Muse

Hey, gang, I just had a neat idea. Let's all go sightseeing. Check out Sydney, get to know each other, bond. You up for a segue tour of Australia, mate? This is a knife on the bar bay. TBTL. They say, you snooze, you lose. But we snossed. And look what we lost.

Ladies and gentlemen, meatloaf cake with mashed sweet potato icing with only 433 calories, 52 grams of protein, and only five khyber hydrants. Be cool, get out there, and don't forget to be yourself.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

When it comes to believing in myself, I'm an atheist.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where I'm just looking around for nope, still no snow although it's supposed to get very, very cold this weekend I am getting in the Christmas spirit but I'm also very, very concerned

Oh my god, I'm freaking out!

that I have purchased zero presents so far I've been putting it off because I've been very busy with work stuff but I'm worried that next week when I get to it because of the supply chain and such. It's going to be another one of those Christmases where I'm giving a lot of people a printout that indicates the thing that will be arriving in the mail weeks or months later. That's how I like to celebrate the holidays with my friends and loved ones. Here's how I like to celebrate episode 3836 in a

collector series. Let the fun begin.

By telling you what we're going to talk about, or at least possibly talk about, including this very interesting legal approach in new zealand to curb smoking it's literally illegal it's sort of like a reverse minimum age of who is allowed to smoke it is i've never seen anything like it and it's it's kind of interesting also the jim ursay experience okay he is the guy that owns the indianapolis colts football team we talked about him like recording music standing in front of the washington monument kind of a let's just say it's an unusual move for someone who owns an nfl football team well the germ the jim ursay experience rolled into san francisco and it was according to the san francisco chronicle weird uh so we'll tell you what happened with that plus We'll do some emails and V-mails, and we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Hey, Hermano. He is my broadcasting Hermano. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke.

I have a funny story for you that also serves to remind people that we have a Zoom holiday party with you and me and the tens of listeners coming up this Friday at 5 p.m. Pacific time. 8 p.m. East Coast. I'll let you all in the middle figure out what that means for you. And you can sign up to join us via Zoom and enjoy some holiday treats and holiday laughs and holiday music. If you go to tbtl.net and you scroll down a little ways, you'll see something that says the great tbtl holiday food off. We're encouraging people to if they want to bring some special food or beverage to their own Zoom party and we can show them off to each other. So that's the plan. I think we've talked about that. Now, one detail here is something that we've mentioned on the show, which is we don't know if we're going to get over 300 people or not on the Zoom call. And official American public media policy is you're not allowed to have Zoom calls with, like, listeners that are more than 300. Don't give me a break.

You'll let Francis Lamb do that all the time.

He was like we had to turn it into a whole, like, conference instead of a Zoom or something. But our pal and I think our boss, John Sklaroff at APM, as we, I believe, discussed on the show, really went to bat for us and really fought to say, hey, listen, if these guys get more than 300 people to sign up, we should give them the opportunity to buy the expansion pack, the Zoom expansion pack that allows them to host up to 500 people. And the people at APM said, no, it's a real Christmas miracle story. The APM people were saying, no, no, no, and wagging their fingers. But John Sklaroff was our hero, and he fought for our rights.

Well, he visited our boss three times. That's right. During the night. He visited.

Actually, I think it's a guy in IT. I could be wrong about that. But anyway, so John said he got them to sign off. Okay, we can get the expansion pack if needed, if we get more than 300 people to sign up. Well, we are now knocking on the door of 300 people. We have like 240 people signed up, I think. And John said often people will sign up at the last minute. So it's kind of likely we will need to buy that expansion pack, as I'm calling it. But, Luke, here's where things get funny. And the person who holds the strings on that is now apparently out of the office. And John keeps writing to him saying, hey, we need that expansion pack. And he keeps getting a bounce back email that is saying, I am out of the office right now. So I don't know how this is going to resolve itself. But here I am, a fella talking to you, a podcaster talking to you all on a Wednesday before a Friday event saying, we may only have about 60 slots left. So if you're waiting to sign up on Friday, I don't know what's going to happen here, but you might as well, if you're putting it off, go to TVTL.net and sign up today before we run out of room.

You might be the 299th person. You might be the last person. Do you know the anxiety that I get around that stuff? I've talked a lot about my my sort of maybe because I grew up in a big family or something. I have this real like easily triggered sort of scarcity mentality on things and and also just kind of like missing out on something. And one of the big ones for me is the fear of being the first car that does not get onto a Washington State Ferry.

You don't want to be the first car. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of pressure there. the first car left off of the ferry oh oh i see okay gotcha yeah yeah you know because it's this

really weird game where there's they'll fill it up mostly and then they'll scooch all the cars together if you're not from the northwest we have a a very robust car ferry system in in seattle because there's so much water um and it's uh an easier way to get around i guess uh but so they'll they'll pack the ferry and then there'll be like probably maybe three or four more cars worth of wiggle room. If they just scooch everyone together. And then there's always a ferry worker on like a walkie talkie and they're just getting an update from the boat. Like they're standing in the, in the line of cars and they're stopping folks. They're like no more cars. And then you'll hear some squawking on their little radio. And then there'll be like, they'll like wave two more cars on or three more cars. And then just be like, if you're in that line, And if you're like, say, in the last five cars that still might get on, you're like, please, please, please, please, please. And then at some point, they put up a full hand that says, you shall not pass. And then you just have to sit there for like an hour knowing that you were, if somebody would have just four years ago purchased a Honda Fit instead of purchasing a GMC Canyonero, you could have been on your way to whatever the thing is. But anyway, that I would rather be like 200 cars back than the very first car that is not allowed on the boat.

Yeah. And also, do you wonder about the other people's decisions about what cars they bought? Or is that what you're saying? Not just like what you're sitting in, but like, hey, if all of these people I'm talking about.

I'm never the problem, Andrew. Oh, right. I'm in a Camero, but I would like everyone else on the boat to purchase the Honda.

Sure, exactly. Or a Yaris, I mean, if you would like. Or, you know, a Scion would have done you well, too, although I think they stopped making both Scions and Yarises. Do you think that the ferry situation— The Andrew Walsh bump wasn't enough for either of those vehicle models? Well, I switched my allegiance to the Mitsubishi Mirage, and I think that they— Yes, right. Famously, when we were in Denver. Yeah. And then, actually, I really did switch my allegiance to the Kia. I loved that Kia that I drove home and also broke the windshield on. But I loved that car.

I forget how much car anxiety was present on the show for a couple of weeks there.

I told Genevieve, I was driving home, like, Genevieve, our next car has got to be a Kia. And she was like, no, I'm not getting a Kia. I don't know why she's so, she was immediately, like, angry with me, suggesting, not angry, but, like, irritated. Like, no, I'm not, we're not getting a Kia. It's like, why not? You're not driving this thing. I'm driving it. It's great. It's kind of boxy. I like something boxy, but it wasn't like tiny and it's like manageable for the city, but a little bit bigger than like what we're driving now, which is like a hatchback. And so I was really into it. I will agree with her. I'm just on a jag now. I'm sorry. I will agree with her that the new Kia logo is awful, like just terrible. Have you been sitting at a light or something with a Kia in front of you and you're trying to figure out why it says K backwards N on the back?

of the kia no but now i'm looking at it and it's that's fascinating because um yeah it looks like a k backwards and except if you stare at it long enough you realize that it's a kia but the a is so stylized that it's kind of confusing now on the other hand we're talking about it so i guess you could say that's sort of a win for the company but all i can think about is i mean what do you think The iterative Processes for coming up with The logo that will go on 100,000 vehicles or Whatever many you know of these cars Get produced I cannot I mean when we're just trying to figure out what are we Going to call the TBTL zoom party on Friday I mean that was maddening you and I Almost killed each other that word honestly

Like choking me like break us up

God may was there just kind of as a sort of

Neutral observer you had your hands around my Throat like Homer used to do to Bart

Simpson yes yes like i mean i'm just like i cannot even the stakes are so high in the minds of the of the people you know at the car company like how many different possible logos do you think that this design company went through whoever they hired to come up with the new kia logo and the fact that they landed on this one is interesting because it is it's fairly controversial i can't believe they got something this edgy on a bunch of cars it's funny you should say that it's literally

edgy and i think that's part of it too like in a certain way i look at this and i think okay you're it's a korean company right kias are from korea am i right about that um i'm thinking that's the case okay either way like i could sort of see like let's say we're not talking about the cars right now we're just talking about if you can divorce in your brain the idea of kia being a car but it's something else like it's a south korea by the way so it's like let's say let's say kia didn't make cars but they made like bluetooth headphones or something like i actually think this would be a totally fine logo for that but the cars they're the key that i was driving which i can't remember what it which model i was driving i wish i could um but it didn't it felt like this logo you you use the word edgy and it actually is it's kind of sharp and edgy and it just doesn't sort of fit the car i feel like and it bothers me when i'm sitting behind it as a logo for something else it might actually be kind of interesting but i do think it's a swing and a miss on this anyway Genevieve says we can't get a Kia I can't remember where I was going with that

story I am I think I've also figured out a quick way to describe my friend Andrew Walsh to people like when they're like what's the what's your co-bro like and I'm like well he's boxy but not edgy yeah exactly that's kind of what you go to you think you like things that are it's like Queen Anne right that are boxy we've played Queen Anne before on the show I think I even got you the first time with it like she loves pools but she hates the water she hates pools oh yeah yeah

I know that one because it's a classic one Maybe I learned it on the show It's the double O right Yes exactly

So like a pool's great water's not She loves things that are green It's double vowels I believe She loves things that are green But she hates the grass But she loves trees But she does love trees If you ever want to just like While away about an hour with a nine year old Just drop some Maybe on Sunday when I'm out at my family get together I'll drop some Queen Anne knowledge On my nieces and nephews I remember being a kid and just Sitting there just as Ned Flanders would say as far as Melon scratchers go that's a honey doodle Of a problem

Is it always that Or are there all you can plug in all Different kinds of

The double vowel thing I bet you there's a bunch of different versions actually

It does look like the go to one though Is Queen because I'm looking at Youthgroupgames.com Queen Anne likes toes but not Feet Queen Anne Queen Anne's a little freaky Queen Anne likes swimming but not water Which means that it's double letters I guess not just double vowels

She likes feet but not picks

Queen Anne can get it Anyway I wonder if anybody else has created other Is it always double letters But I feel like you could plug other things in here But I'm not smart enough to do them

both both of those oh you know what by the way it might not be double vowels because an it's not

double constant yeah because they said swimming double letters swimming but not water yeah kittens cats puppies but not dogs um but anyway well that's uh that is interesting we should figure out more ways to plug in but i am edgy not boxy or boxy not edgy um we sort of were talking off

air about this yesterday but like i and i i've mentioned on the show already today when i was doing my little intro but like i am so i have uh this christmas tree that's out in the living room and i have a little um tree skirt around it and can i ask you a personal question about that tree

that i've been wondering about since you mentioned the other day sure um and this is literally kind of a personal question so i hope it's okay to ask i know that you've said a lot of times uh or let's say you've just mentioned in passing that a lot of the things that you um loved in your bellingham house stayed in bellingham did you when you moved out did you go and buy another christmas tree or is this the same tree i bought another christmas

tree and i have to tell you and i'm on very good terms with carrie that's the the good news and you know it was not a particularly contentious thing about sort of who gets what but the christmas tree there were things that were probably more that had more financial value that are still at the house in bellingham and are no longer uh sort of i guess my possessions if you will but the tree was a whole thing not between us but because they're impossible to find right because they don't make them anymore so the one that that we had and that is still in bellingham carrie had to drive this one we lived in port towns and she had to drive to like tacoma washington and meet someone in a parking lot to get this aluminum Christmas tree which was still like $500 or something insane and I remember thinking that this was totally ridiculous at the time and then but then really liking it and then wanting to get my own and then having to spend more than that amount to get a similar version of the tree and then separately buy this weird color wheel light thing that illuminates the tree so this is a this is my own version of this tree but it is also from the 1950s like the box is totally weathered it's all original stuff i don't know why there isn't a company making this tree in 2022 with the light

i feel like you'd make a killing right like yeah what is the word for that that we were throwing around a couple of years ago that somebody coined about the things that look kind of fancy but they're actually kind of affordable and you can nostalgia or something yeah something something along the lines of that like not name brand but things that sort of look name brand you can get them on places like Wayfair or or what have you but um yeah the reason I asked of course I did not ask at all because I wanted to create any or create the impression that there was tension there or something but the reason I asked was because I know that you guys loved that tree in Bellingham and it truly was you know from from another era and um and you would take your photos in front of it for your Christmas cards um and I was thinking about it because you mentioned the other day that you had another one down there or a christmas tree uh down there in portland and as genevieve and i went to the tree farm a couple of days ago to buy a christmas tree and

then genevieve uh what do you call it looks great by the way yeah she did a great job on it and you

know like i i go with her we pick it out together we put it in the car but then genevieve does all the trimming um that's kind of her thing um and i was thinking if i lived by myself i would not have a tree i would maybe have like i remember my parents got me like a a small like kind of tabletop fake tree that I would just sort of set up because I you know I like maybe a little bit of ambience of Christmas lights but I don't really care like I wouldn't if I were by myself I wouldn't go in for Christmas really at all and I was sort of thinking about that and so when you were talking about having another one of what I presume to be another one of these kind of retro beautiful trees I was curious if you had gone out and done that yourself because I know Christmas is more important

to you than it is to me well yeah you know I really like the vibe of Christmas it actually makes me very happy like i don't have any lights this year because i feel like the cat's going to tear them down yeah but like um i i like the smell of christmas i like the uh the music of christmas i just it's a cozy thing and um and i'm a fan i really am so i look very forward to it um and and get my whole little kind of setup going but this is the thing one my tree skirt really sucks i bought it on amazon and it is way too i bought the large and it's still too small and the thing is i need to just like trust my instincts i looked at what the um i guess would you call it the radius that they listed for because like the tree skirt is just like this fabric thing that you kind of put down at the base of the tree and i wanted something that was kind of vintage because the tree is vintage so i found one on amazon and then it said it was i don't know 24 inches wide and i got a tape measure and i put it down at the base of my tree and i was like that's way too small but there's no way they really mean 24 inches like this is the large who are they making this for like Lilliputians like this is this doesn't make any sense and it didn't say like novelty tabletop tree skirt or something like it didn't it was like they were saying this is a thing you can put at the base of your normal size Christmas tree so I ordered it and it came and in fact it's way too small so that's kind of out of proportion and is kind of bugging me but also there are no presents down there and one of my favorite things to do is to get the present spot and get them wrapped and get them all kind of spread out around the base of the tree i like that visual and every time that i walk into my living room and i see my little tiny doily of a christmas tree skirt and i see that there are no presents there i am filled with anxiety uh that uh i'm

I'm falling way behind on my present buying because I have a lot of people to buy presents for. I've got a lot of friends, families, girlfriends, ex-wives, pets. It's a it's a whole situation.

Yeah, that's the thing. Like I mentioned that I was having a lot of anxiety on Monday. And it was I think I mean, I think it's a combination of a lot of things. And sometimes the holidays will do that to me, even though it doesn't really make sense on paper because I don't have I have very little responsibilities for the holidays. It's really just, like, get Genevieve one good present or a couple of thoughtful presents, and that's it. Like, nobody else, like, I don't have kids. My parents aren't expecting anything. Like, we don't, you know, we don't have an extended family. Like, it's just us. And usually I have, like, a list of gifts, gift ideas that I kind of write down during the year. Yeah, exactly. I give you the gift of this golden voice and the jokes that don't pay off. The gifts that never give. But anyway, I and this year, like I just realized like, oh, I'm like two weeks away. And I don't I not only do I not have anything in hand, I didn't really have any good ideas. And it just really, you know, it's funny, like Genevieve has said before, kind of just like in passing, not like in a deep conversation, just kind of like, oh, you're a really good gift giver saying that to me. And it's funny because I never feel like I'm a good gift giver. I always feel like I'm frantic. Like that is something about Christmas. And again, maybe it's one like I like the warm and fuzzies that you can sometimes feel around Christmas time. Like now that we have a tree in here and Genevieve took care of it and it smells like Christmas in here. I like that. But also what goes along with it is this feeling of. Wow. Now I'm really just getting into it, but like this feeling of inadequacy for the season, basically, which I think I felt for a long time since I came into adulthood. When you're a kid, you just enjoy it like you're I was just a spoiled little kid who would like run downstairs and rip open gifts and had very generous parents and everything. And then when when I became somebody who was supposed to be, you know, engaging as an adult with these things, I remember it started in college, like kind of like I had my whole college life, which involved a lot of smoking of cigarettes and just like being a dirtbag. and then i moved to new zealand what's that yeah right we'll talk more on that coming up and then like kind of coming home and just feeling like i don't like almost feeling like i was carrying a patina of dirtiness with me during a holiday when everybody when everybody is supposed to seem like you know everything is supposed to be clean and glittery and everybody's at their best it's the best season and when you sort of feel like you're not living up to that and there's something about that that i've carried around i think and like the past few years have been better but then this year sort of feeling like god you have one thing to do just like get one damn gift and it's just like and it just makes everything else it's one of those things that nagged on my brain all week to a point where it just made everything else feel bad you know what i mean like it's i'm trying to describe why sometimes and i think the holidays i think will trigger a lot of people in different ways and that's sort of the way it triggers me i always feel like this isn't this isn't from i don't want to say i don't deserve it but it just seems like it's this time when everything is emphasized as being just sort of perfect and you know like everything from the from the christmas

songs we grew up with to just the fantasy of the perfect holiday and then knowing that that's not only not attainable but also you couldn't even clear the lowest bar for it sort of i'd see that's

not that would not be the reason that i would have assumed that you were a little bit like less jazzed about christmas than maybe other people i would have guessed it was because this sort of forced merriment of it or this you know somebody telling you it's the most wonderful time of the year literally i feel like could cause you to sort of say well i'll decide if it's the most wonderful time of the year or not for myself well that's definitely part of it too i mean there's a

whole but there's a whole oh luke it's a cosmic gumbo my friend i mean there's so much stuff i mean also yeah the more like the more kind of irascible part of me if that's the right word there it does still hang on to the what I would call maybe my more sophomoric feelings about this that I've also sort of carry around sometimes and again I don't dwell on this as much as I used to when I was a younger man but I used to really resent the holiday because you could literally could not opt out of it you know you told the story the other day about like somebody hanging up their tree in their window too early for your taste and like you're like I want to opt in when I want to opt in and I my own feeling was like I and I also want the option of not opting in and I'm not talking about like being with Genevieve like we are a couple and we make you know what I mean like I don't feel like Genevieve is dragging me into things I mean just society as a whole like if I want to go get a big beefy at Arby's on the 25th if the 25th of December is on a Wednesday I should be able to do it not because your religion said that you know that this is a day that you can't get a beef and a beefy eater or whatever I called it you know yeah I mean yeah I am I guess for

me part of it is that we didn't celebrate christmas when i was a little little kid so i think i kind of had some christmas envy um and so but i will say that like i'm you know i also am not i'm not full clark griswold you know christmas vacation like obsessed with it being perfect because of course that's the whole premise of that movie is just kind of like he wants and and this is i do think a trap a lot of people get kind of caught in is like that it has to be perfect and then they're trying to force it and then it's you know nothing's ever uh exactly perfect but i do just I like like later today back there, these this guy in Portland does this cool thing where he or I think it's a cool thing. He has like, I don't know, 500 little like light up Santas, kind of like vintage, kind of like you might. They're probably like three feet high. They're almost like garden gnomes, but they're plastic and you plug them in and they light up. And he got I don't know how he just like got a bunch of these somewhere like a rummage sale or something. and what he's been doing for the past few years is he will go set them up somewhere and then just it's on people to figure out where it is and go find it and he'll like give a hint he like has an instagram page and he'll just give a little hint but he doesn't tell you where they are so you kind of go on this little scavenger hunt for these santas and we found them last year and it's like it's like a fun thing like i i like that i like that there will be some cider consumed it's going to be cold ish tonight so i'll have like a warm jacket on there'll be christmas music in the car like i i do get into that stuff i have to say i'm kind of a basic b when it comes to christmas

stuff well and for me that's where um i i don't everything i just said in my little rant that was what i call a sample rant that last one i just went on like that isn't like an overriding premise for me right now as i sit here at age 46 in 2022 i mean there's maybe a little bit of resentment over that that'll pop its head up again around noon on december 25th when i want a beefy eater i changed the name of it every time no well now it's just becoming an alcohol drink

it went from being yeah i think we're gonna arby's to like daddy needs his medicine are

we getting closer to the truth every time i say it we get like we inch a little bit closer to the truth that i'm trying to that i'm trying to bury um no but like i generally speaking like when genevieve and i went to go get a tree the other day i was kind of like i was having i was having kind of a an anxiety ridden day anyway and i was kind of like not super in the mood but i wasn't trying to be you know i wasn't i don't think i was like stampy or stubborn about it but like you know once the tree is home like i'm so glad we did that like for the past you know i don't know how many years we've been back in seattle vives and i have gone to the same tree farm i like it as a tradition it's like leading up to it i kind of never feel like doing it but then once it's done and then genevieve does everything we said i help her get it in the stand there's always a moment where we can't we think it'll never fit in the stand without leaning over but then we sorted it out but then genevieve trims it and everything and they're like now i'm i'm happy like i want to make that clear like there's a tree in the house that's very nice we since we've been together for a while now more of the just plain decorative ornaments are being replaced by ornaments that sort of mean stuff to us whether it's stuff that tens have sent into us or a little fox plushy ornament that Genevieve got me one year because it looked like Fantastic Mr. Fox. And, like, you know, getting to unwrap those every year. I mean, I'm not a monster is what I'm saying. Like, I do appreciate aspects of it, but I do think when you're not maybe in your best mental self, the holidays can also – it can be a double – it can happen at the same time, too. You can be smelling the pine tree and thinking how nice everything is and then think, oh, God, but I'm not prepared for this. I'm not ready for this. I screwed it up again, you know.

right i think for me uh and i think a lot of people can relate to what you're saying which is these things tend to amplify if you're already not feeling great about you know life or yourself or if you're struggling with anything it can get really amplified at christmas in particular um i think for me it's that i cannot relax and enjoy it until i feel like i have everything handled and i have just been so busy with traveling for work and you know we're getting and Winter Games recorded, and we've got Livewire tomorrow night. By the way, Revolution Hall, come on by. Hari Kondabalu will be there. It's going to be a fun night. Sarah Schaefer will be there as well. I feel like I just have to get to the finish line of basically the end of this week, and then I can get... I feel anxiety because I feel like I haven't... Other than putting this tree up and this lame tree skirt, I haven't done anything. I have a long list of things I have to get done related to Christmas, and I feel like without those being done, And I'm not able to enjoy the music of Andy Williams the way that I would normally because I just feel like I have Christmas anxiety right now. And I want to just be I want to have just Christmas joy in my heart.

But you need to get over that hump. And I guess like the Friday event that we're doing is. Oh, yeah. We have that, too. Yeah. Yeah.

It's going to be fun, everyone.

No, I mean, I just realized when I was like.

oh yeah we have that too hey andrew do you have any of that beef eater left it's ed beefy luke i don't know how many times i need to say it for you to keep it straight

oh man do you remember being a kid and like i feel like most of what we most of the free boxes you got as a kid had the name of an alcohol that i found just completely

confusing beef eater is very confusing i still find it confusing like or or even like tanqueray

or something you know it'd be like because i feel like when i was a kid you never paid for a box nobody ever bought a cardboard box when i was a kid you went somewhere where they had extra boxes and you got them and then you used it to move but then maybe you didn't unpack everything or somehow it ended up in the basement and like we were we didn't have any alcohol in our home when i was growing up um other than a period of time where my mom was secretly drinking bee feeder no um but we we would have these but i remember we had this tanker tanker a box in the basement with who knows what in it and i would just stare at that thing like what is it i mean i guess at some point i figured out it was a gin it probably also said that but i feel like childhood in the 80s was a lot of things being kept in boxes that had once had weird alcohol and also there's a period where

you wonder why would anybody drink anything other than royal crown since it comes in that nice little bag like my uncle uh my uncle don in in west virginia when we would go to visit him maybe once a year whatever he would say hey hey kids come on and he'd take us in the basement he'd like let us pick out a silver dollar from the from the um crown royal i'm sorry royal crown right wait now i'm going back wait royal that's why i got confused i thought yeah you know you

said you said royal crown which is the soda uh oh no you said crown royal when you said it though i heard it as the soda and i was going to my like you know my 12 year old brain really was why would anyone drink anything that has alcohol in it that's gross clearly yeah i've come around

you're still working on it you're like i gotta get over the hump i think i might have said royal crown before i'm not sure either way i'm not talking about rc cola i'm talking about crown royal the i guess it's a liqueur right is that or is it no it's a canadian whiskey i'm looking it up here yeah i don't even know if i've ever had it i don't know if i've ever consumed crown royal but i do remember those those like almost felty bags those purple bags that would come in and that's where the silver dollars were kept.

I have this TV story that is still yet to air, I think. I'm getting confused. There's so many that are on the shelf right now, but it was when I was in Tennessee doing that marbles story. And what I thought was pretty clever was a lot of these, there's a lot of old-timers that do it, but then there's kind of this, I guess it's kind of gotten in style with some guys that are in high school. So we went down to a marble yard, and I don't know, 10 of these high school kids showed up with their bags of marbles, and they all keep their marbles in a crown royal bag. And I was like, I would have been into that when I was like 16, like a cool kind of felt. And it was Tennessee, and I guess they make the crown royal bags in Tennessee. You can get them in the Tennessee Volunteers color, which is this very kind of like bright orange, which was also kind of a cool look. So you live in Tennessee and you got your Tennessee Volunteer colored crown royal bag with your Aggies in it. I was kind of into the vibe.

I am just having another sort of Crown Royal related memory but I'm blanking on the name of a bar that was one of my favorite bars but I always got the name of it wrong I want to say the Smoke House in Ballard but it's not the Smoke House it's not the Smoke Shop is it the Smoke Shop? I think it was yeah okay it was the Smoke Shop okay I was going to say that at first and then it sounded weird to me but this is a bar that is connected to like a little kind of cafe diner in Ballard and it's one of the last remnants of like kind of old, cool, like dive bar Ballard as everything else gets really kind of moneyed around there and a bunch of kind of like nicer end restaurants and what have you.

You don't like to go to Stoneburner in the Ballard Hotel? I actually love Stoneburner.

I mean, I've been to those places and they serve their purpose or whatever, but they don't have a lot of heart and soul to me. But I used to love going to the smoke shop. I didn't live in that neighborhood, but for a while there when I was living, I think in, it doesn't matter, Roosevelt, I sort of would carve out some time to make my way over to Ballard and just maybe, like, go have a late lunch and have some drinks and just kind of wander between, like, the two places I liked there, the two remaining dive bars there. And I loved the Smoke Shop, and they had pull tabs that you could get, and I got the ones out of the vending machine, so I would just sit there for a while, while away the hours and just, like, pull tabs and, like, hang out with some real, like, regulars, you know? and they didn't know me I was definitely more of just like kind of a an interloper I guess but you know just sort of eavesdrop on conversations between fishermen and what have you but anyway I just remember being there like kind of late one afternoon or maybe early one evening and we're all sitting around the horseshoe shaped bar and there was a bartender there uh the place is reopened by the way I don't know if it's under new ownership but it

apparently did survive the pandemic miraculously but back in the day there was a bartender there who was a little like literally short old woman probably in her 70s or something who kind of shuffled around i remember she was finishing up her shift one day and she had a crown royal bag she had just unsheathed a new bottle of crown royal and she was going around the bar as if she was all of our grandma and like saying hey do you want this crown royal bag do you need anything for it i was like i think i said i can put my quarters in it or something because i was buying the buying the uh the pull tabs out of the vending machine and i think i showed up with like a whole bunch of quarters in my pocket but it was just so sweet and it seemed like from a different time this little old lady going around the bar being like who wants the crown royal bag i promise you

if i were to come across one of those i would 100 keep it like i feel like there's something very there's something very um very wrong with throwing out a crown yeah right like yeah like i don't i don't know what i would do with it i don't even i don't have one nobody needs to mail me one thank you i'm yeah i can probably get one if i really need it but if you if if i were to be at your house and you were like do you want this i'm gonna throw it out i'd be like don't throw that out what are you doing i'll take it i'll find something for it that's the problem with really

nice packaging of anything right like on the occasion you get like anything from apple i'm sure like when i would get a new ipad when i was still in the ipad space like just the boxes alone

seemed so beautiful i had to get a new apple watch because my old one the battery was dying and so uh and i'm dealing with that right now i have the packaging from the apple watch it's sitting in the apple bag and it's by my door as a reminder that i need to go toss it in the down the garbage chute but it hurts me to do that for some reason but what am i going to do with all this i don't need it it's just the packaging is so designed it's so designy that it just feels

like i'm throwing away something of value yeah and then and what are you gonna do with it i just got a new i'm not trying to brag here but things are going pretty well and genevieve and i just got a couple of new electric toothbrushes which is luke you sort of inspired this because we've had um we use these sonicare brushes um that we've been using for a really long time and both of ours are i think they're like seven years old so they're not really holding much of a charge anymore so anyway Genevieve was at Costco and I'm like oh you should look for a new toothbrush because you always use that as an example of going to Costco that I don't know why you lock on to that but you always say if I were to go into Costco I would just find myself buying too many electric toothbrushes and I was like Genevieve buy us too many electric toothbrushes while you're at Costco um and it's changing your life oh um I I have just plugged it in I haven't today I um said goodbye to my old electric toothbrush I brush my teeth with the old one one last time As I want to do As a sentimental person And I will toss it away this afternoon And then tonight I will use the new one But I guess what I was going to say Which isn't really relevant to this conversation Is it comes with a travel Like a travel pack or whatever It comes with like a plastic container That I can put my toothbrush in If I want to take it with me But the thing that bothers me about this And God love the Theragun Which is not a gun But a sponsor of TBTL at least at one point They also have a travel version that has a little travel pack but why when people are making these travel containers for these electronics don't they include a place for the charger like it's not really handy if you give me a travel package but i then have to have like a charger that's outside of the pack but this is

the beauty andrew you don't i have because i got um from becca actually as a gift uh the the two pack the twofer of those like sonicare toothbrushes and i have the one that i that i travel with that i have in that plastic i've never had to recharge it oh really i've had it for like a year because think about i mean you go on vacation or on a trip it's like seven days of brushing your teeth with it like i keep waiting for it to die and it hasn't i mean that thing is holding a charge forever so i don't just on the road for three weeks i'm telling you it is extremely durable i mean maybe i'm forgetting about a time of like i'm home and i just pop it on the charger but you don't if you if you leave that thing on the charger for a day you don't need to bring a charger with you now let me give you one other pro tip on this that i didn't even know about until becca very nicely who has like immaculate dental care was one time we were on a trip somewhere and she was like you know that thing's on a timer right do you know this about these sonicare toothbrushes

Yeah, it does a little buzz after 30 seconds, 30 seconds here, 30 seconds there until you get to two minutes.

It just, well, I mean, maybe that's a setting that I don't have it on. But basically, when you turn it on, you're not supposed to turn it off. It turns itself off after you've brushed. I didn't realize this.

I also think you're not noticing because Genevieve didn't notice it either. Notice that after 30 seconds, it'll give us me because it's already vibrating while it's while it's brushing your teeth. and in the other The other little electric toothbrushes we used to advertise did this, too. After 30 seconds, it does a special little buzz that you will feel. I think you will feel it going forward because you're supposed to do, like, one section of your mouth for 30 seconds, then 30, 30, 30, and then it stops itself at two minutes.

Okay, so I didn't realize any of that was going on. I thought you turn this thing on, you brush your teeth for an amount of time that feels right for you, and that's something you can talk about with your doctor or clergy or trusted advisors. And forgive me, Father, for turning off the Sonicare before it was full, like full complete. Like, yeah, Becca was like, you know, that thing turns itself off. And I was like, what do you mean? She was like, it's on a timer. So you just what she was trying to tell me nicely was brush your teeth longer. Like you turn it on, you brush your teeth. And then when it's because I was probably turning it off after like a minute. That seemed like a lot of time to have had this, you know, high powered toothbrush cleaning, you know, my my dental situation. and so now that I know that of course I leave it on I let it guide me and tell me when it's done but I was brushing my teeth for like six months with the thing not even knowing that that was part of the deal. I'll tell you what man

it is like and now I'm doing a commercial but it's like I'm living inside of a commercial for Sonicare because since I've started using it my dentist has actually noticed Luke and that might have to do with the timing as well in fact the last time I was in I had a dental hygienist who was cleaning my teeth and she was a little bit she had a little bit of a brusque bedside manner i liked her but um and also why did they put me in a bed not clear it's a weird dental facility um they strap you down and they clean your teeth and um she said oh yeah the brushing looks really good you can still work on the flossing though and she's right i'm brushing every day and i'm doing it for two minutes and and doing it right but i i only floss probably i don't know once every couple of days and the

dentist new i'll tell you what andrew it's official we're never getting quip back i know

that's that's the one i couldn't think r.i.p quip and drink works now i enjoyed quip as well i

did enjoy no i did i used that i really did um we were you know i will say this like we as far as these kinds of shows go if there's anything that we give a personal plug for we have really used it um and and liked it and if we didn't we wouldn't advertise it in fact i'm not trying to do an ad

here yeah like you're geeking out on the skylight frame aren't you i really am you started using yours first and so i said hey can you do those skylight frame commercials i'm you know i'm just going to go ahead and say this outside the bounds of an actual advertisement for one of those skylight frames that we're advertising now which is a digital frame and you can like kind of either use the app or just a designated email address to email pictures of this frame and then they just immediately appear in the frame and the frame will just sort of like kind of cycle through your favorite pictures and it reminded me of something that I had that was almost like kind of pre-internet technology where I would fill up a SD card with some pictures and I would put it on there and you know something I had I don't know 20 years ago or something and I was like huh that's kind of funny this sort of seems like an old technology coming back but no the ability to use it with an app and with email and with Wi-Fi is such a game changer and I freaking love this thing i was a little skeptical i'm like i don't need this in my life yes i do like i'm spending so much time i have my little frame set up in my dart gallery here and just last night destroying your marriage i should say your relationship well genevieve did she's like i want to add photos to it and i'm like putting all my art photos in there that are like tweaked and she's like here's a picture of me of with the husky named dubs i'm like okay all right all right all right we're doing

that um i wanted to just be pictures that you've taken walking home from the eagles no i interesting

photographic sort of things i seriously have like 50 photos that i have taken that i think are like like really well framed and things that i've really considered and edited and i'm there and i love going through that every now and then there's genevieve on a step and repeat next to a dog that some random took and i'm just like okay i mean i love genevieve and you know dogs are nice um but uh anyway it's just sort of it is it was a bit of a sticking point but it's the holiday season that's my gift i'm not deleting i'm gonna get that dude i'm gonna get that link

from genevieve start you will not just start integrating but the most like i gotta figure out what would be the most uh annoying photo for you to have i don't even want it yeah i could that

could go off the rails really quickly i mean nothing like obscene i just mean like i think

of something that would be like a way a way more specific irritant for you well even the way it's

formatted you know like so you can set the i'm just doing a full-on ad here because now i'm obsessed with this thing like last night i was just gonna say i was going to play darts and i have this thing set up in my little dart area and i'm like oh but i've seen the same photos too many times before i play darts i'm gonna send like 20 more photos to the frame like i am so into this frame and then i'll play darts and watch the new photos go by and eventually like i'll fill it up I love this frame.

But here's another thing. So you can either set it up long ways or, like, so it's sitting in – so it's sort of tall. If you use your phone to take photos and usually you're taking photos that are kind of more vertical than horizontal, you can do that. I take my photos horizontal so you can set up the frame that way. But then Genevieve is sending things to the frame that, like, don't really fit the – you know, like, don't really fit the – It's not landscape. It's, like, up and down.

So then there's a bunch of, like, kind of dead space on the side.

So I was a little bit irritated by that because, like, you can edit it on your phone. like in the app if you want to take the time to do it which I was doing for mine like you can make sure it fits but Genevieve was kind of throwing a couple up there but then I was like oh geez it doesn't even fit in the frame right but then I went up to the frame I didn't realize the frame is a touch screen that you can just sort of pinch so if you see a photo come into the frame that is not quite fitting the frame perfectly you can just adjust it on the fly like it is so it's so much more malleable than I thought it was I love this gd frame and so we should get extra money for the

last five minutes of this show absolutely um all right well let's take a break and run some more ads um yeah one airs yes and then and then uh we'll come back and uh do a little more tbtl stay with this all right let's thank some of our daily donors keeping tbtl going with their financials we can't pay for this thing with unsolicited toothbrush ads people that's a real thing by the way not to get realer than real but like we do have you know a fair number of ads that will play on the show um and and i could imagine a world in which somebody might hear those ads and think well that's that's probably supporting everything not really because basically the way those ads get sold is i don't and you know a company like a car maker or something buys like i don't know 100 000 impressions so that means 100 000 times somebody somewhere is going to hear this ad and then tbtl is kind of a rounding error on that basically it's like what do you got we got a couple of we got a couple hundred people over here who could hear that ad but um we are so much more dependent on donations to keep going than we are on whatever those ads are so thanks to donna emery in linden washington that's right can i actually piggyback on that for a

second too because i've been thinking about that a lot lately because we've had kind of more ads running in our show that are like not voiced by you and me and it's on the occasion that i go back and listen to the show i'm like oh wow that's funny it's a it's kind of a different vibe and like yeah if you hear that and you think oh well this show is just like any other commercial podcast it's really not it has to do with the fact that we're clumped together with a bunch of other shows at american public media and i mean i'm not trying to make i'm not trying to be overly self-deprecating here but like you know it is the it is the tig notaros of the world who are landing these deals right and it's just sort of a group thing so we also run them on our show but they are definitely not paying for the most part those ads are not paying our bills i mean kia has

actually asked to withdraw the ads comments about the logo for instance even though what did the car talk guys always say at the end of the show even though npr threatens to fire us or something

along those lines some version of that yeah um so again the point is we uh we really really really want to thank and we really really need uh you the the people who donate money to the show that's how this thing keeps going so thanks donna yes thanks also to laura ferrell wortman in tucson

arizona this is the way we talk in tucson matthew berry you've given us so much love it uh almost

as much as laura ferrell wortman uh has uh from tucson also amelia patterson is in libertyville illinois nice thank you amelia i think i stopped in libertyville on maybe i was a different i feel there's a few liberty villes in the midwest they were into that for a while that name i stopped at a liberty ville when i was doing that weird road trip across the country many years ago and doing shows from various places because i had lost my id and i thought i couldn't get on an airplane so i just drove home from buffalo basically to seattle um and uh i remember liberty ville was great because they had the liberty ville i went to they had a old school pizza hut oh yes like you know with the like with that iconic roof and the salad bar and the red plastic kind of glasses for your pebble iced soda i was in one of those on my last road trip

when we went out to denver i believe i was on the trip home and i was just i don't know if that's true or not i was on the trip there or coming home and um i stopped in to get a pizza to go so i didn't eat it there and i'm glad i didn't because it was still like kind of that post pandemic I can't remember what town I was stopping over in but like the whole place was really empty and there were some sulky teenagers running the place so I'm glad I got my pizza to go but

It was like an actual, like, it was the exact same layout as the one I used to go to in North Olmstead, Ohio, when I was a teenager.

So comforting. Thanks, Amelia. Also, thanks to Stephen Charles, who's in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Oh, beautiful. Golly, Stephen, that sounds amazing. That sounds like exactly where I'd like to be right now, eating a Pizza Hut pizza with you.

The only problem is if you live there, you probably have to work there, too. I always say that. Like, living in a place that is a vacation destination might be a double-edged sword.

And we know Stephen is working because Stephen is supporting TVTL as well. So thank you, Stephen, for redirecting some of your hard-earned Virgin Island bucks towards us. Thank you. Also, thanks to Laura Whitmore in Tigard, Oregon. I know where that is. I was in Tigard buying, trying to find a pocket square for my Christmas suit. What are you, Paul F. Tompkins? I'm trying to dress up for our party on Friday, man.

Oh, a Christmas suit.

Yeah, Christmas suit. And yes, I am Paul F. Tompkins. Thanks, Laura. Thanks also to Joshua Johnson in Seattle, Washington. We appreciate you, Joshua. Appreciate all of our donors. I would not be able to buy pocket squares for my dandy Christmas outfits without the support of our donors. So thanks for keeping TBTL going. I really do appreciate you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. This article really jumped out at me in the New York Times. New Zealand bans cigarette sales to everyone born after 2008. Do you follow that? So in other words, it means if you're old and you're smoking, I mean, I don't know how old you'd be if you're born in 2007, but if you're already smoking legally in New Zealand, we're going to let you do it. But it's like you if you show an ID and it shows that you didn't get in under the wire, if you were born after 2008, you're never legally going to be able to buy a cigarette in New Zealand.

Yeah, it's hard to wrap your mind around, but I was thinking about it this way. Like, let's say that you're 15. Let's just say that the law is standard as it is now. You're 15 years old right now. And when you turn 18, you can start smoking. I don't know if anybody really looks at it that way, but like, you know, you're like, OK, I can start smoking. but there is a generation i don't know how old they are right now maybe 14 but when they get to 18 the door remains closed and it remains closed forever they it will never be legal to smoke and

then eventually it'll just never be legal to smoke yeah it's i mean i i just i'm trying to wrap my mind around that as well i'd never heard of such a thing anywhere i mean i guess you're right i guess the idea is that eventually it will be there will be no legal smoking in new zealand Now, some people are worried about like a black market for cigarettes because, you know, if they're literally illegal, but people still want to smoke. It reminds me of the like one of the opening scenes. I think it's the opening scene in Beverly Hills Cop. He's breaking up. He's in a semi truck that's full of illegal cigarettes. And if I remember right, I think Eddie Murphy is like in the back of the truck and it takes off. It's a semi truck and he's just getting knocked around amidst all these cigarettes. And I remember thinking, what is the cigarette black market really even look like?

I mean, I guess they're like, isn't that always a thing in the movies, like a trope? Like when you're introduced to like some sort of like characters who might be like low level involved with organized crime, there's it's always a cigarette truck, right? Like they're unloading like cartons of cigarettes off the back of a truck.

Right. And I guess I just thought that was a movie trope. But I guess it may end up happening in New Zealand when when everything is out. But I also didn't realize this, that there's a high sort of use of cigarette amongst the Maori and Pacific Island populations there. And so I guess that's really an area of emphasis is trying to is trying to, you know, just get everybody in New Zealand healthy and not smoking. I will say this, Andrew, I have always been very impressed at your ability, the fact that you quit smoking, because people say that that is like one of the hardest things to give up.

And I wasn't living in your head when you were doing it. But it didn't it doesn't seem like just you just kind of decided you weren't going to do it anymore. And then you didn't. I think it's very impressive. Well, the health scare really, you know, I had a couple of oral surgeries and everything ended up being fine. But, you know, even I did not have cancer, but they were using the word, you know, pre cancerous spots like that. Really? That'll you know, that that'll put the fear of God in you for sure. That definitely helped. Also, even though I'd been a smoker for years and years, like, well, decades at that point, I really was like just a nighttime smoker, I would imagine. And it would be much harder if you're somebody who still, like, wakes up in the morning, has that first cigarette, you know, has one at lunch, just smokes throughout the day. I think that would be a much more difficult road to travel. But, yeah, so I'm very glad, too. I will say that I also think it's a bit of a personality thing. I knew somebody, I believe it was Mike Salk over at the old sports station that we worked in collaboration with. And he had a conversation with him. He had quit smoking years and years and years before I ever did. And he, no, he might exaggerate, but he claims that, like, he thinks about smoking every single day. He says it never goes away. I constantly want to smoke. He said it was my favorite thing to do. And I just don't have that. There will be every now and then if I'm watching a movie, like, that's where it really gets me. Every now and then, if I'm at a bar and I get the perfect waft of smoke coming in from outside and I'll be like, oh, man, that those are my people out there. Like, it'll be a kind of a passing thing. Or if you're watching a movie and they're just filming it in that way where you can sort of hear the crackle as they inhale. OK, I just did the Homer tongue out of my mouth drooling. But like it'll just it's pretty much a passing thing. And I think that I'm just sort of lucky in that way.

yeah what i always say when this topic comes up is i'm just so happy that i didn't ever start smoking because i'm terrible at yeah quitting things that are bad for me and i just never had that i just never had to like try to deal with that um which is just good luck i'm also very afraid of inhaling like i literally don't understand how somebody breathes smoke into their lungs and it doesn't make them cough so that's been good for me to just be scared of it you know my mom just casually dropped like a little while ago we're at some family get together she's like well i still do i have a cigarette a day like what oh you did tell me that yeah my mom who's now many years sober from from drinking alcohol um just like you know just like smokes smokes a dart every day just just for fun just to have one cigarette which is also kind of i i don't understand having one cigarette a day i feel like if i liked it enough that i wanted to have one i'd

want to have like 20. well that's what my dad always would say to me like he would talk to me on the phone and be like have you quit yet or whatever and he's like i don't even understand it he's like if I was if I because he was a you know he's of a different generation and he worked in a steel fab shop and he'd go out in jobs like they just smoked constantly I think in the heyday my dad was probably smoking two packs a day or whatever and then eventually he quit and I think that he he may have quit like back in the I think he quit right before my sister was born so that would have been about 1974 and so I think that he had some sort of a program that he used to do it Um, but like, he's like, God, if I was down to five cigarettes a night, like I would just stop smoking. It was like to him, it's kind of like you, you're saying with your mom, like one cigarette, but I wonder, you've mentioned that your dad also kind of has like a cigar. I don't know if he has a full cigar a day or not, but do you think that it's maybe tied into that, that maybe they kind of have a cigarette and a cigar together and it's like a little moment that they have?

I don't think, do you like Patty and Selma? Sit there. Yeah. Yeah. Watching, um, MacGyver. Sit outside on the park. I was picturing sitting outside. Well, the funny part is I don't think my mom really loves my dad's cigar smoking, which is hilarious because my mom stopped drinking alcohol. My dad just immediately stopped because he just never – he would have a beer, but he was never like – he never cared that much about drinking and to be supportive of my mom. He just totally – to the point where like he'd be at my house, you know, miles away from my mom and like in Bellingham and I'd be having a beer. I'd be like, you want a beer? He's like, no, I'm fine. Like he wouldn't even drink not around her just out of solidarity, which I think is really sweet. and he has one bad habit which he likes cigars and my mom is always like oh he's got to smoke that cigar near me i'm like i'm like he's like not drinking alcohol when he's in new zealand with my brother david okay like let's let him have a cigar but yeah he loves those things loves them so i don't think that they sit i think probably my mom probably like smokes a cigarette as she's like leaving her substitute security job at the local school district on her way to swing by Value Village to see if they've got any new cool stuff in. It would be when I think, I can imagine my mom, she probably wouldn't smoke in the car. She would think that was gross, but I think it's probably her fun little treat for herself. I will say that when I was in Rochester doing the show the other day, I was staring out into a parking lot of the residence inn, sorry, Yonkers, not Rochester, and I saw a guy who was like, he had a car in the parking lot of the hotel, and he was moving some of his stuff. his friends had pulled up to pick him up and he just had a like a lit cigarette he was smoking it and he was moving the stuff in their car and then he was getting in the car with the lit cigarette and they shut the doors and the windows were up and i was like this is madness well even though that was i was raised that way not by my family but it was so normal in when i was a kid to be in a car with an adult who was smoking with the windows up well that's where um yeah i think

it's where the perception kind of plays into this too because i mentioned like let's just make it like kind of almost the most small or romantic scenario of wanting a cigarette like you're at a you're at a bar maybe it's the day before thanksgiving or something you kind of got that long weekend holiday feeling and then some friends go outside to smoke cigarettes and it kind of takes you back you're like oh man that would that'd be great but then i that story that you just told ended in a different way but like also you can imagine a scenario where you're looking out of your let's say very uh moderately priced hotel window somewhere in the suburb suburbs in the middle of nowhere and you see like three people out like kind of half in their pajamas and um and clogs or whatever like shivering in the cold smoking their darts before they go to bed or whatever and you're just like oh that looks awful you know what i mean like there's It's just kind of like, in some ways, smoking has been, well, in some ways, I mean, obviously in our culture, smoking has been portrayed as romantic in so many ways. And I think that when people are smoking a cigarette, they always picture themselves looking like Greta Garbo or something. Or who is in, well, it doesn't matter. Who was I picturing in Casablanca? Who's the main guy? Oh, well, Humphrey Bogart. Humphrey Bogart. Bacall, maybe?

No, it's not Lauren Bacall. I'll remember.

It doesn't really matter. But either way, you sort of picture those romantic scenes of people lighting somebody's cigarette, right, and just being so cool. But then also the reality of it is when you're addicted, like, you're just, like, you're throwing on, like, an extra hoodie and you're just, like, going outside so you can quickly smoke this thing even though it might be raining. And especially as, like, places are less and less accommodating to smokers. Like, I told Veeves a while back, and I think I have this right. I think this was my idea. This isn't an actual commercial. But after I stopped smoking, I remember being in an airport where they still had the designated smoking areas. So and I don't know if any airports still do that. I feel like LAX still has really LAX surprises me.

Well, I mean, no, no. But what I mean is it's it's not open air. It's like a it's like a glassed off thing where you have to go be like with the other undesirables.

Yeah, that's what there was one. And I feel like it might have been a Chicago airport or maybe Cleveland or some Midwestern airport. and and I remember I think I used one of those like maybe once or twice but it's like such a sad experience and like I was outside of one one time just walking by with my rolly bag or whatever and you just see this glass box just unadorned glass box windows on every side and inside a few people just creating a room full of smoke it's just like a waiting room full of smoke and it's just like it seemed i told thieves like somebody should just train a camera on that thing for 30 seconds put it on tv and just say don't even start like it's just the saddest smoking experience that you can picture and i've been in there i'm not trying to be judgy i'm just saying that like

it's a perspective thing right and also you know if we have listeners that smoke uh i don't want them to feel like i'm trying to um you know drag them or whatever um but because i have a million bad habits just smoking isn't one of them but i was saying this to becca the other day we were driving somewhere and it was really cold oh we were we were driving through shelton washington we've been visiting my family and uh there was somebody standing outside of like i don't know just a kind of slightly depressing building and it was freezing cold and they were out there smoking i said i mean i go the you know the bad news about smoking is it's pretty bad for your health and it's really expensive but the good news is you do get to stand outside in the cold a lot yeah like that now that it's become so socially unacceptable to do it indoors it's like i mean and that's just one of those things too where it's clear that the changes in the policies have been effective in reducing the number of people that smoke in this country because it's just a pain in the butt to do

it now it's like it works yeah i mean that's something i've been saying for a long time is like when i was a smoker like um we started to see that like no smoking laws in like various restaurants and coffee shops or whatever kick in I believe when I was in college so like kind of late 90s at least this was in Ohio and you know like my whole high school experience was and again sometimes being underage and of course to the dismay of my parents even though I was trying to get away with it but like my high school experience was like hanging out in coffee shops smoking cigarettes and talking or playing chess whatever but like that's all we did like smoking was almost central to our socializing like well well we have to get out of the house because we're all addicted to nicotine so like well you want to go meet at the park okay like where can we go like and so we spent so much time in coffee shops and also there's something sort of like kind of again smaller romantic about that too right like i loved it it was a coffee shop like Thank you.

whole vibe that's what me and my friends did and we would just sit around and talk and drink too much coffee and smoke and smoke um and then when they said hey you can't smoke in restaurants or coffee shops anymore you know i'm a i'm a very young man i'm a smoker and i was appalled i mean you want to yeah that's the most libertarian i've ever been in my life just like are you kidding me like let the let the market decide if people don't want to go to the smoke-filled coffee shops. Well, then open up non-smoking coffee shops and see if those do better. You know, like I was just appalled that they would just take this away from me. But the thing is, even as I continued to smoke for the next, you know, decade or so, I smoked less and less and less because it became less and less fun and less and less easy to do so. And it became more of the, OK, I'll shudder outside in the rain for three minutes while I while I smoke this dart. So So it actually did work over time. And now here I am, an ex-smoker, reading this article about New Zealand's laws, which have already been very strict and being like, well, if eventually you just have a generation of people that's never tried a cigarette in the same way, hopefully you have a lot of people who've never tried hard drugs and therefore are not craving them. Is that the worst thing? Like this will never happen in America because obviously it's such a big business here and with lobbying and the money. And it tastes so good. Yeah. Well, I mean, honestly, in some in some cases it does. I mean, that's sort of a that's sort of a personal taste thing there.

Right. I was just remembering the so many ads when I was a kid of like the taste of cigarettes. Like that was a big selling point. Yeah. This one tastes the smoothest or this one has menthol or this one has like it was like I almost imagine it was like are people eating cigarettes? There's a lot of commercials about how good this tastes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that is a thing, though.

I mean, both with with tobacco and how you smoke it, whether it's a pipe or a or a cigar or a cigarette or weed. I mean, obviously, different weeds, you know, different strains of marijuana will taste different. So in a certain way, again, maybe as a as a smoker, ex-smoker, like I have a slightly different perspective on that. But I have noticed how awful, awful people smell after they smoke a cigarette and then come back inside. Like I never kind of it's almost worse than them smoking in front of you inside. Like back in the day, let's say we were hanging out at Charlie's Kitchen in Boston or Cambridge or whatever and smoking cigarettes. If somebody were to smoke across from me, that might be annoying. But I never realized that when you go outside for a cigarette and then you come sit down next to somebody, you talk to them. It doesn't just smell like cigarette smoke. It smells like death incarnate. It smells so bad. It's one of those few times where the thing smells like what it's doing to you. Yeah. And I don't I don't mean the smoke. Like, actually, the smoke smell itself doesn't bother me. But it's like when somebody's got it on their breath. And, like, I smelled like that for two and a half decades, you know?

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.

All righty. Got an email or V-mail that we should enjoy together before we wrap things up today?

Yeah, let's play this voicemail. I've actually been holding on to this one for a little bit because I wanted to play it during the holiday season. This came in several weeks ago, I think, from Listener Show. Now, back in maybe a month or two ago, we were playing a lot of voicemails from listeners who had stories about finding money, their adventures of found money. And this is another found money story, but I felt like it was a good one to play during the holiday season. So I'll let Show take it from here.

Hi, this is Show from Seattle. I've never called this sign before. It feels really wild. Anyways, not to see the fed horse, but I have a really cool story about finding money. It's not my story. It's a friend of mine's. Unfortunately, he passed away a while ago, so he can't tell it himself. But I've really enjoyed hearing everyone else's stories, and I just wanted to share this one. I think it might be interesting, because it's the most money of anyone. He was going to a gig, and he found this zippered bag of money. There was no bank slip or anything in it, but there was $20,000 in bank-wrapped, $100 bills, and this little brass frog. And, like, there's no one clearly who dropped it. He, I don't know what it was in his beautiful, beautiful heart, but he decided to call the non-emergency police number, and really shortly thereafter was met by a frantic old woman, just like basically hysterical, and she opened the bag, and she ignored the money at first and just grabbed that little brass barrage.

and she was crying and it turns out that um she was a holocaust survivor and that little brass frog was like all that she had left of her family treasures and um the police officer was there the police officer was crying and my friend was crying and then she explains why she had the cash Um, every year she sends $500 to people in her neighborhood that are in need. And she goes to different churches for Christmas services and donates large amounts of cash. I mean, Christian churches, Catholic churches, um, mosques, Jewish synagogues, completely non-denominational donations. And, uh, she offered my friend a reward and he was like, yeah, right. um no just like donate what you wanted to give me to someone else like you already do and um that was my friend steven dudeman's start to the holiday season a few years ago and yeah it's just a really wild story anyways uh power in keep doing what you do love you guys that's a

really nice man that's an incredible story it really is i was about to make a joke about like well you won the found money story thing but like i ironically because you and i were talking the other day about how we hate it when it's like how to win at thanksgiving or how to win the holiday can we agree though that show did slay all day but you said something and i'm sorry to take this off topic immediately but i've been meaning to tell you this you said something like there's also something going on in commercials where people say things like they take a noun and they turn it into a verb like how to how to change how you pizza change how you pizza there was one i hadn't noticed it as much until you said it there was one the other day like we're gonna change the way you money it was like shrimp related i feel like it was like something we're gonna change the way you see food or something like that only it was much more specific it was like butter popcorn shrimp and i was like that cannot be a verb but anyway sorry

to ruin show's story that is an amazing every time i thought the story couldn't go up a notch it did it's like it's twenty thousand dollars that's insane then it's like holocaust survivor and it's like charity that you had a crying police officer you got a brass frog that story had everything

that story had everything thanks for sharing it show yeah thanks show hey call us

again with any of your other amazing stories now that you know the phone number now that you've got it probably saved in your phone so all right that is going to do it for today's episode we didn't get to Jim Irsay speaking of people that just chain smoke that guy every time he's performing his bizarre traveling musical thing he's just chain smoking on stage true story I guess if you're Jim Irsay they don't mess with you maybe we can talk about that tomorrow until then hope you have a really great Wednesday stay safe and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

It's my new favourite bong. I wish I could smoke it. Power out.