch of cities in it on it okay you got me ah you got me you set the trap and i walked right into it but if we're in like

i guess i'm now i'm thinking of like in michigan you have the up the upper peninsula you say i'm on the upper peninsula or i'm in the upper peninsula where is uh it just yeah yeah i think

you know if you're talking about a city that was that was on the upper peninsula i think i don't know i can't speak to that but as we have this conversation it becomes very clear to me that yeah there are cities that are on cape cod right but okay i guess you know i mean obviously that's

what they say out there it just seems to me and i might be missing something it seems to me like usually when i hear on it means island and when i hear in it means i'm on land so i'm i'm on land i'm in i'm in a even just a an area i'm uh i'm in the willamette valley how about that here here's an example the willamette valley has multiple cities in it but i don't say i'm on the willamette

valley i say i'm in the willamette valley uh baja peninsula i think is a good example of this along mexico right you would say because that's a long piece of land but it's a but it's a peninsula and you would say and i don't know any cities off the top of my head but if you're talking about okay i stay i stayed in san jose i'm looking at a map here i stayed in san jose uh where san jose oh yeah it's on the peninsula it's on the baja yeah that's a good point that's a good point so

i guess it's i guess it's islands and land that's kind of sticking out but we don't say on florida no is very similar to the baja peninsula it is is florida a peninsula now we're just making people angry are the bahamas not only is it a not dude not only is florida a peninsula but a peninsula

whose governor has me rip shit i don't even know can we even do that i mean can we even get into

that without just i mean it's it's so it's so unbelievably despicable but i'll just say the By now, I'm sure most of our listeners know that the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has done this thing where he's taking migrants that were trying to make a life for themselves in the U.S. or whatever and has basically tricked a number of them into getting on a plane and flying up to what they were told, I believe, was Boston where there would be a chance for jobs and services and things like that. And instead sent them to Martha's Vineyard without telling anyone on Martha's Vineyard that this was going to be happening all as a way of trying to own the libs. But this is what's so I mean, first of all, that's just despicable. But he had to more or less kidnap people because guess what they don't have in Florida, a huge immigration issue from Mexico. And why would that be? Because it doesn't touch Mexico, even though DeSantis' spokes henches were like, you just don't know what it's like to be a southern border state. They literally said that. And I was like, unless, and I wrote this on Twitter, unless sunburned Jimmy Buffett fans coming back from Key West count as immigrants, it is not a southern border state. And also, as our friend Chris Hayes wrote on Twitter, do you think if they were to get Cuban immigrants, are they going to send them to Martha's Vineyard out of Florida? Probably not. Why? Because Cuban Americans tend to vote conservative. And this is. just so it's so gross and it's so it's not even this is not even something that is impacting florida in terms of it does not share a border with mexico they're human beings i mean they're

these are human beings here's the thing that i get caught up on and this is because of of this is because of my own you know connections to to people in my life and the in the hypocrisy that i see in people that i love and care about and can't wrap my head around now i don't i have not talked to anybody about this you know like any of my conservative family or whatever but when I think about stuff like this, and I just think about the party that they vote for, the party that they align with, because they think that that is the party that isn't, that is, and they're not, the people I'm thinking about are not cynical people. They truly believe that, like, this is the party of Christian values, and when you think about the fact that I grew up Christian, and I learned all these lessons of Christianity, now I become an adult, I don't practice Christianity, and I'm not a religious person. However, how in the world can you align yourself with these people and think that you are a good Christian? And I'm not saying that all Christians belong to the Republican Party or back to Santa's. I realize that I just have my own personal hangups where I'm shadowboxing over this. Like it becomes more and more explicit, the evilness and the anti-Christian behavior of this party. And it becomes less and less explainable from that standpoint, yet they keep on punching those tickets. And I don't get it. This is the least Christian thing I've ever heard in my life.

I mean, it's also – this has been now well-documented as well. This is something that was done, I believe, maybe it was post-Civil War. Basically, white supremacists, racists in the South were sending buses or trains or some sort of convoys of black Americans up to the north with the promise of work and things like that. this is from you know however many years ago like with the exact same idea being oh the people in the north and these you know these liberal people are not they don't know what it's actually like to deal with whatever the thing is we're dealing with and we i mean the fact that this is something that's already been tried as a trolling effort i don't know a hundred and something years ago or if not longer it's just it's so gross it's like are the is that really the people the super racist white supremacist southerners from like the post-civil war era is that really is that the model for the party you know to use human beings as pawns to just try to try to troll folks i mean really what it is though at this point and i'm sorry that i brought this up this is totally on me but what it really is andrew you're right it's not a coherent political ideology anymore what it is is a guy sitting next to me at a bar showing me a t-shirt that says let's go brandon that he thinks owns the libs that's what it is it's not about tax policy it's really not about coherent immigration policy i mean this is nothing to this is not going to create some kind of useful legislation like it's just become completely uh disconnected from any kind of actual political ideology and it's just a bunch of people who are just trying to basically own the libs and it's It's just very, very, it's really depressing to see, honestly. Yeah, it really is. It's really hard to see. Okay, I have a couple of other things that I want to get into regarding what's going on down here for me. But there's another zero turn. Oh, another lawnmower going by? Yeah, another lawnmower being towed behind a truck. It is like all anyone does around here. it's it's really because also i think the thing about this i was just trying to go to break and then i got distracted by that lawnmower um it's this is a kind of interesting part of the world because it's very rural and i think probably used to be lots of agriculture and farms but it's kind of not anymore it's just a house with a massive huge like meadow in front of it that you've got a mow every week which is not being used typically for um you know uh growing alfalfa or whatever

that sounds like what i grew up in yeah like we had a barn when i was driving out i yeah i was

thinking i bet you this is very very similar to the kind of landscape you grew up in yeah and you

know i have growing up in that um countryside at the time i didn't like it much i mean i had a lot of things going against me as far as you know my uh just position in my social life and what have you like it wasn't great that i was a big nerd but also just like being far away from everybody and not being able to ride my bike to the 7-eleven and meet up with a knucklehead like you or something like that was just like not a possibility but now that i'm an adult and i look look back on that and when I'm drunk. arriving to you know visit somebody who's in a more rural area and i see these huge lawns that there was a time when i would have shuddered and just thought you fool you have to mow that whole thing and i'm like god that would be a great saturday just to mow that green lawn so i mean i do get it more now even than i did when i was living in it but i'll tell you what being out

here is helping me i think wrap my head more around your early childhood because again i bet you this is very similar to to what you grew up in in terms of everything is really spread out and and everybody who you talk to is very used to driving like 20 miles to something like even the the the there's a little kind of booklet of you know things to do in the area and i was looking through the booklet and i was like oh great there's just tons of restaurants and there's everything is just right around here and then i realized this is all referencing a city that's 25 miles away from me right and everybody you talk to is just like um just another zero turn but we don't have to get into it um everybody is just really used to just driving like 20 minutes to everything and if you were a kid and your way of getting around was a bicycle and that was to ride by the way on one of these two-lane highways that's got like farm equipment going down at half the time that would be a little sketchy like i it would i might guess i guess i'm understanding more how disconnecting that could maybe be for a kid yeah it felt very disconnected as a kid and now

you know i don't know if we want to really get too much into this it was kind of funny i was goofing around with you and chris on our our text chain last night because i don't remember how we got into it you were at a bar somewhere trying to watch thursday night football and you're giving us updates on the bartender who was just completely flummoxed by how to get the feed on the televisions there because of course it wasn't on broadcast or cable tv it was on amazon prime amazon prime So you're giving me updates from the East Coast about that situation. Meanwhile, I'm kind of really looking forward to Thursday night football. Like, boy, that sport really gets its hooks in you. Like, you know, I don't know. I had a couple of fantasy players on those teams last night. So that was my main point of interest. But really it was like, oh, yes, something to look forward to on a Thursday that I can build around, get my work done before it begins, get a pizza, like sit down, like really settle into Thursday night football. Like, they really got me hooked as far as just, like, the tradition is the wrong word, but, like, just the formality of it. The ritual of it. The ritual is exactly the word. Thank you. But how did I? Oh, I know. I was looking for a place to get some pizza. I have been. Oh, right. I've been turning this story. And this story is going to get too long. Sorry. You know, I'm the type of guy who doesn't usually pay attention to the price of things. I've gone through my life, not a rich man, but always living within my means to a degree that when I go to the grocery store, I never used to look at prices of things. It's just like, whatever. I want the Cheerios. I'm going to buy the Cheerios. If I see that the Cheerios are more expensive, what am I going to buy? Frosted Flakes? No. It never occurred to me that I should be looking at the prices of things. But now with the economy so wacky, which is, I believe, what the Fed calls it, Janet Yellen in a statement to financial reporters described it as wacky. I don't want to become a cheapskater, somebody who's like counting pennies all the time. But I got to say, like, we've been using one of them may still be an advertiser. I don't know. But we've been using, you know, like the meal delivery services, you know, the third party apps for a long time. But, like, I know it's a reaction to legislation here in Seattle to pay the employees more, et cetera. But, like, they just keep on tacking on these weird fees where if I want to get a pizza and wings, we cannot get it for less than fifty dollars. Like, again, like a pizza and wings for fifty dollars. Maybe I just sound like an old man here, but like with with a decent tip and all the things, it's like, oh, fifty five dollars for a pizza and wings. It just seems out of control to me. So all of that is to say, yesterday, Genevieve has the car somewhere, so I can't drive anywhere to pick up a pizza. I'm kind of thinking, I don't want to get delivery. Delivery is too expensive these days. I'm becoming a cheapskate. I want to walk somewhere and get a pizza. And so I walked to this, you know, the pizza was fine. Like, it's pizza. Like, there was nothing. It was totally fine. Like, but there's a, you know, kind of a small little like walk in kind of, you know, pizza shop that's in kind of the dumpy area of my town next to that strip club that we were talking about.

I think on the show recently there it used to be called Dancing Bear. Yeah. Now it's something else. But anyway, you know, I go in there and I get my pizza and I'm it looks kind of like a cartoon pizza, by the way. Like, I'll go back. Like, I'm not saying that I'm writing home to my family about how great this pizza was. But, you know, it was a pizza that they threw some pepperoni and sausage on and put in the oven. You know what I mean?

like nothing with the ingredients and again like yeah there there's some of those places that can be really really kind of no frills but like you know if they know what they're doing and and they don't undercook or overcook things that can be very satisfying to eat some of

that very down market pizza but down market in a different way than like pizza hut pizza is down

market yeah exactly and anyway so this was fine pizza but all of that is to say and this is such a weird place for me to take it you're talking about like growing up in a place where you have to drive 20 minutes just to get to a grocery store or even a convenience store which isn't very convenient when you think about it and I Luke loved walking home with my pizza yesterday like this place is I don't know five six seven blocks from my house or something I didn't count but like it's not far right it's like a five minute walk from my house and so i'm just walking home with my pizza which i don't think i've walked home with pizza as much but whenever i'm in my car at a stoplight and i see somebody walking home with a pizza i get this sense of like that's the life that's the life where i follow that person with the pizza and yesterday i got so much joy walking home with my pizza knowing that uh thursday night football was going to start in like 10 minutes or whatever i was gonna crack that pizza open crack open a beer um and just enjoy the game i was just kind of like i'm living the life like my my standards are low but i think part of that is like getting a kick out of walking home with a pizza was probably because i grew up in the country where you had to plan that pizza for several days yeah i don't even know where i

would that totally makes sense and that makes more sense to me now having spent a few days in this kind of um environment where everything is yeah just so spread out and the thing for me that it's impacting is normally if i'm traveling i'm usually staying in a hotel right in the middle of a big city and it means that i eat out at a different restaurant every single night and like last night i did end up uh eating at this place in a nearby town but it was like i didn't really have anything to drink because it was like a 30 minute drive back here i'm not trying to yeah you know get in any trouble in tennessee i don't think that would end well and so what i've been doing like what i did uh two of the nights i was here and what i'm gonna do tonight is i'm getting excited actually to like get my little grocery situation together i'm gonna buy some more charcoal today after my interviews and then i'm gonna like do a little barbecue here and because it's just you have to really like you said plan it out you have to really account for things like there's just no the convenience factor is very low in terms of you can't just like decide i couldn't decide at 7 30 hey i want to have a pizza and have one here with me at at by 8 15 it's like i don't even know where there's got to be a pizza place in that town but it's

literally 25 30 minutes away and it probably has a pun involving the word hair so you probably

don't want the pizza there anyway exactly all right uh we should take a quick break uh but When we come back, we've got much more to discuss, so don't go anywhere here on TBTL. All right, let's thank some daily donors who are making TBTL possible with their generosity. Thank you to Robin Burlingham of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Old Saskatoon. It's fun to say. A city I know well. That's not true. But they did have a junior hockey league team. So I would always hear. I talked about how I can't seem to get into the Kraken. But I was very into the Seattle Thunderbirds, which was our junior hockey team. I mean, I would listen to their games on the radio as a kid. Wait a second. I'm sorry. What level is this? You say a junior hockey team? I think this is like the minor leagues as a double-A team. Actually, no, I think this is even lower. Like, as a, like, single-A baseball team would be to a major league. Okay, almost collegiate, maybe, like, college players, almost. Yeah, these were, I think, even high schoolers, maybe. Okay. Really good high schoolers, because they would, these players for the Thunderbirds would stay with families that were, like, Thunderbirds boosters. They would billet, is the term you use.

Oh, not unlike AAA baseball in the MLB. The MLB cares. is it true maybe it's not triple a but there are like high relatively high level baseball professional baseball players that still stay with families when they tour like really i don't think i knew that there's a bunch of labor stuff going on now i think they're going to unionize the minor leagues which i really hope they do this has been going on for a long time

but so i would listen to these thunderbirds games and i would hear about um yellow knife and uh red Medicine Hat and Yellowknife and Saskatoon, because basically all the other teams other than the Thunderbirds were in Canada, pretty much. You mean on Canada, yes. Kamloops. They would be, I'm on Kamloops right now. Anyway, thanks, Robin. Ooh, I'm on

Kamloops right now, too. It's why I can't talk straight. I bet you are. Brian

Covey is in Seattle, Washington. Thank you so much, Brian. Nathan Halley is checking in from Chesterfield MO. Is that nearby?

Box Elder M.O.? I don't know if it's near it, but it's on the same

state. Is it too late for me to change my Music Free Weekend to Box Elder by Pavement? Thanks, Nathan. I don't think you can play that

after Labor Day, by the way. That's a heart of the summer song, Box Elder. Can you play that after Labor Day? I don't think so. I was wearing

white after Labor Day, and

I literally thought, maybe I shouldn't do this. Well, you're the bad boy

of public radio. Stop that.

Sorry about that. Put him on. Who is it?

put them on the phone it's very strange how sometimes my phone does that says my cell phone is just ringing some spam call but then my laptop picks it up but then there are other times when that happens and my laptop does not try to do that thing with it and i it's got to be a permission somewhere that i just don't really know how to control anyway i want to apologize to shannon mitchell for that rude interruption from my phone shannon's in fort worth texas uh also donna mir doll is in fullerton california thanks donna and then tiffany peterson is in south orange new jersey home of uh why do you start sentences luke when you can't exactly say the end of them who is the guy chris who was on um our thing show oh yes sorry i was lost by thing gethert

Chris Gethardt, I believe. Chris Gethardt is from South Orange, New Jersey.

Oh, interesting. Nobody tell him that I forgot his name.

That's where he used to have his cable access show?

I don't know if that was in South Orange, but that's just where he grew up, and he writes about it a lot and talks about it. So maybe he even knows Tiffany Peterson. Anyway, thank you so much, Tiffany. Thanks to all of our daily donors for making this show happen. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. this isn't that fascinating but i just because i've been alluding to it on the show a couple of times i have this rental vehicle it's not even a car it's a chevy tahoe that i did not ask for i was i had a normal car rented and then when i got off the plane in nashville they were like we've upgraded you to a chevy we've upgraded you to a school bus this is like a big suv

kind of thing okay yeah like you've seen a chevy tahoe before well you know i'm kind of you know i'm kind of car blind right i don't pay attention to what they're called every car kind of looks alike to me either it's a big suv or a small suv um but i'm looking at photos of it now so this is

a honker yeah it's a canyon arrow it's got like three rows it's it's it's interesting because so the first thing that i noticed when i was driving from nashville down here in it is that it starts wobbling at exactly 80 miles per hour and i i started to think that this might be something that was like by design so that you couldn't speed but then i did a lot of googling on it yesterday and it doesn't seem to be a thing so i think it just has a you know there's some problem with the suspension which i guess is not the end of the world it'll keep me from going too fast i mean it's fine if you're at 75 it's fine if you're at 79 that's why i found you're fine that particular mile per hour to be a strange like it's like you could be going 79 and just smooth sailing as soon as that little dashboard thing shows 80 it's vibrating i feel like um yeah that is that

happens though with cars sometimes you know i think i had a junker where that happened at a a lower speed right and it's like an alignment issue oh yeah i have had those yeah um but uh i feel like growing up we would hear stories boy didn't hear very good stories i feel like there was like a rumor going around that like somebody could put a governor on your car like either a rental agency or your parents or whatever that would prevent the car from going over a certain speed is that something that was rumored when you were growing up i certainly heard about a governor

on the car on a car like that would control it yeah i mean i'd heard about that growing up not that like parents were surreptitiously putting them on cars no that's not even true i think i'd even heard about yeah some parents you know because they didn't want their kids speeding or whatever but the thing about this tahoe is it's also because it's so enormous it's like unnatural for a human being who doesn't have a commercial driver's license a cdl to drive something like this they have just made it it has so many bells and whistles and safety things it's got like easily four cameras on it and it does this thing i i cannot figure out how they make this happen but i was like pulling out of the food lion the other day and when you start backing up you know you have this of course huge like digital screen or whatever it doesn't just show you like the typical backup cam it shows you like a drone shot of your vehicle from above oh and then everything that's around your vehicle have we

talked have we not talked about this on the show so i maybe it was a podcast i was listening to yes somebody i swear you and i had a conversation about this one time because we tried to figure out how they get that shot and it's an approximation if we did i totally spaced it out it uses the camera it uses the cameras all the way around your car to take real images of the of the ground and your surroundings but then the the image of the car that you see is actually an image superimposed that is photorealistic i believe you're not actually of course you're not there's no actual drone footage of your car right it's amazing though because i thought

like i was looking i was comparing the oil stains in the food lion parking lot to the ones i was seeing on the screen because i was like am i seeing am i really seeing what i think i'm seeing it is really wild technology and then also it's got the seat has multiple servos that will vibrate you depending on what is going on so if you're backing up and it senses someone is behind you it will start vibrating your back butt cheek on the side of the car where the person is Or if you're driving on a highway, a freeway, highway, whatever, and you get too close to the, you know, the sort of boundary line on, like, let's say the right, the right side of the entire seat will start vibrating under your leg. But if you were getting too close to the center line, the left side of the seat will start vibrating under you. It's just, again, it's a testament to how unnatural it is to try to pilot a vehicle of this size. that they basically had to build in so much stuff so you're not just mowing people down.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I'm going to say something here that I might later think of as the stupidest thing I've ever said. But as we have all these technological advances happening so quickly in our lifetime, I almost feel like the haptics, if that's the right word for it, is almost like this. Yes, I believe that is. It's a bit of a sleeper sleeper as far as how much this is going to continue to affect our lives and how we you know we don't talk about that we talk about all the other functionality of the watches and phones that we use and of course we've gotten used to little the little buzzes and vibrations that they give us and we know they're called haptics but like when you think about the integration of technology with our bodies and how we're going to continue I think to have these little haptics in our life and they're going to become we're going to become more and more reliant on it you know and like how how strange is that i mean you know son one day or a long time ago people used to drive cars and their ass didn't vibrate when they did it or if they did it was just because they're on a bumpy road you know like it's just become like it's that that's a real integration of our of our human flesh with technology and that we're going to rely on more and more i don't think that's a

stupid thing to say at all and i hadn't really thought of it that way but you're right there's a sort of almost cybernetic quality of it of like the kind of meshing of machine and man okay that is the stupidest thing that i've said on the show but but yeah you're absolutely right i mean we i don't think about that a lot but so much of my life now because i've got you know an apple watch and stuff so much of my life is i just have this kind of low level of vibratory information happening my either my phone maybe is buzzing in my pocket or my watch is telling me stand up time to take a walk you know it's just like you're right that's a that's a big part of life and

it's only probably going to get bigger once you started so you get this huge canyon arrow and you're like i didn't want a canyon arrow that's not what i drive i wouldn't like that either you know that i don't like driving big vehicles i drive the smallest vehicles possible if i can power them by pushing my feet through the floorboards and just running um like the flintstones i prefer that um but uh so i'm with you on that but now that you've had it for a day or two and you're realizing okay well this thing is difficult to drive but it's got all of these things that help me drive it do you see the appeal more like after another week would you buy one and

move to tennessee i've already put a down payment online and a and a beautiful um and yet humble home here in tennessee no you know what certainly it feels less weird on day three or whatever of driving it but it's still too big what i would like is a small i would like a car the size of my car which is a mazda cx-5 like a crossover suv so it's just a car that's a little higher up off the road when you're sitting in it which i like that's enough car for me like this thing is still with all the technology and with all of the vibration and warnings and cameras it still feels like

going to crash into something at all times like it it another thing too out here every single person is driving a giant truck right so you got this two-lane highway that was built whenever it was built and probably you know at the time when people were driving they were driving trucks but i don't know if the trucks were as massive as the trucks that people drive now just as a matter of course and i am constantly afraid that my uh my mirror my side mirror is going to hit some dude's side mirror as he's zooming coming from the opposite direction on these roads so i'm always practically over in the ditch because i i don't trust that like we can have our side mirrors three inches from each other and that's not going to end up in a problem at some point if one of us slightly veers so it still feels it still feels like way more car than i want um but i do think the technology is pretty cool i would like to have a smaller car that did all of those things for me

just to help me stay out of my own way yeah yeah i i do like the technology it sounds fun it'd be nice it would be nice if it was just on a tiny car and then actually a drone could just pick you up and actually just carry you and your entire car to where you're going that's the goal well that

will happen someday i'm sure probably not in our lifetime although who knows um very quickly i just wanted to mention this story that i saw circulating this week from this gq article um and i'll actually draw it up i'll bring it up on my computer so i can credit the uh the writer if i can get to it basically this uh writer is doing a writing a profile of this doctor in las vegas who is the sort of go-to person for limb lengthening surgery but it's not just any limb it's not like your arms it's basically leg lengthening surgery uh chris gayamali is the name of the person who wrote this article and first of all i mean it just sounds unbelievably painful and the recovery process is like a year um people i guess that you could get up to six inches of added height if you because the first time they do it it's with your um fib fibia okay is that the upper part of your leg yeah yeah your thigh like so basically they you know surgically cut your bone and then put this kind of expanding screw in there which you then as the patient expand each day to just kind of keep growing your bones you can get three inches from that but if you then go back later for tibia surgery you can get another three inches you get a total of six added inches of height if if you were to have both you know four of your bones basically broken and extended and the thing that i was intrigued by was the cover stories that the people that he profiles So he talks to a bunch of people who've had the procedure and I don't even, it's almost like I don't even want to weigh in on the procedure because this is the thing. I have been very privileged in my life that after my junior year of high school, when I grew one entire foot, I was like 5'1", leaving my sophomore year and I was like 6'1", as a junior or whatever. I have just not been a person, it's not a thing that I've thought about a lot in my life is my height, which is a privilege of being six foot or six foot one or something. And I know for some folks, if, you know, height is something that can be, you know, an insecurity and stuff like that. So it's like, I don't, to me to be like, why would somebody get this? It's like, well, because they probably would like to be taller and this is a way to do it and whatever. What I think is really interesting is the cover stories that these people, one of them is going to tell, because this happens during the pandemic. So they basically get the surgery, they're recovering, and then the pandemic sort of winds down or we go back to more normal life. And now they're suddenly just walking around three to six inches taller. And one person said that they were going to say they fell in the bathtub and broke their hip and had to have a surgery to repair it, which in no way explains the height difference.

No, I mean, I guess you would say as part of the as part of this was a byproduct of the surgery or something.

Well, right. I think that was kind of used to explain this is what this person was telling their mother as to why they were hobbling. even though this person had never broken a bone in their life okay so now they like we're gonna say they broke their hip in the bathtub uh another person was going to say it was from the vaccine oh great and like 90 of the people that this reporter talked to which was probably like 10 people so like 9 out of 10 said that they just had no intention of of of explaining to people either either going to lie or just not mention it that they were like significantly taller than they used to be and this is what i was wondering if you and i did an event together andrew and i was like six three do you think you would notice i think i think you're asking me specifically

because i'm so unobservant around people and physical characteristics probably because i

don't make great eye contact I think I would probably get a notion for a while until I maybe locked on to it and then maybe like a week or two later I would if we were hanging around all that time maybe I'd be like wait a second are you taller I mean it's a hard thing it's a weird thing like at our age I mean it take a long time it's like when somebody's in shock sort of they can stare at whatever their surroundings are and like you're not shocked but I feel like we were just talking about this like your brain is not going to organize things in that manner and so it'll just take a while for your brain to piece out like when you walk up to your car and it's been smashed and grabbed or whatever right like sometimes you'll you'll stand on the sidewalk and like you'll just think oh that's not my car or your brain will do somersaults because of cognitive

dissonance right totally we're trying to figure we're trying to write some other story i mean people will often say this is kind of a dark place to take it but sometimes if there's a you know an event involving a gun people will say i thought it was firecrackers your brain is trying to find the least you know out there explanation for a thing that's pretty out there potentially i think what would happen is you would go into massive self-recrimination about your shrinking no maybe you would just be like god damn it andrew look at now you're five eight because you haven't been taking care of yourself you would just assume me being taller just meant you were getting shorter

like rapidly isn't there a rolled doll story where either there's a married couple and one of the people in the couple I want to say it's the man who's like constantly kind of um secretly pranking his wife I don't know if pranking is the right word there but by like short maybe shortening the table and chair maybe shortening her chair at the table a tiny bit more every day like that's just one of the little things he's doing in the background to like kind of uh the more you talk about it i've heard roald dahl bad guy right i always liked really i don't know the story on that i mean i think he was a terrible anti-semite i i think it openly so and actually described it somebody sent me an article recently about that it's a you know i guess it's not that surprising but it's a bummer it's there it seems like there are very few people from you know a

hundred years ago who didn't have really bad takes on one thing or another you know and i mean this is a very weird way to wind things down on a friday but it's like even like i was recently learning about like susan b anthony and like we think you know she was on whatever that susan b anthony dollar and of course she was extremely important for for women's suffrage and for uh women in this country getting the right to vote but there was a point where the leaders of that movement at least susan b anthony and a few others who i think we hold in pretty high regard basically worked actively against the interest of black men getting the vote because they basically saw it as like us or them and so you know there are like so much complexity around and that's like that's a real big jump from roald dahl having james and the giant peach being you know a metaphor for something or whatever but it's just like i just almost nobody seems to come out unscathed if we spend any time looking into it's like almost everyone had at least people who were you know in leadership positions and and having the privilege of getting to kind of have this impact almost all of them had some bad shit going on to very to various degrees i i don't even know

if i would say almost all of them i do think that certain people of certain of certain statuses but doll here just like saying in interviews like yes i'm anti-semitic like not even like i don't know if he used that exact word but like just outwardly being just hateful is i mean that's quite that's not just kind of like oh you know he said something over the dinner table that was on the edge a

hundred years ago you know yeah i guess i'm just thinking about it because you know becca and i were in dc and we we went to the the lincoln memorial and we went to the washington monument and we were in the portrait gallery and we're just kind of like i've been as much as i do steeping myself in a certain amount of history like the fact that francis scott key right you know uh the national anthem dude was like a huge huge supporter of the south and was very pro-slavery and had written the the i think it's fort fort henry is the you know oh say can you see by the dawn's early light was him looking out upon this now luckily i guess you could say this wasn't something related to the civil war i believe this was related to the war for independence so like at that moment at least he wasn't at least he wasn't celebrating the southern victory and now that's our freaking anthem but it was written by a guy who was very on the record as being pro-slavery i mean george washington owned human beings i mean yes this is what i'm talking about i've just been walking around i've been looking at paintings of these dudes and then reading the side of it and being like that's pretty bad yeah yeah i mean i don't think that's news to anyone but i just i feel like i've been around that information a bunch and like the francis scott key thing i didn't know about um and for a minute i thought oh is he like is that from an event where it was like the south won a military battle and are we really singing that song and it's like it's not technically that But it's still like, I don't know Can't we get a new national anthem, get Lizzo to write Something, I feel like that would be so much catchier I would be into that Yeah, I would stand for that at the ballgames

Can we get a refresh on this entire country Do you like that Lizzo commercial Yesterday? I gotta say, just to End this on a more, maybe a pop culture Note instead of that I mentioned to you at the beginning of the show That this idea of Thursday Night Football I'm like suddenly really hooked, as much as I was You know, I have been bemoaning this idea of these essentially tech companies kind of coming in and and uh claiming these broadcast rights to things that limit the number of people who can enjoy them without buying another service right well as somebody who has amazon prime and didn't have to jump through hoops it was actually quite easy for me to watch it and it did feel like an event like for as much as it made me feel really ill to see bezos like hanging out with goodell oh my god it's like just seemed like i don't i don't want to talk about it but um but you also have to admit like the on air product is good like it was a good thing and well maybe for me i really enjoyed it and it did feel like an event like it felt like the first time like they did a good job of being like this is our first broadcast here's a history of nfl it was corny but they made you feel or they made me feel like i was witnessing an event and i felt like the commercials had a little bit of a super bowl vibe at least at first like oh what is this it's just like a full minute of lizzo sitting in the bath like ordering things i thought it was gonna be an amazon prime ad i was shocked that it was instacart but did

you catch any of that no because i was watching this on my phone because the place where i was having dinner the guy the owner of the restaurant and bar was not able to he had signed in on all the tvs to his personal amazon account he was like nobody buy anything please then he was trying to get prime he couldn't add it had to do with the samsung it was a whole mishigas so i wasn't as tuned into the game and the commercials as i could have been because i was just on my little phone but and we we got to get to music for your weekend but i mean i actually do have maybe i don't know on no point at some point i have a lot of thoughts about it because like first of all uh kirk herb street calling a game it was al michaels and kirk herb street kirk herb street has always been a college football analyst him calling an nfl game was weird to me um i didn't like it's just weird that they're using like the dude perfect guys which are these guys that live in some warehouse and just like do trick shots all day that they were part of the like intro package they were part of like the fun and frivolity i don't know the fact that every commercial seemed like it was for amazon from my kind of like half paying attention yeah no it was just like i was almost

clocking when the first I was actually kind of clocking when the first non-Amazon related commercial whether it was for an Echo device or Audible which underwrote it or you know Amazon has all the products I would I mean I'll tell you this I didn't watch I didn't know who the Dude Perfect guys were before this I saw you mention that and then quote it but like I mean now we're just having the argument but like I'm talking about the product of the football game I didn't have the context of Herb Street being associated with another sport but I didn't think that he did a bad job and that sort of seems like what i didn't think yeah and and the and the guys jumping around or whatever like i didn't see any of that because as part of some pre-game thing i was just talking about like the actual like the footage on the field was good like seeing that guy yeah who was the receiver you mentioned this in the text chain he was the receiver who um didn't catch the ball and it was intercepted the guy kind of jumped around him and intercepted it and ran it back for 99 yards um later on they showed like him like being exhausted like trying to get out of the game and that he shouldn't have even been there as a receiver and then like immediately after the interception he just pays attention to the fact that he drops his his mouth he looked like me he was just like well I guess that was intercepted I should pick up my mouth guard now he just like dropped out of the game I was like there were some angles and stuff in the actual broadcast that I was like I don't know if NBC would have given me this that's a good point I

have to watch it next week not on my phone and then I'll be able to actually give a more um a more thorough thought on it i just it felt a little bit like the biggest company in the world that i use all the time and yet kind of loathe yeah combining forces with the biggest sport in the world that i use all the time and kind of loathe yeah it felt evil and it was it felt it was like one or the other i can handle but them teaming up it was just like god the sinister

factor here is off the chart. Yeah, absolutely. And I...

I am separating those two emotions out in my brain for the purpose of this argument, but I'm not dismissing what you're saying about that to just that creeping feeling of like, this ain't good. All right.

We are going to do some music for your weekend now, and we are going to need to try to keep this relatively toit. So Andrew, what a song would you like to play this? What song would you like to play?

Four seconds of I kind of tease, this last week i don't know much about this musician which is good because we don't have much time but um the stew bot sent this to me the stew bot and pip have been digging this song um and the performer is julia jacklin i don't think we've played julia jacklin on the show before the name of this song was i was neon and it in the words of the youth of yesteryear slaps

I was neon. I was the nearest door. I was the sign that said you've been here before. I swear I could see it. Swear I could see it all so clear. I was steady, I was soft to the touch Cut wide open, did I learn in too much? I swear I could feel it, swear I could feel it Am I going to lose myself again? Am I going to lose myself again? There we go.

I just want to get to the chorus there. Great, great song. Yeah, I like that a lot.

The song that I would like to play is from a singer named Morgan Wade. And I will just preface this by saying the song is called Wilder Days. It's off of this album, Reckless, that came out last year. I don't know how this landed on my radar, but I have been listening to this whole album, Reckless, on repeat. Might be because I'm in Tennessee. I don't know. this is totally highly if not overproduced country music the like of which i usually dismiss um you know i don't listen to a lot of modern country uh but i just i understand why people listen to modern country because of this album now she's a little bit outside of that norm she's very heavily tattooed and i think has had a kind of an interesting life journey dealing with some addiction issues and things like that but the music she's producing you could absolutely just hear it popping on to whatever your your sort of basic country station is so i've been battling that i mean medium i go like tepid country that's kind of my speed okay gotcha but um i've been battling that in my head this whole time being like this sounds so much like the kind of thing that you know you just hear someone blasting on a pontoon boat in lake mead um but i also just love it it just it's very it's it's so polished but it works for me so can we hear a little bit of this wilder days song by morgan wade that was me slipping into it by the way

and in my head you said look pretty you're so devious road and i'm from a windy city yeah I ain't got a clear view Tell me what you're wanting me to do You tell me every single story in your mind Come on baby we got nothing but time You say I'm too young for you You're scared I'm too right for you You say you hate the smell of cigarettes, whoa You only used to smoke when you drank

When you lay up in Chicago Chew where the wind blows I wish I'd known you in your wilder days Now here we go

I sent this song to Becca and she was like, are you trying to tell me you wish i was still she you know in college she certainly was like a typical college student uh you know having the fun and now is a very with it person who is uh you know makes good decisions and takes care of themselves she was like are you trying to tell me something i was like no i just like this song it just slaps it does slated message i like this song yeah i wasn't sure what to expect with your somewhat I don't know. um uh bashful introduction apologetic setup yeah i like it i'm looking at her wikipedia page it says that she does a version of suspicious minds which i wouldn't mind yeah did you hear that is that on the album too i did it's pretty it's pretty good um somebody described her as being like a uh harder edged cheryl crow which i was like okay because because actually like i've got a real soft spot for cheryl crow as well um so that probably explains uh this but again the whole album, Reckless. It's really good. It's also kind of rare anymore that I just will listen to a whole record or a whole album, you know, but I've been getting into it, so would recommend Morgan Wade. The listener suggestion is from listener Dave, who says, this is not a new song, but it is in the vein of your recent picks. Patti Griffin, Sweet Lorraine. This song was one of my college songs that carried me through the years, and if I got a John Prine tattoo on my arm, it would be of Patty Griffin. I love that sentence. That's what really sold me on it. That's a great sentence. I love that we're making this a thing now. Everybody weigh in on what their John Prine tattoo would be. That's really funny. All right. So that's going to do it for this week. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Thanks for hanging out with us. We will be back with more Imaginary Radio for you on Monday. Until then, have a great weekend. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners. Go Seahawks. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Sweet Lorraine, a fiery air and brown-eyed skewer Who came from a long line of drinkers and dreamers Who knew that sunshine don't hold up to dark Whose businesses fell Who sweep in the park The rain who spoke of Paintings in Paris And outlanders Thanks to her family Just as scabris Whose heart when a folk can wear It shouldn't are whose mother could only spit at the front of the rain.

Sweetly rain.

Y'all come back now, you hear? Power out.