Muse

You've been listening to a Listening Goose podcast, co-produced by Jingle Jangle Media, Inflatable Jukebox Productions, The New York Times, and Splunk's, your one-stop shop for pistachio nuts and swimming trunks. The podcast was produced by me and Ahara Minara. Executive produced by Maria Gronzinski, Jack Goulash, and Peter McTeter-Totter. Additional reporting by Laura Panerni. Our editor is Skye Ben Shugan. Our deputy editor is Kylie Sassafras. Vowell's editor is Noah Elefante. Constance editor, Bison Hodgepodge. Executive editor, Bill Fist. Executive associate, associate executive is Mary Moo. Sound production, Sam Blind. Audio production by Hester Lestrange. Production production by Bofi Fennell Harrington. Magic tricks performed by Zamo the Great. Original music for this episode is provided by Young Kong. Next week on The Secret Rabbi, how much lettuce is too much lettuce?

i've seen it coming for years i've worried about it i hoped with all my heart i wouldn't experience it i wouldn't see it but it's now here chips and dips chips and dips i love chips and

dips that's a that's a no from me dog you know being in prison i have uh finally decided to start my first novel uh started it two weeks ago it is uh christine by stephen king mom

It's not real. It's a jib jab.

You know, I just came here to hit dingers and have a good time. That's about it.

Well, all right, everybody. We knew this would happen eventually. And frankly, it's happened exactly how I always imagined it would. First of all, hello. Welcome to a Tuesday edition of TBTL. I'm Andrew Walsh. I'll be handling the hosting duties today.

So if you're out there, come find me.

So Luke is out today, and as you might have guessed, he did indeed receive a letter over the long holiday weekend informing him that some long-lost relative of his, somebody he didn't even know, has passed away, and now he's inheriting this huge mansion down in Georgia somewhere. So Luke is down in Georgia right now. We wanted to check out the estate and everything. And then he met this woman who, trigger warning, ends up getting murdered while she's with him. Everybody accuses him of murdering her, which he did not. I'm telling you right now, Luke did not murder that woman. But now he has to rely on his background and skills as an investigative journalist to sort of clear his name. And what he's doing is he's dressing up like a bunch of different characters. He's using nom de plumes. He, for some reason, I think, is infiltrating the local KKK and, like, I guess, sort of exposing the seedy underbelly of the southern town. I don't understand even why that's involved here. But that is what I think is going on, why Luke is not here today. Either that or it's the plot of Fletch Lives. Fletch. F. Fletch. One of those. Or Luke's just recording a corporate video. I'm not sure. Anyway, I'm your host today, and I am legitimately, legitimately excited about this show. This, and I'm not kidding here, this show today is a show that is like a decade in the making. We're going to try something today that I've been wanting to try for a very long time, and I've been wanting to do it with this person who's sitting across from me. Let me introduce you to her. You might know her as the host of the After These Messages podcast. You might know her as the woman who has a desk right outside of my studio and will kind of barge in here sometimes when I get something wrong, which is totally fair. Her name is Genevieve Haz. She's the longest-running co-bro of my life. Veeves, I didn't pull a drop for you.

Oh.

I'm sorry. That's your favorite part.

That's my favorite part.

Which one do you want? Let me see if I can find something on the fly. All right. I totally forgot. I'm sorry. I got all wrapped up in the Fletch Lives thing.

Well, I was really, I was mesmerized by that retelling.

This is, the reason I did that, I did that purposefully because it kind of sets up what I want to do with you today.

I thought, I was like, who's telling the movies here?

How, while I look for a drop for you.

Yeah.

You tell me, how close did I get that? What did I leave out or what did I get wrong as far as the plot of Fletch Lives?

I mean, you got, you didn't get anything wrong. I think there are, I mean, you just sort of like glossed over the remainder of the mystery, which that I don't, I've seen Fletch lives a lot and I don't remember why the lady got murdered or who murdered her or why they murdered her.

And is it true that people think that he did it?

Yes, because he's, he's basically framed. And I think it has to do with the land that the plantation he inherits is wanted by some evil organization. Oh, yes. So I think the murder is actually...

Yeah, they want to, like, frack there.

They want to do something.

Some fracking there or something.

Right, sure. Something that is just like evil company needs land.

Yeah, evil company needs land is the headline. And he's only framed for the murder. The woman is murdered totally superfluously. Like, there are probably a million ways you could, why not murder him?

Right.

Although then it's just somebody else inherits it, I guess.

And also it's a shorter movie.

But also, yeah, like, you know, I feel like that poor lady got murdered for very little reason.

Yeah, well, that's Hollywood for you. Hey, everybody, joining me now. You might know her as the host of After These Messages or the woman who sometimes barges in here when she hears me get something incorrect on TBTL.

It takes a lot for me to barge. I have to sit there and think, like, Emma, is it barging time? Is it barging time again?

And she is very excited to be on the show today. Well, you must feel like a celebrity. A regular Ira Glass. Her name is Genevieve Haz. Hello, Veeves.

Hi, Andrew. It's good to be here.

Yeah, thanks for doing this. Yeah, so for real, Luke is doing some sort of, you know, he's got a corporate.

I got it. He inherited a plantation. You just said this.

We'll start over. Luke's had another gig today, so everything is okay. We got to, I hate to say it, but we sometimes have to say that with Luke. Everything is okay. This was a planned day off. He's not crashing a boat somewhere. Right. I promise you.

Unless it's part of the script of whatever he's doing.

That is true. He is shooting, I think we can say, a safety video. Well, a type of safety video.

All right. Well, hopefully it's not boat safety.

Hopefully not. But I am not joking when I say what we're going to do with TBTL today is something a little bit different because you're here, Vives. And I'm not a top story guy like Luke is. He's good at kind of retelling stories. And I didn't see any headlines today that I felt like we needed to really address. I mean, it's snowing outside in Seattle. That's kind of a big deal.

Top story in Seattle. It's snowing.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. So instead, we're going to use the show today to do something that I wanted to do with you a long time ago. You and I have been hosting, after these messages, a podcast about commercials for seven years, seven years now. Yeah. But it took me a while to get you to do a podcast with me. I'd been asking you to do a podcast with me, kind of like tossing around goofy ideas, I think, for years before that. Yeah. And the idea that I think I got the closest to, aside from talking about commercials, was this idea of Genevieve just tells me the story of movies. Yeah. Like I tried and failed to do at the top of this show. You're actually really, really good at it. And I haven't seen a lot of movies or I'll come in and out of movies like I've seen you in the living room watching Con Air in our relationship together. What have we been together going on? 22 years now? 22 years, yeah. I mean, honestly, how many times have I come into the living room and you're watching Con Air? At least four times a year, right?

If it's on TV, I'm watching it. Now that we don't have cable, I've really fallen down on the job of just watching Con Air and The Rock a million times.

Because it's the type of movie that you land on. If you land on it and you stay there, you don't dial it up on a streaming platform.

Exactly. If I see it on TV, I will continue watching it. But so that actually has really changed since we gave up cable. But but I still have, you know, 20, you know, I still have 40 years of doing that under my belt.

Yeah. 20 before me and then 20 after me. Do you miss that, by the way, the the idea of just like flipping on the TV and just catching what's on everything we have now?

We have to dial it up. Yeah, I do miss that. It's probably better for me and, you know, my media consumption habits to not have that. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I watched a lot of garbage and I would rewatch a lot of garbage because it was just easy. And it was I mean, I, I was just kind of a perennial just flipper. And I do I think there isn't there's a quality of that flipping through and not finding anything that like sort of like when you've been doom scrolling for a long time. It's sort of like it sort of creates the same feeling for me of doom scrolling.

but contrarily you miss those moments where you just land on a movie like Shawshank is another good one right yeah so that was my original idea for a podcast I want to start with you a long time ago like I haven't seen a lot of these movies or if I have I've only half seen them or whatever and sometimes you and I would just be out at like breakfast or something I'd be like oh what happens in this movie and you'd be like oh your eyes would light up you'd be like oh do you want me to tell you the story of Con Air right and you would right so Con Air first of all is not on the list today and neither is Shawshank Redemption but I have pulled a handful of movies we don't have to do them all but I'll throw them at you some I know you are very familiar with and you will be excited to tell me the story of others I'm not entirely sure of but they're sort of there I think everything I picked some of them with a little bit more humor than others but I'm pretty sure almost everything I picked is in either the action or heist genres in some way or another I feel like that works well here I don't need you telling me the

plot of elf although that wouldn't be bad either i could probably do elf i'm not i'm not like

intimately familiar with elf but i could tell you the story yeah it's about an elf it's about

an elf who eats cats he's an alien life form right yeah really that does feel like a parody like a mashup that's ripe for parody yeah like a trailer for elf versus elf we luke brought this up on the show a couple of weeks ago we'll go to a break here in a second then we'll get going with this because i'm excited for you to tell me the stories of these movies what would we have called

this podcast i think about that a lot i don't know what it would be called like um maybe by the end

we'll come up with something but luke uh was talking on this show maybe three weeks ago when he was in new york there was a giant billboard like some sort of animated billboard i think it was like a video screen or something in new york city they have them there wow yeah i know it's the apple that never sleeps um and there was some billboard that kept showing the same like i guess 10 second clip of a movie that i had not heard of until he told me about it but now you and i have

seen the trailer for it violent night oh yeah with the the cop from stranger things funny horror

the horror comedy about santa yeah and luke even found the trailer and ended up playing it for us and i was kind of like yeah whatever i gotta say seeing the trailer like irl i understood the appeal more it's way I think and this is on me I think I was missing some of the camp I mean there's obvious camping this year but it seems more successful camping this than maybe I thought

when I just heard the audio yeah you know I think David Harbour is uh is is a good pick for that role for a kind of for a snarky violent Santa and I also just like we just saw him in a movie

John Leguizamo oh yeah and that's that was for the menu which we saw that trailer yeah he's in both

of them right i think and he i actually love john leguizamo as a villain i think he's a fantastic villain and so i'm always kind of here for it when he when he like goes into high high camp villain

yeah the one thing that i and i this is not praise but when um i saw in the trailer there's a line you know like the voiceover guy says something like it's like die hard meets home alone which obviously it is in many ways but when they say home alone i think you literally see a kid at the top of the stairs dropping a paint can into somebody's face. Yeah, it's like that's so literal. It's just like a straight up homage, I guess. So, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to take a quick break a little bit earlier than usual here. When we come back, we'll thank the donors of the day and then we'll get into this. Genevieve telling me the story of movies. It's going to be a good one. Stick around. all right let's thank some donors of the day here now here's the thing luke is really good at thanking the donors of the day because our donors are spread all across the country

And that's why Luke is good at thanking them? He knows geography really well.

Actually, he doesn't, but he travels a lot, so he'll have a little vignette for a lot of his little towns.

Or he is good at- I'll make up a vignette. Test me. I'll vignette the shit out of it.

Okay, good. You know what? Let's do that. You vignette. Yeah. Because I was gathering little factoids about each one of these little towns. I'm a vignetter from way back. I have little little factoids about each one of these little towns where our donors are from and some of them big towns. But no, let's scrap that idea. Genevieve, you tell me the little factoid or vignette.

OK, please. All right.

But leave the donors. I don't want you besmirching the name of any of these kind donors.

You know, that's on them. Whether or not they did anything to deserve besmirching.

All right. Christine Woodward deserves no besmirching. She is from Renton, Washington. Oh, I know a vignette related to you in Renton, Washington.

What's the vignette related to me in Renton?

I think I'm right about this. When we had first purchased this house, or were in the process of purchasing it, I had to take a trip to Cleveland where I stayed for a week. And you were in hyper mode of preparing for this house and all the little tasks we would need to prepare this house to live in it. And you needed a ladder. I texted you.

I got a line on a free ladder in Renton.

That's exactly right about that, right? It was Renton?

Yeah, and I think it might actually have been a snowy day like this because I have a vague memory of driving through the snow to Renton to make off with a free ladder.

That ladder almost killed me when I was trying to trim the bushes.

The ladder's still fine. I used it to put up a light outside recently.

Anne Bissell of Mount Desert, Maine is a donor today. Mount Desert, Maine. now

Now, that struck me because I don't think of Maine as being specifically desert-y.

True. True. Not a lot. There are mountains. There are mountains, certainly. They got the mountain part right. Yeah. Mount Desert was actually home to a big cult in the 60s.

Oh, is that a fact?

Yeah, it is a fact.

And had nothing to do with this, though.

And had nothing to do with it. But it did sort of take over the town in the 60s. It was actually a very nonviolent cult. Mostly they just grew fruit trees. It turned out they were really just, you know, farmers, but a lot of people thought it was a cult.

Turns out it was just a guy with a farm and a family. Turned out it was just a fruit tree farm, yeah. In Mount Desert, Maine. Thank you, Anne. Also, Marie Hahn and Joel Barnes in New York, New York. Now, have you heard of New York, New York?

Oh, I don't have any anecdotes, any vignettes for New York.

I haven't heard of that one. I think they called the city so nice they had a name at once and then include the name of the state after it. That's what I think they say about New York, New York. Thank you, guys. Julie Lambert of Julian, California. I believe Julian, California was named after famous TBTL donor, Julie Lambert. That's true. Yeah, that is also true. Andy Soff of Madison, Wisconsin. Thank you, Andy. Little known fact about Madison doesn't actually exist. Yeah. People just say they live there to avoid paying taxes. And Andrea Walton of Port Orchard, Washington, home of the world's largest thumb drive. Thank you, Andrea Walden.

Is that physically the largest thumb drive, or does it hold the most data?

It's physically, it's totally useless. It doesn't fit anywhere. It doesn't fit in any computers. It's huge. It's hilarious, but it's useless. Right. Yeah. Holds about five megabytes. It's time for Genevieve's Madcap Movie Recaps.

How do you feel about that? I like Mad Cat movie recaps.

All right, Genevieve. Like I said before the break, I tried to pick movies that I thought you would know. Some I know you know. Some I'm not sure about.

Okay.

This first one is somewhere in the middle. I feel like you would have seen it a couple of times, maybe. I definitely have not seen it at all. Okay. But it seems like the type of movie that you'd be able to tell me the story of, hopefully. I don't want to start off with a...

I can pass, right? if I really can't tell you anything

I can pass. Yeah, I'm just hoping that we don't have to pass on the first one, but that would be on me honestly. I don't know. I'm sorry. Can you hear the insecurity of where I started this list?

Yeah, well why don't you just tell me the name of the movie and

we'll... No, I think we should talk about this some more. Get on with it. True Lies. Oh, sure. I can tell you the plot of True Lies. Okay, good. Oh my god, I was getting worried there. How many times do you think you've seen True Lies? I don't know.

A dozen. Okay. More than that

maybe. And who's in True Lies?

Well, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tia Carrere.

Oh, really?

Yes. Oh, Tom Arnold. Don't sleep on that.

I didn't know that. Tia Carrere.

Who plays the daughter? It's, I feel like the daughter is somebody, Elisha Dushku. Oh, okay. Elisha Dushku. I can't remember how you say her name. Eliza, I think is her name. Eliza Dushku. Sorry. Sorry. I couldn't quite nail that down. But, all right, should I just start from the beginning?

You tell me the story, and then when you're done, I'm going to read the official plot synopsis.

Oh, Bill Paxton, R.I.P.?

Oh, yeah. Oh, God, I'm remembering this movie.

Definitely not Pullman. Okay, so, in True Lies, Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger are a typical suburban couple. And you know how, like, you go to the suburbs, and there is usually a giant Austrian man who just, like, also works a boring office job. In any... And has the foxiest wife you've ever seen.

In any Schwarzenegger movie, do they ever write in a reason why this man has an Austrian? It drives me. Not that it always has to be explained, but sometimes.

Sometimes it would be great, especially when he's a literal agent of the U.S. government. I would love to just hear, like, was this an exchange program? Like, just walk me through. Even just an acknowledgement. Just a nod.

Like, oh, we used to have these in Austria.

When I had emigrated. Like, just something to acknowledge. But that that like sidebar when Arnold Schwarzenegger has, you know, of course, invent, you know, he has manifested himself as like one of our truly one of our greatest action stars, you know, in movie history. I think you've got to give that to him. And a big part of the brand that he was trying to create is really grounded in the idea that he's he's of no nation. He's just he's like he's just an action star.

He's an international international action star.

and it like it doesn't matter what he sounds like it's kind of in the same way that sean connery's like yeah i'm a russian you know submarine captain yeah you know i'm wearing a kilt and a tam as a russian again i can't stress this enough a russian submarine captain captain what's

with the bagpipe yeah captain what's with the bag okay so true lies they're a standard suburban

upper middle class couple yes exactly like nice nice house but nothing nothing too nothing too crazy um he appears to go to a boring office job every day as far as his family knows that's what he does and i you know it's it's immaterial what he what they think he does but jamie lee curtis even jokes that she like when she needs to fall asleep at night she just asks him to tell her about his day no yeah so they're in there they've definitely like the fires have cooled a bit right and they've got a kind of a somewhat bratty teenage daughter i'm confusing sometimes i get the daughter in true lies confused with the daughter in um face off how did i know you were going to say that well it's a very sort of similar role i think there's a point at which so so let's i'm getting ahead of myself jamie lee curtis also has a professional job she works in some office it's like maybe real estate or something i can't remember but she's got a white collar job armful singer is as you might expect not really a boring office guy he like works in some kind of get smart type of outfit where they go into what looks like a bodega but it's actually an elevator to the 30 30 floors down and that's where like all the biometric stuff lets them in and they're like super spies right Tom Arnold is like his sort of his handler and his partner in crime but he has all the boring like sit in the van operate the technology while Arnold Schwarzenegger wears a tuxedo and dances with beautiful women and I think the movie even opens with him doing some some operation like that where he maybe meets Tia Carrere who's like a beautiful femme fatale now we're back in I want to say Chicago I might be wrong I might be LA maybe it's LA I think it's LA so now we're back in LA they live in the suburbs Tom Arnold comes to pick him up for quote work and he starts this operation that is involving Tia Carrere and some kind of like I think the deal is like some terrorists are going to be stealing or moving or transporting nuclear warheads inside of like stolen antiques stolen antiquities meanwhile and this is like what's really important is that so he's doing spy stuff but his family doesn't know meanwhile it's jamie lee curtis his wife is just really bored she's you know bored with this boring marriage and she starts up this like little affair where she doesn't actually sleep with him but she like meets a sleazy car salesman used car salesman played by bill paxton and And she kind of gets the idea that maybe she'll have a little affair with this guy. And he claims to be what Arnold Schwarzenegger really is, which is that he's like a super spy. But he's not. He's just a liar.

What a coincidence.

It is a bit of a coincidence.

So she's married to a real spy and doesn't know it. She wants to have an affair with a used car salesman who's pretending to be a spy.

Exactly. You're following. Exactly. So the big money scene in this movie is Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Arnold through, I forget whether it's like happenstance or if he actually gets wind of the idea that she might be cheating on him. they use their super spy skills to find out that she's kind of contemplating this affair cool and they decide instead of to confront her and have a conversation about it a little stalkery they set up a situation where she's with this gross car salesman and he actually gets like it actually starts to get kind of ugly where he's sort of trying to like coerce her or force her into having sex and she's she's not going to go through with it because ultimately of course we have to root for her and she has to be you know faithful to her marriage in the middle of them like about to maybe get busy or not arnold schwarzenegger and tom arnold using government resources which has commented on several times pull them out of this trailer that they're hooking up in they scare the dude by like hanging him over a cliff or something until he pees his pants and that's the end of him suge knight style but then he wants to give his wife something fun to do like a fun adventure because she's clearly craving adventure so he sets her up to have like a fake spy thing where she has to go in and be like a hooker for some mysterious some high-end call girl for some international exactly you got it so she so there's a very famous and pretty good scene i gotta say where she shows up at this hotel to do the the call girling and she realizes looking herself in the mirror she's very suburban mom looking with the dress and everything so she like rips up the dress slicks back her hair and suddenly we've got full jamie lee curtis right she goes from like suburban kind of like karen-y looking woman to just super hot jamie lee curtis no offense to karen no offense to karen's but you all know what i'm saying and so she goes into this hotel room arnold schwarzenegger even though he has like all the resources of this I'll see you next time. All this technology, spy technology. He's just sitting in a chair with a tape recorder where some French guy has said a few phrases like, do it again and dance for me. So it's not his voice she's hearing, but he is sitting there in the dark. She's supposed to plant like a bug or something. That's what they've told her she has to do, is plant like a bug in the telephone. So she does the sexy dance for this mysterious man.

That is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But she can't see it.

He's just doing this all to keep her busy, like when our cat is too rambunctious and so we play with him for a while?

It's just like a distraction. Yeah, it's just like a feather on a string.

Does this pass the Bechdel test?

I really do not think this movie passes the Bechdel test.

I don't think so either.

I don't even know if two women have a conversation alone.

And of course, they have to give her a job. So what is she going to be? She's got to be a prostitute.

She's got to be a prostitute.

Right. Her husband can use all of the power of the U.S. intelligence agencies.

He could actually be a CIA guy.

To stalk her, essentially.

Yeah, stalk her, terrorize her. She's been terrorized. So his end game, we find out, is he tells her to get on the bed and that they're going to make love. And he's going to then reveal himself to be her husband. And he's going to tell her the whole thing. But just as that happens, she tries to get out of there by smacking him with the telephone. She plants the bug and starts to leave. And just as this is all unfolding, the other real operation that he's doing that involves Tia Carrere crashes into this one. And they arrive and they kidnap Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And he tries to tell them like, oh, no, he's trying to save her. So he's like, she's just a hooker. Like, just leave her here. And then she has on her neck a locket that has a picture of him in it. And she's like, if I'm a hooker, why do I have a picture of my husband in this locket? Because she doesn't realize that she thinks this is still part of the thing that she thought she was a part of. Oh, right.

That's a little bit like The Man Who Knew Too Little.

Yeah, it's a little bit of that. So they get taken to this weird island somewhere off the coast of, I guess, Los Angeles. They sort of get tortured, and suddenly it's like we're in Nicaragua.

Is it the Catalina Wine Mixer?

It's like the Catalina Wine Mixer, and they're on this island, and they're getting kind of tortured and light torture, I would say, and truth-serumed, and then they-

This isn't the Daniel Craig torture of the 007 movies?

Yeah, it's more or less like punching, you know? People, whenever someone gets tortured in a movie, you can tell if it's like a real kind of violent torture movie if they do more than just punch them in the face.

Yeah, don't watch Romero.

Yeah, right. So they get out of this situation somehow. I guess Arnold Schwarzenegger just like breaks the ropes that are tying him and he punches everybody and he punches their way out of there and they get rescued by the CIA. Somehow they get back to the land And the terrorists at this point have now also Kidnapped their daughter For reasons And then they have her up at the top of a tall Building that's under construction And then Arnold Schwarzenegger gets a Harrier jet and flies up there And rescues her from the top of the top building

Wow we were just talking about Harrier jets on the show Yeah In some great detail recently

That's probably fine Happy ending and then at the end And they just like Jamie Lee Curtis likes the spy life so much that she also becomes a glamorous spy and they become glamorous spies together.

And then that leads into the sequel, Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

I actually was going to have you tease up. I mean, it's very similar.

I have too many. I've never seen that movie. And yeah, so you haven't seen Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But I was going to say, like, True Lies into Mr. and Mrs. Smith. In doing this exercise, I think for the first time in my adult life, I sort of realized, oh, yeah, two different movies. Right. Right. Because I think in Mr. and Mrs. Smith I've learned this from my research now Again, I've never seen this And that's Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Were they already a couple, do you think? Well, that's where they met And there's a lot of speculation

About when it really began He was still married

But in this one, they're both spies But neither one of them know it And then their agencies hire each other to kill each other Exactly Could be a sequel to True Lie Well, no, because they would know in True Lies that they're a spy.

Mr. Smith, even though I haven't seen it, I've seen parts of it. And the tone is different. It's going for something much less silly and sort of madcap. It's meant to be a sexier, slightly darker, more knowing kind of, but still a comedy, like action comedy.

Here, let's listen to – that was a lot more detail than I expected from True Lies. So I was going to say, let's see if you're right by playing this 30-second spot. But honestly, this 30-second spot will not cover a fraction of what you just covered. But let's take a listen to this. For 15 years, Harry Tasker has been leading a double life. Hi, it's Helen. Is he in? Harry's in a sales meeting with the task. he's protected the country he's faced the enemy but when his wife finds out who's going to protect him arnold schwarzenegger jimmy curtis in a james cameron bill that's right this sexy shot of her hanging off of a helicopter that that was kind of i remember that from the commercials but that whole like who's going to protect him that's not really what happens that's just like how they are selling it yeah that's just oh honey's in trouble because the wifey

found out that you're a spy yeah that's that has nothing to do with the actual plot all right i'm

gonna jump around a little bit here jump up jump up and get down um i am gonna move to this movie because this movie played an interesting role in our relationship it came out right as we were first dating in the year that we were first dating and we actually saw it together if you

know i'm not doing bandit why not i barely remember it okay so genevieve and i were first

dating now keep in mind and again i'll give you the 30 second hold on a second i was very i wasn't well educated but i fancied myself a bit of a movie snob i did not like hollywood movies i did not like tropes every movie i watched that was kind of tropey was like watching an episode of stella to me or something like everything just seemed like parody unless as i say unless it was by like david lynch or somebody you haven't heard of before and it's just like two people having a conversation about an egg for four hours it's like okay then i'm into that so that that's what i was coming into the relationship with you were an appreciator of popcorn movies and you know anything like this yeah and so we go to the theater and we see this movie bandits which i don't think i knew

It's just a regular heist movie.

No, I'm sure it is. And I don't remember it well because we saw it in 2001 in the theater together. And that's the last time I saw it. And my brain does this thing where it blanks itself out every two nights or so. And I have to relearn everything. But I remember.

You swum around the bowl one time.

Yeah, exactly. And I remember, like, I think we got a little tetchy with this. I mean, I didn't really care.

You were so dismissive.

I was very dismissive of this movie. You just thought this movie was so bad.

You thought it was so bad, and I don't understand. I'm not saying it deserved to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, but it was a competently made kind of interesting heist movie, and I will tell you the story of it right now. Okay. Billy Bob Thornton and Bruce Willis are bank robbers, and they work as a pair, and the way they rob the bank is they go to the bank manager's house the night before, hold him and his family hostage, or her.

which is a plot development that we saw in an episode of 1970s police woman recently remember

that yeah i actually do i'm not 100 sure but i think that might be something that someone actually has done in real life um so then the plan is their their their their deal is like they get the bank manager to let them in before the bank opens they rob the bank easy peasy lemon squeezy so then for some reason and this is where i'm really losing the plot they somehow they end up with Cate Blanchett as their hostage and I don't think she's a bank manager so I think this for some reason you know some misadventure causes them to be holding her hostage and then she's also boy this is a real theme sort of a bored housewife I think and she kind of like gets excited about the adventure this again I really don't remember what I do know is like they then sort of go on the road the three of them end up in a throuple and then they want to get out of the the bank robbing business because they want to want to be in a thruple i guess and so they at some point have picked up two other accomplices and these other two accomplices help them stage a bank robbery in which they appear to die oh using squibs and stuff okay and like the bank they the accomplices come in with the fake ambulance and drive them away and then the last thing we see is the three of them the thruple in mexico just loving it up yeah so that's that skips a lot but that's the broad i looked at no that's good i

think that that's what we're going for here i think that's that's always true lies too much for you true lies was a lot okay so here's the deal i looked up the official plot synopsis i'm going to read it to you verbatim because the whole thing is i think these guys were always trying to they were robbing banks again to fund their way they just wanted to get out of the country essentially so uh joe played by bruce willis and terry billy bob thornton have escaped from prison Cutting a swath from Oregon through California, these fugitives rob banks in order to finance their scheme for a new and somewhat legitimate life south of the border. Unfortunately, things get more complicated when they meet Kate Wheeler, played by Kate Blanchett. But it's worth noting that Kate, the character is both a K and Kate Blanchett, the actor is both a C.

Kate Wheeler, who runs into Terry with her car. So it's sort of like a deus ex machina kind of thing, right? Kate joins the bandits on their cross-country spree, and eventually she steals something, too.

Their hearts?

Their hearts. Yeah. I swear to God.

That is in the official description. They come to your house. You're the boys from TV. You have to sleep over bandits. They stay the night. Please. They rob your bank. Just give us a little bit of the money.

No, good manners are no excuse for criminal behavior.

I'm stumped. And this Saturday, they're breaking into theaters for a special sneak preview. Great. That's the spirit. Bandits. It's quite terrific. An immensely entertaining comedy. Cool. Rated PG-13. Starts October 10th.

So I think Billy Bob sort of plays, he plays maybe the less competent of them. He seems like he drops a gun at one point and it goes off.

He's sort of a keystone cop type.

Yeah, only not a cop. He's a keystone robber, you might say.

He's a keystone robber. I feel like that, like many trailers, doesn't really get into the bulk of the plot, which is the relationship between these three people.

Right, exactly.

Probably doing an ad where they really trumpet the idea of a throuple was maybe a little bit much for 2002 or whatever that was.

Maybe. I also think that like with the 30 second TV spot, like there are longer trailers. Like I found one for this, but it was like two and a half minutes and I didn't want to be playing two and a half minute trailers. But like with a commercial, I think you really see how they have to take one aspect or one element of a plot and just like kind of focus on that or just like. And as they release kind of a batch of these types of commercials, I always think it's interesting to see, not always, but sometimes like you can have the same movie advertised on maybe a TV show or a movie that might have a predominantly female audience versus like a football game, which has traditionally been predominantly male or whatever. And you can see how they will pull out different plot lines in those commercials for the same movie. Okay, so we've done True Lies. We've acknowledged Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which is all we will do there. Bandits. Okay, how about this one? I know this movie as, and I think a lot of people know this movie as, the movie where Catherine Zeta-Jones has to sneak her butt under a laser beam. Yes. The movie is?

It's Entrapment.

Entrapment. Good recall. Okay. That's also the name of a Buick, by the way. Shout out to the episode of After These Messages Which is coming out later today You guys should all listen to that Genevieve quizzes me on fake Buick names And real Buick names Anyway, have you seen Entrapment?

I've seen Entrapment several times

Really? And again, this must be just a It comes on TV, right? You didn't see it in the theater, I would assume

I'm sure I saw it intentionally All the way through once Whether that was in the theater Or on video as it would have been at the time

It came out in 99, by the way.

So I'm not super familiar with it, but I'm familiar with it enough to walk you through the major beats here.

Okay, yeah, broad strokes.

Okay. Sean Connery is a Russian? No. Sean Connery is a master thief.

He's a Russian sub-captain.

He's a Russian submarine captain. No, he's a master thief. And Catherine Zeta-Jones is, there are quite a lot of elements in this of, what's the one with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, the Thomas Crown Affair.

Which was also on my list, but maybe we'll be skipping that one.

I can definitely tell you that one.

I know you can. It's one of your favorite movies, right?

It's one of my favorite movies. I do love it. But Entrapment, she's on the side of the law. And I now can't remember if she, like, works for the insurance company or if she's actually a cop. I think she's a, I think she's a maybe, like, actual law enforcement.

Okay, no, she's an insurance investigator. Okay, so just like Thomas Crown. So you're right, that's very much like the Thomas Crown affair.

Sean Connery, we open with some kind of heist, and I forget the ins and outs of, like, he steals a painting, puts it in the mail to himself, and sneaks out the building. It's a Rembrandt. A lot of using of glass cutting and things like that. he's then he's like kicking it at his chateau or wherever and catherine zeta jones shows up and says i want to be an apprentice and i think she's i think she's somehow honest with him about who she is but just says like i never wanted i i was never really wanted to be on the right side of the law i want to be an apprentice um and i he somehow like i think the entrapment title comes from him somehow like kind of using information she's given him to kind of blackmail her into into helping him so they they do some big they plan some big heist there's the

laser scene which they she has to like dip beneath the lasers as adam divine once said they they practice for it by having strings that they you know they stick up in a room like it's parodied maybe i've seen that yeah it's been heavily it's been oft parodied um anyway they do some big heist um and i think at some point they have to choose between like betraying each other and getting the goods at the very end she has an opportunity to turn him in but then he

gets away i think i will share for you or with you the official synopsis insurance investigator virginia gin baker virginia oh she goes by gin virginia quote gin baker uh insurance investigator gin baker looking into a stolen rembrandt painting suspects that the accomplished thief Robert Mac McDougal, played by Sean Connery, is responsible. She decides to go undercover and help Mac steal an ancient artifact. When a suspicious Mac confronts Jyn about her real intentions, she claims that she is in fact a thief and that the insurance job is a cover. To prove it, she proposes a new target that could net them $8 billion. And I'd like to remind you that's a 1999 money. The master thief. You want to get him or not? He's not gettable. The perfect plan. Why are you following me? I've got a proposition for you. The ultimate prize. Eight billion dollars in total.

It's terrible.

Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bing Ray. This is for real. You're playing both sides.

You want him? I'm going to get it for you.

You change partners. You change rules.

You change rules.

Entrapment. It's funny, you know the podcast, everybody knows the podcast I'm obsessed with, the Dan Lebitard Show. They do something called a fake limited Sean Connery. they'll do a fake limited anything where when they used to take phone calls people would call in and they'd say alright do your fake limited Sean Connery and you do your Sean Connery impression but you only have to do a couple of words like bastard would be my fake limited I think that's what they call it and there's a guy on that show Mike who always I didn't know it was from this movie he's always saying you're playing both sides and I didn't know that's from this movie it only sounds like a punchline to me now now you mentioned the Thomas Crown affair We're not going to get into that Because I know that you know it really well And I didn't know how Maybe that's the reason why I thought of that After doing Entrapment Maybe it triggered something in my brain But I know that you think the Thomas Crown Affair Or I think I know that you think the Thomas Crown Affair Is one of the sexiest movies Would I be right about that? Yeah I think it's very sexy Now you also one time said that

I think they have really great sexual chemistry

You also said that a Sam Cooke song Like not at the hop But didn't your friends used to make fun of you because you mentioned that a Sam Cooke song, who writes some very romantic songs, he had a song about one of his top hits is very not sexy, but you thought it was a sexy song? Do you remember? I feel like when I first met you, Twisting the Night Away, I remember you were arguing that Twisting the Night Away was a sexy song, and everybody was like, that's not a sexy song?

Well, if I believed that at one time, I no longer believed it.

Okay, but Thomas Crown Affair, sexy movie. Yeah. on the fly yeah not in order could you list what you think are like maybe the top five sexiest movies

um yes I think that um Sliver is a sexy movie ah

obviously yes that's one with all the TVs right and everything's a wash in blue I remember the commercials

and it's like a lesser Baldwin

it is a lesser Baldwin yes yes yes that might you know what I might have seen that but I might have been one that I rented as an adolescent yeah having seen the commercials

and wanting to come of age. Let's see, other sexy movies. You're always walking in on me with my sexy movies.

I do feel like every time I walk into a room, you are watching a sexy. I don't know what's going on, but every time I walk into a room, it is mid-coitus on the screen.

I'm trying to think. Yeah, on the spot like this, I can't, like, Sliver just came to mind right away.

What about Bound? I've never seen Bound, but you mentioned that that is one.

That is a very sexy movie. Um, and it's, it's ladies being sexy with each other.

They stopped making sexy movies in 1999, according to us. I mean, that was, they did it. They, they solved it. They cracked it. They solved it.

Yeah. No need to make any more sexy movies.

I, all right. I'm looking at my list here. I don't want to go on forever on this. I have some emails and voicemails I'm going to share with you as well. So Thomas Crown Attrapment, Bandits, we did. All right. I'm down to two here. I'm going to ask you to recap. No, you know that one too well. I'm going to.

I feel like I'm getting punished by it. made to review one the recap ones that like i'm most of my recap is like and then some other stuff

happened no but that's good though i um i have two here in front of me one i know you know really well but i've also seen it okay so you don't really need it and then the other one i've never seen but i think it's a much more basic plot here are the two i'll let you choose all right we have gross point blank okay which is more of a comedy but also a heisty movie yeah um which you love I mean, there's action.

Yeah, I mean, a heist, I think, is a strong word for that, but I've certainly seen it many times.

And then the other one, and this is the one, I know you've watched Con Air a million times, but what about Air Force One?

Yeah, I can recap that. I didn't kill my wife. I don't care. Yeah, that's the one. That's the one. President Harrison Ford tells the terrorist, Gary Oldman, I didn't kill my wife.

That's why it's called Clear and President Danger, I believe. It's the fugitive where he says, I didn't kill my wife.

I don't care.

I don't care. You and I say that a lot.

Yeah.

We will seriously say something. The other one will say, I don't care. I love Tommy Lee Jones at that movie. It's a terrible Tommy Lee impression. So good. Let's do Air Force One.

It is a terrible Tommy Lee impression.

Mine is. Yeah. Oh, yes, Tommy Lee Jones. um okay so let's do air force one what happened yeah okay president harrison ford and i don't

know anyone's names in these movies you reminded me when we were doing the true lies uh clip or the the trailer whatever that his name is harry tasker and it's like yeah i remember that now but yeah i just don't remember anyone's names from movies basically um but uh president harrison ford and his wife and daughter are in russia and they have just signed a historic peace accord of some type they're all there and of course they've got like you know the whole apparatus around air force one his you know his staffers his secret service this is 1997 by the way okay 97 um they're getting on there's a leaving russia they're all on the plane and a film crew a russian film crew is allowed to get on Air Force One as part of some sort of diplomat, you know, some sort of like, oh, we're going to have this film crew as some sort of, they're going to do a documentary.

And it's Steve Buscemi.

It's Gary Oldman and a bunch of guys who do look more like terrorists and heavies and gunmen and goons than they do documentary filmmakers. But okay, they're all, everybody's safely on Air Force One. Plane takes off. They're up over the, um over you know they're out over the over the water traveling home and then we realized that one of the i think secret service guys um is actually in league with these terrorists with these with the film crew who are the terrorists who are disguised disguised as a film crew and he helps them um take over the plane uh and they capture everybody they've got somehow they get access to guns like he opens up the gun locker on the plane and but he doesn't he he gets away like he does it in such a way that nobody else none of the americans know that he was part of the the plot he pretends to be a hostage like they are harrison ford the president uh is hustled by i think his his other security people i think maybe william h macy or somebody hustles him when the when the when ship starts to pop off on the plane he's hustled to the escape capsule and we think for a moment that He's gotten in the escape capsule, which I don't know if that's a real thing on Air Force One. I'd be curious. The escape capsule flies out and lands somewhere. And so there's some...

But he's left his wife and daughter behind.

His wife and daughter are behind, right?

That doesn't sound like my president.

It doesn't sound like my Harrison, my President Ford either. So it does sound a little like Gerald Ford, I guess. I feel like he maybe would have done that.

Oh, Lady Bird.

Oh, Lady Bird.

No, wait, that's Johnson. No, Johnson. Sorry.

Who was President Ford's wife?

Betty Ford.

Okay. So we're on the plane. As far as anyone knows from the people back in D.C. Oh, Glenn Close is the VP. She's the vice president.

And she's on board. No, no, she's back in D.C. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

So the question quickly becomes, like, is she the president? Because is the president alive, dead, incapacitated, whatever?

She's going to be in the, what do you call it, the chaos room?

She's in the chaos room.

What's the room where everybody would be in down on the ground?

Whatever that room is called, that's where they are. You got it exactly right.

I did. I got it exactly right when I called it the chaos room.

Dean, who played Al on Quantum?

leap oh geez it's something dean stockwell dean stockwell dean stockwell is like her sort of like he's like the chief of staff in dc oh great and he's really like he's like advocating basically for like you're the president now like you have to make all the decisions and she's like she's very much like i'm not the president until i till i see his bloody corpse like he's the a president everyone's like the you can tell if somebody's good or bad in air force one by how loyal they are to the idea of harrison ford remaining president if the less loyal they are to that idea the worse they are as a character ziggy says the terrorists are still on the plane exactly so gary oldman the terrorist is on the is on the horn with uh dc and telling them what he wants is some bad terrorist guy who's been in prison uh that the u.s has in prison to be released and he's gonna you know these are like from the bad old days in like the cold war or whatever the russian president is like you know we'll do whatever we can to help like we don't you know we're not with these guys we don't know them um and that's true like the russian so this is in that post-cold war era where the russians still have to be the bad guys but russia isn't the bad guy so you've got to like find some separatist yeah cell that's like it's always terrorists Still doing bad old Russia stuff. So we're up on Air Force One. Now we cut down to where the escape capsule flew out. But Harrison Ford didn't get in it.

I had a feeling.

He didn't get in it because he's not leaving his wife or his daughter behind. Even though Gary Oldman says, his wife, his daughter, I think he'll negotiate. So right now, everybody in the world, everyone who's involved in this, thinks that the escape capsule has been shot out. and they now the people like the american government flies to find it they open it oh no it's empty but the people on the plane the terrorists and the hostages and the first family don't know that the president's still hiding somewhere yeah is he hiding one of those

like drink carts where there's like a there's like a oh no he's just like tucked away the bowels of

the plane and you'll be thrilled to learn that he was like a military green beret or something so So as one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says, he knows how to fight.

He's an ex-soldier.

He's an ex-soldier. Of course, he has super special fighting skills, which is definitely what you get in training to become the American president. So now begins the diehard part of the movie.

And then it's like bang him up.

Now it's a bang him up. He has to, like, obviously pick off the terrorists one by one, very quietly breaking their necks and whatnot. Then eventually he, I think, gets caught after he kills a bunch of terrorists. But finally, Gary Oldman and his remaining henchmen corner him and get him locked in a conference room with all of the all of the hostages. uh he's got the wife and daughter up front and he's threatening them harrison ford talks to president ford talks to his fellow hostages his staff and stuff and one of them a woman figures out that like they can communicate because it's like the big deal is like are they gonna is the plane gonna get shot down basically by glenn close at the urgings of dean stockwell uh to prevent this from become you know in other words just take it out right but she's like i don't want to kill the first family and the president yeah it's fair that's fair um but if he can prove that he's still in control of things then they don't have to shoot the plane down they use a fax machine he promises this woman who gives them the idea to use the fax machine that if she if it works she can be postmaster general which i think is nice i didn't she's like my wife she's like a very low level she's like a low level staffer and now she's a postmaster general yeah because she can use a fax machine because she figured it out so they get enough information to the government um at one point the plane the plane has to be refueled in flight you know where they

do like the like the hose thing yeah the hose thing yeah everybody knows the hose they do the

hose thing they figure out a way to um get almost everybody off the plane using uh like a zip line

they zip line them to another plane nope and at the very nope by the way just kill me just kill

you yeah you'd rather just die yes just let me let's just let the terrorists kill you let the

terrorists win yeah i say i negotiate with terrorists all the time don't make me do a

zipline from an airplane to an airplane so at this point i think he's got successfully gotten his daughter and wife off the plane and all as this is all happening the like the guy who they're trying to terrorist if they're trying to get released from prison you know in the hot like in exchange he's literally walking towards a gate and if he passes this gate he's free i guess even Even though you could easily grab him back up.

This is down on the ground in the U.S. U.S.

Yes, exactly. Or wherever he's being held. Yeah, where he's being held, but by U.S. Yeah, exactly. So that's all happening. They get everybody off the plane, but then the zip line snaps or something. See? So now there's only one parachute. You've got the president. Oh, I think at this point the hospital, Gary Oldman, has died. You've got the president.

Of natural causes?

Yeah, he just had a heart attack. So we got the president, we got his heroic security guy, William H. Macy, and bad secret service guy who is still maintaining his cover that he's really a secret service guy. So it's just the three of them. Bad secret service guy obviously wants the parachute for himself. Even though William H. Macy is like, Mr. President, we're going to sacrifice our lives. You're going to parachute to safety. But bad secret service guy who was, I think, one of the actors in 24.

Yeah, okay.

He's like one of the kind of main guys in the early seasons of 24. He's like, oh, hell no. And he shoots William H. Macy. He gets ready to shoot the president. And he's like, you know, no one will ever know what happened up here. I'll just parachute to safety and say, like, we couldn't save you. But then Harrison Ford knows how to fight. Obviously, he was special and he was good in the Army. He was special in the Army. He was special in the Army. And they have a big fight in, like, the open part of a plane.

Yeah, the cargo doors open. They have cargo doors open. They're punching. They're kicking. They're sliding. A gun goes skittering across.

A gun skitters across the metal floor and falls out. It is high art. And then ultimately Harrison Ford boots that guy out of his plane and he says, get off my plane.

But now, oh, that's in the commercial. Get off my plane.

Get off my plane.

Which kind of takes me off because it's the people's plane. Get off the people's plane. Get off the taxpayers' plane. They tested it. They had test audiences and they tested those lines. Yeah. What happens to William H. Macy, though? If there's only one parachute.

He'd already got murdered.

Oh, really? By a bad Secret Service guy. In this fight. The three of them are fighting by the car door.

That's how bad Secret Service guy finally unmasks himself. Because he's got to get that parachute. Yeah. So he just kills William H. Macy first. And then he's about to kill the president. Oh, that's a bummer.

I like William H. Macy. It's too bad. I'm going to miss him.

I'm going to miss that guy. Oh, hey.

We should. Here. Well, first, I'll read the official description. then i'll play the the actual commercial for you um let's see here it says after making a speech in moscow vowing to never negotiate with oh i forgot that is a key part of the part of the thing is

like so that's all we just said we're not gonna do this we can't negotiate with her after making

a speech in moscow vowing to never negotiate with terrorists president james marshall played by harrison ford boards air force one with his family i'm not gonna read the actor's names because i I can't pronounce it, and his advisors. When a group of terrorists led by Ivan Korshinov, Gary Oldman, hijacks the flight, the president's principles are put to the test. Feigning escape, ex-soldier Marshall stows away in the aircraft in one of those drink carty things and must race against time to rescue his family and everyone else on board. Yeah. William H. Macy doesn't make it. Wow, it's weird that they would put that in the official description.

How the hell did they get Air Force One?

I'm the president of the United States.

The president's plane, Air Force One, has been hijacked.

Experience the motion picture event of the year.

My husband will not negotiate.

Sir, your parachute. I'm not leaving without my family. Jim isn't making this decision as a president. He's making it as a husband and a father. Harrison Ford. Get off my plane. Air Force One I didn't kill my wife Here I go once again with the email Every week I hope that it's from a female Oh man It's not from a female

What do you think Vaves? Do you think we made the right choice in doing a podcast about commercials? Or is this a lost opportunity? What do we call it, Genevieve's Madcap Movie Recaps? Madcap Movie Recaps.

I mean, I don't know. I'll be interested to hear what the people have to say.

If the people vote for it, we will stop doing after these messages, and we will shift to Genevieve's Madcap Movie Recaps. Thank you for doing that. That was a lot of fun.

That was fun.

I do have a couple of emails here from listeners that I want to share with you, Genevieve. These were kind of related, I feel like, to, well, this first one is very much related to commercials. So let me set this up for you. So we were thanking a donor of the day a week ago or something who was in Roseville, California.

I'd never heard of Roseville and I looked it up like on the fly on Google Maps and we saw that it was outside of Sacramento and when I looked at it you know when you look at Google Maps it'll kind of show you just some of the um highlighted features of the area or whatever like if it's a park or even sometimes just a Walmart or whatever well I noticed that I think I called it Denio's but I think I was pronouncing it incorrectly it was a place called Denio's I think which was like a like a swap meet area all right swap market is a swap market a thing well a swap meet is a thing swap meet and a flea market is a thing yeah so it was like one of those it's one of those maybe it was a flea market i don't know and i got this note here from april who says hey i grew up in the sacramento area and i have to share this denios commercial from 1982 it randomly pops into my head and of course i thought of you when you mentioned denios on the show it's a classic And I think they still use the jingle. So here, I'm going to play this for you. This is the jingle from 1982.

Denial this week

Plot twist in the commercial Open every Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine Come on out this weekend So first of all, it's a farmer's market

And auction

And auction, but I'm a dingus It was not a swap flea market

Well, I can understand how it sort of got

It evokes that kind of thing It looks like an amazing place You see all these When I said, whoa, plot twist You see all these, like, you know, shots of fruit and vegetables being sold But also, like, antiques You see the beginning It's like the song is being played on an old-fashioned record player. You see all kinds of stuff that you and I would just spend the rest of our lives here. This is totally our tons of comic books. But then suddenly you see this big vase or more of a big planter, right? The thing that you might plant an indoor tree in or something like that. And all of a sudden a woman pops out from behind and it turns out she's been singing the song all along. Yeah, it's a real surprise. You know, that reminds me. I don't know if I can find this on the fly. I like that jingle. I like it a lot.

Yeah.

And that's something that we do on After These Messages, by the way. If you're unfamiliar with that show, we have people call into the listener line and sing their favorite jingles from throughout time. I would give you the phone number to call if you're interested in that, but I don't remember it.

607-444-5597.

Look at you, like a professional podcaster. But I have also been doing this thing that I think I talked a little bit about on TBTL, tbtl but i've talked a lot about on after these messages and it is the fact that i uh came across a big box of vhs tapes at a garage sale this summer and i bought myself kind of a janky old vcr here and a and a janky cord that allows me to digitize things and so i've been spending and i've kind of gotten back into it the past few days just digitizing hundreds of commercials i've gone through maybe about five vhs cassettes so far and um you know local sporting events to a lot of stuff taped off of fx in the early days of fx for some reason and all 90s gold right like old commercials and i found one commercial that i just posted the other day to our youtube channel which you can find if you look for um after these messages podcast on youtube you should be able to find our find our channel just make sure you put podcast in there because after these messages we'll call up a bunch of stuff but it's for something from around here v's back in 1996 called Bargain World. And I wonder if a lot of our, I think this might be in Everett. I think the commercial will tell us, but it's essentially a thrift store. And it was somewhere around here in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle area, I think. And this is a commercial that aired in 1996.

It's Bargain World's President's Day sale. Don't miss 12 hours of extra bargains this Monday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. All pre-owned merchandise will be half-priced. That's right, 50% off all toys. Save on all furniture, half off all housewares. And 50% off all pre-owned clothing, infants to adults. Don't miss these special savings at Bargain World, your fashion alternative thrift store, where our pre-owned merchandise is half price and the friendly service is free. Bargain World, located in Kent, Puyallup, and Spanaway.

Kent, Puyallup, and Spanaway.

I've lived here on and off for 12 years, and I don't know where anything is.

Yeah, I don't know where Spanaway is.

I could not point you towards Spanaway.

I also don't know if Bargain World is still around, but I think it's interesting. It looks like it is still around. It looks like it's in Parkland, Washington now, maybe.

How far is that?

If it's the same place. I mean, Bargain World is a pretty generic thing, but it does look like it's a thrift store. And it looks like that is, well, oh, it's north of Spanaway. So it's south of...

Tacoma so it's right between Spanaway and Tacoma okay um so that's not too far no it's not too far so you're heading down the five or whatever from Seattle you get to Tacoma you keep going um on the 507 you end up in the world and then you keep going and then you hit Spanaway and then eventually you're gonna hit Yelm um that's what I learned um but how often do you hear a tv commercial how How often do you see a TV commercial for a thrift store? Very rare, right?

Very rare, yeah.

But I like it. And then for them to have like a President's Day sale. You know, like, I know a Goodwill or what's the other one that's around here? Value Village. Value Village. Sure, they'll do. They'll have a sale here and there, but like a big President's Day sale with an ad buy?

It is an unusual way. I was thinking that, too. It's an unusual way to market used goods. Like, the way Goodwill does sales is, like, they pick a color of tag, and that color is 50% off that week or that day or whatever.

Which, by the way, I think this crappy VCR that I have was the right color tag the day I bought it, I think. I bought it for, like, nothing.

It's so satisfying when it's got the right color tag on it.

I love it. It has a VHS player and a DVD player. The DVD does not work at all. It will not read any of my discs.

Well, I mean, it was practically free. What are you going to do? I'm looking at pictures of Bargain World here, and I want to go to there.

And you finally went to that thrift, not thrift store, but the antique mall down in South Seattle. I did. That Luke was saying that his daughter Adelaide actually has a-

I wish I had known that Adelaide had a booth there. It's an amazing place. I was there with my family. They're visiting from out of town, and we were just absolutely blown away. It's huge. I want to go there. There's like a hundred vendors and it's just so much stuff and it's really high quality stuff. Some of it is, I wouldn't say it's a place to go for like, it's not like Goodwill. It's not like, I mean, it's an antique mall. No, it's an antique mall, yeah. You know, it's things that are priced for their value, but there are some good deals there. And there's just a lot of stuff. I got us a really cool, very mid-century modern, very like minimalist set of fireplace tools. And I've been, we've been looking, we have a fireplace in our house and we're excited to start having fires. now that it's getting cold out. We need to get our fireplace like cleaned and inspected first.

You got some old Tupperware there.

Yeah, so cool Tupperware that has like the ridges on the top and it like closes by pressing the button down at the top.

They almost look like those things are like canister shaped, like they're supposed to keep flour in there. Yeah, you could absolutely keep flour and keep canister stuff. I love that I'm finally getting real Tupperware into my life in my ripe old age of 45 and 46.

We're finally, yeah, we're rotating out and away the like the gladware shit that we've been using for years yeah um i love i love tupperware do you

know if tupperware is still like a going concern in the way it used to be boy i don't know i would

assume i i feel like if it were totally defunct you would know about it yeah i think so too although

you never hear about it you hear about all these other i mean that stuff lasts forever i mean it is high quality yeah they produce themselves out of yeah future business but that's not true there's so many younger generations and like there's so much nostalgia factor i feel like people our age

We have a beautiful set of, like, the autumn-colored nesting Tupperware bowls.

That you and I found at a garage sale. Well, the same day that I found that box of VHS tapes, in fact. You know what we had growing up was one of the Tupperware pitchers that we would make Kool-Aid in. Can you picture that with the lid with the button on top that would come on and off? Yeah. Here, I have one more email that I'm going to share with you, and then we should probably try to get out of here.

Yeah, we've got to get to Bargain World.

Yeah, that's why we've got to get out of here. Jill in Lakewood, Ohio, by the way, Lakewood, Ohio, where I lived for quite some time on Clarence Avenue.

You must have a few vignettes.

I do. I do. Had my first cigarettes there. Had my first drinky poos there. Oh, good. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Used to, I had a-

Killed your first man there.

Yeah. I had a slingshot there that I would sometimes shoot like marbles over the fence at Lake Erie Screw and hit pieces of metal and try to make them go clang. Anyway, this is from Jill who lives there now. I don't know if Jill has a slingshot or not. I hope she does. Today, my 11 and I noticed that our next door neighbor had a service come out and clean his outdoor trash can and recycling bin. They basically took a heavy duty power washer to wash out the bins. I don't know if soap was involved, but they also carted away the dirty water. We wondered why somebody would pay for this. Any thoughts? I do have thoughts. also Jill says here wait are you supposed to clean these out regularly maybe don't say that part on the air I already know I could be a cleaner person so I don't want extra judgment and thanks for what you do what you do is really important Jill says I've heard of this in fact people who know that I'm obsessed with two things clean well three things vhs tapes but that's not relevant here um i'm obsessed with cleaning i'm obsessed with getting my garbage bins out to the curb on time and i would argue that one is a subset of the other yeah potentially i like things to be in order i like things to be in order and i still get nervous boy what a victory this week i mean what what could be less clean than having

garbage not be removed exactly it's it's like the ultimate type of cleaning i gotta tell the

listeners about this you already know about it but um so since we've moved to this new house garbage pickup has been a breeze and i gotta say it was such a pain in the old place people know that that's why i got really obsessed with it it's score one for the suburbs so far since we've been here i don't like to think of this as the suburbs it's north seattle okay our address is seattle

actually i'll give our whole address here well our our house listing says that we live in the

suburbs don't listen to the house listing don't listen to our house listing says a lot of things Don't worry about it. But so far since we've been here, they've never missed a day. They've always picked it up. No problem. I haven't had very little issue with people leaving dog poo in my bin. That only happened once. I was nervous this week, though, because it was a holiday week, I guess, late last week. Right. Usually our garbage pickup would be on Thursday. Thursday was Thanksgiving. And so I was a little bit miffed because they have an app now that tells you when it's garbage day. And the app all week was I was looking at the app and it said, yeah, you know, your garbage schedule is Thursday, as usual. I thought that was wrong. I went to the website for a secondary source and the website said people whose trash is picked up on Thursdays will be picked up the next day instead. But then the app still on Thursday night gave me an automated alert. Hey, take your garbage out. I was a little miffed about that. No, I'm sorry. On Wednesday night, it gave me that alert. So they need to get their app in order and, you know, updated. But anyway, I knew that pickup was going to be on Friday, but also I have a bunch of those big bags of leaves and yard waste because I've been trimming these GED hedges around our house, you know, in the late summer. Don't talk bad about the hedges. No, love the hedges, but they create a lot of yard waste. And I learned that it's not free to take them to the dump. I still have to pay for that. And I only have one of those small little green yard waste bins. Yeah. So I've been little by little emptying out these big, huge brown paper bags full of leaves and stuff and stuffing them into this little green bag incrementally week over week, hopefully emptying them out. When I was on the website to check about pickup on Thanksgiving weekend, I also saw a note that said November is free yard waste pickup month. Yeah. They're like, avoid flooding. Please rake your leaves and we'll take them away for free. i only had one more day to take advantage of that because i'd missed the first three weeks and now i'm thinking it's a holiday week will they even come on friday if they do will they take away all these extra bags if not i'll hate myself forever for missing this and having to pay 17 dollars when i'll never get back it's like it's so funny it's like 17 i can afford that i mean not to brag but

i can afford that right but you just become obsessed with the idea of it on a nice freebie like right next year we'll know we'll we'll cut the leaves in the summer we'll bag them up yeah

have them hauled out in november yep um but anyway everything went well i got to say congratulations to me and to the city of seattle yes for taking care of this on friday the day after the holiday everything was emptied nobody left any dog doo-doo in my can and uh all the yard waste was gone

what are you laughing i don't know somehow the phrase nobody left any dog doo-doo in my can just really was evocative for me in a way that was both troubling but also strangely alluring

um anyway back to jill's email about uh garb i've heard about the service that you can hire people to clean out your bins um i do think that if you're if you're somebody who's been has gotten

bad for some reason or another someone left some dog doo-doo in your can exactly or like i had a

really bad issue i talked about it in great detail on my spotless podcast where i had in the yard waste they also will pick up like food waste and stuff you know certain food waste and i had a maggot issue a couple of months ago that was unprecedented it was i am getting a little gaggy just even thinking about what this bin was like and so i had to kind of take care of that and then I hosed it out myself that's the thing now that I'm somebody with a hose and like to me that's the biggest demarcation of being a homeowner as opposed to a renter and I know some people rent places that have garden hose attached depending on what your rental situation is but we never had that we've always been in like that's not true well not never but for the most part especially our last place like we were living above another

building it was a hose free

zone it was a hose free zone and so like if I had to clean out the litter box or something like that like you know Thank you. really clean it if we were taking our cat somewhere or something like you empty it out but then you have to clean it i'd have to do it in like the bath so bad scrub the bath it's just terrible the huge thing for me of owning this house the maybe the biggest thing is having a hose it just changes everything so and i got you that flexible light hose yeah which i at first i was very skeptical i'm always skeptical of a better mousetrap right i know you don't believe

that anything no better mousetrap will ever be invented i get it but this one i think it's pretty good it's pretty good and it's so light i have one of the rubber ones out front

and that thing is a pain in the ass yeah but um that's the thing that i don't get jill if you're somebody who has a if you live in a place that has access to a hose i don't know why you would need this service because i feel like you blast i mean it's not a pleasant job but if you have a bin like an outdoor garbage bin that has accumulated some gunk whether it's the garbage one yard waste or whatever it is or even recycling like a lot of recycling bins will get really sticky you know if you're throwing all kinds of pop cans and beer cans or like i said pop soda pop some people don't like to say pop they'll say soda okay soda pop it just covers everybody yeah just cover the water friends on that one um but you know like i do think for me and my um you know broken brain i like to have those things clean but i just like throw a little pine saw maybe down in there and like get it really suds up and just do high pressure on the hose maybe these folks don't have access to that or don't feel like messing with that's the thing

i think it's probably it's probably the latter like we have a good friend um who she also owns a home and we were we were talking about things and i was saying how much pleasure i took from installing light sconces and learning how to install light fixtures and it's really not that challenging i mean there's a little you know there's some things you have to know about it to do it safely but it's like sort of any i was like you know anyone can learn to do this and she was like she's like yeah i know but what i i don't want to spend my time doing that kind of thing i want to pay someone to do it so she pays someone to like install new light sconces for her that's fine that's her it's it's her time her money and her her home but you like doing i like doing accomplishment yeah and i love i i just enjoy the experience of it even when it's frustrating even when it's like you know you have to it took me a while to like get the right pieces and it was like a three hardware trip you know kind of project so i get why someone would say that's not for me i don't want to go to home depot and like search out this one particular bolt that i can't find you know and then have to deal with all of the nitty-gritty of sticking you know of figuring it out i would rather just pay someone to do that there are things that i could probably do that i do pay someone to do right like if you didn't clean the house so you know thoroughly thoroughly and frequently I absolutely would hire a house cleaner at least once a month like I would just prefer to have somebody else do that in some ways you did hire a house cleaner

I guess in a way that's true if you look at our relationship as transactional if that's if that's

how you want to look at it yes but like like I'm capable of cleaning the house are you I mean I

think theoretically yes but I don't are you capable of cleaning it right well probably not

the way you do it I mean the way now that I've cleaned my own bathroom which really sucks yeah I do a real half ass job of that I just kind of like do

I'm not like holding but I mean just for the background on that like now you have a bathroom that you use upstairs to get ready in the morning I have one downstairs and so yeah like I'm not I'm not trying to withhold on you but it doesn't really make a lot of sense for me to clean that I'll clean the bathroom it needs it by the way not all the time I'll give you I'll gift you a bathroom cleaning maybe this I don't know soon because it needs it been tracking a lot of leaves in there there is if you go into your bathroom right now you look down at the bath mat it's more leaves than bath mat i don't know how you can live like that

um great i'll um i'll just let's look at our calendars and get that on the books

all right we got to get out of here we also have to renovate my downstairs are we doing that

between now and christmas or now that we're traveling i don't know we'll figure it out

later but let's get out of here for now that maybe we did just finally realize that some conversations really are best off the air maybe that's one that serves zero entertainment value for but um thank you babes for doing this with me yeah i had fun i will let you know how things go with luke and his estate down in georgia uh which is also that murder yeah me too i think i my guess is if he's able to dress up like a southern preacher in like kind of a mega church situation maybe put on some glasses and a bigger nose and some big teeth or something i think he'll get out of it yeah he and do some faith healing he might be able to get out of it so we'll let you know how that goes maybe he'll be back here tomorrow to talk about that in the meantime oh we gotta do the little ending thing in the meantime uh we will talk to you tomorrow we'll be here and uh what do we say we say no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Garbage. All I've been thinking about all week is garbage. I mean, I just can't stop thinking about it.

Power out.