Muse

My name is Pat, I'm from Michigan, and I have 32 teeth. Cool, okay. Just a reminder, everyone, the check-in question is, what's your favorite color? How about next? I'm Baird, I have 32 teeth, and my favorite color is blue. So, okay, and the middle question is, where are you from? None of the questions are, how many teeth do you have? That was what I was picking for my fun fact, I can see how that was confusing. There's also no fun fact. What about favorite color? Can we say our favorite color? Yeah, that's what we're, yeah, do say your favorite color. But if in order to honestly answer that question we do need to answer the teeth question This isn't a test Just like introduce yourself Okay I have 31 teeth I think the question was how many teeth would you like

T-B-T-L 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 Here's the 1-0 Swung on, there it goes Deep left center, that ball is high It is far, it is gone

But caught

It's embarrassing and it's gross But at least it's kind of funny

You know, a lot of people may not know this But I happen to be quite famous

I've only ever said I love you to two men my entire life Stone Cold Steve Austin And a guy in a dark club Who I mistook for Stone Cold Steve Austin

All I know is

This violates every canon of respectable broadcasting

Alright, hello, good morning Welcome everyone To a Friday edition of TBTL The show that just might be too beautiful to live

This party is going to be off the hook.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Is it too early a good fish sandwich?

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is absolutely soggy. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. An atmospheric river has descended upon the Northwest, and it is real, real rainy outside. Inside the broadcast center, I am dealing with a very sore arm. You're entering a world of pain. Because I got the bivalent booster yesterday and the flu shot in the same arm. And that may have been a bad idea. Maybe I should have done one in each arm. I wanted to just make it so my left arm was kind of no good today. But my right arm, which I'm right-handed, was still able to play cool drops like this. There is something about the soul of a cat. But boy, my left arm is in pain. And I'm not the only one who's hurting today. This is basically, this room I'm in is a cat hospital because the cat, Bubbles, got spayed yesterday. And so she's laid up.

Nausea, cold sweats, hot sweats, involuntary trembling, dead hands, numb lips, fingernail sensitivity, pelvic discomfort.

Those are just some of the issues that Bubbles is suffering through today. She's also wearing one of those collars so that she doesn't chew on her stitches. But right now she looks like she's doing well. I also had to throw a pain pill down her throat today, which was an odd. It's an odd thing with a cat where or any animal, I guess, when you're doing something that they're just absolutely hating and you're just doing it to be nice to them. So anyway, we're being very nice here by bringing you episode three thousand eight hundred and eight in a collector series. Let the fun begin. On this Friday, I tried to buy a Bruce Springsteen tickets the other day, and they were like $1,800 a ticket. Sounds expensive. Thanks to Ticketmaster, one of the most evil companies in America. We've known this for years. We've known this since Pearl Jam hipped us to it, and yet Ticketmaster Live Nation continues, and there's now a new move to try to get them broken up as a monopoly. They're the same company, by the way. We'll talk about that. Also, we are going to fall back on Sunday, and it's going to get even darker even earlier.

Don't stay in my house if you're dorks at it.

And it looks like the legislation that got through the Senate on keeping us permanently in daylight saving time, as in not falling back, it's not going to make it through the House. And so we are stuck with this for the foreseeable future. We'll talk about that as well. Plus, we'll talk to this young man. He is a handsome young stranger. He's doing the work. He's baby-stepping. He is the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ship.

You're, like, the coolest person I've ever met.

He's Andrew.

walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke i had to kind of adjust my plan for today right before the show because as you mentioned um bubbles your cat had a big operation yesterday we call it a procedure and i was i was going to ask you about that and i thought we could talk about that for a little bit and then then move on but then i got this email from a longtime listener who is just outraged at the amount of cat talk on the show lately it has become quote almost unbearable uh quote actually not everyone in the world thinks someone else's cat is adorable as the parent does and so now having read this luke i feel like we should spend the entire show talking about your cat i don't want to i want to hear nothing but bubble talk the rest of the show and also my moratorium on bingo talk has been lifted as well it's all cats from here on out wow was i on that email as well i don't believe so this person is thanking me for trying to show some restraint stop the cat takeover i would love

to be able to start listening again uh this might not be the show for you my friend whoever sent that luke tell me everything how is bubbles doing you know um she's doing pretty well now i was i have to admit i had kind of a sort of a fantasy would be overstating it but i had kind of a little scenario that i was bizarrely looking forward to yesterday which was i was going to go pick her a bubs up from the vet she was going to be all doped up on um you know whatever anesthetic they give her when they spay her and so she was going to be kind of groggy i know you've never had a young kid but it if you have kids you know this it is really sad when they are feeling uh not great when they're under the weather but there is selfishly this kind of Sort of cute thing where they're just A little feverish and they just kind of Want to cuddle with you and kind of go to sleep On you they're just a little laid up And you never wish that your kid were sick But I'm just parents know what I'm talking about Low key it's kind of a silver lining It's a bonding it sounds like It is it's you know and so I kind of thought Bub's is going to be in that mode I'm going to go get my Bivalent booster and my flu shot So I'm going to be a little cuddly too I'm just going to get I stopped at the store Becca and I went and got the booster together And then went by Fred Meyer And I picked up some fixings for a grilled cheese sandwich And some tomato soup And I was like, I'm going to turn the heat up To like 80 in the apartment And then me and the cat And the soup, we're all just going to kind of like Have a really chill A really chill night And so at about 2.30, the vet calls me To tell me how it went With the procedure And they say, Bubbles did great and i said how's she doing they go bouncing off the walls i was like isn't she groggy from the can you give her more and they go a lot of cats are but not her can you give her two cc's more i mean seriously i was like could you get the propofol what do you have could you i was i had a whole afternoon planned unless just being snuggly not her being wild with stitches but

Actually, that is a situation for real, though, because especially, I think, for a spay situation, they do have to take it easy, right? They can't go jumping around and stretching. What did the docs say about that?

That's why I am currently broadcasting from what I'm calling a cat hospital, Andrew, because, yes, I am responsible to try to keep this wild animal from jumping or running for the next 10 days. uh and so what i did was i this room made the most sense for uh that being the being the place where she's been primarily hanging out and so i took the desk out of here not the one that i broadcast from but i have another desk that's kind of it's jumpable for her so i didn't want her to be tempted i wanted to get all the furniture out of this room that she would be tempted to try to jump on and i brought in a litter box not the robot one from the other room but just like a regular one her food her water i put down some blankets i've got her protest blanket in here this other thing she can sleep in i basically have set this room up so that she can just be in here and have all of her needs met but not be able to run a lot and not have anything to jump on

and is it working no doesn't say because i mean if there's energy there's energy maybe she won't be jumping up on things but she's still like probably tearing around the house i mean i've seen bingo chase things that aren't there like bingo wants to play so bad and in the morning when we're still like kind of laying in bed and being lazy he just is like okay fine you guys don't have anything for me to chase i'll just make something up in my head and tear around the house

chasing it well when i first got her home she has that cone on and and it's very

disruptive you know i mean it completely cuts off her peripheral vision which is kind of great because it slows her down and i mean she was though she was bouncing off the wall she was also a little kind of woozy like she was so between the cone and a little bit of wooziness she was like very confused and kind of very like just tentative so i was like this is great yeah i like confused and tentative because it means that she's not going to be you know injuring herself further reopening her stitches or whatever and then i'm making the grilled cheese sandwich and i look up and she's just standing on top of the kitchen bar like she's just jumped five feet straight up in the air and is just standing on it in her cone is this a place she doesn't even usually jump i know that you would prefer she usually does jump there but like she was so out of it when i got her home i was like okay she's just going to be taking it really easy for a while because she's again she can't see anything so that's got to be intimidating and again the drugs were still in her system it took about five minutes for her to figure out the cone and just go right back to jumping on things she still have the cone on yes she doesn't get a photo of that for the show pic yes i have many as you might imagine oh you thought many photos of this

what's that you thought to do that you thought to take a photo of your cat with the well yeah

exactly i just i thought to photo document every second of this cat's life mostly for that listener who emailed in that former listener yes exactly but um uh what i did though with the cone is i was worried she wasn't drinking enough water because it was and i had two different water sources for i had our standard bowl and then i have this kind of constantly cycling kind of water fountain thing yep we got one of those and i i kept like bringing her over to it and then kind of like splashing the water with my fingers and being like here's where the water is and she was just kind of uninterested and so last night i took the cone and i basically inverted it so it went from being like a um a handmaid's tale yeah looking thing that's a superhero like a to being more like a collar that like um you know uh sir francis drake would have worn yep yep i can totally picture it

when i did that she went it's not getting in the way the legs in front it is a little bit it's a

small collar it's it's getting in the way of legs a little bit but it means that she can actually sea again and what happened was she went over to the water fountain and she drank for like literally five straight minutes oh wow so i was like oh man like i figured that she would just figure out the water because she would need it but she apparently hadn't she was thirsty as all get out so now she's she's francis draking the collar but she i mean the critical thing there is just to keep her from messing with her stitches and she doesn't seem to be very interested in the stitches maybe it's because i paid extra for the laser treatment oh nice that's right 50 bucks right 50 bones uh 40 i think it was and so um anyway she's she seems to be she seems to be doing fine like in terms of not like messing with that so that's the main reason she has the collar on um uh but she seems to be doing okay with that and right now she is sleeping behind me and uh

everything seems to be relatively okay around here how long does it um like how long do you have to keep an eye on the stitches situation like more than a week right or is it just days well they

say 10 days but i mean that's not even possible first of all i'm going to new york on tuesday so i guess it's going to be becca's problem but but also it's like there's just no way i'm keeping this cat you know chill for 10 days it's i mean i'm just going to try to you know keep her as mellow as i can for as long as i can but there's definitely going to be a point where it's just like well i'm gonna have to let go and let god because it's just that's just not a possibility

with this animal and the bigger thing would be if she were like kind of excessively licking at scratching right biting at the stitches so as long as she's not doing that that's good and then you know with every passing day that it's getting in the it's moving in the right direction

yeah i mean it's uh it's a pretty gnarly wound actually it almost looks a little like they told me take a look at it on day one so you kind of know what to compare it to uh-huh and it's not that it's particularly like red or infected but it's kind of almost like it sort of bulges out more than i expected it's almost looks mildly herniated but i know it's not because they sent

her home that way so yeah maybe it's a little bit swollen we have um it's been it's been really fun watching i mean this is a very very slow process but little by little bananas and bingo are kind of becoming friends bananas i think i told you she was never um because we kept them separated for so long she she didn't get kind of traumatized by the new animal in the house like she didn't go to ground for a day or whatever which i expected um but you know like bingo's just annoying to her right like she used to have this place to herself she's older she moves slow she's scared of things she doesn't want to be harassed she just wants to sleep right and then bingo is also kind of like bouncing off the walls he's a he's for a kitten he's incredibly chill he'll bounce around for like five minutes and then just fall asleep immediately on your lap he's mostly a cuddler but he sees her Thank you. and he's fascinated by her and used to live with a bunch of other cats who would wrestle with him all day if he wanted to so he'll just see her and then just go run she's totally asleep and he'll just go running up to her and jump on her right and just I mean that would startle the hell out of anybody so she's been really wary and you know little by little letting him sit closer to her and then last night Luke for the very first time bingo was sitting on this little kind of armchair thing we have and bananas came up jumped up and sat next to him and she sat there a little bit like kind of cautiously for a little bit but then by the end of the evening i think we had our first real snuggles although it is the most awkward snuggle you'll ever see because they both fell asleep but bananas still isn't quite giving into bingo so it's bananas is like back half is using is using a bingo as a pillow it is like the most awkward thing and it is also my most treasured photo right now because it's proof that things are moving in the right direction yeah you know for

poor um bubbles because i'm out of town so much she ends up staying at becca's house a lot and becca has a cat named holly and it's exactly the situation that you're describing holly is a little bit older she's not old but she's just older she's rounder she's mostly just like sleeps and and stays pretty chill and then bubbles comes over and it's just a situation and bubbles is jumping all over her and tossing her salad and just going crazy but by like day three they're sleeping together like uh some inspirational poster or something and like cuddling and like hanging out and then right as they hit a vibe i come home and go bubbles it's time to go back to

the lonely apartment with the drunk dad it's time to go back to the divorced arms wait what do they call it this bachelor arms bachelor arms it's time to go back to where i have a race car bed

bubbles and then she's like really i like it over here and then we go back here for like three or four days and then she gets used to this vibe yeah and then i throw her back uh into the situation with holly so i know that i know that sort of i mean luckily for your cats it's a permanent situation so once they once they connect they're gonna stay connected so yeah anyway i'm really looking for mostly i hope that that was um i hope that was exactly what that one emailer was looking

for on this friday here's where bit of content i am such a jerk because here's the deal i've received many very nice notes from listeners saying hey please we're interested in hearing about bingo more you're putting this rule on and i was doing that as a bit of a spoof kind of kidding on the square a little bit i was doing it as a bit of a spoof but i really didn't want every show to be me just talking about how cute my kitten is i i understand why that is not appealing to all people but i got so many notes from listeners saying please reconsider we'd really like to hear more bingo talk i'm like you know i'm just silently sticking to my guns here and then i get one rude email and i'm just like all right it's kitten talk all the way down it's like what is it about

me that is motivated by that what is it about that person who listens to this show and doesn't understand that of course that's going to force us to do a loose 80 minute like have we ever responded positively to that kind of feedback someone saying please stop doing x like of course i mean it's weird that someone would both know the show enough to email us but not know the show enough to know that that's a hundred percent a recipe for us doing the thing they're asking us

not to do i promise you and this i mean you and maybe two other listeners will will know what i'm talking about here but luke i was i've been listening as i mentioned since i don't listen to baseball for three to four hours every night now i've been listening to the dan lebitard show i actually had the thought the other day i'm just like huh that's funny i was like almost totally out of this universe not all that long ago now i find myself really trying to catch up on levitard all the time now i wonder what's changed has the show gotten better have i changed i'm like no baseball's over and i can't have silence in my head so um i've been listening to that and so you know how it is when you listen to the show with that much content every single day like you just start to think in their voices basically and i was cooking last night when i got this email And I was like, wow, that's pretty harsh. But I got done reading it, and I swear I just heard the sounder of, you don't get the show. I was like, why can't that be our sounder? I know. Anyway, but that's enough.

We've got some sound effects of my mom. Maybe we can. Well, no, we can't get my mom saying, you don't get the show. That's such a direct ripoff of Levitard.

That's okay. Anyway, I don't want to be mean to that person anymore. They are very direct with their opinions. Again it is the type of thing where I always And I guess it's a double edged sword I can't Was it our boss Beth Coleman It was Joanne her boss unfortunately No I mean it's one of those things Where part of me is kind of like Are you kidding me like using Levitard as an example Like there are regular segments Or just conversations that slip into areas I don't know anything about And I either just ignore those parts Or I skip them Like there's literally a fast forward by 30 seconds

You hit it ten times and you're good, you know. I just – I seriously don't understand the desire to email into a show and say, please don't do X topic or this segment anymore because I just – I have opinions on the things I listen to, but I would never write to a show in this tone and talk about how unbearable it is. Having said that, it's a double-edged sword because –

My plan, by the way, is to mention Bubbles in 30-second intervals. Yeah. so every time this listener tries to hit that little like forward circle with the arrow on it

it's still bubbles talk but on the other hand we do pride ourselves on like okay we aren't the lebitard show we don't have a million listeners or i don't know how many listeners they have you know what i mean and so we are in direct contact so maybe this person felt comfortable enough with me to unload on it but it's a good lesson for everybody involved that if you want me to do something yell at me and tell me to do the opposite please yes and the savvy listeners know that yes actually all those nice listeners who are saying please more bingo talk they probably were they were doing a good job of tamping it down probably right now i'm into wow that's reverse reverse

psychology you're right that you're you're right those people hate cats it's i gotta that's why they were saying very nicely please talk about your cat more because they know that that means

you'll do it less when somebody writes in andrew your insights on modern american politics are are so thoughtful and on the nose i realize that oh no they need me to stop talking about

please weigh in on climate change more

luke please weigh in your thoughts on human trafficking some of the most poignant commentary i've heard on the matter anyway now i'm just now i'm just

dragging us what else yeah now you wait did you write the other email now you're just wait this email is from me what's going on what have what have i called was coming from inside the house

exactly all right let's take a quick break and then we'll come back with these top stories and we've got some music for your weekend as well here on this friday so stick around all right let's thank some daily donors these are the wonderful generous cat talk loving people who are making today's episode possible with their financial support folks like nicholas scavlam in chicago illinois that toddlin town

it's gonna start getting real beautiful there real quickly for snowfall probably right around the corner i haven't looked at the weather for chicago i don't know it's snowing in washington

by the way it was snowing up on the passes although you i was looking at a weather map today what what is it about being 46 that i look at weather maps i care more about the weather now

than i ever have before and i probably leave the house less than i ever have before there has to be

some kind of psychological or brain explanation for that because i used when i was a kid other than like you know was it going to snow and then school would be canceled or maybe is it going to be 100 degrees other than those extremes i was just like who cares about the weather and and i was riding my bike outside i was uncovered i was exposed to the elements so much more than i am now and i remember thinking how is there a whole channel dedicated to weather how is there a weather channel who is watching that shit and as i get older i'm like hmm seattle's

in a rain shadow right now interesting oh an atmospheric river interesting literally you are

in a rain shadow right now like it's raining everywhere in oregon and washington except seattle um it looks yeah it looks like you know there was at one point yeah it's not it's not

There's rainwater on the ground, but it's not raining right now, and I don't know if we need to get into this, but I have a haircut appointment in the university district. Hold on, Andrew, wait a sec.

Bubbles.

Oh, sorry.

I just have to do that every 30 seconds.

I thought Bubbles was up on something.

No, I just have to say the name every 30 seconds.

Actually, yeah, I need to work the cat into all of my stories. So I need to get away from my cute, cute kitty for a little while. So I'm going to go get my haircut this afternoon, And I remember booking it on a Friday thinking, hey, because this is kind of near my old neighborhood, kind of near Teddy's. If I book haircut appointments around 435 o'clock on a Friday, I can get my haircut, maybe meander to my old pizza shop, have a slice, have a beer, go to Teddy's, hang out, like kind of do a little light rolling thunder on a Friday evening if I if I plan my haircut correctly. the thing is i made that appointment like what two months ago or however long it is between haircuts and i realized there's something wrong with my brain where i intellectually know that the weather is going to change from summer into winter in Seattle but I don't I think I'm immune to the effects of it until I'm in the middle of it I'm like oh okay so it might be a little rainy so what I can walk in the rain and then like yesterday it's like freezing cold down pouring rain and I'm just like why did I think that this was doable like why did I like just I just did I forget what rain is like here well I

mean I think I saw in in my assiduous scouring of various weather blogs Andrew I think I saw that it dropped by 40 degrees in seattle over the course of like a few days it got so cold yesterday and i told you the night before it was it was frozen it was unusually warm you know late into the year but then it got actually colder than normal and that difference was pretty extreme

it was it's it's been pretty bananas yeah that is the thing too the type of rain and cold that we had recently or you know these past couple of days i don't even think it is i don't know what normal is anymore but i don't think it is like the kind of rain that we used to get when i first

moved here you know who loves weather talk is theresa true of seattle washington theresa currently in the rain shadow enjoying it uh thanks theresa also thanks to johnna beving

in camarillo california now i'll bet you the weather is nice there i bet it is can you check

the blog uh hold on hey gorgle bingo camarillo weather we're doing 66 and sunny right now that's what i zero percent chance of precipitation i think that's my is that that's my perfect weather

maybe like 66 to 69 or something like 70 might be getting well maybe up to 70 i'd go that's perfect tempered weather. You should move to Camarillo. It's going to be

70 tomorrow and clear. You should go kick it with Jonna Beving. Jonna, yes. Now, Gillian or I should say Jillian Lamont is in Sammamish, Washington. I don't know if it's in the rain shadow or not. I didn't look carefully enough at the map.

I'll look it up later. I'll get back to you on that weather fact by Tuesday

at the latest. Please do. Thank you, Jillian. Also, thanks to Megan Johnson in Hawthorne, California. Beautiful Hawthorne in the greater Los Angeles area if I leave a little south of LA and then moving north but keeping it in the golden state Lindsay Joy is in Palo Alto CA by the way

Hawthorne it's 65 degrees right now today it looks like there might be some scattered clouds but mostly nice and the rain won't be coming there until Monday

golly I want to be one of those people that is like I want to be a snowbird i i that's another thing uh that's really appealing to me as i advance through life is going down to like something called sun city i'm sure there's a sun city arizona arizonia that's just full of people escaping the weather in the northwest that's really that's kind of how you do it you head down there for the winter and then you head back up for the summer you know

that's how my grandma ended up there grandma simsik really grandma clink clink um yeah she and my grandfather would go back and forth from Ohio to Arizona, you know, sometime after they retired. And then eventually they just stayed there. And now Grandma lives solo down there,

100 years old. And she's like almost 100, right? Yeah. I mean, she does live in a place that is

graduated care. I shouldn't say alone, but my grandfather passed on a while back. But yeah, she loves it down there. She's been down there for like 20 years now. So you start by being a snowbird is pita okay with snowbird do we call them snowboids or what would be a i think we can say snowbird okay because it's good right because yeah it's celebrating the the ability to fly south for the winter yeah flying down to where it's warm to get away from the snow it really should be called a sunbird though i think you're right because you're flying towards something that is more appealing a snowbird would be attracted to snow that's why

It would be a bird that loves the snow, is camouflaged, does its best hunting in the snow, etc. Yeah, I think you're right. By the way, you're going to live forever. If you've got those genetics, if you've got a 100-year-old grandparent.

I think my grandma might make some healthier choices than me. I'm not sure.

You've got your 80s, Andrew, to sober up. Hey, thanks to our donors of the day for making this intervention possible.

We really appreciate you. Also, a sausage just slipped out of my ear for some reason. What's that all about? Hello and welcome to Top Story.

I had kind of an interesting experience the other day, Andrew. I was, as you know, I'm a big listener of the Howard Stern Show. And he had Bruce Springsteen. on and that was a big deal in that world because everybody on the show they're huge fans of Bruce Springsteen and also he's never been on the show before and it was a really good interview like it was I think it was one of Howard Stern's better interviews because he's so he reveres Bruce Springsteen so much that he just kind of got out of the way and let Bruce Springsteen talk a lot of times if he's interviewing someone who's not quite as famous or beloved he's injecting his own um i don't know what you'd call it his own bs into it a little bit more than sometimes is for my liking but uh they were talking just about bruce springsteen's career and everything and it struck me i was like dang this guy's got so many good songs like i think of myself as sort of a an appreciator of bruce springsteen but i'm you know i'm i wouldn't say that i'm like you know his biggest fan or anything and uh so i thought you know what he's he's promoting a tour he's coming to portland maybe i'll grab a couple of ticks he's coming to the modus center and it's a giant ass arena thought i don't know it might be a hundred bucks or something first of all there was like 20 tickets that were left in the whole arena and uh they were in then they were ranging between three thousand dollars and two thousand three thousand on the high end two thousand on the low end and i was like i was shocked by that number now i know with inflation and stuff i mean i know things cost more than they used to but i was just like that is and bruce springsteen is again he's the kind of person that that people are obsessed with enough that they will pay you know exorbitant fees because it's it's almost a lifestyle um seeing bruce springsteen but i was like that is a ridiculous number and then today i look at twitter and someone writes on twitter somebody from the website more perfect union ticket master live nation which is the same company reports record quarterly earnings of 6.2 billion dollars fueled by an all-time high in combined ticket and fee charges ticket master fees now cost as much as 78 percent of a ticket jesus christ 80 of the ticket cost in some cases can just be going to ticket master not even the person who's doing the performing it's not going to the uh arena or whatever it's going to freaking ticket master and the example that more perfect union uses is this bruce springsteen tour oh really they go on to tweet a bunch of other things about how the there are tickets for the bruce springsteen concerts that are going for five thousand dollars and that bruce springsteen himself is super pissed about it is tweeting like how is this legal and it really seems like it shouldn't be legal i was i was watching um some videos and other reading some other explainers on

the latest with ticketmaster live nation and i mean it's basically exactly what pearl jam was mad about back in the mid 90s which is that they have a monopoly on venues and so it's not even like if you don't want to use ticketmaster they will be able to tell venues not to let you play there and they have control because if the venue defies them then they can steer all of their

business away from the venue it's so sick also i don't know much about this you tell me i'm gonna ask you a question and hope that you have an answer to it having read that piece i mean isn't there something going on too where there's like this secondary market for ticket sales but they also own the secondary sites like i don't yeah i just don't understand i literally don't understand how to get tickets these days i told you we were up watching pavement we paid 50 for tickets that these young people literally laughed at us well didn't laugh at us to the horror of some youngs that were near you right they were concerned they're like literally like sir you should be down on the floor for 50 we paid sir aren't you supposed to be in arizona right now with the sunbird what are you doing here and i said you called it a sunbird god bless the youth of america um but uh yeah so i don't really know how to do that either but it does sound like it's like well a lot of people are buying them on the secondary market but the secondary market are like websites that are created by ticket masters so like they're making tons of money by selling them at supposedly at face value with these huge fees and then they go to the secondary market where there's less restriction on how high of a ceiling they can go up but there's still the there's still the the um the company in between that's making profit off of that yeah i noticed when i was

looking for these uh bruce springsteen tickets there were there were um you know it's there's thousands of seats in this arena again they're almost all sold then they're a little like kind of clear circle that's like oh this is an available ticket then there are the green circles which is a like verified secondary seller or something it's basically a person who ticket master is also getting money from so they don't have any incentive to try to keep scalpers away do we say that by the

way oh that's a good point i would say probably not what do we call them i don't know jerks no

yeah no that's a really good point but there there's no way that's okay anymore right well

i mean it's but is is i mean i guess it's because of typically the way that that that that term is used because it's not it's not actually specific to any person or people it is really just the act of yeah maybe you're right cutting someone's hair off but it's almost always used negatively around the topic of native americans and so it just feels loaded yeah it feels loaded to me but um but again i'm not an expert on these things but so like basically you know there used to be an incentive for these ticket sellers and if you if you ever use like a smaller service like brown paper tickets or whatever they'll put limitations on how many tickets you can buy so that you don't so that they don't have the situation where a few people buy up all the seats to something and then get to just resell it at exorbitant prices but ticket master is so devious bastard in new york city

there's a lot going on there the machine's broken somebody hit the machine don't praise the machine

ticket master is so evil that they also are getting a cut from that secondary stuff and so they therefore they have no and it's a percentage presumably so they have zero motivation to try to stop that kind of stuff because they're going to get paid when they sell the tickets and they're also going to get paid when those people resell the tickets it is gross yeah it's super super

gross and of course then bruce springsteen those prices are so high not just because of the popularity but also like the age and demographics of that audience right those are those are presumably going to be people who are older and have more disposable income and are doing this you know going to to watch more of like kind of a legacy tour well it's dynamic pricing right uh

and that's the whole that's the issue is that the more demand there is the higher the prices go which is i know the free market but it's like this is why the the blink 182 tour was running into the same thing where it was like tickets were five thousand dollars or something ridiculous and it's like it's not even like like bruce springsteen is pretty well known for at his shows like leaving the first few rows like of tickets of seats empty so that he can bring down people who might be in wheelchairs or have other stuff going on where being right at the front of the state or right in front of the stage is a great thing for them like this is a known thing that bruce springsteen does like i don't get the sense that he is interested in getting paid a million dollars to play these shows like i think he would rather people normal people can come to these shows and watch them and

enjoy them you know and make some money but not try to gouge right yeah like I don't even I really

don't even think it's the artists and it seems to me like this would be in the interest of the Justice Department to really do something about this I mean they break up monopolies there there are you know rules in place to stop this kind of thing from happening it's just wild to me that Ticketmaster has been able to just get away with this for so long and again it's not just that they are dominate they dominate the space in terms of selling the tickets but they can they they have a tremendous um sway over the venues as well so they don't own the venues but they might as well because the venues have to do what they say do you think that it's not a priority

for the government because of all of the thing of all of the companies and all the regulation that they need to kind of oversee and and mergers that they need to investigate like the this grocery store merger and that's that's kind of being debated right now like there's something about tickets that could come off as more frivolous like grocery stores the effect of grocery store monopolization affects us because we need to buy groceries you know what i mean or or even right computers we need computers to do our job like there whereas it just doesn't to them of all of the things that they need to deal with the idea of not going to a concert it doesn't raise to that

level yeah i mean that's a fair point in that it seems it's pretty um you know it's uh it's elective i guess you would say like you don't have to go see blink 182 or bruce springsteen you do have to buy milk so in that way it's not the highest priority but it is sort of a quality of life thing in a way it's like if people yeah exactly it's like if people can't uh if normal people can't go to a concert anymore or have to be like you know sitting at the back of the stadium or whatever it's i don't i mean i get yeah again it's not it's not food so i guess it's a lower priority than that but it just seems so wrong it just seems so unfair that i can't see bruce

springsteen for less than four thousand i mean honestly why does everything bad happen to you no i'm not but my point of bringing that up was just like kind of pure speculation thinking out loud and maybe to a degree, keeping the needles moving. But I but yeah, but I'm not being dismissive about it because it is it is evil for a corporation to be able just to take over all aspects of that. And and then, you know, like you said earlier, or maybe I was trying to make the argument that in this particular case, it's affecting people with maybe generally speaking, more disposable income because they're more established in life. But you are seeing like when you think about like the importance of the arts and and and pop culture as being part of that and young people often being the ones who are going to discover new music live music whatever like the impact on them i think actually is pretty serious yeah um we are uh basically going to be

stuck falling back um until further notice andrew despite the fact that the senate unanimously the united states senate unanimously did something which is they unanimously passed something called the sunshine protection act helmed by by the way marco rubio gross um but it was a move to stay on daylight saving time in other words stay on the time that we're on right now and not fall back also of course the legislatures of california oregon and washington and i think maybe idaho as well have all agreed to do this everybody has agreed except the u.s house of representatives which for some reason it's the energy committee will not give this a hearing and will not give this a vote and you know uh next tuesday is the midterm and then it's a lame duck session after that because a lot of the people there are either retiring or will have been replaced but are just filling out their time so the word on the street is this is not going to get here you know it's not going to get a vote in the house meaning we're just doing this we're doing this for the foreseeable future this falling back thing which I really feel hits me worse every year like the darkness really the darkness on the edge of town to quote Bruce Springsteen again

it really bums me out what is there some sort of economic argument from the from an energy perspective on this that i'm because i haven't read about i remember when these headlines were being made i feel like last year but then i haven't really revisited it what is it about the

energy do you know uh i don't know why it falls i don't know why it's that committee but i mean originally the idea was for farmers i think it was to allow people working in agriculture to have more daylight and so basically what they decided was it'll be darker in the morning but you'll get a little more light in the afternoon so that's why we spring forward um but so so you know right now we're in daylight saving and our friend bean baxter will be very very quick to remind you it's not daylight savings i think of him every time uh are also the world's biggest fan of christmas uh denny's christmas and clyde twambaugh and daylight saving time those are the pillars that hold up our friend bean baxter um by the way speaking of christmas just a quick uh sidetrack i was um driving in portland the other day and i looked into a window of some like kind of high-end condos and someone had a full-on decorated christmas tree just lit up you know right there happening and i know like i know you're not you don't really go in for the like giving people grief over how and when they start celebrating christmas but it felt early to me yeah it felt kind of early like it was it may have even been pre-Halloween I'm not even kidding

yeah whatever I think the the pandemic people I really saw people celebrating and getting really into Christmas really early I feel like last year because it was the first Christmas where some families could get together for the first time and it's just like it was more about just like kind of I know I use this too much and probably incorrectly but almost just like the vibe of just like let's just do this let's just sink into the cozy season here and I think that that's what a lot of people in our culture kind of needed and it's like i don't know man like i'm not trying to i'm sorry i'm not trying to be um annoying here for lack of a better word but like if that whoever lives there just gets joy when they wake up in the morning they see a christmas

tree who gives a shit you know well yes i mean i would start by saying they absolutely have the they have the legal right to do whatever they want but i will say for me the the my personal issue with celebrating christmas earlier and earlier is well one there's a huge consumer aspect to it like the stores and the malls and the old navies are doing it to sell us shit you know it's not like it's it's and they just keep cranking it up earlier because that's a larger window to sell us shit and to convince us that like we must consume this time of year but for me really what it is is i like that christmas is not all year long i like that i like that it's special. And I'm just talking about my

experience i like that it is a limited time offer so that when it happens when like i set up the christmas tree and i and i put the lights up and i get the frazier fur oil going which smells because i have an aluminum christmas tree but like it smells like a christmas tree i like that all of that happens between the period after thanksgiving and before new year's eve and so if to me it's like if we were to do it all year round it would make that part just feel less special to me but that's just that's just totally my experience and it doesn't mean that that person in that condo although i did write on twitter that uh if people want to know what my super villain origin story

it's that i saw that christmas tree yeah i uh i'm gonna fire me up i'm gonna ask you a question it's gonna sound like i'm pushing back but i'm honestly just interested because again i i don't i'm not super fired up about this topic in fact bubbles if i bingo that'll be our marco polo game You say bubbles, bingo, go. I, I, if I really start untangling this, I'll go back to my dark origin story, which was kind of like really disliking Christmas and just been thinking that honestly, other people's love of the holiday affects those of us who don't care as much about it. Wait, as a kid, did you not like Christmas? Certainly as a young adult, probably starting in college and certainly like kind of as a young man out of college, I would rant against Christmas. I was very against it. I was like, listen, this is a this is a religious holiday. Those who celebrate it, celebrate it. But then like it just seems weird to me that I can't go to a store or a bowling alley or whatever. Like the whole world shuts down for somebody's religious holiday. Like that kind of irritated me. I'm not there anymore. But like the idea that other people's decision sort of shuts down the world. And I was like, I want I would like to opt out of this. And I had no choice to maybe not the most mature attitude in the world, but it's where I was. So at least you know where I'm coming from on this. I'm looking forward to the holidays. I enjoy spending time with Genevieve and whoever I'm spending with that that season. But my point is that I wanted to ask you this. OK. And it's just yeah, again, I want to make it clear here. I'm not I'm not challenging you, but like the idea of let's say chili. I love chili and I'm looking forward to my first pot of chili that I'm going to make like later this fall. And when I think of fall and coziness, like I sort of think of that moment when I'm making my first big batch of chili. Right now, if somebody else makes chili and I don't eat it like it doesn't affect me because like I still haven't made my chili. And if somebody in another home is making chili, like I've still maintained my I've still maintained my boundaries. And so it doesn't it just doesn't affect me. Is it different for Christmas? Because by having a tree in the window, it's like maybe going somewhere and smelling chili everywhere.

Like it doesn't feel like it's like it's like people smearing chili on the outside of their home, which is part of my tradition as well.

I should say. Yeah. But no, is is that the thing like you feel like you can't avoid it?

yes for me it's that the it's the same with hearing christmas music to take it back to our friend um bean who i don't know if he has any more but for many years his email signature was like here's where you can hear christmas music all year round it was like a link to a web radio or some shit for me it's like if i start hearing christmas music or if i see christmas lights or christmas trees it feels again i'm just talking about my experience it feels a little premature to me and it's almost like it's forcing me into a headspace that i like to i like to really get into that headspace for about a month and a half or whatever it is and so as opposed to the chili which is like if that person was cooking chili in a crock pot in their high-end apartment in portland's south waterfront i would have no idea but seeing their tree lit up it's it sort of stimulates this the christmas part of my brain which i like to leave unstimulated until it is

time which is interesting because now the more i talk about it like your argument for holding off on christmas until a certain time is actually very similar to my basically my anti-christmas argument that i used to have and the you know the more i kind of think about this i i think i had some emotional issues around christmas as well that um i haven't fully uh explored but like christmas would kind of bring on some bad feelings for me too i think that we don't have to talk about now because it's a depressing topic but i think there was some probably depression there and even though I wasn't bringing that into the conversation for whatever reason I didn't want to opt into the holiday and I felt like I didn't have a choice because the world or our culture I should say our country and our culture forces you into the holiday and in a certain way I didn't want it to come ever you wanted it to come after Thanksgiving it's kind of the same argument

yeah for me it is and this is all just about tradition and I've talked about this on the show a lot part of why I think I like Christmas is because we didn't celebrate it when I was a kid So talk about opposite. experiences i'm guessing that you're growing up your home was probably fairly done up for christmas i don't know what your mom's deal was but like presumably you had the tree and the lights and the stuff like that we had none of that and i longed for it and then my mom slowly got the camel's nose under the tent because when my dad was the one who was like we're not celebrating christmas because with the tree and everything because it's that's pagan which by the way it actually is like you know the whole christmas tree itself is very pagan in its origins and then my mom was like okay but how about some boughs of holly or whatever like she started getting like wreaths and things that were basically made out of christmas tree materials but not a tree and then putting up stockings and then we did one christmas where we we did presents we didn't have a tree but we had stockings and the stockings had a bunch of presents in them by the way terrible presents but presents nonetheless and then eventually we got a tree i think because i grew up kind of longing for it now it's a big deal to me and also we have this family tradition now that we're fully we're a full christmas family is thanksgiving we gorge ourselves we do all the dishes and by we i mean my sisters typically i go over there and like stand around and go does anybody need any help um kind of but i don't get close enough to the sink to do any real helping but when the christmas or the the thanksgiving dishes are done and this these big long tables that are like temporary that are brought out in the living room for all the people those are taken back downstairs the good china that my dad has from my grandmother is hand washed dried put into these um like foam sleeves and then for some reason put in filing boxes like cardboard you

know like cardboard document boxes yeah and are they late they're laid flat though they're not

up and down they're laid flat in there but they're in each one is in a protective foam sleeve but And then for some reason, put back in a filing box, taken downstairs. And now the room is clear. Again, the food has been consumed. Everyone is in fine fettle. And then it's time for Christmas music. And Addy DJs, it's a whole thing. And it cannot start until those dishes are done. And I don't know, that's just like a big ritual in our family. So I think that's playing into this for me.

Yeah, and again, the point being that even though you're not making the choice of having that Christmas tree in your house seeing it in somebody else's house sort of like makes that less special for you

yeah well a little bit i just like to you know it's like when you get home andrew and you really have to go to the bathroom and you're doing a jig but you also need to take your coat off and hang it up and like kind of get a few things taken care of so that you can really enjoy your bathroom

time do you ever do that move yeah i've also i'm also thinking of times like specifically in the last apartment i remember a racing home and there are also the times you go to the bathroom it's called a jacket on the floor situation like you just shed that thing as fast as because the body knows the body can sense that the body keeps the score i believe exactly right yeah your body

can sense i mean homing pigeons have nothing on a human's ability a human's bladder's ability to very carefully gps how close we're getting to the toilet um and increasing the the pressure down there but i also have had i don't know if you've ever done this i used to do this more when i was younger now i've just decided it's a bad idea but like i would sometimes get home i've been holding it in all day i really have to go there's no toilet paper instead of just grabbing a roll of toilet paper it's like no i have to take the old one off the roll throw away the cardboard put the new toilet paper on the toilet paper roll press that little middle part in the spring-loaded part put it on get it started like i would actually torture myself you want to talk about dark origin stories i don't know what was going on emotionally for me but it'd be like i would have to i would force myself to do various little tasks as i'm almost you know having an accident um i was sort

of yeah i was sorry that was me like do i want to talk about this i was sort of proud of myself yesterday so i had a day where i had you went on the big boy potty no but i'm getting so close I did get a sticker because I didn't mess in the bed last night. No, yesterday I had some errands to run, about three different things to do. But I wanted to get some lunch ahead of time. So I went to this old diner and I had some lunch. And then my next stop was to the grocery store and I'm shopping. And then I kind of realized, oh, oh, I should probably go home before my next errand because I think I need some private time. And then I walk around the grocery store Kind of at a quicker pace Feeling like oh this is getting a little bit Yes the plan is definitely To go home Something is arriving Definitely okay to go home Like do that and then get back in the car But again it's kind of It's a really cold rainy day yesterday And I'm just like It's just kind of a It's not Let me put it this way. My house is pretty conveniently in between the grocery store where I was shopping and the pet store, which is what my next destination was. It actually wasn't like me having to drive way out of my way. But, you know, it would be nice not to have to go home, grab the groceries, rush through the rain to go inside, unlock the door, you know, and then go back outside again. And so I was like, it would be nice if I could just pull off this this caper without having to stop home to use the restroom. But also, do I want to be in the pet smart like in a real desperate situation? What if I think I'm timing this right? But then there's a delay at the cash register or something, you know, but I get in the car and my plan is to go home. And then I I'm kind of getting near the decision of whether or not I'm going to go home or not. I'm kind of like, I think I'm OK. now I was standing in the grocery store and I wasn't okay and now I'm sitting in a warm car and I am okay if I run this risk and I go and I skip the pit stop will I get out of the car and immediately have regret and then be stuck in traffic on Aurora or something but I did it I rolled the dice Luke I'm like I think I'm okay I think I can do this mind over matter so I went to the store it was a risky move because I was buying some kitten food that I'd never bought before so it wasn't like a store I'd never been in the store before So it wasn't like hey I can run in Go right there It actually took me some time to find the cat food Did you consider using a litter box? I did They're like sir I'm like I'm just testing it They're like sir you have to leave The only thing I did was There were a couple of cute dogs in there That I in other circumstances would have said Hey can I pet your dog But I skipped that part I made it home And I made it home I will say it was slightly close to the wire But I pulled it off And it gives me confidence, Luke, maybe misplaced confidence, maybe I've made a huge mistake, but, you know, next time I might regret this confidence.

I told you that I had a situation where I used the, like, Home Depot bathroom, and it was actually shockingly nice. Like, it was a single, like, single-person bathroom, locking door, like, clean. I was like, this is great. And I was sort of reflecting on the fact that I haven't had – I don't know what changed about my biome or my gutty works, But I will say the last 10 years of my life, maybe I have luckily not had a lot of sort of bathroom incidents, which really was a staple of my life. A lot of my like 20s and 30s.

Yeah. And the funny thing for me is that maybe it's this show and talking about it more. I don't feel like that is something that was a big part of my life. I feel like I have I feel like I have closer encounters now than ever. But maybe it's going the opposite way.

Like I remember being on a TV story. So this would have been in the last 10 years. I think I've only been doing the TV stuff for maybe seven or eight years. But I was I forget I was in the south somewhere. I must have been like outside of Atlanta and I everything seemed normal. I get in the rental car and I'm driving and all of a sudden it's just like I start sweating from the discomfort. and i get to this like hampton inn and i i park and i realize like i don't think i can get from the car like i was i was holding everything in but i was like if i stand up and start walking everything is going to come out and i had to like psych myself up to like put one foot outside of the car and then the other foot and then stand up and then be like okay okay clench get it together and then stare at this retention pond because it was in one of those like office parks, you know, and then like get my suitcase and then practice how I was going to talk to the front desk person asking them if they have a restroom but not looking like I'm about to shit my pants.

Yeah, but this is a case where...

Being casual about it, kind of like, hey, you know, some weather we're having. Anyway, on another note, this is not a situation that I'm... This is not dire, but do you happen to have a restroom in the lobby? Because I could pee or not pee or whatever. It's fine. but like i'm just curious and you're like kind of leaning you kind of awkwardly lean your your

elbow on the counter but then it slips away you know i you know i was flipping a coin in one hand

for some reason just kind of like being real cash like i'm on the corner yeah why is there a why is

there a piece of hay coming out of your mouth um i was oh so this is a peeing situation i'm sorry i thought this was a number no no it wasn't it was a shitting but you're trying to be cash right okay

Because pee seems less gross than number two.

So what'd you do?

Well, the weirdest thing, my body shut it down when I got, it went from being like, I am literally going to have an accident in this parking lot to like, I got to the front desk and somehow my body summoned its inner resources and just like shut it down long enough, I think for me to get to the hotel room where I did have to put the toilet paper on the roll. Cause you know, that's the tradition. I'm happy that my... My gutty work seems to have more or less Which is weird because I feel like I eat worse Than I ever have before I still consume too much alcohol I haven't done anything intentional about it It's just like something about the lining of my stomach Or my bladder or whatever the thing is That activates that stuff Or I've just beaten it into submission One of the two

Are you still eating an entire jar of peanut butter every night Before you go to bed? That might slow things down That's my sleepy time routine

Alright let's do a little music for your weekend before we get out of here by the way Andrew I have been I mentioned this on the show the other day I've been really getting into Detroiters oh yeah

I'm so happy that you love that show

I love it so much and now I'm on season 2 I'm already sad I think they only do 2 seasons probably

I think so certainly no more

I'm already sad about the fact that I'm burning through season 2 now but the Sam character he and his girlfriend are in bed reading I'm just looking at my twitter feed he and his girlfriend are reading before bed and I tweeted this out that people say the perfect nighttime reading doesn't exist and then I included a photo of the books they're reading so his girlfriend is reading a book by Steve Harvey called Steve Harvey reacts to messes and he's just giving that look like he does on Family Feud and then Sam Richardson is reading a book called Karn on the Cob it's a book by Richard Karn the sidekick in Tool Time on Home Improvement it's a book he wrote about the baseball player ty cobb it's called carn on the cob and that's just a quick shot that's like it's like i probably i'm probably one of five people who even noted it like they didn't make these fake book jackets it's so great carn on the cob that is so good

that's the book jacket i want we're talking about how like people who work on sets can sometimes collect those books or whatever god i want to know who has the the book sleeve for carn on the Carn on the Cobb. That is so great.

I told you, he gave the commencement speech at my friend Dave Hill's graduation from Roosevelt High School in Seattle, and it was a mess. I don't know if I remember this. It was weird. I mean, I was just like, oh, the guy from Tooltown, because he's from the Northwest, and he gave the commencement speech. I mean, I was in 11th grade at this point or something, maybe a senior, and I remember thinking like, oh, this is why you rehearse things.

This is why you have a script. What's the, well, I guess we know that story. It's probably the banking one because you are, we kind of joke around about not being super prepared. I mean, you listen to the show, like sometimes it's clear and we're definitely meandery and sometimes messy, but like you are a man with a plan. Like you don't do this show without, I mean, even if we're doing a show, just like a quick one on the road, we haven't done this in a long time, but like, you know, you sitting in uh in the passenger seat and me driving around and we're just like gonna record a quick tbtl you still have to have a piece of paper that has written down on it like we're doing this and then we're doing this and then we're doing this we might not do those things but you're very you need a plan going in so what is like aside from that speech you gave to the bankers do you have a story of a time that you just like you're like oh shit i am not prepared for this i think that

was the worst one and i think it really scarred me i don't feel i don't have a memory of something else like that i really think that kind of put the fear of god in me and for uh for people that don't know the story the brief version is i gave this i got hired to give basically like a keynote speech at for a banking association this was in the midst of the financial crisis of 2008 and i didn't i i just thought i'll just be entertaining for a half hour so i mean i had a plan by the way i did have a plan of like what i was going to talk about and it's going to start here and this is going to be the middle this is going to be the end but none of it was about banking and my life story wasn't particularly inspirational at that point and it's only gotten less inspirational up till now so uh but i didn't have a powerpoint i didn't have examples of things i didn't have i didn't have any real useful information to offer these folks like ways to i mean it didn't help that the person writing the person who was representing me in these matters had like written an idea of a speech that's now been repeated many times on the show which was how to be unreasonable during unreasonable times so i was trying to deliver on that promise i didn't even understand what that promise was and but i was i was like well they hired me to because on her website it says luke burbank from wait wait don't tell me we'll give you a speech about how to be unreasonable in unreasonable times and so i had to like try to reverse engineer it and it was really bad and then later that same person who was repping me uh said that they talked to the folks from the banking organization and they said there was i believe it was described as a credibility problem or a credibility gap gap i think you've said in the past so that was that was real by the way i got out of it after that like i i was like i'm not doing this anymore please take me off your web site i can't like i'm not prepared for this i don't have anything to offer these folks so um

i don't probably get a service though because now all of those because that's a terrible message and so what you did was you led a was this on a boat no that was a different one right you led a room full of bankers to say to themselves you know what i'm gonna stay reasonable this guy is trying to be

unreasonable and it's a mess i was like the people emailing you to say talk more about the cats It was a giant reverse psychology move And all of those bankers Operated completely reasonably And within the FDIC laws Going forward

Reasonability is undervalued in our society I'm going to lean into it I don't even want to tell this story Because it's still such a bad feeling I ended up getting the job But I remember flying into New Hampshire For an interview For the job that I ended up getting On this talk show So I'd already been offered another job somewhere else, but I was hoping to get this New Hampshire one for for myriad reasons. And I remember being on the plane thinking like, OK, you've done all the prep for all the questions, you know, they're going to ask. The one thing is like I know they're going to ask about like, what are some show pitches like, you know, not episodes, but, you know, like it was a public radio talk show. Like, what are some show ideas? And that's an obvious question. Like, what would you be bringing to the table? I mean, it's the most obvious question. And I remember just keep on thinking like, um, I can't think of anything. I'll think of something on the plane and then I'm on the plane. And this is before everything's online, too. Right. This is like the year 2001, I think. So I don't even know if I don't have a smartphone at this point. But I'm like, I don't know. I'll get there. I'll look at the papers. I don't know. I don't know anything about New Hampshire, Luke. But for some reason, I'm like, my brain couldn't settle on like, Andrew, you have a piece of homework to do. you have to come up with one or two just like one or two ideas for a show you want these people to hire you to produce their show and I just kept putting it off and I'm just like yeah it'll be fine I do the interview with the people I'd be working with the people on the talk show and they asked me about show ideas and I just sort of like you know kind of meandered and didn't give them anything good but they didn't seem I remember it was somewhat awkward over lunch but it wasn't that bad but then i had to meet like the rest of the newsroom and we go into this this conference room and it's like the entire newsroom and these are people who like to ask people questions and put them on the spot right and i remember mark beavis the the news director and he was just like okay well like what kind of shows would you produce and i don't know what i said luke but i just talked and i talked and i talked and then i said so i don't know does that answer your question and he looked at me he said no do you want to try again or something along those lines And I basically I just I don't know. I just like bullshitted some more, had nothing. I just remember the almost a look of because I think, you know, in this situation, I was a young, eager person. I think that probably Mark, I'm guessing, probably liked me and liked the idea of me being on the staff. But because I swear this man who I just met had a look. I remember a look of disappointment on his face and I ended up getting the job. So whatever. They also, I think, had to give me the job because they were offering me such little money. I found out later that a bunch of people had or at least one other person had turned down the job from from Boston because he's like, are you kidding me? You want me to work for what? And I think they knew I would work for literally anything, which I did. So anyway, I've told this story a million times.

The closest that I've come to that kind of event in a job interview was I was trying to get this like reporting internship at NPR because they had this weird thing for like a few years. That was like anybody who worked at NPR At any level You could be the front desk person You could be a custodian If you worked, if you were a staff person at NPR You did it for one year You could apply for this thing Where they would let you be a pretend reporter For a few months Which was bizarre Because everyone who got it No one ever wanted to go back to their regular job What do you mean pretend reporter?

I mean you are actually filing stories for the network, right?

Yeah, it was Like the other people that did it Were Andrea Seabrook, Ari Shapiro did it Like a bunch of people who are pretty well known at the network um even though the idea was okay you're the front desk person but you'll be better at answering the phones or or responding to emails or showing guests to the green room if you also know what kind of pressure a reporter is under the national desk but then you're going to go back to being the front desk person and everyone who got the internship was like i'm not going back to my other job this is way more fun but anyway we had to do i got down it down to me and my friend Shireen Marisol-Miraji, who's also a heavy hitter now in public radio. Somehow, everyone I worked with at every level is doing better than me at this point.

You're getting high on CBS television, Luke. You're fine. You know what?

But I'm not snacking. And that's the important thing because the CBS brass were very clear, no snacking. Anyway, we had to submit some stories. and like write some pieces and basically you know do a bunch of interviews and finally it gets down to this video call and it's like five people in dc and these are like the heads of all the shows and like people that i've never even met these are like very very senior important people and same thing one of them asked me something about like well how would you do this and then like i gave some meandering bad response and then i said did that answer your question and this woman said no not at all yeah almost exactly like beavis yeah i'm so fucked and so i was like well thank you everyone i say goodbye the video thing shuts down and then i just go straight to the bar it's like noon on a friday now granted we we would get in for work at 5 a.m but like somehow you're supposed to stick around into the afternoon like be at your desk even though no one was really working that hard on a friday afternoon and i'm just getting loaded at the tattletale and then i get a call luckily the telltale is walking distance to npr west i get a call that's like uh they're paging you over the intercom like because you know you could pick up a phone in dc and you could just like hit one button and you could be talking to people in la like we'd hear it in the building and they were like they're paging you in like someone's texting me like they're paging you over the thing you need to get back here i'm like oh my god so i come back and you know i ended up getting the gig but i was so sure that i had completely fumbled those sweaters

and you uh and you probably reeked well maybe not i don't know yes i was chewing so much gum

i'm like sitting at my desk i'm thoroughly toasted at my desk abutted my friend shireen's desk and she gets a call they're like shireen miraji pick up line two or something so she i haven't even talked to them yet she picks it up and she's like hi oh thank you so much thank you oh my gosh that's amazing thank you oh that's incredible thank you so much and then she hangs up and she goes i didn't get it which basically meant i got it and i was like what my head is just swimming for a variety

of reasons being respectful just saying thank you for the chance well i think probably they were

telling her you have a bigger future in public radio than this will bear out in 20 years you'll be hosting code switch you'll be a journalism fellow at uh berkeley etc but um i think they were probably telling her you did an amazing job and you're really super talented so i think they were complimenting her but it sounded from where i was like oh she got the gig now i can go back to the bar but no in fact it was me getting the gig but i was thoroughly sure that i had completely blown it so there's only one slot huh for this thing yeah and then i think shortly i think they did it like one more time after me and then they realized it was kind of a terrible idea because they were taking people who were relatively good at whatever job they were doing and then putting them in this other job meaning they never wanted to go back to their original job so like so they were just like it was a bad deal for like the shows like you take oh one of your better producers or bookers and and now they don't want to do that anymore yeah so like the Shapiro you said Shapiro

did it and Seabrook did it they did it I think they did it before you so they had sort of I see that's interesting I was just sort of like that honestly you you've told me that story before and I think it's interesting but I didn't remember the Shireen part about her kind of getting the news in front of you that she didn't get it my heart like i i like i know that this is something that happened 25 years ago and she's doing great but like you just telling me that like i my heart kind of broke there for a second i was like oh i thought you guys were both getting it was that tough if you guys were co-workers and friends and to you're sitting there drunk and she's getting

she's she's not getting the gig that you are well you'd have to ask her she was extremely gracious about it super gracious and and has gone on to have you know a spectacular career so it's all worked out but i bet you it did really suck i had another thing sort of like that when i was in that beer commercial we tried out with a group of friends it was um and i'll leave this person's name out just because whatever but like it was a group of my actual friends including the mummy and this they wanted real people real friend groups to go on you know be in this commercial because i thought it would play better and our friend group of about four people went to the audition went to the callback in portland got the gig and we were like oh my god we got it it's amazing and the night before we were going down to start shooting they called one of our friends

and said well actually we're not casting you wow i didn't i don't think i knew that yeah that friend

is the richest person you and i know now so again this is why you've got to be unreasonable in unreasonable times Andrew because you will become the richest friend of mine by not getting in the Molson commercial or the most successful radio friend of mine by not getting the internship but that was rough and I remember we called this person I called this person and said I will not do the commercial if you don't want me to and what this person said was no I don't want you to this really sucks but it would suck more if you didn't get to do it and also I need to hang up because the liquor store closes in five minutes literally the conversation we had they were dashing to the liquor store to drown their sorrows. I mean, can you imagine, like, and this was our tight friend group, like, your tight friend group is going off on the adventure of a

lifetime and the casting people were like yeah but but not you that's really rough i have more

questions i mean i think i know who you're talking about and i'm i'm shocked because i thought that that person i always pictured that person in this crew with you so that is very much in this crew but they were not i mean on the road trip i remember because this is the road trip where you had the your your foot smell issues right and i always my vinegar dogs i the person that i think you're talking about i always pictured that person well that person brought it up in vegas i believe it was a separate i see it was a different stinky foot situation okay anyway now we're just also involving me yeah what do you call your salty dogs or some disgusting vinegar dogs i believe this person coined the phrase vinegar dog okay see that's my mistake because i i thought it was that person but i thought that person coined it on the trip when you guys were in no you know what

i think literally happened i'm sorry this is so boring and that's just yeah basically they they gave us like when we show up here in portland and we go to this the the hotel benson which was at that time the nicest hotel i'd ever stayed in in my life and they just take us into a room and it's just it's got like i don't know fifteen thousand dollars worth of clothes and they just sent someone to um urban outfitters which was a store that i was very into at the time i'm like 24 at this point and they had just bought every everything in the store it was just like shirts and jeans and shoes and jackets and it was all very stylish and the kind of stuff I liked and they were like just pick out as much of this as you want so you have cool stuff to wear in the commercial and I was like this is amazing but they had these shoes that I really liked but they were like a half a size too small for me and so my solution was to just not wear socks I figured that would buy me a little extra room and so by wearing these shoes with no socks they started to reek then when we got back from the commercial we were flush with cash so we went to Vegas and I believe I was still wearing these shoes and that's when they were christened vinegar dogs so that's interesting

i did have the right person i did have the right shoes i did you have you on a trip but i just did it was the wrong trip i didn't know that that person was excluded that breaks my heart too but again yeah that i mean this is a long time ago everybody's fine but like yeah i know how close you all were that's that's interesting that's sad yeah again the the happy ending is is that

things have turned out really well for this person and deservedly so but yeah that was brutal yeah i believe it well that's i think a pretty nice run up to music for your weekend

what song would you like to suggest andrew literally how did we get there how did we not start by saying okay let's do some music for your weekend i did say that but it was about 40 minutes ago and then i just started i literally said all right let's do some music for your weekend and

then i just jumped right into my tweet about something okay yeah because i started i know

this conversation started with me asking you if you've ever been underprepared but anyway It doesn't matter. We don't have to relive it. Sorry, everybody.

It was talking about the books in Detroiters and then me saying Richard Karn did a very bad commencement speech.

Ah, then the speech and then Karn. Yes, there you go. Thank you, Luke. Oh, wait. Hold on one second. Bingo. Okay. My music for your weekend is by a band called Smut, S-M-U-T. I don't know much about them. I know they're from Chicago. I know it's a five-piece band. and they're kind of I'm pretty sure this is maybe the only song I know by them it sounds very shoegazy to me if you'll recall last week I gave you the option of like three different kind of styles of music to choose from and this was the one that I described as being you know this is like this is the slow kind of easing into a fall weekend where the time is going to change and maybe we're not all partying hard maybe we're just feeling a little bit more introspective and cozy, and we're listening to this song called Unbroken Thought by Smut.

Thank you. That beats very 90s, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, I love this. I like it. It's got. some Sundays kind of in there.

Yeah, I was thinking the same exact thing, like Sundays, but then who was the very kind of gentle music like this but employed a lot of the electronic beats? I feel like it was something that you were very into in the 90s, but maybe I'm just...

More Chiba?

Maybe. And do you like that, isn't there a song called Fruit Loops or something? Or no, Land of Loops?

Oh, Land of the Loops was an artist. I think it was like one person and they had a whole, they put a whole album together that I was really into. Yeah, I was into that kind of vibe-y stuff in the 90s. Speaking of vibe-y stuff, probably from the 90s, it is that time of year where I feel like I need to suggest the song Autumn Sweater by Yola Tango.

Oh, yeah, of course.

And because it just feels, it's wet, it's cold, you need to put on an autumn sweater, you need to hear the songs. Let's hear, do you mind playing a little Yola Tango?

No, sorry, you know, I didn't have that ready because I wasn't looking at the notes. I thought you were saying this is something like Autumn Sweater, so let me get this up. it's literally that song yeah no this song from here too i got it here now um yeah no i just i i i concur like that that's almost like we talk about that moment of like when you switch from fall to christmas stuff or whatever like autumn sweater to me is it harkens in a season We'll be right back.

Then I heard the knock on the door I couldn't catch my breath Is it too late to call this off? We could slip away Oh, would that be better Me with nothing to say And you in your autumn sweater

I didn't realize Yolotango is from Hoboken, New Jersey, from Palookaville.

That rings a bell to me, but why do you find that notable?

I don't know. I guess I just, for some reason, I think I thought they were from L.A. They seemed like an L.A. band to me, but no, they're from Hoboken.

We saw, I don't know why I said we, we, me, the royal we, saw Yola Tango once, and I'm trying to figure out why, because they would have been a pretty big indie name at this point, but I saw them at this tiny little club that we used to go to all the time in Cleveland called The Grog Shop. I mean, like, I'm talking small, like, my friends would always play there, And I would often like do the or a few times I would actually do the lighting for them. I would go back behind like the sound guy and I would be the lighting guy or whatever. And like I was not a professional in this, like just to give you a sense of like kind of how low key this place kind of was. But I remember I saw Yola Tango there the day Jack Nance died. Jack Nance, the actor who was in like Twin Peaks. And of course, he played the main character in Eraserhead or whatever. And I think it was the day that he died Because Yola Tango did a version Of the Lady and the Radiator song Which I don't know if you ever saw Eraserhead It doesn't seem like it's exactly up your alley But it's like this very surreal movie Obviously with this weird song in the middle of it By the Lady and the Radiator And as a tribute to Jack Nance Yola Tango sang the Lady and the Radiator song And I was just That's very up your alley right Because I assume you were an Eraserhead head At that point Yes I was free And this is I just looked it up So Jack Nance died in 1996, so this would have been 1996, yeah, in December. So, yeah, I just remember, like, being just floating. I bet. Yeah, love you, Martango.

Jack Nance died at age 53, Andrew. That's, like, six years away for us.

I know, man. Yeah, he died too young. I don't know why. I'm not exactly sure what led to that. But, yeah, he was in—

For some reason, when you look him up, one of the things it refers you to is Winchell's Donuts.

Oh, I don't—

I wonder if he did ads for them or something.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I'm not sure.

I wonder why Winchell's Donuts would be one of the other things that comes up in relation to the actor Jack Nance.

I think he was in every one of David Lynch's projects, even if it was like a really, really quick cameo up until his death, I believe. Could be wrong.

The listener suggestion this week comes from listener Jordan in Chicago, who says, Heyo.

I'm going to suggest the song Moral of the Story by the singer Ash. I'm time banditing, and I'm currently in the throes of the mystery of the TikTok piano riff. Remember that one, Andrew? Oh, wow. That's a long time ago. Yeah. Yes. Jordan says, I'm experiencing the same consternation at truly recognizing the song but not placing it. While listening to episode 3611, it finally clicked. I was wrong, he says. I thought it was this song, the Ash song, that I listened to a bunch at the start of the pandemic. I'm not sure at this point if you've ever solved the mystery Oh that's delicious I love that Jordan is still in the dark On how that whole thing plays out By the way do you know I heard that song They used it as the actual song Which is by Menomena Wet and Rusted They used it as a bump On all things considered The exact part that was bedeviling me Wow So I was thinking God if we would have never solved it And I was just walking around in my house And heard that I would have like lost it

You would have been calling Like you would have been trying to reach people at NPR Because I don't think there's any public place That they like that they document Their bump ins

They used to on their website I bet they don't anymore Because it was one of the when I was there It was one of the most frequently asked questions

Maybe they still do because It would be on like the all things considered like page You could see a rundown of the whole show right And they would mention the bumps yeah I can kind of

Yeah because I think people were always like well is that thing But anyway, I heard the Monomena song, and I was like, oh, wow. So I guess the mystery would have solved itself if the listeners weren't so smart and didn't tip me off to the right song. It would have eventually worked itself out.

But that was like two years ago. The listener says that was episode like 36-something, right? 36-11. Yeah, yeah. That was a while ago.

Anyway, Jordan says, this song has a great vibe, and it really reminds me of what you were trying to find. I love the show. Signed, Jordan from Chicago. So we're going to hear a song called Moral of the Story by a singer named Ash. And that is how we will wrap up our broadcast week. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for being part of TBTL. We'll be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for you. Until then, please go vote. Really, please go vote. And have a great weekend Go Seahawks Go Phils And please remember No mountain too tall And good luck to all

So I never really knew you God I really tried to Blindsided Addicted Thought we could really do this But really I was foolish Hindsighted Obvious Talking with my lawyer She said where'd you find this guy I said young people fall in love with the wrong people sometimes some mistakes get made that's all right that's okay you can think that you're in love when you're really just in pain some mistakes get made that's all right that's okay in the end it's better for me that's the moral of the story

I love my job. Oh my God. I want to do it forever, especially because this is the kind of job that I've gotten better at every year. And it's also the kind of job that you need to be fast on your feet. You need to be quick and you need to sort of, uh, I don't even know what the word is. Power out.