Muse

Here he comes. Here comes John Wayne. I'm not gonna cry about my pa. I'm gonna build an airport. Put my name on it. Why, Michael? So you can fly away from your feelings. You can keep them bottled up, but they will come out, Michael. Sometimes in the most unexpected... Hey, where the f*** are my hard-boiled eggs? T-B-T-L! i know i come on strong all right i radiate power i can't help that the employees at trader joe's

heaven sent they are saints they were made in a lab the manners and when they say how are you

i act i'm like i'm not well and they're like we've biscottis trees they're all around us but who gives a shit uh 56 pounds of beef that corresponds to i don't know what five or six year old kid what podcast are you talking about all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show just might be too beautiful to live a beautifully wrapped glossy sweet smelling show my name is luke burbank i am your host a lot of people think i'm confident but i'm actually just loud coming to you from the hollywood broadcast center bring it back home baby bring it back home yes back home here in portland oregon which is a nice feeling this is special this is special feels like a month since i was here with my little equipment and my little stuff, my little cough button. I just used it right there. Although I guess that is not great radio since when I use the cough button, there's no sound. But anyway, very happy to be here doing episode 3,834 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. It's an interesting story of a guy who had been writing screenplays for over 40 years. He said he had been turned down something like 100 times for his screenplays. So who needs a movie? And he finally got one made. And you can watch it. It's called Single and Ready to Jingle. It's going to be on Lifetime. We'll talk about that also. My beautiful, luxurious, powdered hair. You paint your bald spot? What bald spot? Is being endangered by supply chain issues. and it's got me very, very nervous here on a Monday. We'll talk about that as well. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is pretty much self-taught when it comes to podcasting. He has no formal training, and if we want him to do the job, we're going to have to round up his crew of misfits and get them out of prison. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Welcome home, man. It's been a minute.

Sure has. I mean, I guess I was maybe here for like one day last week, but yeah, it's nice to be standing here doing the show with you from this location. Not just because, as I mentioned ruefully on the show the other day, I do pay rent here. And unless I start Airbnb-ing out my apartment, which I don't know what the rules are on that, I assume Gray Star Management looks down on that. You think?

They seem pretty flexible.

I've got to be home more just to get some use out of this joint.

How is Bubbles the cat doing, or did you just open the door and it's like a funny skeleton of what used to be a cat, like mid-playing with a ball of yarn?

That would be one of the saddest news developments in the history of TV. That went darker than I meant it.

It started comedic, went dark, and then I tried to bring the nose up, but it was too late.

Well, I'll tell you what, I don't actually know, because Bubbles is still at Becca's, because she was watching her, and then through a series of scheduling problems, chiefly, I got home super duper late Saturday night, also known as early Sunday morning, and then I had to go out to the house that I'm working on, because there was a windstorm, and one of the windows blew out.

Well, how'd you find out?

Not my neighbor. Remember the guy who told me about my tansy? Yeah. He texted me and said, I think you've got a... It's not a window. It's actually a giant piece of plywood that was nailed up to where a window had been, and now there's going to be sliding glass doors going there eventually. But I guess they didn't nail it on hard enough. That's the terminology, right? Hey, did you nail that on hard enough?

Yes, we did, Mr. Burbank. So I was up on a ladder nailing a giant piece of wood onto the house yesterday, and it took a long time. And so, anyway, I'm getting old Bubbles B back in a matter of a couple of hours.

Do you have a nail gun? I feel like if you had a nail gun, I would know about it. Let's face it. If you had a nail gun, we'd all know about it. I'd be using it on the show.

Yes, you would. I'd be using it right now. No, but, you know, I operated a nail gun extensively this summer when I was working with my dad on this studio thing that I'm building in the garage up there. And it was probably the most macho I've ever felt in my life. Standing on a ladder, wielding a nail gun in one hand. And, yeah, it was a great moment for me. It's all been sort of downhill from there.

Tool belt on, no trousers, Donald Duck in it. Yep. Absolutely. I can picture it now. You know the look. yep absolutely it's got a note here from a listener this is neither here nor there i have nothing going on in my life right now other than holiday anxiety so that's why i'm

not really that's that's a thing what are you anxious about i don't know it's just it always

happens around this time of year just sort of feeling like is it involved is it related to we need to record the winter games is that part of the anxiety oh you know what no honestly like we get we have that lockdown i mean well we haven't started it yet when i say we have it locked down i mean you know like we have a plan like that'll be fine just um i got a note here though i was going to say uh from lisa apparently francis lamb is uh name checking you in a uh in an ad on the splendid table do you know about this apparently the ad is for victoria knox knives including their tomato knives and apparently actually our friend our friend and colleague like

annie maybe tip him off i can't imagine francis lamb is listening to this show and picking up

ideas for ads lamb's a stan i am guessing that our pal annie might have tipped him off but i'm not sure i just heard this but listener uh lisa just said hey just so you know nice little name drop mentioning luke and his love for tomato knives worlds colliding in a most delightful way in a most delightful way is that a christmas song uh-huh i believe it is yeah i've got to text

becca about that because she turned me on to that tomato knife and also loves the splendid table

is francis lamb should be name checking her is what really i mean if we're being accurate

yeah speaking of food i did not plan on talking about this andrew but i'm going to anyway speaking of luminaries in the food scene so there's a guy named gregory gorday here in portland and he is a chef and he has this new restaurant called con which is wildly popular um he has been on top chef a bunch and he's had an i think a number of different restaurants here he had one called departure which was also really really cool and i never do this but you cannot get a table at con uh it's like one of these things where like once every three months there's like one hour where they are accepting reservations it's like it's it's your it would be your favorite Kind of scene possibly

I like to fight for my right to give somebody Money for service It's heavy duty cottage cheese as well That's most of what they serve

It's really right up your alley So I never do this But Becca really wanted to try to go And had been trying to get reservations And I was trying to be I was trying to be the big dog And the cool guy And we've had Gregory on the show a couple of times And so i felt like i kind of know him and i messaged him on instagram and i literally said i never do this because i really don't i i really i can't think of another time when i've asked somebody for like sort of a favor or special access in some way based on maybe interviewing them or knowing them through the media i i do think it's kind of a bad look and uh it's a very i try to play that card extremely sparingly so i i messaged him on instagram and i said i never do this but i'm doing it right now is there any universe in which you could make me a hero and help me get a table for two at your fine restaurant and i never heard back from him well that was extra painful do you

know this thing uh about instagram i know we were talking about instagram um last week and that you don't know all the ins and outs of some of the stuff do you know that if you send a message to somebody who does not follow you back that they don't necessarily see it in their inbox i often have to go and um because like if listeners send me stuff via instagram if it's somebody who has sent me something before and i've accepted the message i'll see it or if i follow them i'll see it otherwise it goes to like a folder where it says you have like pending messages from people

that you don't know that is really good information as i've mentioned on the show a lot lately i do not really understand.

how Instagram works and so these are the sort of things that I just don't I don't know instinctively like if I message someone what the likelihood is that they saw it but this was this was extremely mortifying to me because again I rarely do this and then to send the message and then to not hear back but then to see this person posting frequently on Instagram about you know restaurant stuff and all kinds of adventures it was like one of those things where I was like well I know this guy's on instagram because i see him posting so did he just see this message and was he just like heavy eye roll another person trying to hit me up for special access and so whatever that happened it's been living in the back of my mind a little bit i feel embarrassed i wish i would have never tried you know instead of trying and sort of falling on my face as it were yesterday i'm coming out of the apple store because i needed to get a new apple watch because my old one dies anytime i'm jogging after like 30 minutes so anyway i'm walking out of the apple store and i look over and who is standing at the bus stop but the renowned chef gregory gorday he's a public transportation guy well more on that in a moment i look over and i think that looks exactly like gregory gorday but i'm not 100 sure and he's standing at a bus stop in downtown portland on a sunday which it just it seemed like an unusual place for him to be standing and using public transportation also Gregory Gregory Gorday happens to be a black man and so if I'm not 1000% sure that this is Gregory Gorday I'm not trying to mix myself up when it comes to people of color so I look over and I'm about 99% sure it's him but I don't want to I don't want to make a fool of myself and also what are we going to talk about the time I asked him to hook me up with his restaurant then he looks past me and i look over and i see oh an uber is pulling up to pick this guy up outside of the apple store and all of a sudden it sort of comes together this is definitely gregory gordet because he's actually taking an uber from outside the apple store this starts to check out more for me not that chefs can't take public transportation but the story just made more sense and i went hey gregory and he kind of looked back at me kind of confused like trying to place my face but with a smile on his face i said hey it's luke from livewire and he said oh hey and then just got in the uber and zoomed off and i was like how do i interpret that interaction was it oh it's the guy who is trying to hit me up for a reservation at my restaurant or was it i have no idea who this person is or was it um i'm embarrassed because i didn't grant this guy access to my i couldn't figure out what was going on in the interaction And I still don't really know I think it's most likely He has no idea who I am He doesn't remember being on Livewire twice Because he does a lot of media things And he just wanted to get in his car And get away from this person trying to chat him up

I completely agree with that analysis I don't think you have to worry about that invite thing I don't think he probably saw it Or if he did, like he just sees so I mean, you and I are not very Well, I'll put my I mean, you do more stuff in public than I do I mean, literally, you socialize in public more than I do, but also you're more of a media personality than I am, obviously. But even for the tiny little Wade pool that I play in, I mean, there are just a lot of emails and messages and, you know, Instagrams and things that are coming in at all times. And it's hard to keep track of all of it. And I'm sure like outside, he like 90 percent of his brainpower at that moment is just trying to navigate. Like, is this definitely my car? The driver is probably asking him his first name. like he's just doing all these things you say live wire something he's outside he hears live wire maybe he you know what i mean it may be sounds like something else like he's just like a lot of people probably are like oh hey um and so i'm sure that's it i really don't think you have to i don't think that in that moment he's like that's the guy from live wire who's trying to get into my restaurant and cut in line and it's so gauche that he used social media to do it like i think that's almost a zero i think that's almost a zero percent i needed this today possibility yeah no but luke hold on you've done negative side here is he doesn't know who you are he doesn't care he doesn't remember your radio show honestly i'm more okay with that than the alternative uh like a scenario here i don't have a lot of these in my life but and again it was instagram i don't have like my relationship with lindy west to the degree that i have one is always interesting to me because i assume she doesn't know who i am but on a couple of occasions i she's been to you she's literally been to my house i mean she probably you know she was also on my radio show once but like she knows it's very sporadic and ask her no but should i text gregory gorday and ask him if lindy west knows who you are but like i definitely don't have her contact info she's not somebody who i would reach out to personally to say hey we're having a summer part

or something like that you know what I mean um and one time and this goes back a couple of years in fact I think I remember I was actually sitting at Teddy's at the time although I don't think this was a drunken mistake on my part it was just um I have a friend who is a journalist who lives in Australia and she had um texted me and said hey do you know Lindy I'm interviewing her on stage at some big venue. I mean, it wasn't... The Sydney Opera House? It couldn't have been that, but it was a big venue. I mean, I want to say that, but that can't be right. I mean, I don't know. We could look up where... Yeah, you look up where Lindy was interviewed on stage in Australia in probably more than one place if she's going all the way over there for any kind of a book tour or whatever. But I did reach out. You know where this story is going. I just reached out to her on Instagram. this is weird it says the pink panther pub and yeah that was it yeah they call that the opera house of the north did i not say that i swear i said that find your voice with lindy west sydney opera house andrew okay does it say who interviewed or was it beverly wang i am it's taking me to facebook but it must be it because i remember beverly hit me up i mean beverly kind of made a name for herself she's uh works for abc radio out there she started a podcast called It's Not a Race. We've talked about it on this show before. She ended up getting some international headlines because she kind of challenged kind of an old famous media guy there who has just like, you know, the very casual racism that is kind of common amongst that generation of older Australian men or whatever. And so anyway, Beverly was interviewing her. So anyway, I sent a note to Lindy like, hey, are you doing something at the opera house? A good dear friend of mine is going to be interviewing you, I hear. And I never heard anything back. And, you know, that was three years ago. And I still I'm bringing it up now because I still remember it. Right. So I understand how these things can live in your head. My guess is, though, I don't think Lindy follows me on Instagram. And I'm sure, again, even if she did, even if she has an inbox that I would appear in, I'm sure she just gets millions of messages, you know.

And also, I would say, as a woman online, it's a notoriously welcoming place. yeah especially for lindy has lindy had any kind of it's a place where i believe as a woman you you want to read every dm and you want to look at every comment because it's universally affirmative so no i could see a world in which like whatever that is is turned off or yeah the notifications although my dms are apparently open i actually don't know what that means but my um you don't have to ask me for permission to follow me oh well that's nice you

turn that off here do something with me this is going to be just really terrible broadcasting So it's a good thing we're micro casting here. So go ahead and open your Instagram app because this could be interesting. Oh, quick shout out because I think we're getting very close to the same thing here. I've mentioned this podcast. It's a slate podcast called One Year. And each season just focuses on one year. I believe the first one was 1977. And then they did one, I believe, for 1995. And they take both stories that were very famous and well-known But give you an interesting perspective on it Something that happened that year And they also cover just obscure stories that happened that year That you might not have heard of It is so well-produced I believe it's a Josh Levine joint The new year is 1942 Haven't cracked into that one yet But the previous season I missed, 1986 And I've listened to two episodes It is so good And the one I listened to last night was the Al Capone vault opening with Geraldo Rivera. Oh, I'm obsessed with that. You have to listen to this episode, Luke. It's got so much good, like, insider information and background on it. It is great. And also, though a much more heavier topic, but super interesting, was their treatment of the Challenger, you know, the Space Shuttle Challenger. They interview a whole bunch of the teachers who were the finalists to go into space and kind of what their journey was like and how they felt when the shuttle exploded and in the aftermath. It's so well reported. I can't believe that they're just cranking out the seasons of the show like they are, and I'm missing them. But anyway, this is like Al Capone's vault is my point here. There's nothing in there? There's nothing in there, but I'm going to take about two hours to explain it. Have you opened Instagram yet?

Yes, I'm on it.

Top right-hand corner, little message icon, little paper airplane-looking thing. Yeah. Yeah, click on that, and then you see messages, right? now to the right of the word messages you have a blue link that says requests and then a number in parentheses yes how many are what is that number in parentheses one oh okay that's not too

bad uh you're no famous i guess i'm sending me a picture that actually has been sent to me by somebody else i believe there is an instagram account for a a different bengal cat named savannah

Thank you.

and Pam is telling me that this is Bubbles Twin and Pam, you couldn't be more right and I'm accepting messages now from listener Pam

and now those will go directly in but yeah, every now and then if you care, you might want to go into there and then look at the pending messages that people will send you

one from Gregory Gorday saying if you come within 100 feet of me on the streets of Portland I will be calling the police

I will say that that actually delivered better than Capone's vault At least there was one thing in there I have to say

86 must have been A year when I really started To sort of come into a certain amount of pop culture Consciousness that would make me 10 years old In 86 because of course I Pretty vividly remember the Challenger thing Because that was back in the day When if you were well first of all Krista McAuliffe was on board a teacher There's also a very interesting documentary on One of the streaming platforms About the the challenger and i think it was a series maybe on netflix and it also really delves into the teacher that got second place to do the mission and she became really good friends with krista mcauliffe because she was basically the backup and then how obvious i mean it was traumatizing to everyone but it was especially traumatizing to her and then to go forward with your life um having had such a close um brush with death like that is just must be psychologically really something but um i just really remember that because that was back when as kids you would watch the the space shuttles launch in class if it was happening you know during the school day do you remember the teacher like wheeling that tv and on a rolling cart for stuff like that i do and

i you know this is one of those things where i actually i'm really embarrassed to say that a lot of these things i don't remember that well like some of the big news events i have like i think i'm the only person my age in america who has no idea where he was when uh oj was driving the white bronco um i literally have where it was i've literally and i'm not i'm not i wasn't young enough to even have that as an excuse i was in high school right wasn't that 90 i were i was at

bumpy's fruit and yogurt i was working i rushed home got a small black and white television from my parents' house and put it on top of the yogurt machine and was playing the OJ chase for everyone who wanted frozen yogurt, which was a bizarre way to handle that.

That was 94. Yeah. So like I would have been, you know, a sophomore at the very youngest. I should have been more aware of that. But anyway, I do, you know, I do believe I can probably I do remember the Challenger explosion. And in my head, I do. But of course, that that memory becomes just more of a vague notion, almost a memory of a memory, the older I get. But I do believe I was in. Well, I want to say third grade, although I guess we could do the math on that and I could be wrong. And I feel like I remember the teacher bringing, you know, wheeling something in. I also feel like I don't know. I feel like there was some complication, like maybe we didn't see the actual explosion on TV, but we knew we were told that something went very wrong or something along those lines. The one thing that made me pause on this story and my memory of it was listening to this podcast about it was how many times the mission got scrubbed. I think it got scrubbed like at least two, if not three times, which would mean that I should have remembered the teacher dragging that thing in there and then dragging it back out several times in the days leading.

I don't think that that would have been likely because when they would scrub it, it would usually be, I don't, I mean, I know that they were, the astronauts were in the shuttle, but I'm wondering how close it got in terms of hours. I'm saying this so that you don't feel bad that you have literally erased like multiple events related to this. But the thing that happened on the West Coast was the launch was actually before 9 a.m. So it wasn't, I wasn't at school. I remember turning on the TV at my house, like before I went to school, and it was after the explosion, and there was just a cloud of white smoke, and I couldn't figure out what was going on, but I could tell by the tone of voice from the person, the television announcer, that something was terribly wrong. So I didn't actually see it in real time either, and I guess kids on the West Coast probably wouldn't have because it was actually before school started. But then the Al Capone vault thing, to just pivot back to that, there were two major television events that I remember from around that era. One was Geraldo opening Al Capone's vault, and there's nothing in there. The other was the magician, David Copperfield, making the Statue of Liberty disappear.

Oh, that I remember more. I think as we were more of a Copperfield family, my mom loved David Copperfield. I think she would have married David Copperfield. I think he was very much her type. Uh-huh. He... I was so let down when I watched David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear because I don't know what I expected, but somehow I was like, I'm just looking at this on TV. He could be, I don't know why that was my accent when I was about 11, but I was like, I don't know what I thought was going to happen, but what it was was very underwhelming to me because it was just kind of like, it was like, okay, I guess I'm just going to believe you. I don't know what I thought he was going to do, somehow manifest the Statue of Liberty in my house and then make it go away. but it was like I just was I was like I'm watching this on TV and now he's like and look it's not there and I'm like okay I guess I'll trust you on this like it just felt very very underwhelming

and we've talked I can't remember if I've listened to other knuckleheads talk about this on their podcast or if we're the knuckleheads who tried to delve into this on the fly on our podcast but I feel like we've we've kind of talked about what it was mirrors was it literally mirrors I believe

if it was like forced perspective in some way it may have even we have talked about this on the show i think it may have even been the case that the the camera and the crowd were on some sort of moving platform so that and maybe it was like imperceptible to them that they were that ring sort of very slowly rotating in such a way that when he then like dropped the whatever curtain or something they were now no longer looking at it i think that was maybe part of it or something I could see that. Yeah. Anyway, I was very let down. I was very ready for him to somehow physically make the Statue of Liberty actually disappear completely. A little note on my memories of Copperfield. So my mom, when I was growing up in the 80s, my mom loved two men. Well, three, I guess, if you count my dad, which they ended up getting divorced.

So I'm not going to weigh in where they were on that in the 80s. But I will say that, again, probably going too dark on a Monday. I will say that the two men in my mom's life, aside from my father, were Neil Diamond and David Copperfield. She really had a type. Yes. I grouped those guys together. Yeah, exactly. And I remember on the big nights that we would get a babysitter or whatever, and dad and mom would go to a Neil Diamond concert. And I think every time Neil Diamond would come to town and I'm trying to think where he would have been playing in Cleveland at that time. I don't know if they drove out to the Ridgefield Coliseum like we were talking about on the show the other day. That sounds about right where the Cavs would play or maybe one of the large Cleveland venues. They would talk. My mom would come home and she would be buzzing the next day talking about how great the Neil Diamond concert was and how they shot off cannons during the performance of Coming to America. And I remember the David Copperfield story. I don't know if she saw him multiple times I feel like she did But I remember her coming home And telling the story of how she was Just blown away by the fact that like They were all waiting for the show To begin and you heard A motorcycle revving or something And then David Copperfield somehow Miraculously or maybe I should just say Magically Appeared in the middle Of the audience on a platform On a motorcycle an Aztec tomb revving a motorcycle in the middle and for me like the cannons the told cannons of Neil Diamond and the magical motorcycle of David Copperfield kind of occupy a similar space in my brain

this is the magic trick huh illusion Michael those yeah those guys are they're both guys who would be very likely in the 80s to be wearing kind of a blousey shirt with a lot of hang down on the arms and do a lot of motions where they're kind of revealing things.

Yes.

Like David Copperfield for the magic and Neil Diamond for the today. You know, when everybody around the world is coming to America, as it were.

I'm going to retract something I said before. I think I must have been in fifth grade in 1986 for the championship.

That would make sense because I was 10. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I think that would be a little so well wait fifth grade i'm doing some math here that doesn't line that is it possible have i did i mandela this whole thing because i didn't go to sixth grade so if you were in fifth grade you

graduated uh in 95 right i graduated 95 were you 94 what year was schubert dip literally so i

graduated in 94 so i was one year ahead of you in school okay and if you were in fifth grade that would have meant i was in sixth grade which i didn't do i didn't go to any school in sixth grade i just hung around the house trying to talk my mom into taking me to pizza and pipes i've always had this memory that i saw the aftermath of the challenger explosion and then went to school but i guess it's also possible that i just watched the aftermath and then just stayed right where i was and tried to go to pizza and pipes well i trust your what I don't know.

an inappropriate time to ask your mom to go to pizza and pipes first of all read the room um secondly uh i would trust your memory of this more than mine what what year of what grade year do you

think it was for you well okay it's a further complicating things is that i didn't go to school yeah in grade school sometimes i didn't go to first grade and then i went to second grade but they put me in first grade because i hadn't been to first grade and then after two weeks they moved me back up to second grade um so that would have been when do you go to when do you how old are you

for second grade typically well that's what i'm not sure of i made a little chart this is why i i put grade age and year and so if i put kindergarten as ages five to six for me i think that would be i think i would have turned five and 81 but i get like i'm doing this while we're talking on the fly i would need to figure out like kind of months and like you know grade school year But if I'm right about this, I think kindergarten is five and six, first grade is six and seven, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I am thinking I my memory is I must have been in fifth grade.

I must have been 10, maybe 10 years old because that was 86.

Right. And I was born. It was definitely 86. That's for sure.

So I think I was in fifth grade. I think I was bombing out of fifth grade. You know, I almost didn't graduate fifth grade, which is really hard to do, like because I didn't ever do any of the schoolwork. I just sat in the back of the room reading the newspaper for an entire school year. And we had this thing called the blue book, which is where your late assignments you have. If your name was in the blue book, actually, everyone's name was in there. But some people had nothing written under their name, which meant all their assignments were up to date. Other people had a lot of things written down. I had most of the blue book. It was just hundreds of assignments I had never turned. You consider it sort of a captain's log almost. Yes, exactly. I thought it was it was. Let's see if we can max this out. Let's see. What are the what are the limits of how many assignments you can not turn in?

So here's my reasoning. And, you know, again, I think that you and I are both probably a little bit fuzzy on what age we were when we went into which grade because or at least I let me say that I certainly am. Because, again, like it depends on kind of what month you're born in and like where you end up. But if my chart is right here, the chart that I made for myself, and if I was indeed in fifth grade, that would make sense to me because in the same way you're sort of picturing where you were in my grade school, grades one through five were all in the new section of the school. And then for some reason grades I'm sorry It was grades 1 through 3 were in the new section Grades 4 and 6 Were in the old section of the school Which was cool like creaky wooden floors Or whatever but for some reason What about grade 5? Grade 5 you were back in the new section For some reason and I'm not sure exactly why And I feel like I was in the new section Of the school that's why in my head I've always said Oh I was in 3rd grade well I definitely Wasn't in 3rd grade so if I Was in 5th grade that would make me feel good because at least my memory is i was in the right i was in the right wing of the school

when they wheeled that tv in well if that was the case then that would mean that i wasn't in school that would mean i very possibly did have pizza and pipes on the day that the challenger exploded we all mourned in our own different ways yeah absolutely mine was with asking the organist to please play the star wars theme song or chariots of fire that was my go-to i love to talk about pizza and pipes just because it gasses up our friend phyllis fletcher yeah i didn't

realize they took requests at pizza and pipes oh yeah oh yeah you could go up there with a slip of

paper and um and it was that was i remember being a kid and and and giving the guy the a piece of paper i don't think actually the organist would be there on like a random wednesday afternoon it'd be more like if you went on a friday or saturday night when it was packed but i remember going up there and it was sort of like it was sort of proto karaoke in a way like you put your slip up there And then you're just waiting and waiting. And then all of a sudden, if you hear your song, it just was like such a rush. It was like, I can't believe I thought of a song and then I wrote it down. And now he's playing it on an organ that goes around this entire pizza establishment.

Let me ask you a quick question, which is on a different topic, but it's very quick. So if I can squeeze this in here, I'm talking about asking for requests from a keyboard player reminds me that in the TV show, which just wrapped up last night, White Lotus, there is a there is somebody who plays the piano and sings in a bar. um that's not a spoiler that's just merely a fact um but last night the second season of the white lotus wrapped up and i've been um watching along which is kind of rare for me to be like kind of watching it along with the world as each episode dropped over the past like seven weeks or whatever it's been and i've been pretty wrapped up in it and there's a pretty big central mystery around it and um it was very i enjoyed it it was much more soap opera-y than it Uh-huh.

season I feel like last I really need to watch it by the way because I'm it's very close to being spoiled for me that's my question for you so in the culture right that that's my question for you

I was telling the thieves like I was like hey I'm glad I kind of happened to be I don't know why I happened I guess because I liked the first season so much which I binged after it was all out you know but then this is one of those rare occasions this Game of Thrones a few other things that I've watched where I'm actually watching it along with the world as it's as it's being revealed and I feel like my i feel like anytime i open up my phone all anybody is talking about is white lotus and i was trying to figure out does it feel that way to me because i'm in on it this time or is it true if i if i were not watching the white lotus i would still be having this same sensation that it seems like every meme every comment every reaction on my phone this morning is white lotus

related i'm seeing a lot of people on tiktok using the music because the theme song is so kind of unique. Yeah. And so it's been memefied a little bit. I've luckily I haven't. I mean, I know Michael Imperioli is in it. I know that Aubrey Plaza is in it. I know Jennifer Coolidge makes a return. I saw somebody write on TikTok, why are they eating at the same, why are they eating at the hotel restaurant every night? Get out there. See the world. You're in friggin' Italy. That's the extent of what I know. And I really, you know what, maybe tonight who's playing on Monday Night Football? Oh, I don't know, Luke. The NFL is dead to me now thanks to the seahawks collapse yesterday i mean let me just can i say one minute

on that yeah if i can say 30 seconds on something else related yes would you like to um related to the white lotus or related to the football related to fantasy football which is why i only get 30 oh no yeah oh andrew i'm sorry did you lose multiple fronts yesterday i was king turd of shit mountain for so long in that league and then i got ousted i was in second place but still very very competitive i've been beating all of my opponents handily yesterday i was playing somebody who is very low down in the rankings and um i would you say they were the carolina panthers of fantasy and i lost to them luke and i this has not happened this is the worst feeling in fantasy sports but i left over 50 points on my bench i just made the wrong decisions and i thought i was making smart decisions based on guys coming back mike williams coming back from a high ankle sprain i thought he's not going to be as productive like i thought i was being smart and i left so many i'm just looking at i mean i've now lost my you know i'm still doing relatively well but i just cannot believe that i lost to an opponent who is way down in the rankings and i left so much talent on my bench and it is not improving my mood today well the state of

washington saved me some money thankfully because i was trying to bet on my phone um on the seahawks Because when they were down 17 to nothing, I felt so confident they were coming back. I was blowing up our text chain, and I was like, this is going to be the comeback of the year. Because all we needed was a touchdown or two, and then we had the ball at half. And I just kept waiting for the Panthers to kind of regress to their mean. But I couldn't bet on my phone from where I was at the house I'm working on. And so I thank you, State of Washington, for geofencing draft kings up there. That was a small favor. but um yeah that was a bummer uh of a game and it i've been thinking about it kind of a lot today i don't know why i guess because it was like at the beginning of the season i had no expectations for this team and then we sort of like over performed and i got really excited and now we're speaking of regressing to the mean we're kind of we're sort of not nearly as bad as i thought we were going to be but we're not as good as i kind of dreamed we were in our best moments um like i thought we're a legit like you know we could be the nfc like number one seed in the nfc and it's like well you got to be able to stop the run more than we can and um and uh and a few other things uh so it's a it's a bummer but i mean i guess if you would have said to me before the season you're gonna be seven and six at some point i'd be like wow that's actually like the over under on wins for the seahawks i think was like three or something going in like i was like well i would take seven and six it's just that i you know i we flew kind of close to the sun there for a minute and uh it was really fun and now it's kind of a the come down is a little hard yeah i mean i know

that we should just probably do a no point conversion but we don't have time for that and so forgive us if you're somebody who doesn't like sports just hit fast forward twice you don't need to send an email but um like yeah what is what is it about the nfc south like you know that they've swept us now right like that is the worst division in all of football and we've lost to the bucks the panthers the falcons and the saints like they all beat us how is how is that possible

i think it's one of those things where every team in the nfl

has players on it who, unless they went to the University of Alabama, I said this before, and I'll say it again briefly, every player on an NFL roster was very likely the best player in the history of their high school, possibly the best player in the history of their college. And now they're on the Carolina Panthers, and we're going, well, they're 4-8, so they suck. It's like every NFL team is full of elite human beings, and if you just catch them on the wrong day or your elite human beings aren't feeling it that way or the ball bounces again you, like kind of happened to us yesterday, you can lose. Now, the fact that it's all with that AFC South that seems like really terrible on paper is just, I think, a weird quirk. But it really is the case that, like, you just can lose to any team on any day because even the bad teams are full of spectacularly talented humans.

Did I say I left 50 points on my bench? I left 64 points on my bench.

Are you eliminated? Was this the playoffs?

No, it's not the – no, luckily, no. I'll still make it in the playoffs, which means I guess I still could win the whole thing. But I've been very afraid of the playoffs, actually, because it is an elimination situation, which also rhymes. But the problem is I just thought –

Also, there's some money to be made there.

There is, exactly. In fact, like this is a league where I paid $100 to play. And Genevieve, I think I said this on the show recently, Genevieve, we were talking about fantasy. You want to talk about a good partner She actually listens to my fantasy football stories And seems legitimately interested

We will not listen to your fantasy football stories We are not saints What does Amy Schumer say?

We are not saints She's a very special person She would check in with me, how's it going And then one day she's like, well what is it, like 50 bucks I'm like, well 100, and her eyes got really big Because she doesn't usually throw down hundos On things like that, but to me A $100 buy-in to a 10 person fantasy league i think it's kind of standard these days i would guess obviously they would go and it's like much

higher than that it's like 15 16 weeks i don't know how it works because of the playoffs but it's like multiple months of entertainment for you yeah well it feels like entertainment on most

days and then on days like today you're just like why do i do this like what why in the world of entertainment followed by a crushing emotional cratering it's just it's so it's so rough but no I'm still, I guess I'm still in it, but it's just, it's just like, I mean, listen, you know, I don't, I don't gamble ever. I don't, in fantasy, usually I'm just so bad at fantasy that I don't really care. You know what I mean? Like, I do my best, but it's all just kind of like, I always chalk it up to a learning experience, like, before the season even begins. I'm like, yeah, it's a learning experience. I just learned how to give away $100. But this time, it's like, the fact that I've been doing so well, and the problem is, like, I've been proud of myself. Learning. it doesn't feel like just luck it felt like well fantasy baseball was really hard very difficult and as we were wrapping up the fantasy baseball season all of a sudden there's a football draft and the football draft just seemed so easy to me compared to managing a baseball team and then I came out of the gate kind of winning and again I was like oh my gosh with baseball you had to like there was a game every single day there were roster changes there were pitching changes there was so much to do and when that went away for me and I just had fantasy football I was like, oh, my God, I can spend a fraction of the time on this and really win. Like, I don't know how much credit I should really deserve for all those wins. A lot of it is luck as well. But I was really starting to, you know, get high on my own supply. And then I thought I was being so smart coming into this week being like, I don't know that. You know what? I don't know that Mike Williams is ready yet. You know, I'm just going to I'm going to I'm going to assess him from afar. Like, why would I do that?

But you're not out of it. You're not eliminated. No, I'm not eliminated. You could still conceivably win, right?

Not this week, but I could still place in the league when all is said and done, we're hoping. Okay.

Could you still take first place conceivably? I think so.

I can't remember exactly how the playoffs work, but I think essentially, I think I could. Yeah, I think I'm still in a position to do that, so we'll see. We'll see.

Well, I'm rooting for you, my friend.

The good news is I'll keep talking about it on TV, because I know that people are like, hey, we don't really love sports talk, but we love fake sports talk, so could you bring that to the table?

As Van used to call it, fantasy. Whenever I would bring it up, she would just laugh her ass off at just the term. Yeah. Fantasy. I know. All right. The listeners have a fantasy that we're going to actually take a break today. Actually, I don't know if the listeners are heavily invested in us taking breaks, but the advertisers are, it turns out. So let's do that. And then when we come back, we will talk about this screenwriter who, oh, man, Andrew, this is one of those classic things where there's the story which is interesting but then there's the story within the story which is only going to be interesting to you and that's what i'm excited about okay so it's about this guy's fantasy football team the screenwriter All right, quick break, and then back with more TBTL in a moment. Hey, let's thank some daily donors. These folks are keeping TBTL rolling with their monthly financial support, and we are very grateful for folks like William Burton in Worthington, Ohio. Worthington, Ohio, in federal way, the only way, open to midnight every day. I was trying to meld the Cal Worthington car ads from Seattle with where listener and donor William lives. It didn't really work. I didn't know what you were going for there.

A couple of very local references.

Well, I'll tell you what. Worthington Ford was also a big deal in L.A. I'm sure you must have heard the ads if you ever listened to commercial radio down there. Snoop Dogg did the ads in L.A.

I was going to say, I know that Snoop Dogg did ads for a car dealership down there.

Yeah, for Cal Worthington.

I guess I didn't remember the most important thing. They should change the name of the place to Snoop's Car Dealership, because that's the only part I remembered.

I do think a biopic of this guy, Cal Worthington, would... I mean, maybe it would be very niche. It would just be for those of us that lived in either Seattle or Los Angeles. But like he was really kind of the The kind of original You know Sort of wacky car dealer guy Who would have a monkey in his you know commercials Or I think there was even a A joke on like UHF the Weird Al movie Where there's a sort of Cal Worthington-esque character Or maybe I might be just blending Things together but there was some joke It's kind of a dark joke but that's the Theme for today where He's like I will club a seal to make a deal Like he's like brought a seal Onto the car lot he's gonna like hurt the seal If you don't come down and buy a car anyway I wouldn't put that part in the biopic You know I thought it was Biopic until about probably six seven

Years ago I think some people still call it that I think I've gotten into arguments with people because I Think it's very much a biopic because it's a Biography picture yeah I think

You're right I was calling it biopic Like on TBTL I think Jen might have said I think You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means. Anyway, thanks, William. Also, thanks to Byron Orme in, get a load of this, Shelton, Washington, where I just was.

Oh, okay. I thought that was going to be where a Kel Worthington dealership was.

No. It's where my sister Hannah and her husband and my nieces live. and I was there filming a component of this story that's going to be on TV this Sunday about Hallmark holiday movies. I went and watched a Hallmark holiday movie with my sister Hannah, who is a fan of the genre. And I was in Shelton. Thanks, Byron, for supporting the show. Thanks also to David Alsop in Summer Hill, New South Wales. you truly are the most devious donor in new south wales god these impressions are getting better it's amazing too thanks david also thanks to jordan mobley in chicago illinois reminds me i gotta get in touch with my friends that'll wait wait i haven't done that show in a in a long time i feel i'm falling off their list of people they email they asked me i was somewhere in america uh doing a tv job and they were like can you be in like missouri tomorrow to do wait wait and i was like i can't because we're doing live wire in seattle and i don't know maybe i offended them this is my anxiety andrew if i say no to any job they'll never ask me again and i'm being reminded of it by jordan mobley being in chicago do you know that there's a character on

one of genevieve's star trek shows that looks just like peter sagel to me like just like peter Segal to me interesting I think you know I don't think it's next generation I Think it's like a newer one but a 90s Era let me see if I can let me see if I

Can I think I can kind of picture the Person that you're you're thinking did I

Say Trek or Wars by the way I meant Trek if I said I believe you said Trek

Okay good it wouldn't that would not be Insanity in that Peter was a screenwriter He did of course write the screenplay That became Dirty Dancing to Havana Nights it's definitely not him though I I mean, I don't think it's him character. Yeah. But he is also he's written. He was he was in the Michael Jackson. Remember the time video. But they ran so long on their day shooting that they never shot his scene. Right. That's the IMDb of my pal. Oh, Peter Segal. Anyway, while you're looking for that, I got to continue thanking folks like Margaret Kearney, who's in Whitefish, Montana. Okay, Whitefish is the setting for that podcast that I was obsessed with called Cover Story Season 2, Seed Money from New York Magazine and Vox. Would recommend. Margaret probably... knows all about it because margaret lives in whitefish montana and then we've got katherine palacios in houston texas thank you katherine where did we find out that where do we find houston landing in largest american cities you know my inbox and i i don't know if this is the

right or wrong way to handle this but my inbox is filled with emails from people who know from what um trying to explain like that there's different numbers we should be looking at and density and you are my true density and so I think that you're probably are my density what's that so a lot of people it's back to the future which doesn't make sense how you know back to the future but sometimes I just spin Genevieve up by trying to make that argument but anyway I'm probably not going to read them because they're just very very complicated and a lot of people have a lot of different thoughts on it and so suffice it to say probably the lists I was playing off of probably are just like it does have to do with like borders and density and all this stuff that is probably not worth

revisiting if you ask me i'm glad to hear that because i thought and and by the way i'm not saying you're wrong actually andrew because i what other than the u.s census can we rely on in these troubled times but i mean i would i was losing my mind at that list and so i'm glad to hear that there's maybe some universe in which through some other interpretation i'm less wrong

about those those cities that was the general vibe of all of them was just like just so that luke so that's all you need to know is like a bunch of that's all i need luke gregory is not

mad at me yes and there's a universe in which i'm not as wrong about like ranking the cities by

population yes i felt like after that conversation although we did get a note from san jose barbie telling us that san jose is really huge for what it's worth listen before we thank our last donor Can you open your email really quickly? I am looking at the doctor. Because I realize that, am I, is that an insult? As I look at this now, maybe, like, do you get Sega vibes off this character called the Doctor on Voyager?

Sure, absolutely played. It's Dr. Louis Zimmerman. He's a human, by the way. He's a hologram, right? It lists him as a human on this website that I'm looking at.

Maybe they're saying the actor is a human. I thought his thing was that he's a hologram.

No, weirdly, the actor is a hologram.

Oh, that is probably what I'm getting confused.

It says, Dr. Lewis, I only, oh, you're right, I'm sorry, this is so confusing, Ron. Species, hologram, appearance, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, parenthetically, human.

Okay, so he appears human as a hologram, because I guess as a hologram, he can appear as anything.

Played by Robert Picardo. Oh.

He got the name because it sounds so close to Picard, probably.

Exactly, and I just want to say, you're welcome, Trekkies. that was not painful at all for any of you but you do agree that there's seagull vibes because

i think i 100 dismisses that when i say it or maybe she's just sick of me saying it

no i agree i agree i can see i can see what you're uh what you're uh i can pick up what you're putting down there i can also say uh i said thanks to everybody and you said before this last donor but katherine palacios oh you did in texas was our final donor i'm sorry i lost

the thread as i was googling around i know i know this this show moves so fast this show moves so

slow thank you to our doters we appreciate you hello and welcome to top story okay this was a story in the washington post i actually i really like the writing of um or at least the story finding of a person named kathy free who writes these pieces for the washington post i feel like i've sort of seen a few uh what kathy will do is sort of find somebody she's sort of the eric lucidas of the washington post eric lucidas who writes for the seattle times is i just think one of my absolutely favorite writers at the seattle times because he just finds these kind of human interest stories and these people who find themselves at some intersection of like history or whatever um anyway kathy free seems to find people that have had an interesting experience as well and she is profiling a guy named brian ruberry um who after 40 years of trying is finally getting at age 66 one of his screenplays not just produced but it's airing on the lifetime channel um in fact it's aired this was this was december 11th uh the film that he wrote was called is called single and ready to jingle that's so perfect oh that's great And basically this guy was a football player who his dream was to go pro in football, but he played college ball, but then, you know, just didn't quite come together. And so he was taking a class and one of the teachers, he was taking a writing class and his teacher submitted one of his stories and like won a couple of awards and he got.

into writing and so then he started like writing all these screenplays and things like that he actually got a degree in film at Loyola Marymount in LA but he just never came together like he wasn't able to sell any of these screenplays until he heard about these like Hallmark movies which you're gonna hear about a lot this week because I'm working on a story about them and he was like they make a lot of those holiday movies now I bet you I could get one of those made and so he wrote this movie single and ready to jingle and actually like sent it in or submitted it somehow and they liked it and they made it it was on TV I am so mad that that's actually the

name of the I want to name our show that so badly but it's already I mean that is such

a good name single and ready to jingle this is the part though Andrew of the story that will only be interesting to you is it about kerning fonts what is it honestly pretty close to that so remember how i told our listeners and a nation of people on livewire that julia roberts was personally researching underrepresented people in science particularly women and people of color and then writing their wikipedia pages i do remember that because i was reading an article in the washington post that i had formatted through that print friendly thing and in and And in taking out the photographs and the captions and in the whatever, the mess of that, I had ended up with this line that just existed in the middle of the piece. And I had thought it was because the story I was reading was about a woman. It was about Julia Roberts. And the line fit perfectly into the piece, except it was not about Julia Roberts.

It was about this totally other person. It was like a promo headline for another article. But since you had used this app to format all the text to look alike, you didn't realize that. Exactly.

And so thank goodness I'm now aware of this feature because in this article from the Washington Post, imagine that I was telling you about this guy, about Brian Ruberry. He's 66 years old. He lives in Kensington, Maryland. It's a kind of cute story of how he proposed to his wife during a race. He ran behind her with the ring all these miles. And what if I was just telling you Single and Ready to Jingle will be Ruberry's second movie this year. He was harassed for the Black Santa on his lawn. now he's a professional black santa what if i thought that was part of brian rubary's story because that's literally the next sentence fool me once yeah now what if i said i'm reading a quote from brian rubary this is not an isolated incident in this piece quote just like that i found this new passion he said when i graduated i decided that i wanted to write television sitcoms nobody wanted to adopt the dog with one ear until he started painting that one i think you would have flat i don't know what if i was what if i was reading further into the piece and i said another quote from our guy ruberry every year actually from his wife i should say about him kind of being a sort of creative person his wife says every year he'd put together this hilarious christmas letter and send it out to everyone and as long as i've known him he's been working on scripts a stranger called he had photos of her family from the holocaust era i think i mean these are the most ridiculous non-sequiturs

sorry i'm just a little confused because i'm now reading the story nobody wanted to adopt the dog with one ear until he started painting so also they worked this is another washington post piece by uh katie free for whatever it's kathy free is another kathy free original yes

What happened with the dog with one ear?

First of all, it looks like some sort of a bulldog mix, which I absolutely love. This beautiful boxy little head, cute, is wearing a bandana. You like your dogs like your cars? I really do. I really do. Give me the Scion of Dogs, please.

That's not really... Is that a show title, The Scion of Dogs?

Maybe. Could you actually write that down while I try to read this article?

But people are going to think that that just means the heir to a dog fortune.

Oh, that's a good point. The scion of dogs. That's good. Either way, it feels clickable to me. Wow. So anyway, he had his ear ripped off. So that's kind of a bummer. Nobody was adopting him. So far, I haven't given you anything that isn't in the headline. But I'm trying to get to the painting part of this. I'm not anything about a black Santa. Let's see. After he'd been part of her rescue for four months, she looked at Van Gogh. Oh, so the dog's name was Van Gogh. And an idea sparked of how she could make him more adoptable. I'd seen. Go ahead.

If that dog's name was Van Gogh before it lost an ear, that's.

Oh, right. That's really something. I'm sorry. The ear thing and the painting thing. Right. Of course. It says, again, I don't know who's quoting here.

This is somebody who I believe is fostering him or caring for him. I've seen TikTok videos of other dogs creating paintings, so why not Van Gogh, Gartner said. He certainly had the name and the ear for it. So she dropped small gobs of bright paint on an 8-inch by 10-inch canvas, sealed it in plastic wrap, and coated the top with a thin layer of peanut butter, Luke. Van Gogh took to his assignment with gusto. Yeah, because he wanted the peanut butter, obviously, of a true peanut butter-loving artist. so he licked the paint into dramatic streaks I see so he's not actually licking the paint the paint is down below the saran wrap or the

I could be a painter if they would incentivize

me similarly I know that's

that's interesting yeah maybe we could all be artists I'm just saying it's a good thing that I've been down this road before or I would have been spreading some real misinformation and in fact I'm probably we're going to record Livewire after this and this is going to be my best news story and i would be very close to talking about his holocaust era family photos

that's a good story for that because it's very seasonal too it's very yes and it gives me a

chance to brag on a different platform about my holiday movie story oh that's true but i'm actually kind of excited about where i got to interview lacy chabert oh somebody said that

your twitter story did end up airing on cbs i think you and i both thought it might get spiked

since it didn't air when it was supposed to it was so boring though because it just it went through so much legal to where like everything every one sentence ended up being like five sentences because legal was like well there is a universe in which this statement could be interpreted you know as something else so therefore we must qualify it with it's almost like some people got into the legal reworking of TV scripts like not for the love of the TV show they got into it for the wrong reason they got into it for some boring reasons like preventing a lawsuit from elon musk right right yeah it did air so i was i was happy about that it wasn't for naught but um it was also like i said it was it was kind of weird actually because i just don't do very many journalism stories anymore and it was me very much being a journalist again like you know with the way that the story was constructed the amount of data or info that was in there the all the graphics they had to do and stuff so the only bummer was basically we interviewed kara swisher who's um who's very knowledgeable on this topic and she was great but we interviewed her like way before she was making the rounds for this so then she ended up on our friend chris's podcast she ended up on various like uh all things considered she was sort of the go-to person she's interviewed elon musk more than anyone else and with elon musk not doing interviews kara swisher kind of became like the elon knower and so our story because it got delayed ended up seeming like we were following everybody else when in fact we had

done it first and i believe she got like a very public twitter fight with elon musk in between

your interview and the airing i think i think it was before oh maybe another thing happened i mean before that he had called her an a-hole um and we interviewed her about that but maybe there was another thing afterwards that i didn't catch or something because she has interviewed him a lot but he's very mercurial and she had said something i can't remember if it was in a piece or on her podcast and it was very um the way she respond or the way she described it to us it was pretty sounded pretty innocuous actually but it somehow struck elon musk as uh you know offensive and so he's sort of put her on his um you know enemies list yeah i think i saw something after that they

were going back and forth and he was like just like basically screaming fake news at some insider report that she had done and she was going back and forth and saying let's sit down let's talk publicly again come on man and then she was going on talking about how he was the biggest disappointment of anybody that she'd ever covered like oh wow serious wow that would have been spicy

yeah if we could have had uh if we could have had her uh say that on our our piece we would

have definitely gotten elon's attention here i go once again with the email every week i hope

that it's from a female no man it's not from a female all right a quick email or v-mail Oh, you know what? Can I say one? Well, whatever. It doesn't matter. I can't get my topic hair powder, Andrew. Oh, yeah. You mentioned. And like it's really, you know, like it's confirming my I wouldn't say hoarding tendencies, but my tendency towards super possession. Like there was a time six months ago I could have ordered 20 cans of the stuff. this is this like power that I put on my bald spot so that I look like my hair looks more thick and I'll do it for like a CBS story or if I'm doing live wire or whatever but I was like I don't need to have lots and lots of this stuff I just need enough for any given month and now I I had an auto deliverer and

And it just keeps I keep getting a message from Amazon. Sorry, your auto delivery was, you know, didn't happen because we don't have any of this. And I was like, well, OK. And I started hunting around and like supply chain issues. I don't know how the pandemic affected people trying to cover their bald spots, but I'm in a pickle here.

It's going to be one of those things where you're not going to have it for a while. Then you're going to get your supply of it. And then people are going to say, how come you have more hair? And it'll be ironic because you've always been on more hair watch of other people.

Well, you know, I read a piece in the New York Times a while ago that I found to be very interesting, which was the idea of taking – I'm forgetting what the – I think maybe it's Propecia. There's a topical thing. Oh, Rogaine. There's some topical thing that people – I would put on my bald spot or where I was worried I was going bald. But it was this very kind of gooey thing. You'd put it on before bed, but then your pillow would get ruined. It was kind of a hassle. And this piece I read in the Times was like there's a tremendous amount of success with people just taking this same drug in a minimal amount as a pill instead of slathering it on their head. And again, I keep stressing this was in the New York Times. This wasn't like some random ZergNet click like Matthew McConaughey's hair secret click here. It was like, yeah, you know, these some of these doctors are prescribing it and it's a pill and it's having a pretty remarkable effect for the people that are taking it. I was like, OK, maybe I got to get on that. In the meantime, yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just going to have to wear a ball cap, I guess, for all of my outward-facing events.

Or just be cool with it.

What about like a novelty cowboy hat or something?

Like a giant foam novelty cowboy hat?

Or like the one Homer Simpson is wearing when he is going undercover in the Quickie Mart. And they're like, whoever it is, FBI. We've made a camera so small it can fit in this oversized novelty hat.

I need you to keep talking here Because I want to send you a photo While you do this

Do you ever have to tell me to keep talking

Has that ever been an issue In the history of this program I'm wondering if I can maybe make this a show pic today Because somebody sent me a photo this weekend Of me in a very large Novelty cowboy hat Have you seen this photo before This was sent to us Or sent to me I guess By our friend Whitney who you know who's in the radio business as well and i met her through our friend bean baxter probably like oh god like eight years ago or something now yeah and um for so i didn't even know who she was at the time bean just said hey come have lunch with uh me and my friend um and she uh apparently for some reason oh we were we met at a uh at a at a barbecue joint right and so because of that she brought these giant oversized uh cowboy hats for me and bean and uh me and bean put them on and posed for a photo which is kind of rare for me i would say that like 90 of the photos of me are taken with bean because it's very rare that i'm taking photos of myself uh and i just sort of think it's interesting that novelty sized cowboy hats came up today hours after seeing this photo of myself which honestly is not i hate photos of me this is actually one of my favorite photos of me maybe i'll use it as a show pick today i'm very i'm looking very serious wearing

a very very silly hat i'm trying to find the the the particular hat i guess there's a lot this is interesting if you put homer simpson giant cowboy hat there are multiple episodes where he for one reason or another is wearing a very large cowboy hat the one that i was thinking uh was uh it's orange and they i wish i could find the video because it's so funny they're like you can only wear the hat for five minutes before it does permanent neck damage oh yeah i think you've mentioned that before yeah it's like so great uh by the way the um the this piece is by gina colada who i love gina colada's writing in the time she writes about health and fitness a lot um and the chemical uh which i was misdescribing is actually minoxidil oh that rings not i've heard those minoxidil is the active ingredient in like a lot of those like things that you would rub on your head but again um this article says that there's actually some pretty good results for just taking it as a pill i didn't even know they made it in a pill form until i read this but it's surprising i haven't asked my doctor about this andrew it seems like a thing i would do

um let me read one quick email here from listener nate um who says mr edwards was absolutely in the books i believe we are talking about the i almost said prairie home companion a little house on the prairie books uh mr edwards was in the tv show of course and i think you said that you had heard that he wasn't in the books or did you know from firsthand that he wasn't in the book i didn't know that from firsthand i knew it from like wiki prairie wiki or something i see well stop hanging out on prairie wiki nate says uh my dear mother read them aloud to us four kiddos when we were youngins and mr edwards left an indelible image print on my tiny little brain my mother grew up in the canadian plains in the 1930s and had a lot of stories that related to laura ingalls you know like when you spit it would freeze before it hit the dirt sidewalk whoa yeah that sounds intense the dirt sidewalk well he put dirt in um parentheses because i guess they didn't have probably uh cement sidewalks back in the day okay i'm still

oh by the way happy blurs day to our friend camaro kev oh yeah today's the day that's right Today's the big day. And again, I'm still marveling at his Little House on the Prairie rewatch.

Yeah, I know. It's just shocking to me.

We've got to get him on the show to talk about that. All right, if I sound distracted, it's because I'm trying to update Becca on what I was talking about when I said there's these Splendid Table knife ads that you're going to be interested in. And now I'm trying to explain Frances Lamb talking about Victor Knox.

Could you just send her the photo of me and Bean wearing big cowboy hats and just be done with it? that's what she really wants um oh man that's that's actually a cool picture i kind of like this i like this picture a lot this is as much as i don't like having my photo taken i love big silly hats i mean listen what did we talk about last week like this was the this was probably the original idea for um noggin fun what is the name of that company big noggin noggin noggin boss noggin boss yeah i love me a big hat like i just can't deny it anymore um do you have the hat still no i believe i took speaking of camaro kev i believe i mean this is so old this was again i mean this is i'm going to put this at least seven years ago i believe i had this hat and then i think i took it over to camaro kevin anita's house for a football game once and then i left it there kind of purposefully thinking who wouldn't want a large hat and it turns out they they wouldn't love a large hat and so i don't know what happened to it would you consider

Wearing a large Christmas hat this Friday Andrew. If I had one I certainly Would. I got that. We will be doing A TBTL holiday get Together. Good point. We should have promoted that Earlier. It's Friday This Friday 5pm West Coast. I think the link is I assume at tbtl.net. How do people sign up

For this? It is. Yeah if you go to tbtl.net And scroll down until you get To the little announcements section You'll see a hot dog wearing a Christmas hat Click on that and you can sign Up for to join there it's also like on on our twitter feed and and slack and and facebook but uh yeah looks like people are signing up um uh we got a pretty good turnout already so the idea is we're going to be dialing up via zoom people we have we certainly have and uh and we're going to dial up via zoom if anybody wants to like make a dish or or a cocktail or a mocktail or anything they enjoy enjoy drinking you can bring that to the zoom party and you can we'll uh maybe do a little show and tell with food and maybe announce a winner at the end um somebody said oh you got a real misophonia party on your hands this friday but i think we can is it misophonia if you can

see the people i'm wondering if that impacts it at all yeah i'm not sure i don't think we have to

worry about it because most people on this call are not going to have like microphones right up

to their face right it's not asmr they're not going to be like rubbing a handful of jello up against the microphone although i do think there's probably a website for that and some people pay extra no shame but um yeah like we we would love it if you um if you've got like a sort of special holiday dish that you like to make or i don't know like a tradition or just something you invented if you want to make it and then show it off to us and we're calling it the tbtl great holiday food off where we're gonna through means that we haven't even fully figured out yet try to kind of pick a winner of the food off um so yeah that'll be that'd be kind of fun like you said show-and-tell aspect or if you want to make a special uh you know christmas cocktail or i should say holiday cocktail or holiday mocktail um the we'll uh we'd love to hear about all that i think i'm going to do some kind of giant punch bowl of something or other i'm probably just

going to stick with some classic eggnog i got to decorate my uh office um i also now you've put this idea in my head i do sort of want a santa hat or something so can you buy a santa hat where

I believe you can. Do you have to go to the North Pole? If those SantaCon people haven't taken all of them. Yeah, that's a good point. They haven't all been consumed by Red Menace and the other names for that. Santarchy? What's the name of the guy who does SNL's Weekend Update now? Well, there's Michael Che and there's Colin Jost.

I think it's Colin Jost. I assume this was a new joke I saw going around this weekend, although it might have been recycled from years past, where he was saying that SantaCon happened in New York City or wherever, maybe around the country, proving once again that Santa does exist, but God doesn't.

That joke was designed for you as a known SantaCon non-appreciator. I am not a SantaCon kind of guy. I actually have also become a non-appreciator, having done it once. with our pal Robert Smith, not realizing that it's kind of a giant FU to everyone. I mean, we did this in New York City. I mean, it was probably 500 of us. And it was just like we took over the subway. We took over every bar we went into. It's just kind of like you're just having a Saturday and suddenly a bunch of drunk Santas show up and you can't get a beer or whatever. I'm kind of – I've become a non-fan of it after having done it.

Especially as somebody like you, as somebody who hates, you know, the way we celebrate in this country Cinco de Mayo or St. Patrick's Day, or it just sort of seems like kind of like amateur hour, just obnoxiousness sort of.

I just know I was personally being very obnoxious because I had consumed a lot of absinthe, which was not my, I was going through my French writer phase where I consumed a lot of, a lot of absinthe, but I had like a, I don't know why, but I literally had a flask of absinthe for some reason. And it really got on top of me, Andrew.

Yeah, as it will. Anyway. It doesn't seem like a good holiday drink, absinthe. I've never had it.

Oh, it's terrible. Honestly, I feel sick thinking about it.

Yeah, yeah. It's a strange choice.

It's very unappealing, actually. I don't know what I was like. It was a different time, Andrew. It was a different person. We're all growing. So thank you. All right. I guess that's going to do it for today's show. Yeah, power out, babies. Yeah, man. I feel like we stuck the landing.

Yeah, pretty good show.

So that's the end of today's program. By the way, I'm not looking at anything right now. It sounds like I'm looking at an email or something. I'm just staring out the window at a loss for words. I'm just having an aphasia. But it's not because I'm, like, trying to get ready for something else. Sometimes that happens. This is not one of those times, Andrew. This is just what my brain sounds like. It's all right. Hey, I'm not doing anything.

I'm not helping any, so don't.

I came in really hot today, too. Like, I mean, I got my jog in. I'm enjoying being home. I got a couple of real nice nights of sleep in my own bed. So I can't blame it on anything other than just being bad at podcasting.

You're not bad at podcasting. I wasn't really helping out much there.

No, it's not your fault. It's not your job to prop me up when I'm staring into the middle distance, questioning all of my life choices. That's on me. All right. Thanks, everyone. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. Until then, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

i feel like i have the power of a thousand cowboys running through my veins right now power out