Muse

Are you a professional ukulele player? Oh, no, I'm a writer. What do you write? T-shirts. Really? I wrote Save the Dolphins.

Excuse me. What do you mean you wrote it?

I wasn't the first person to say it. I was the first person to put it on a T-shirt. Did you do Life as a Beach? Oh, I wish. TBTL!

the faces may not look familiar but the voices this zany radio team have developed a unique

style of frolicking on the airwaves i'll tell you another thing once you step inside this circle the weather never changes it is always 67 degrees with a 40 chance of rain always i just want to use

my muscles and my mind and be your number one guy using my muscles and my mind now it's time

for jazz plus jazz equals jazz today we have a recording of benny goodman played over a separate

recording of miles davis this party is gonna be off of the hook well all right hello good morning

and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful

to live that's a terrific title it jumps out at you like a rat in your underwear drawer my name

is luke burbank i am your host coming to you from seattle washington my hometown bring it back home baby bring it back home on an absolutely gorgeous thursday not a cloud in the sky i'm looking out the window from the hotel at the mountains and the distance and my goodness i'm remembering why people love this place so much it is um it's a it's a very special part of the world everyone and this is a very special episode of tbtl because it's episode 3817 in a collector series let the fun begin there's some news regarding larry david and tom brady and um it's pretty

pretty pretty bad they're being sued for doing the ads for that ftx thing that

crypto exchange or whatever it was we sort of talked about this a while ago like before anyone knew that this ftx thing was a scam about how sort of culpable celebrities should be for being in ads like this and um well i guess the courts will now be deciding it because there's a class action lawsuit uh so we will get into that sam's club is um discounting its uh hot dog and soda by a bizarre amount of money in like, it's like either 8 cents or 12 cents. It's a tiny discount. I can eat a hot dog pretty quickly, but that's just out of gluttony and enjoyment. But it's part of a business strategy that we will talk about. And then time permitting, more food news today. Subway says that they are looking to expand their non-traditional sandwich offerings.

Is it too early to get a fish sandwich?

I don't know if I want anything from Subway that they themselves are listing as the non-traditional sandwich space. But we'll figure out what's going on with that And then it's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day So we'll do the Blur's Day messages as well And we'll talk to this young man The handsome young stranger who's back at it again With the white vans His podcast hosting is as cool today as it was yesterday And there's one thing that we know about this guy

I like turtles

He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now Good morning, my friend

Good morning, Luke Quick little thing to tell you about at the top of the show here I don't like to admit this because it just gives you more power, but I would say that there are a few things where you live in my head. There are a few topics where I think about you. Maybe I'm going through some routine, and I think about something that you said about that routine at some point or something. There's one that happens weekly, and that is when I get a little alert on my phone telling me that it's time to take out the garbage. right i used to have it on my calendar now i have an app an official app from the city of seattle that says hey andrew time to take out uh your garbage no recycling this week it's kind of how it talks to me uh and i remember you saying one time somewhat somewhat i mean mockingly is too strong of a word but you queried like andrew do you really need that like you are thinking about I'm paraphrasing here, but what you implied was I, Andrew Walsh, am spending more time throughout the week thinking about Garbage Night than anybody else on the planet.

Like, I don't need a phone to remind me. Than anyone who isn't being paid to work for the Garbage Night. Right. Like, of the amateurs, of the people who are doing this.

is for no pay. You are definitely probably in the top one percentile of people thinking

about it. Oh, certainly. And I think I'm in the top five percentile, including people who work in the industry, I would say. You might be in the top one percentile overall.

Like, honestly. Maybe you wouldn't have to think about it so much if the people that actually were doing it for their job were even in the top 20 percentile. Well, that's

interesting because I think that what you just said there kind of maybe leads to what happened to me last night, which is The reason I'm obsessed with my garbage is because we lived in a place where for a long time they would routinely miss our stop and they would leave our garbage on the curb. We would call to complain and they would lie and say that we didn't have it out in time, which was untrue. So I was documenting it every week and putting a photo on Twitter so it was time stamped. It was like this, well, you might say it was not my best look. Anyway, here we are in our new neighborhood and we have had no issues so far. And so when there are no issues, one becomes complacent, my friend. And I was home and I had already put on my tonight pants. And yes, they are a very old pair of chinos. Those are my tonight pants. I had my little tonight shoes on, which are like these dock siders that I slip on. I had on my old flannel shirt.

Are you saying that like your pants, you've gone soft, Andrew, on this whole garbage vigilance?

Yes. In fact, as I'm talking, this is a great explanation. People are surprised when they hear that my quote-unquote tonight pants are not like pajama pants or sweats or some other apparel that I would not be comfortable leaving my house in. Well, last night was the perfect example of why I like to have tonight clothes that are both comfortable inside but conceivably wearable outside the home because suddenly my phone alerted me around 8 o'clock, I think. Or I hadn't looked at my phone in a while or something, and I saw that my app was telling me, hey, don't forget, it's garbage night. And I was like, I did forget. I did forget. I was lulled into complacency. And luckily, I was wearing clothes that I could wear outside. So I just went outside and I took the garbage out. But it was a very close call, my friend, a very close call.

It's also very satisfying, not unlike the fact that you called that early David Chase work on Rockford Files as being the sort of germ of the Sopranos idea. Because it's like all of the things It's like you put those pants on Those tonight pants That you can wear outside You do that every I would assume seven nights a week And you could go months You could go years potentially Without needing them to actually be pants You could wear outside You know what I mean It's very rare that they're actually called into action For that particular service And also You could have just said We all get too many push notifications in our life now and it's always kind of a dance of like which one of these do i really want and is this ever going to actually come in handy or is this just more like sort of digital visual garbage so to speak that i have to deal with but you let it you let it keep happening and it actually everything worked out that alert saved you and the fact that you could just casually stroll outside in those pants i mean it was like all all the planning came together now i should

acknowledge just for those who are just i mean i think rightfully screaming at their phone that i'm mentally unwell in this in this area because like i do think it's there's some precedent of people wearing pajama pants or or sweatpants outside in their own yard to take out the garbage i realize that other people like most other people are very comfortable with that that people i mean people i'm pretty sure people wear pajama pants and crocs to weddings now so i understand that like i'm not

Oh, I'm sure there are pajama pants themed weddings. Certainly, I would say 50% of the people in the airport look like they literally slept walked there. Right.

But that's not me. That's just not me.

No. You don't want to look like, to take it back to The Sopranos, you don't want to look like Tony Soprano getting his newspaper. Yeah, right. Full pajamas, tank top on, hair just kind of like sticking up in all directions. Like that's, I mean, that is, that's major Tony Soprano vibes.

It is. I mean, that's a real power move, right? To be that comfortable in your skivvies in a robe outside. I'm not that comfortable. I'm the opposite of that. That does remind me. I don't even remember exactly what the scene is or where it happens in the show. But I do know that when the weather turns warmer and my tonight pants become tonight shorts, I have several pairs of shorts. Yes, with a zipper and button and a belt that I wear to relax in at night. And when I tell Genevieve, I'm going to go.

Is it your relaxation belt?

my relaxation but i'll tell genevieve like i'm gonna go put on my shorts and she always yells at me a don doesn't wear shorts which is apparently something that is at one point yelled during the sopranos although i don't do you remember that specifically a don doesn't know

but i love it i love it as an idea because i think i sort of believe in it even though i've gotten much more lax about my

Being in public in shorts, partially because Becca got me these Lululemon shorts that I love.

So can I see through them? Wasn't that a big scandal? No, you can't. When I hear Lululemon, I just think, oh, those are the ones you used to be able to see through.

I think they had some yoga pants that were a little too sheer, but they also make men's athleisure. And while I wouldn't ever wear, I don't know if they make men's yoga pants or not or whatever, they're just this particular pair of shorts that I really like. In fact, I have two pairs of them, Andrew, because, you know, I'm me. But they're like my most comfortable favorite things to wear in the summertime. And I found myself – this is my way of saying I'll never be a Don because I've started to wear shorts outside much more than I used to.

I just realized something, Luke. This is not related to what we're talking about right now. But I just looked over at my IPDTL, and I just discovered you're a naughty, naughty boy today, aren't you? Marketplace LA1.

Yes, I would say. Actually, I thought you and I were going to discuss that. Okay, this is so incredibly inside our baseball. But I tried to log in today. But here's the thing, Andrew. I don't know if you remember this. I haven't been home in like, I think, how long is a fortnight?

Yeah, it's about a fortnight.

I haven't been home since they invented the game fortnight, Andrew. But I've been on the road and I've been logging in. So we use this little system to talk to each other called IPDTL. We may be the last two people using it on the planet. It's a web-based system.

It's just like you just call it up on your laptop using Chrome, and it's a system that lets Luke and I talk to each other. It sounds like we're in the same room when we're not.

But it's just funny because there's, I mean, and this, I think, I mean, I believe APM is probably still paying some kind of yearly licensing fee for this to happen. and there are myriad free options now whether it's you know zoom or teams or river quest or what's the name of that other one something riverside down river riverside um uh van down by the river anyway there's all these i mean it's it's yeah it's definitely working its way back into um you know a productive life but like it's just there's so many ways that we could be doing this and yet we are, because we're creatures of habit, we're stuck on this IPDTL thing and I have a login and Andrew has a login and I've been doing the show, Andrew, from this computer right here logging in from New York City and today when I was here in Seattle I tried to log in to my IPDTL account, it said you're logged in somewhere else and my question, Andrew is, where else? Where else could I be logged in? I've been because sometimes what will happen again And then, sorry, this is where it gets even more specific and even more boring. Sometimes I'll be logged in at my place in Portland, and I'll forget to log myself out, and then I'll be off somewhere. And on those days, it'll be like, hey, you're logged in at home. You can't be logged in twice. And that's when I have to use one of these other general logins that, thank God, exist. I'm on something called Marketplace 1 right now, I believe.

Marketplace LA one, which makes me worried that there's some producer in L.A. in downtown right now who's trying to get like high on the line with some sort of mover and shaker in the field of economics. And they can't make that interview happen because you're you're squatting on Marketplace LA one.

I my I'm hoping and I feel pretty confident in this that no one there is ever using IPDTL for anything. I think it's weird that I'm logged in somewhere else like did I am I am I logged in at 30,000 feet on the flight which you know I wasn't that I remember like was I logged in on the flight from New York here to Seattle and that somewhere over Billings it just like got confused how can I be it's it's Schrodinger's you know broadcast how can I be logged into this thing and not allowed to log into it when it's all been happening on this computer that I'm staring at isn't that bizarre.

weird so you were in new york you were logged in as your own personal luke burbank login i hope i didn't just give away too much information your login is your name luke burbank um and you've been logging in that way and then now suddenly you're in a different city across the country and it's like no you're logged in somewhere else i mean it's not a tabs issue right you don't have another tab open on that no another window or something i don't know i know that's really well here's what it's probably is um do you think somebody broke into your apartment and is podcasting right now god damn it bubbles i was gonna say what if bubbles is starting her own podcast bubbles and bingo are collaborating i did have to kick bingo out of my office project

yeah so that's why i'm logged in as marketplace la1 for reasons that i don't understand but that's just what's going on today so um i hope that everything otherwise uh is normal and is

working i'll tell you what is right now not normal and working andrew which is that we are of course doing live wire tonight at town hall here in seattle very exciting um and also i just found out that our wonderful drummer for our house band who's also kind of our band leader and just really like the the heart and soul of everything that happens musically on stage for our show has tested positive for covid oh no so we are everyone else in the band uh tested and they're all negative so we are now scrambling to find a drummer in seattle okay i'll do it between now and tonight can you can you this is going to sound dirty andrew can you bang the

skins i um i can make the noise of drums with my mouth isn't that oh really well remember i'm you're like a regular dougie fresh no i'm an andy day old um i that's right can that be it for everything can they just play over that yeah sort of riff over top of that we

need to redo a lot of the songs to be kind of more i don't even know what era that would be just like jazz just like 60s out 60s jazz maybe never know how much i love you so they're trying to scramble a drummer we have we have another drummer named alex who has played on the show in years past but she's in portland so they're trying to like they're trying to um get a drummer up here from portland because she kind of knows the deal but then i was like can it just be any drummer in seattle so i'm like dming like people that i i mean like semi-famous Drummers in Seattle that I just think would be fun For the audience if like you know Somebody from a band that's well known in town Was like our guest drummer for the night None of this is really my job

I shouldn't say this, have you texted Leanie? She would know some people who play drums

Well I'm trying to, here's the thing I need to find out if we're In fact I should probably re-engage with our producers And find out if we have Here's the thing, I don't want to invite a bunch of people And then And then get the call that they got Our other drummer from Portland is going to make it because that's a little disrespectful. So I need to find out if – yeah, I need to find out basically if that's happening before I throw a lot of lines in the water. Also, it's really the last thing that I want to be or need to be dealing with today because I'm still – I'm like jamming through the last hundred pages of one of these books because, you know, we have three authors on tonight and it's going to be a packed show. And obviously I've been traveling a lot. So I'm feeling a little bit like I'm kind of playing a little bit of catch up here on this Thursday. And so also trying to source a drummer in Seattle feels like it's a it's it's a something that I don't fully have the time for. no one's even asked by the way no one's asking me for that like i work with an amazingly great team of folks on live wire who do pretty much everything on the show other than them talking into the mic part so it's not like anybody called me was like you got to find us a drummer but then i immediately was like is this a creative opportunity could we get maybe i don't know

animal from the muppets oh could i reach out to helen hung my friend from wait wait who is in that

geico commercial with animal and see if she can get me animals number because i feel like that would really the crowd at town hall would love that and guesting on drums animal is that really

what the town of crowd is that what the crowd at town hall would want actually it's funny a lot of crowds would like that i'm trying to think of celebrity towers no i agree i think animal would be a great get i just worried i was thinking john bonham yeah i know maybe keith moon do you know You were in a room with Ringo Starr one time.

I sure was. I mean, would it be that? Can you do the can you do the drum part for Octopus's Garden? Wouldn't that be the irony of all ironies? If somehow Ringo Starr, a person that I have been dragging on this show for years and years and years, but who is also objectively one of the most famous drummers on the planet. if somehow he were available and were like, sure, I'll come by. Who is that?

Wow, that was the yellow M&M. That was the yellow M&M.

No, it was the weird dog from those old, hey, Davey. Okay, Davey. I mean, that was a really weird character I just did. Anyway, wouldn't it be the ultimate irony if Ringo Starr was willing to do it, which would, of course, be the most insane thing ever. But then I would have to like, I would also have to swallow my pride on the fact that I really find him to be a severely annoying person. Do you know, I just.

learned this two days ago although the new apparently the record came out um i believe late last month i'm very late to this um but i actually learned about this through our friend and listener david zakaris of the smittens who's a huge beatles fan and is often posting things on his instagram feed um artwork that is inspired by the beatles and whatnot david's an amazing artist by the way um all of that is to say he posted something in his instagram stories the other day saying i'm sorry but the only thing i'm able to talk about right now is the is the new remix of the beatles revolver album i'm like new remix of the revolver i wonder who's remixing this and so i did some i did a little bit of reading on it caled it is it's it's dj ringo dj ringo hey jude we the best you ain't bad um no it's the son of george martin whose name is a um alluding me right now and somebody else collaborated so george martin being the original producer his son there is some sort of technology now that apparently george martin's son a producer in his own right has been waiting to get good enough it's not his technology but is implementing it that somehow allows remixers or producers to separate out like instrument tracks on old master recordings where they weren't separated out so let's say that there was a drum you know i don't know exactly how the beatles all the beatles stuff was recorded i mean we all talked about get back when that documentary came out but i think this actually this process was implemented in there too so apparently this producer felt like the technology was good enough now that, and he was talking about it like it was magic, he doesn't even know how it works, but he was able to separate out every single instrument on that record and use them as individual tracks and then remix them together and I haven't listened to this yet, I'm actually I'm not like this very often, I see that it's available on Spotify, I almost want to just buy the CDs, I don't even have a very good CD player honestly, it's a bad idea I should listen to it on Spotify but like David was talking about he said it's not every single song is an absolute slam dunk or three-pointer but three-point slam but he said that like what he hears is just amazing on some of these tracks and I am so Luke I don't know if this makes sense but I'm so excited to listen to it that I haven't listened to it yet does that make sense like I I want to be like in a really – I want to be in the right place and mindset to like dig into this.

No, you want to be in your office with your projector going, just kind of chilling out, maybe have an adult beverage or whatever and just kind of get into a real like – right? I mean basically get in a very relaxed kind of state where you're just like really ready to just like spend some time with it as opposed to like you're listening to it on your phone as you're like walking out the door to go like run an errand.

Right, right. That wouldn't do me any good. So I'm really excited about this. I think many times on this show I've said that, like, I don't know. I was a big fan of the Beatles growing up, and they still hold, like, a, you know, a very nostalgic place in my heart. But, like, objectively speaking, am I even really still a Beatles fan? But then shit like this happens, and I'm like, yeah, I guess I am. I think Get Back did that, you know, very long documentary. What was it? A 10-hour documentary or whatever it was. I think it did a – I mean, it really sucked me back into the mystique of the Beatles, whatever. how many years ago was that 60 years ago now well the mystique of the beatles or at least the

coincidence of the beatles that i'm currently uh i wouldn't say obsessed with but i took note of was a i think a tweet from julian lennon right and uh he said it's like it's like you won't believe who you run into in the airport lounge randomly and he ran into paul mccartney and then there's like a picture of the two of them and and what i wrote on twitter and what i was thinking was imagine you go into the delta lounge and you happen to see at the salad bar the guy who wrote hey jude and then you look over at uh you know where they keep the like cookies and stuff and it's the guy who hey jude was written about and you're just like all i wanted was some tomato soup and now i can't get past these two i mean that is full coverage on that song experience It's the guy who wrote it and the guy who it was written about are both just like in the sky lounge kind of like, you know, going like, are they getting are they getting more cornbread? Do you know if they're out of the cornbread? Are they bringing some more? This one's a little stale. I want to wait if they're bringing more. But if it's the last one, I'm going to just have it. Yeah, I just thought that was. And I'm not even like I am much less of a Beatles head than many. And I'm also not someone who is particularly. I don't know. I just think because I'm kind of narcissistic and kind of very what have you, what has anybody done? for me lately i don't geek that's why i didn't geek out when i met ringo star because i don't really if you're not making music that i care about right now it's and by the way i'm not saying this is a good look or even how a person should be but i'm not one of those folks who gets really overwhelmed by like well this was the person who unless it's if it's like jeff tweedy although i also would argue jeff tweedy is still making music that i enjoy listening to but like I was I'll try to be delicate about this because there's no chance of anyone hearing it but I was on a shoot yesterday in New York and I was talking to one of the folks associated with CBS and they were going through the list of like stories that they'd done and people that they'd and they're kind of it would appear that the lane for this particular producer is a lot of people who were kind of a big deal or at least in the zeitgeist you know 30 40 years ago and maybe just because i don't have a mind for history or something but this person was listing off all these people and i was thinking why on earth did we do a tv story about any of these people like i'm not talking about like even a ringo star like that makes sense like you were part of maybe the most influential musical thing that ever happened like i get that one but it would just be people like you know the guy who did the choreography for saturday night no that's not even true because I actually would be interested in that I can't I can't say can I throw one I'm going to throw out

an example because I'll take the bullet here because this is like this is like super rude but actually this is maybe the wrong era that you're talking about but you know when I worked at New Hampshire Public Radio we would the most of the types of people we would have in to interview artists and musicians they were more local right we didn't get a lot of big names coming through New Hampshire there's not a big city and so when somebody like and I'm going to just use the name And I like her a lot, by the way. She was a wonderful person. And her her hit song from the 90s is one of my favorite songs. But people were over the goddamn moon about meeting Lisa Loeb. And I was like, I'm glad that Lisa Loeb is here. That's cool. And we interviewed her, you know, as the producer. And but like it wasn't a war, a world changing moment for me. And it sort of seemed like there were some other people who maybe had a different perspective on that moment.

Yeah and I'm talking Even the see that's the thing Now maybe this is just generational But like because I love the song stay So much I love stay I would have been Like that's that's in an era that I I think part of the problem for me with some of this stuff That I'm very very sort of like Kind of obliquely Referencing because again I don't want to I don't want someone to go back and watch the piece on CBS and like look at the producer's name And think bad thoughts because The folks I'm talking about are amazing People and I'm you know whatever But it's like it's just people that just struck me as so wildly irrelevant. And again, that's a sort of I don't know, not caring about my about the history of the pop culture in this country. I think that speaks poorly of me more than even people who are like, oh, yeah, but that was the person. And we're not talking about like Harry Belafonte. I guess I also want to say if there's someone who isn't maybe making like music or entertainment that we're all consuming right now, but they were also incredibly important in something like Harry Belafonte in the civil rights movement and also just as a musician like that. I get that is important to me but I just I don't know I just don't get that I don't get that geeked out on somebody who did one thing a long time ago and now we're still kind of I just that doesn't for whatever reason uh it does not uh excite me a whole lot I guess I'm putting you on the spot now

and this might be a bad example and I maybe shouldn't do this because you interviewed him but like what about the guy who um you know helped who collaborated with Brian Wilson to

right smile and um oh that was a whole that was a different situation van dyke parks van dyke

parks like that's somebody who was like so well respected and put on a pedestal i'm sure for very very good reasons but like i that's somebody i've never met him but like from and i know that also i think that was you talked about on the show maybe being a kind of kind of a tougher interview in front of a live audience i'm probably the toughest i didn't want to put you on the spot i

wasn't sure how much we talked about that but no i don't care but like i wouldn't be low chance that

van dyke parks is listening to this like if some if i were to meet somebody and he's just a fella you know and i meet him and then somebody whispers in my ear that's van dyke parks he helped you know he collaborated with brian wilson i wouldn't retroactively be excited about that but again we talk about this a lot i'm just not that i'm not that celebrity obsessed the idea of sharing rare air with somebody who shared rare air with somebody else or who was an icon or or even a a path blazer of an earlier generation like I might enjoy the the product but I just don't get super excited about about the moment of meeting those people because if they're super super famous then they literally won't remember me and yeah i don't know it's just and but that's maybe my gen x-iness i don't know

yeah i i'm sure for me that's also part of it is that and i will say this it helps me in my it helps me in my um my job of live wire and of my tv job because like yesterday we were in we were filming this piece about like hallmark holiday movies which are you know very formulaic they often star a lot of people who were kind of big on tv you know 15 years ago and it's also the most popular cable channel in the world right now and through christmas you know how like on the radio there'll be the station that just plays all christmas music they just convert over to that and they are like they become the most pot like they just they just destroy the arbitron ratings From like October through December I think in Seattle it's like Warm 106.9 or something This is like that of movies right They make these very cozy movies and There's a snowball fight and people bake cookies and Fall in love and etc So the star of a lot of those is This woman named Lacey Chabert who was in like Party of Five And other stuff and I interviewed her yesterday and she was so Nice and just like so Just great she was like a really pleasant very kind person who was like when we weren't filming was just hanging around chatting and like just was super likable but i could just tell that so many people in the room were like nervous that she was there like there was like there was so many people involved in this interview there was probably 30 people there five of them were hair and makeup five of them were execs from the network three of them were managers two of them were um like pr people actually there's probably five PR people and it was like the vibratory feeling of people just being like oh my god okay no one messed this up and I'm just kind of like look I'm gonna be able to handle being in a room chatting with Lacey Chabert like it's gonna be fine and I think it's probably serves me well that either because of a defense mechanism or because of genuinely just not caring I am not very I just generally am not that there are there are certainly exceptions if I got to meet Barack obama i would be shitting my pants if i got to i mean there's a list of people but it's not that long really i mean i met russell wilson over the summer purely to try to make him talk about mr unlimited and i can promise you that other than wanting to try to get it on video i had zero nerves about going up and talking to russell wilson for whatever reason and i'm not none of this is meant as some kind of a flex i just mean for whatever reason that's also sort of how my brain works and it's i think it's actually probably useful i watch one of those hallmark

movies yesterday or part of one i thought of you because i knew that you were working hard on that hallmark story i walked into the room genevieve and i are not hallmark you know holiday movie people at all like at all um and we i'm using hallmark as the generic term here because actually the one she was watching was on netflix and it wasn't hallmark related but um i walked in i was like what are you what are you watching here and she's like well i had some work to do and i just wanted some so she's seen there with her laptop and she's like i just wanted some background noise sort of and everybody online was slamming this particular movie uh and so i started watching i'm like all right i just like sat down next door i was tired i just sat down and so we watched part of it and it took me a while to realize like well of all of the hallmark movies i know a big part of the tradition is to sort of talk about how campy they are and have fun about but i'm like but like there there are so many now like how do you know how does everybody know which one to gather around and make fun of or i don't know it's just not my world right um and then i realized i'm like wait she looks like she's like yeah can you name her and it took me about 15 minutes before i could conjure the name lindsey lohan i'm like oh that's oh yeah lohan genevieve literally wouldn't tell me her name she's like no this is how you learn you have to come up with her name yourself i'm like all right so then i was like oh so that's why there was a gravitational pull around this one because genevieve's like yeah i'm watching it it's not good but it's not like over the top campy i don't know why everybody's making fun of this one either i'm like oh now i understand it Because it's Lynn, it's like you kind of, you know, she was at one point, like kind of the very top of her game has kind of been a slow, steady fall for her. And, you know, I think that, you know, there's a lot to say about Lindsay Lohan that I won't get into now. I just often feel very bad for those kid actors who grow up to be, you know, who grew up with a lot of problems and become kind of problematic themselves. But like when their childhood is sort of stolen from them, like, I don't know, I have compassion from them. But I guess that's for them, I should say. But I guess that's why In all of your research Have you heard of this Lindsay Lohan Christmas movie Oh yeah Oh okay So you're well into it I'm deep Did you watch it Because I only saw The end of it

I've watched some clips Of it But really I mean it's an Honestly it's kind of An interesting business story Like as Because I'm logged in As Marketplace LA1 I would like to take this to

a business place if i can you know it is a this is an incredibly profitable thing for hallmark and you know these people work for the card company like the hallmark movie channel is the hallmark card company that like at some point in like i don't know the 20s or 30s the guy who founded the card company like we should start getting into radio and television and you know the first opera that was ever commissioned for television which it was commissioned by the hallmark card company they went to Giancarlo Minotti and they said we want you to write an opera for television that opera was a mall in the night visitors funnily enough which I was in in middle school this is my box anyway what's in the box but so it's a very interesting business story in that this card company decided to start making movies that was the sort of hallmark classics and everything back in the day and then this particular genre of like extremely predictable holiday movies where typically a, you know, a woman who's living in the big city and has a, you know, works at a high powered law firm, goes home for the holidays and realizes, you know, that contractor with a heart of gold, there's all these things, these tropes, there's always an almost kiss where like they're about to kiss and then the phone rings and then they stop and then the movie always ends on a kiss. There's all these like beats that happen and people love this. It's very comforting. But what's amazing is how profitable it's become, which is why all these other networks have tried to make their version of it. So Lifetime movies, which used to all just be like, you know, these sort of very harrowing stories of very awful things happening, usually to women, you know, often from their, you know, partners or whatever. They have tried to pivot during the holidays and put the like, my husband locked me in a basement movies on hold and go with the like, my husband is actually Santa Claus or whatever. Like they've tried to pivot into making these movies The Weather Channel apparently has one I think Like every single channel On basic cable If they have any resources are trying to make Their version of it Including Netflix and Netflix has a lot of resources That's why they got Lindsay Lohan That's a big get in this world of these kinds of movies

Yeah I would guess Now if you want me to tell you what happens at the end I can only do that off air I will not spoil the ending of that movie

I will also say You were talking about the fall of one Lindsay Lohan. I will tell you this, and I'm not trying to – how do I put this? I'm not trying to judge too much by just outward measures, but I saw some pictures of Lindsay like outside of, I don't know, probably the Today Show or whatever. Like she's doing a lot of media for this Netflix thing, and she looked to be in great health. she looked uh clear-eyed healthy happy like it was it was it made me very i have i don't know why i have anything invested in like whatever's going on with lindsey lohan but i have to say if i'm just going off of what i observed of her like you know being snapped by the paparazzi as she was going into some interview she seemed to be really in a good place which i was very happy for her because like you said that's a person who's been through a lot and had parents who i don't think we're particularly looking out for her her well-being etc yeah so you know and that's the other thing not that these hallmark the folks in these hallmark movies are not it's not a redemption arc for them as far as their personal lives in fact they very actively try to only pick people they know that are not gonna like end up in the tabloids for some reason because it's very off-brand for them you know who one of their big stars was laurie laughlin cheating scandal and And like the two days after those charges broke, Lori Loughlin was scrubbed from the network.

Oh, I think I remember that happening. That was a while back. Yeah.

Yeah. And like the other thing I'll say, we got to get to break here. But the other thing that was really it was kind of interesting because, I mean, could you think of a more puffy piece than like, hey, Christmas is here and the Hallmark holiday channel is in full swing. I mean, it is an extremely light hearted piece.

Until one Candace Cameron Burke Starts showing up in the headlines How do you know this? It's beret, but you had so much of that

I'm giving you the W How is that even on your radar?

It's just been big news I haven't been reading into it I just see all the headlines Supposedly she quote unquote apologized yesterday But she did not really apologize at all She has blamed the press for coming after her And misconstruing her words Which were not misconstrued And she's just a homophobe

It was very funny because It was very coincidental because like how often Is there any Like is there any trending Controversial news about the topic of Hallmark movies right I mean Probably never in history except The last three days When I'm also in a two-story loft in the Lower East Side of New York That has been, that's not true, it's actually in the village I don't know why that matters By the way, you know, funnily, we shot three doors down from where I used to live In the village, in Greenwich Village But that was just a coincidence Of all the times for me to be in this loft Which the Hallmark Channel has completely Christmased out This is three floors of massive Christmas decorations everywhere that were all going to they were just there for the shoot they were all going to be taken down as soon as we left so that we could like be in a wonderland while I talked to Lacey and other folks that are in these movies and also some of the executives and whatever they were on high alert like of all and then you also have this gaggle of PR people who again we have listeners who work in PR and I you know I think there is a value there for certain folks but it also is the kind of thing where i feel like my experience is people can get a little worked up when they're in the pr space and i'm sitting there and i'm talking to lacy and this is so for folks that don't know the uh story with this is candace cameron beret who used to be on full house but then had become like a very popular uh sort of recurring actor on these hallmark movies she's a uh fancies herself A very Christian person And I say fancies herself Because I don't think Her version of Christianity Is the version of Christianity That a lot of our listeners Ascribe to But she basically went with The other guy who used to run The film division of Hallmark Is also conservative AF And he and Candace Cameron Bure Decided to go make their own network Where it could be more family focused And I'm like Have you seen a Hallmark movie? Are you trying to make it More down the middle Than the ones they're already making? Are you crazy?

Well, wasn't it like comments about where traditional marriages are at the core? Wasn't that the thing?

Because Hallmark has one movie this year that has two of the main characters happen to be a gay couple. And it is, you know, I don't know. I'm going to tell you this. It is an extremely, extremely tame presentation of same-sex couplehood. Like bordering on You know they didn't I'm just saying It's good that it's happening In my opinion it could have been more explicit You know what I mean like in terms of Just leaning into the fact That there are people who are you know In same sex couples who also like Christmas So that alone though Was enough that when Candace Cameron was interviewed And asked if on this other Whatever great American network If they're going to have same sex couples represented She said, we're going to focus on traditional marriage, which is a very clear way of saying we're not going to do that. And so there's all this blowback on that. Well, anyway, yesterday I'm at the end of the interview and I just start to say, hey, you know, there's been this big news story about Candace Cameron Bure. And as I'm starting, I'm just talking and then I just see Lacey Chabert's eyes go really wide. Not because I think she's that put off by the question, but because standing right behind me, just right out of the shot, are three PR people who are literally, Andrew, about to come on to the – like step in front of the cameras, throw themselves like a Secret Service person diving in front of the president to take a bullet. They're literally about to dive in front of Lacey Chabert and take the bullet of her having to say anything about this topic.

Yeah, and so what happened?

I just ended the interview. I was like, fuck this. I mean, truthfully. Wait, what do you mean? Those are all the questions I have.

You started to ask the question and then you did get the question out or you didn't? I'm a little.

I got 50% of the question out. And then Lacey Chabert, who was incredibly nice, by the way, I mean, really and truly, started to answer and then got a wide look in her eyes because all these people off camera were being like, no, no, do not. They're like literally doing the like, cut it. Like, it was like I was holding a grenade and I had pulled the pin. That was the feeling in that room. And so everybody and then she very graciously said, you know, I think probably like that's something the executives can talk about or whatever. And I was like, OK, that's fair. But then I was just kind of like, OK, I'm done talking about Christmas cookies. Like I was just kind of a little bit I was reactive to the fact that there's three people who have who are not in this interview who are now sort of trying to like Geppetto the person I'm talking to into not just like and I wasn't I mean, we were not even going to use that in the story. Like by the time this thing airs, no one's even going to care. That's not even the point. But like I'm extremely resistant to having people hovering behind me who are telling the people that I'm trying to talk to not to talk to me. Do I have this right? Because Lacey Chabert, the name sort of rang a bell, but maybe only because you might have raised it earlier this week in talking about this story that you're working on. Or maybe just because even I, who hide from the news as much as possible, somehow Lacey Chabert's name has leaked into my consciousness. But I didn't know who it was, so I looked it up here. And so she's also from Mean Girls. So we sort of have competing mean girls on different networks doing these holiday movies. Oh, that's a really – I hadn't thought of that. Damn it, Andrew.

Why didn't you do this interview? I should be the producer. Tell them. Yeah, that's actually really that's actually that's an interesting coincidence. Right. Because, yeah, she was in that as well. And again, I just want to say for the record and nobody cares. But like none of this is on the person I was interviewing, who is super, super nice and and and was trying to answer every question I was asking. It's on this like this like obsession that a certain kind of PR person who's always clutching to iPhones for some reason and is like wandering around in a tizzy because they're like everyone's just worried about go. So, I mean, I guess, okay, I guess technically if it's a big enough story that it hit your radar, it's a fairly big story. And then if we at CBS were doing the kind of show where we were like, Lacey Chabert claps back and Candace Cameron, like, I guess it could have been a thing. It's just so not what we do or what I care about or the kind of journalismism that I want to be into. like i just was kind of like i just i literally like turned it i said well i wasn't done with my question but okay like i was i don't get that way a lot and then later then later like some head of pr came up and like apologized to me which also then made me feel terrible because i was like no no it's fine it's fine um this is making it sound like it was a bad day it was a great day it was fine but it was just like that one moment i was like how is this the most contentious interview i've ever been in and it's about christmas right right right okay um a little update andrew um we have not been able to secure a drummer from portland so i have reached out to our friend and she is working on it nice getting us a drummer tonight for live wire so very between that and the low hand mean girls connection andrew you're really you're playing three-dimensional chess

today and i appreciate it here i'm being quite serious about this and i'll never know if you Did this or not but It'll make your producers mad I don't care If you end up getting a drummer Through Leanie I need you to sneak me an Associate producer credit at the end of the show Absolutely Now I want you to know

We record that stuff later But I will 100% 100% give you an Associate producer credit for this episode When it airs

Oh that's true yeah if you're recording it later it's for the air I was even just thinking if you could spoof it on stage And it just gets cut out later but either way

you know what i do tonight i'll do i'll try to do a temperature read on how many tens are there because they're the only people that will appreciate the majesty of that reference but

i absolutely will your real producers will be so mad they'll be like they don't care they're just

like honestly they'll be just get through this they'll just be happy that we're actually doing the show now that we're luckily the rest of the band is is is is okay because they were like well we do have the pre-recorded we have pre-recorded music if we need it but i was like no man the whole fun of it is like having a live band and stuff i think it really kind of adds adds a little bit of um pizzazz to the whole thing so i think we'll i think we'll be okay in the end uh okay quick break here on tbtl go ahead and i thought you were i thought you were playing a cd that's why i got confused i'm sorry um back with more tbtl in just a moment All right, let's thank some of our donors of the day. These wonderful, generous folks are keeping this thing going with their financial support. Folks like Joshua Doolin of Dayton, Ohio, home of the Flyers.

Dayton sounds like a very cool place that I've never been, weirdly enough, being in Ohio.

Isn't that also, is that where Wayne State University is as well?

I feel like that's Indiana no Oh maybe so

I went to I went to Dayton To do Oh it's Detroit Wayne State is in Detroit Oh right But Dayton Oh Wayne State is Detroit well then what's the school is it just the Dayton Flyers I think I went to The university there In Dayton And it was interesting because the film school Is dedicated To Tom Hanks it's like the Tom Hanks film school or something. And I was like, did Tom Hanks, did he go to Dayton or something? Did he have a moment here? Wright State University? Wright State. Mm-hmm. Wright State Fred. Mm-hmm.

Is that a show title? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Anyway, Joshua. It's the best we got so far.

I'm trying to get all of my mistakes out before I have to do Live Wire tonight on stage. I'm trying to really foam off a lot of factual errors like not remembering what Wright State, and that's, of course, named for the Wright brothers. Anyway, thanks, Joshua, for being there in Dayton. Thanks also to Reed Schumann in Lafayette, Colorado. I assume one of the many places named for Lafayette. that Frenchman who came over and was instrumental in American history yeah I'm going to back you up on that what did he do again

was he an economist no I think he

came over and fought with the Americans in I only interviewed Sarah Vowell about an entire book about this guy but he came over from France and he he fought on the American side for and I'm now which exact war he was a part of is escaping me but then he just became this kind of folk hero and he would tour around and he just went to I think he wanted to see every place in America so he traveled around and he told these great stories and he became very beloved and there's just a lot of stuff named for Lafayette yeah I'm embarrassed that I called him an economist I don't know who I was thinking of god damn it but the film school is named for him in Lafayette hey look who it is Stacy Sledge my friend from Bellingham Washington this is ironic or coincidence

because I feel like I mean I literally I did not know that Stacy was going to be thanked today and I literally thought of Stacy when I was giving my example before of Lisa Loeb because I want to make it very clear I like Lisa Loeb that is an era of music and a style of music that I like a great deal and I didn't mean to be dunking on her before when I was talking about her celebrity status when she visited New Hampshire but that is also it's that era and style of music that Stacey and I both share a love of and Stacey I think having some professional hands in that field as well I actually literally thought of her and thought ooh that's not going to land right so my apologies Stacey but thank you for supporting the show anyway Stacey can roll with

it I think I hope so Stacey is a is an incredible person a journalist a friend a confidant and a person who I think won't be too upset if you were less than jazzed on the appearance of old Lisa Loeb. Also, J.T. Thorstat is in Tacoma, Washington. I don't know where J.T. comes down on the whole Lisa Loeb controversy, which is riling up an entire program now, and will soon replace the Candace Cameron Buree controversy as the main kind of hot-button issue of our time.

Somebody's going to be asking me about Lisa Loeb. lobe and then jt's eyes are gonna get really really big and then jt's and then stacy sledge

is gonna be standing behind you waving jt off from answering the questions gonna get ugly thank you jt also thanks to julia bush in providence rhode island thank you julia and thanks also to alexa jackie in seattle washington alexa do you play the drums hey alexa can you play the drums

Oh, Alexa's never heard that one before.

Oh, really? Did you have something better? I just said thank you politely. No, that actually is a better approach. Maybe I should do less freelancing and stick with thanking these generous donors who are the only reason the show exists. It's actually a good piece of feedback, Andrew. Your third good piece of feedback today. Don't get cocky. Thank you, donors. We wouldn't be here without you.

And one more thing here, Luke, before we go to another break. A very a very quick break, by the way. Sorry about that. I wanted to talk about something that is some pretty sad news hitting the TVTL community. We lost a longtime listener in front of the show, Emily, Emily McCord, who's been listening for a long time and writing into the show. She would always sign her emails to us, MBOT. I know that stood out to you, Luke. And we got a note from her partner, Angela, yesterday saying that Emily passed away recently. And it's just ridiculously heartbreaking and so unbelievably sad. And I've been thinking about Emily. I thought about her all day yesterday and all of the people in her life and how hard that is. And Angela sent a link to a place where people can kind of donate to a cause for mental health and can kind of share their memories of Emily. And I'll post that on the Slack page and maybe somebody can share that on Facebook as well. And just wanted to let Angela and everybody know that we're thinking of them.

Emily was just an absolutely adorable person who would email us great things like back in earlier in 2022, she said, My partner and I were watching Cheers earlier in the day, and then this happened, and then it's just a picture.

of i presume her partner and in the background sitting at the bar and drinking as george went

oh yes i remember i remember that email yes he's literally doing his character from cheers

he has a pint to his lips yes and so you know em was a really great kind of like correspondent for the show out there in the world and sending us feedback and thoughts and all kinds of things so we're going to miss her. And yeah, if everybody could go check out that link to help support mental health and to really just kind of honor Emily's memory, that would be really cool.

All right, Luke, only a couple of blurs days today.

I guess winter is not a time where a lot of people are being born, or at least not.

Well, I mean, summer is a time when not a lot of people are, you know, performing. Pitching woo.

Yes. Performing their marital duties Matt says That's how Candace Cameron Bray puts it Our new network is going to focus more On people performing their traditional marital duties How have I ruined Blur's days already Did you need a singer tonight Luke? Because I can sort of just riff on stuff like that

I had no idea how musical You really were between the drum sound effect And the improvised songs I think we're kind of set for tonight now. I could do both at the same time. It's amazing.

All right. Look at Tibetan Monk who's lost his way. Matt says, happy Blur's Day to my remarkable partner, Listener Annie. You know what's interesting here is, Listener Annie, that's actually Listener Annie's name. She was born with that name, Listener Annie.

I love you. You're kind of at that point. Yeah. You're destined to become a 10 if your first name is Listener and your middle name is Annie.

I love you, and I look forward to spending time with you, listening to TBTL on the way to Priceless Granite. So I guess they're going to Priceless Granite, or they just wanted to hear me sing. There were musical notes around Priceless Granite indicating that they needed us to sing that. I already played that. I just played that a second ago. So that is for Annie. Happy Blur's Day, Annie, from Matt and from me and Luke. And finally, our pal Heidi in Minnesota says, I hope I'm not too late. Nope, you are. No, Heidi in Minnesota says, I hope I'm not too late. I would like to wish a very happy Blursday to my son, Ayrton. He's nine years old, but wise, far beyond his years. I'm so lucky to be his mom, but I would like to ask him to please stop growing up so quickly. Can you do that, Ayrton? Happy Blursday, Ayrton. Thanks for writing in. That's a command. Happy Blursday, buddy.

that's it my friends we did not get to the top stories because I had to talk about all of the intrigue at the Hallmark Channel that ate up a lot of the program and also I had to try to use this as a way to find a drummer in Seattle so tomorrow I will tell you all how that went if we got someone and also we'll get to these top stories that we didn't get to but in the meantime that's going to do it for today's program thank you everyone for listening thanks for being part of TBTL Again, please go to the Stens page and other places to check out that link to Emily's Legacy because that's an important thing. So we will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Until then, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

What I like to do is first lay down a kind of syncopated beat that isn't so much about what it is altogether. It's more about the modulation and what it is once it starts. It's a little bit of a groove more than it is a rock beat. I do a flam rest, flam rest, flam rest, followed by sort of kind of an intricate african thing on the low drums so it goes like so the pattern is you ride on this tom here hopefully you've got the 17 toms and it goes something like this Power out.