Muse

We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. Oh, yeah. Oh, you got it. One trick is to tell them stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I cut the ferry over to Shelbyville, I needed a new heel for my shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they call Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel. And in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was a style at the time. TBTL!

I got recognized on the street today. The guy had already met me and then forgotten he met me and then recognized me from TV and then remembered me again.

What a space. Like, what is that about? I don't actually think that that space is real. I think people just keep saying that it's real and saying that, like, that there's stuff out there, but it's like, well, we're never going to know for real. You can't go there.

What I love to think about this is a puzzle, and each of every one of us is an integral piece that puts a big picture, and once we're all together, it puts a big picture. The show lets us to see the big picture. Yeah.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

You want to do a make-believe radio show in a room somewhere. I'm telling you, there's no money in that.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Hi, everybody.

Comedy from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is currently a balmy, what is it, 20 degrees. It is going to be cold. It is going to be possibly snowy.

What do you got here, a thunder hurricane going on? A thunder blizzard hurricane.

Ice. Significant portions of the U.S. are going to be dealing with some pretty intense winter weather. And, well, it's going to get serious out there.

This is a serious message.

Everybody just stay safe, stay indoors, and listen to TBTL. Because today we've arrived at episode 3842 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Not sure if you have heard the story of a guy named George Santos, but he was elected to Congress out of the state of New York. And it turns out that most of what he said in his resume about where he graduated from college and various other things that he says he's done seem to not be true. There's no evidence that any of these things really happened. And so now they're trying to figure out why. How did this guy get all the way through the vetting process and the election without anybody reporting on this?

I'd like to point out to anybody watching. This is really bunk journalism.

Is it the New York Times' fault for not covering their own backyard, or is it stingy, selfish, would-be local news consumers who are not willing to pay for local news coverage who are to blame? Or maybe, I don't know, the guy who lied about his entire resume, he bears some culpability in this too, so we'll put our little, on our media hats on and we'll talk about that.

also belated r.i.p to p22 something about the soul of a cat i don't know how this one slipped

through the cracks because i was actually reading about the saga of p22 lately now p22 was this uh cougar or puma actually that's what the p was uh who uh was living in griffith park in los angeles in a very small area of territory for a adult cougar or puma and um showed up in somebody's backyard in silver lake and unfortunately it had to be put down but it's a pretty interesting story that we've sort of talked about before about p22 but not not since p22 uh left this planet so uh we will get into that and then uh speaking of moments where people have entered this planet Today is Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day. We'll do some of the Blur's Day messages as well. And we'll talk to this young man, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Does he sound sort of like a person who just got the bivalent booster? Yes, he does. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Yes, I'm a little bit out of it today. So I usually bring 110% to this podcast every day. And today I'm afraid to say I'm bringing like 98.7% because I really...

I'm probably just being a bit of a drama queen, honestly. Like, I think that this is not really that bad, but my head just feels swimmy. I kind of got noodle arms. And honestly, I'm just thinking, hey, I can get through this show.

Your blood is mostly root beer.

That's right. My blood tastes like root beer. I feel like if I can just get through this show and then get it posted and then I can just take a nap, maybe that's it. Maybe I'm just a lazy bones and I just want to take a nap and I'm using this as an excuse. But, yeah, I'm a little bit out of it today, honestly.

I'm glad that you finally got that bivail booster, though, man, because, like, I mean, I'm not saying that to be, like, finger waggy. I'm just saying, like, the more of us that can get that, the more better. And, you know, I just I'm seeing that, you know, once again, the the advice from, you know, epidemiologists and the like is to go back to masking in public, which, you know, it's bittersweet. I very much enjoyed not having to schlep a mask everywhere, but I look forward to people not seeing my pimples. So there's a win and a loss in these things.

You know, I did wear a mask a couple of times recently. I'm trying to think what the examples were. It doesn't really matter too much, but I was kind of in close proximity with people. And I'm like, man, I got this travel coming up. Everybody was getting this flu a couple of weeks ago. I somehow avoided that. I haven't really gotten sick in quite some time.

Well, you know, leaving your house is one of those things that'll that'll put you in contact with the flu. And I feel like you endeavor to do that less frequently than some. No, it's true.

I want to tell you a story about my day yesterday, though, because and how I ended up getting the shot because I did not have this scheduled yesterday. Yesterday, I had I had a lot of like running around to do various appointments, had to go to various stores for various projects. Anyway, I had my day kind of all laid out, including a haircut appointment at 3 p.m. I thought it was later in the day, and I kind of built around that. And then when I realized my mistake, I had this weird sort of donut hole. I was kind of in the neighborhood of my barber, but I still had like 20 or 30 minutes to kill and nothing that I could take care of there. So I sat in my car. on my way to that neighborhood i was listening to what used to be como radio just like in a straight am news radio coverage for the city of seattle now it's like um what is it called now it's like the northwest news network i think i think what no wait that's that's that's n3 right that's the public radio one they had to change their name they're not como anymore right i can't remember what their am 1000 if people want to um you know act like a young person like me and can listen I've been listening to it a lot lately when the sports channel goes to break.

It's KNWN is their new call letters.

NWN, Northwest News. KNWN. Yeah, so Northwest News is what they call themselves. Anyway, I just want to talk about the power of hearing a message because I knew that I needed a flu shot and I knew that I needed a booster. And I've known that for weeks. I'm actually pretty embarrassed to admit that I hadn't taken care of this earlier. but it was one of those things where I just kind of didn't know exactly how to go about it I knew it wasn't like super hard but like when we got our first you know when the vaccine was brand new like I knew what to do you you went online you signed up you got in line at the at the football stadium right and then we had all gotten mass vaccinated and this time it just sort of seemed like oh I'm not exactly sure where to go I really should go to my doctor's office it's been a while since i've had a checkup i'm like oh but my doctor quit after he saw my x-rays um and so uh i was like then it just became this thing in my head where it was just like i was making it too complicated you know what i mean like i kind of couldn't just sit down and make an appointment because then it led to other things and then i would just stop thinking about it because it's the easiest thing to do and i'm driving to the university district and i'm listening to the am radio and they're just like like they said washington state's flu numbers are like just terrible when you look at the map it's a deep purple that's not a good color for this kind of map just get your flu shots and so then I'm like in my car outside the barbershop I got like 20 minutes to kill I'm like you know what just be a modern adult open up your phone see what the possibilities are and so just like that 10 minutes later I had an appointment last night all the way up in Linwood which by the way the roads up once you get north of Seattle Highway 99 it was a little treacherous yesterday with this accumulated snow and freezing weather but like I just can't believe how much i dragged my feet on this but like i've known forever that i needed both of these shots but like just hearing it over and over and then hearing it in that moment on the radio like who would it was taylor van syce's newscast got me to finally act like i i wouldn't call that propaganda that was news but like certainly like i don't think propaganda we always use that as a as a negative thing but it's not necessarily a negative thing right it's just like uh a mission to get a message out there and the message could be good or bad.

I feel maybe it's just because I've only heard it used

In a negative way, my guess would be at the beginning it had a, you know, it could mean anything. It just mean basically a government or some entity trying to spread a message. I wonder, though, if it's moved into the territory now where it's only considered to be a negative.

I'm looking at this now. It does seem like the main definition, just like when you type it into Google right away. So I don't know what the source is, but the main definition does seem to back up what you're saying. It says information, especially of a biased or misleading nature. So, okay, I'll back off of the P word for now, the PR word. You can't say anything anymore. I know. Geez, Louise, come on. No, but it was just like this moment where I was like, wow, that newscast just really changed the trajectory. And now I'm going on a trip, and I'm glad that I should have gotten this weeks ago, but I'm glad I got this done. And it just sort of took the right words at the right moment in my life just to get it done.

Well, I'm glad that you're now amongst the maximally vaxxed. You're waxed, vaxxed, and ready to hit Hawaii, baby.

Yes. How did you know I'm waxed? That was my other point. Did you get?

Yeah. I mean, I assume you've been spray tanning and you're fully waxed and you are ready for some tropical adventures, my guy.

I've been spray tanning just one half of my body, but I won't tell you what half until you see me tomorrow. By the way. Oh, yeah. So what's going on? I saw in your show sheet that you said like the weather may get in the way of our fun time.

Well, I don't know if I'm just letting all of this snowpocalypse talk get to me or whatever, But like because, you know, there is a tendency, I will say this, to kind of get – sometimes it seems that the kind of – obviously the time when the most people tune in to the various weather channels or websites or what have you is when the weather seems like it's going to be extreme, particularly in the direction of cold. And so there's an incentive for the media to definitely lean into the worst-case scenarios, right? This is my way of saying a lot of times when there's a ton of hype around the weather, it doesn't actually materialize because it's not a totally exact science. So my usual thing is like, OK, it'll probably be fine. But in this case, because I'm coming up to Seattle to celebrate Christmas with my daughter, I and we're being told like I was I have a bunch of errands to run today as well. and i was calling around to different places uh like i've got to get bubbles's nails trimmed because uh becca's family is going to be watching her while we're in palm springs and i don't want her just tearing the shit out of their house so i'm getting her talents everybody's closing at three is my point like i was calling around to different uh i gotta pick up something at the pharmacy and they're like yeah we're closing at three today everyone is closing at three because of the weather now are they closing at three because the weather is going to be that bad or because let's be honest, it's like two days before Christmas or three days before Christmas, and rightfully so, everyone was like, you know what, let's just call it on this week. Let's just go ahead and let's just move fully into holiday mode. But at 3 o'clock around here, supposedly, there's going to be snow, ice, it's going to be crazy, and I'm imagining a universe in which, because the plan is for me to get up pretty early tomorrow, drive up to Seattle, do the show with you at your house in Seattle, and then do a bunch of Christmas errands in Seattle that I have to do. But I'm also a little worried that I'm going to wake up tomorrow and there's going to be like two feet of snow and everything's going to be black ice and it's like I'm not going to be able to get to you, meaning I'm not going to be able to get to Seattle, meaning I'm not going to be able to do Christmas with my daughter. But more critically, I'm not going to be able to do karaoke at the Eagles tomorrow night, which would be really one of the worst outcomes possible. So I don't know. I'm just getting – I don't usually get – I'm not usually weather concerned in my life, But because I have plans and I don't want to getting screwed up, I'm a little nervous about this whole weather situation.

I don't know much about the weather, Luke. I'm not a meteorologist. But I think that you will be able to make it up here by Christmas, right? You have a few days to do that. Whether or not you can make it up here by tomorrow for karaoke fun time.

Right, but the problem is I have a lot of present purchasing, specific present purchasing. I know that's a lot of peas, dude, that I have to do in Seattle tomorrow that I have lined up. And because I waited, as I always do, too long on this stuff, I'm threading a needle here. You know what I mean? Like I got to like hit these exact places during their hours when they're open to get these exact things. Otherwise, I'm in real trouble because I didn't order anything in advance. I don't physically have anything. So me not being able to make it up tomorrow means Addy gets a lump of coal.

yeah so i was going to say like is it almost like okay maybe you could make it up here for christmas but you wouldn't be able to make it up here for christmas christmas sorry with the um the gifts you want and in a certain way if you can't have all of that you'd rather you'd rather just stay down there than be up here giftless no no no no i'm just saying i don't want to i would like to

be up there with the gifts yeah ideally you know that that's what that's what i would like i mean i'll i will be up there regardless if i somehow it was the case i couldn't go there till sunday I would go there on Sunday. You know what I mean? But it. It's just like I kind of have a plan in mind, and it's going to take Cracker Jack timing, and I don't have – I don't really have the – like I was – I'm getting my oil changed on my car because, of course, that light came on like right before I'm going to drive to Seattle. And I was supposed to have the appointment at 3.15 today, and I called them, and I said, is there any chance of moving this up? And they said, yeah, we've had almost every other order canceled today. Oh. So come on by. So shout out to Ron Tonkin Mazda here in Portland. But so I'm I'm just trying to get everything kind of wrapped up and then just cross my fingers that tomorrow is not like I five is not just one solid sheet of ice between here. That's the other thing. I'll mostly be on the freeways and the freeways are usually the, you know, fine because they are a lot of you can't get a huge buildup of snow on the freeway because there's so many cars all the time that it just keeps that from happening. So I should be mostly OK. I just like I said, I just I've got a plan and I don't want to interrupt it by old mother nature.

Yeah, no, I'm with you. By the way, this is not something that I think you're talking about doing before all of these plans. But I know you were talking long term about getting chains on your tires for it's on my list today. It is on your list for today. I don't know if you're doing this, but a lot of listeners after you mentioned that said check out your boys at Les Schwab. You went there a couple of times recently and had really good experiences and somehow they did everything for you for free the past two times. So I don't know if they would put chains on for free, but it sounds like a lot of people are saying they are the place to go.

Well, that's actually a good piece of advice. It had not occurred to me because I don't think of them as being a place that sells chains. They usually do tire stuff, but there's one right down the street from my house. Maybe I'll pop by there just to see what they have to say. I'm not fully going to put snow tires on the car or anything, but maybe they've got some chains that are easy to deal with. I am capable I just want to mention I am capable of putting chains on a vehicle I've done it before it's just a pain in the ass and it seems like it usually is happening when you're pulled over on the side of the road on I-90 trying to go over the pass or something it's always just kind of the least ideal you know you're only putting the chains on because there's three feet of snow everywhere so it's always I would I'm hoping that there's a technologically less of a hassle-y solution to it but I'm going to buy some today and just have them in the back of my car in case because like for instance addy lives on capitol hill and uh it's very steep and so i don't know i mean i'm i have my car maybe i can i can abandon my car and i could walk to her house if i had to but i'm just going to have some chains uh in the back uh you know way back of my car in case i find myself in a a sticky situation you know the idea of walking around seattle because it's too snowy to drive reminds me of a very fond college memory that i have which was i worked at the seattle times in the sports department entering in the high school scores right on fridays and saturdays me and my friend alia saperstein would sit there with our like time life operator headsets on and just field phone calls all nights from the coaches of the various sports and then we would input that information but one time this was back in the days when seattle got like one major snow a year there was a giant snowstorm and nobody could make it into work at the seattle times and this was back in the day when it was the remote work was not really a thing and so i because i lived relatively close to the seattle times i lived walking distance i remember bundling up and walking down there and them letting me write like half of the sports section that day because i was just like the only person there and it was so great and i remember just like getting to actually like write something more interesting than just volleyball scores peace and love to the volleyball players out there but um and then just walking just like leaving the seattle times it's like late at night and everything's quiet and there's all this snow and i know that i'm gonna have like three bylines in the sports in the sports page the next day and

i was just like yes this is pretty awesome yes no storm memories are nice memories even the even the terrible ice storm that I was stuck in in New Hampshire this is uh after Genevieve and I knew we were moving to Seattle but Genevieve already moved out here I was still in New Hampshire in our in our little house and um the power was out for I want to say three days at my house uh maybe four and all I had was like my Blackberry phone this is years ago that I would charge at work and then I would hope that it would oh I think I might have had I might have had some rudimentary um battery charger for it um but like uh all i had at home was a wood burning stove that i would have to come home and stoke and get really hot and leave the cold that's kind of cozy yeah it's kind of cozy and i was by myself it wasn't great i remember driving all the way down to manchester which is like a 20 minute ride with no bad weather looking for um flashlights or batteries oh manch vegas everything was sold out you couldn't get uh i didn't need a show snow shovel whoa i didn't need a snow shovel

or snow snuvel um and i uh i i blame i blame the vaccine um but uh you just couldn't get anything you couldn't get yeah if i seem more if i seem more trackable today it's because i got i'm just asking questions i'm just asking questions um anyway even though that was like a whole ordeal that was a huge pain in the ass in my memory it was a nice cozy thing that i just had to get through you know yeah there is something like when when lives are lost or in danger because of this stuff obviously that's not a good cozy feeling but generally speaking a lot of these snow type of events tend to be kind of manageable and everybody sort of feels like they're in it together i feel like yesterday we you know you're out there shoveling your snow you wave it in the

neighbor who's shoveling their snow like whatever well and also back before we all had this remote work kind of thing going i remember years ago um there was you might have you and i might have been working together at cairo i'm not sure how this came together but my memory is that like it just dumped it was a feet of snow and i didn't come in for the show i think it was like i think it was literally one of those things where like we'll just have whoever's there cover or something i just remember it was i was at i was at the house in seattle carrie and i were there we made a massive fire a massive fire and then just started drinking champagne at like noon and it was just snowing and snowing and snowing and we're getting progressively a little more tipsy and we're just like stoking this huge fire and like you know they're just there is a again if you're lucky enough to have a home and to have access to you know heat or a wood stove or whatever it is there's a certain coziness and also just the like i said this is all pre-pandemic because the pandemic was this just for like two straight years but before that it used to be the case that we'd all be running around living our lives going to work and then every once in a while mother nature in the winter would say nah you're all just staying home today and we're just going to figure it out and that was that kind of weird force majeure of coziness was kind of great you know

what i remember i don't remember the you taking a day or whatever off um but i do remember that snowstorm because i lived on capitol hill at the time and i was producing that show and um for those who know the area this will make sense for others just go along with it here there's a like there was no way first of all for me to drive in the snow but capitol hill is literally on a pretty steep hill in the city and to get down to east lake what i did was i had to take a bus that dropped me off sort of in north capitol hill and then i had to traverse down those longest stairs in the world i remember counting them one time dave ross used to park his car at the top of these stairs to force himself to get exercise after work every day and there's like a ridiculous a ridiculous number of stairs you kind of go under the highway and it's not uh it's not bad it's not super grotty or anything but there's just so many of them and the first time i ever traversed them was when the bus dropped me off at the top of them and then you know in like Like, the city's barely keeping the streets plowed, let alone keeping those stairs cleared. I remember just, like, with a mittened hand or a gloved hand. Just trying to not completely fall. Yes, yes. Oh, man. But even that, you know, you get through it.

Speaking of cozy things and Christmas presents, I'm dealing, Andrew, with a Christmas present-related addiction. And it's not pretty. I call cakes big old cookies. You know how we had that family get-together last week at my sister Hannah's house? well my daughter who is just it's very interesting to our listeners who have adult children will be able to identify with this it's just very interesting when your kids are full freaking adults just with skills that you don't have or know about like addy's really a good cook now and really a good baker and just like shows up at this party with boxes of cookies for everyone And they're in these like cute boxes that are just like, like you'd get from a bakery, like with a clear plastic, you know, kind of like sleeve on the top so you can see the cookies. And they're these very elaborate but delicious kind of like sort of shortbread, but they've got like a jam in the middle, either like a pear jam or a raspberry jam. And they've got these cute little labels on it. It was just like so thoughtful. And she gave me a box of cookies. And I'm not a big sweets person, but I made the mistake the other day of having one of them. And they're like the best cookies I've ever had in my life. And now my thing is in the morning, I'm having cookies for breakfast with my coffee, like a maniac. And it's like this is why I don't usually have this kind of stuff around because I would have been fine in my life with no cookies this week. But now that they're here and now that I have my little tradition, I'm knocking back like three cookies with my coffee every morning.

You know, it's funny. I don't eat a lot of sugar in my life, at least not a lot of. Let me put it this way. I probably eat a lot of sugar. I don't eat a lot of sweets. I'm not super drawn to cookies and cakes and pies and big old. I call cakes big old cookies big old cookies um but uh you know when it's around in the house I availed myself of it usually late at night when my willpower is at its uh nadir right and the past couple of weeks we've had people giving us um you know various kinds of Christmas cookies as gifts and what have you and so we've had them around and the other day I think it was a couple of days ago I almost mentioned this to you on the phone I woke up in the morning and I had such a craving for orange juice which we did have some in the fridge and we usually keep orange juice in the fridge but you know i'll have a little bit maybe on a weekend morning or something i don't i'm not in a habit right now of having orange juice every morning but in the morning i was just like oh i need some orange juice and then i think i realized oh because i've been eating more sugar and like when the body has more sugar the body wants more sugar you know and i think that probably eating those cookies at night or in the evenings and then waking up the body's like hey where's my sugar fix i was like

man it really you can really track that stuff yeah i mean i like i said uh generally speaking i'm not i have no problem kind of swerving on sweets normally i can't swerve on salty food i i swerve into salty food but if you if you i mean i also felt a certain responsibility because clearly she'd put a lot of work into these things and so i was like well you know i'll just have one and i can you know just then i can tell her hey i enjoyed the cookies and then i had one i was like damn that's really good actually so now now it's like a whole thing um so i am like i know we don't talk about this stuff the way we used to in the early days of the show but i i really but the nice thing is i'm going to palm springs where i'm going to be like shirtless a lot for the next week after christmas so that's you know this is good timing for me but i was going to say once we enter the new year i know this is what everybody does i know the gyms on january 2nd are ridiculous and And we all make these – a lot of us make these kind of oaths, and then we don't keep them. But I'm really – I feel like since I moved to Portland, I have really, really let myself go. And it's because I do this. I intermittent fast a lot of the time, but then I just eat ridiculous amounts of food at night. So I don't think it's a net real positive for me. And I also just like – I don't need to go back to where I'm like obsessively counting my carbs. But there's something in the middle. There's something in the middle of like total denial for myself. And I'm eating three cookies for breakfast every day. There's got to be there's got to be a healthy middle path for me. And maybe maybe 2023 will be the year of the healthy middle path for old burbs.

By the way, I don't want to step out of my lane or tell you something that you already know, but when you're driving up here, assuming that you are able to drive up here this weekend, and if you hit a part of the highway that seems especially salty, you're supposed to swerve into the salty foods. That's what they say. That's what you do.

As soon as you start to lose control, swerve into the salt. Have you ever actually executed that move in your life? It is so scary and counterintuitive. I've done it before, steering into the slide.

I've lost control of my car I don't know I mean I must have I mean I think so a big part of growing up in Ohio is just getting through streets and hills that you're really not supposed to like I can't think of a specific moment of doing that but I always prided myself on just being pretty chill in the snow and when you lose control of the car and I don't mean like like Genevieve had some stuff where she lost control in the car really kind of spun across several lanes I mean stuff can get really scary i mean like if you're on a um if you're in a residential street or something with a hill even yesterday coming out of my own neighborhood i was waiting for traffic to slow down on a busy street so i could take a right into traffic and by the time traffic slowed down enough for me to pull out i had been sitting there so long that the street wouldn't i was just spinning my tires i had to like put my car in reverse and go back to the bottom of a very small incline by the way so i i feel like i'm fine with that stuff i have one strong memory in college of being in my minivan and that this is the nice thing about having a I adored my 1986 Dodge Caravan but I also didn't really care about it too much because it was an 86 Dodge Caravan so I remember like driving in this college town my college town and like being at the top of this hill and then coming down to the stoplight at the bottom and realizing oh I have no control over this and just having to like slow my car down almost Flintstone style just by just by dragging the right side of the van into the snow bank on the right until I slow down so yeah it's just I think the important thing is just to keep your head about you well it's

a game of momentum right like that's the whole thing is like do I have enough momentum to get up this hill because if I get halfway

up and i run out or if you sometimes you'll be at an like you said at an intersection and it's like i have to go into this intersection i have to basically try to time it so there are no cars so i can kind of all basically do a california stop because sometimes if you're stopping that's when you get screwed because of the snow and everything i've had it happen before i also think i'm a i'm i'm a pretty um i'm not particularly a feared of driving in the snow i've done it a fair amount and it's not something that stresses me out but i will say there i've been in those moments where you start to lose control you're on a downhill and it's not I've never been in a situation where I'm nervous for my safety I'm nervous for my insurance costs like you start to slide and you're like oh crap am I just gonna like am I gonna just like basically take the side mirror off five cars here on like Queen Anne or whatever but I like so in those cases a couple of times because the first instinct of course if you're starting to slide let's say to the right is you want to turn your wheels to the left that's just like what our brain tells us to do and it that does no good and then you have to like override that manually and go i'm going to turn my wheels towards the direction i don't want to be going so that i can get control again and then straighten it out and it's um it's like i said very counterintuitive i had to do it a couple of times but um anyway hopefully this will none of this will apply to my trip up to seattle tomorrow morning i also think a quick end note on

that i also like that i drive a manual transmission i think that really helps when you're like as i was coming down you probably know this part of the city luke kind of by that um by that park where they play a disc golf you know that little side street i don't know what it is but i'm heading down towards meridian kind of towards the highway there um anyway it was a small i guess not incline but decline towards the main street i'm on the small this is just like two days ago i'm on the small decline but it didn't occur to me that the road was so icy that i wouldn't be able to stop normally until it was a little bit too late and i started to break i was like oh and then i was able to just sort of downshift a little bit and then also like i sort of this is not recommended but in the moment it seemed like the right thing to do and it was i was able to kind of feather my handbrake a little bit and there's something about a manual transmission car that just gives you a lot

more options when you're starting to slide a little bit yes absolutely okay um okay let's take a quick break and then when we come back uh we will talk about i think this may be one of those times andrew where one of those rare times where you and i have a different take on a particular topic that's not true that happens a lot but i think in the news a lot of the times particularly if it comes to politics and stuff you and i are fairly similarly inclined but we were talking a little bit about this george santos story before the show and i couldn't believe that you said you were fine with him lying on his resume that was that was a surprise to me i think it's the american dream uh-huh sure is so we'll talk about that in a moment here on tbtl hey let's thank some of our daily donors who are making today's episode possible folks like Laura Cotty's of Portland, Oregon. Maybe Laura can give you a write-up here. Yeah, Laura, what do you know about snow chains? How about Michael Piacchatelli of Gig Harbor, Washington? How about it? Thank you, Michael. How about it, Michael? Hope you're taking advantage of that Whole Foods offer where they pay your toll going across Highway 16. I was talking to somebody recently about I was at a Christmas party and they grew up over on the Olympic Peninsula and said they remembered. Now, this probably won't mean a ton to you, Andrew, but, you know, Highway 16, which goes through Gig Harbor and goes. That's where the Narrows Bridge is, that big old bridge. Oh, yeah. I call the Narrows a big old bridge. And that famously was the bridge that was galloping Gertie. I don't know if you've seen the original version, which was like that old black and white footage of like a bridge that's in the wind and it's just rollicking. And anyway, this guy was saying he remembered when Highway 16 had stoplights when like, which is just wild to think about because it's like a 10 lane freeway now. Like it's a massive, massive roadway. And he said, oh, yeah, when I was growing up, it was like you would have to stop. It was like a highway had stoplights and then you would go across this little bridge and whatever.

So I'm a little confused, though. So we're talking Gig Harbor area here. Why did I always think it was called the Tacoma Narrows Bridge? It is called the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Oh, but it's not anything to do with Tacoma.

Well, it's near Tacoma. Oh, it is. You drive through Gig Harbor and Tacoma are pretty close together. Oh, OK. You're driving through Tacoma and then you hang, depending on what direction you're coming from, you make a turn around the Tacoma Dome. And and then you're on Highway 16. So it's the general area is Tacoma. The specific area is Gig Harbor.

I'm so bad with like any of the kind of islands or the peninsulas around here because I never really go to them. And so I just always picture everything way north of me, not way south of me. I'm just terrible with that stuff.

Yeah, I am finally, Andrew, two years in or whatever it's been, finally starting to have some semblance of a mental map of Portland. Oh, yeah. And it's very sad that it's taken me this long. But, like, for the very first time when I'm driving around, I don't have to have ways on constantly. Like, I have a general sense of what the northeast, south, and west is, kind of. And people in Portland, because Portland is divided in a very simple way from, like, so, you know, the river, the Willamette River, is the east-west boundary. So if you're on the east side of the Willamette River, you're in, you know, you're east and west is west. And then north and south is Burnside. So if you're north of Burnside, you're in north Portland or you'd be near the northeast or northwest. But people in Portland love to just throw around these. Maybe it just feels pronounced to me because I'm not from here. People are like, oh, where'd you get dinner? Oh, we were down in southeast. And like I have no visual idea of what that means. Or like people are just always – I feel like people in Portland are always using these reference points that mean nothing to me. oh why'd you go over there when you were trying to head to northwest you were heading to slab town then why did you stop in a goose hollow it's like i don't know i just moved here i don't know where anything is i was looking who am i fighting with right now yeah but anyway i am finally starting to be able to like realize oh if i'm going over here and then i'm gonna go there then i might just take this road because whatever like i can feel it i can feel this old brain Which is mostly made out of cookies And monopilova vodka I'm feeling it's a few new synapses Start to fire when it comes to the map Of Portland

It's hard to do because the more we use our phones The more our brains don't have to learn And that's definitely true for me

I was always bad with this stuff And I'm especially bad now But you're right it's like a total Abdication of any kind of Mental responsibility to know where stuff is But the problem with that is Like, you know, Waze will have trouble sometimes. There are just days where it just, for some reason, I don't know if it's just like the software is down or something, but it won't find a GPS signal. And it'll just be like in red at the top. That's what I always use is Waze. And at the top, it'll be like no GPS found or something. And I know that I have service. My phone is working. It's just Waze is being weird. And it's like on those days, I'm like, I've made a terrible mistake not knowing where anything is. Thank you, Michael, by the way. Thanks also to Rachel Andrusiak, who's in Kalamazoo, Michigan. That's fun. That's my next project, Mentally Mapping Kalamazoo, Michigan. Is that a – is Kalamazoo – is that a tribe? Is that a Native American name? I wonder what the origin of Kalamazoo is.

I'm not sure. It's a great word. It's really fun to say Kalamazoo. I always think it sounds like – I was going to say earlier, it sort of sounds like a musical instrument. And I'm like, oh, that's probably because it's kind of close to kazoo. And those are fun. And it's almost like a Kalamazoo. It's like if a kazoo is a toy, the Kalamazoo is the more serious version of it that the adults play at the...

The Boston Pops have one Kalamazoo. And you kind of wonder, like, what does the guy do the whole song when he's waiting to blow his Kalamazoo? And then it all sounds... Yeah, it's like, wow, that's much easier than being, like, first chair violin or someone who's, like, really got to play every note. Anyway, thanks, Rachel. Thanks also to Allie Lenna of Seattle, Washington. Or maybe Leanna. Thanks, Allie. Seattle, that's another fun place to say.

I live near there, so I kind of know that area well. Somewhere between Gig Harbor and Linwood.

Somewhere between Gig Harbor and Linwood, yes. Thanks, Allie. Thanks to Daniel Lennon of Portland, Oregon. Another possible ride for me north. Daniel, are you heading to Seattle? Plus one. Can I jump on? people that's well i mean i'm about to say something that i immediately realized probably how much privilege is encoded and what i'm about to say but like you know i was people will sometimes be like there are a whole message boards just like i need to get to seattle is anyone driving to seattle i'll pay for half of the gas now i have the privilege of just having a car that i can take and i guess a lot of times when people do that it's um maybe because they don't have a car or something but that's a boy i'll tell you what that right there forget the actual safety question about that like you're riding with a stranger just the social safety of that like i can there's not much i could imagine wanting to do less than riding and i'm not this is not a reflection on daniel daniel literally will accept a ride from you later today if you want to give me one but like can you imagine getting in a car with someone you don't know and then like going on a three-hour drive or something Thank you.

My uncle was my dad's business partner, and for a brief period of time, I believe in the late 90s, they hired a salesperson. Usually they kind of handled their sales stuff themselves, a very small company, but they hired a sales guy who was a really nice guy, and he had those hallmarks of a salesperson who's working in that kind of industry, which is just like he was kind of a bigger guy. I feel like he always wore sweaters, had a mustache, sort of a blonde mustache, and always just easy with a smile and a clap on the back.

By the way, he was probably 34. Yeah, I know. You know what I mean? He was probably younger than me. He seems so old to you. He was probably like 36.

I was in college at the time, but yeah, I do wonder. You're right. He might have been maybe in his 40s. That is interesting to think. I can't remember his name right now, but it's interesting to think that that guy was potentially younger than I am now. But anyway, there was a it's probably good. I don't remember his name because I don't want this going getting back to him. But I remember my uncle Frank and him had to take a road trip, I think, to I don't know, Michigan or something. Not that far, like a three to five hour road trip or something for business. And, you know, everything is fine. They're chatting, whatever. But then when the conversation died down, he was a whistler. He just whistled or sang or, like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I remember my uncle talking about how long that trip seemed. Oh, I bet.

Yeah, that's – I hope I don't do that subconsciously. I do enjoy whistling. I don't know if maybe I'm doing that and there's nobody in the cart. Oh, that's true.

I do hear you whistling before the show, usually, if you have your mic open but you're away, like, if you're huddling around.

I'm usually just whistling at gals that are walking down the street.

Oh, yeah. That's my classic. I call that the Wheat Woo. Yeah, that's what they, I mean, it's called the Wheat Woo. You didn't come up with that.

Yeah, exactly. I get no credit for that, and I should. Thanks also to Aaron Moiso of Nampa, Idaho. I always have trouble with Nampa because I feel like Napa, I've known a lot about Napa, California. Well, just that it exists, and then, of course, there's the Napa know-how. Napa auto parts. You don't hear as much about Nampa. No, but it is Wime country. that's that's a solid spoof my friend maybe the best spoof we've had in a little while thank you aaron for facilitating that happening uh thank you to all of our donors today for making tbtl possible hello and welcome to top story all right um there's some kind of some ins and outs of this top story, I'll try to keep them mostly straight. There's a guy named George Santos who ran for Congress. He's a Republican, shocker, ran for Congress in New York, and he claimed to have graduated from Baruch College. He claimed to, let's see, what were some of the other things? There's a bunch of stuff on his resume, organizations that he said he was associated with things that he had done which it turns out pretty much none of it was true or at least none of it can be verified none of the like brute college that he didn't go here these other organizations that he said uh he was you know working for or whatever all of it is kind of it seems to be fabricated he also i think he must have lived in brazil previously and he's got some uh he was like in legal trouble in brazil for possible embezzlement he's got a pretty checkered past. And what's amazing was he won his seat in Congress. So he will be the Republican congressman from this part of New York. And it was only after this that I think it was the New York Times eventually dug into this guy, George Santos's background a little bit and figured out, oh, yeah, he's been kind of lying about this stuff. So then people started saying, well, well, why didn't somebody report on this sooner? For instance, why didn't the new york times which is a multi-billion dollar company and is you know it does have a local section i mean it is the new york times granted we read it all the way out here in portland but it's a you know on like nominally they're responsible to report on new york as well or at least you know that's where they're based and so michael barbaro the host of uh the daily which you know they don't play in portland anymore i feel like i'm they play that uh today explained which is executive produced by our friend and TBTL supporter Amina Alsadi. Yeah, that's a good show. I actually really like Today Explained. It's a good show. I also thought The Daily was a really good show.

Is he definitely still hosting that? What's the deal with that? I don't know. Whenever I happen to catch it, I do not –

Is it Sabrina Tavernisi now or something? I think so.

I hear that.

Oh, maybe he's not there anymore. I'm not sure if he's still doing that gig.

I'm not sure.

It's very possible that he's started onto something else. But I do think The Daily is a really good show as well, and I think Today Explained is an awesome program. But it's funny how one little change if your local public radio.

station makes a change this is why i've never felt i've never felt that um essential to people's lives with any radio show i've ever done because like you know people will be like oh i love that show and then their commute changes by one hour and then they don't they're not in the car anymore and they're like it completely leaves their life and they're completely fine you're talking about

radio specifically here right because i don't want to yes i don't want to and i don't want to toot our own horn but i also don't want to downplay the relationship that folks have with tbtl because some people were writing some very nice things in slack today absolutely no i i mean i'm i'm

humbled and honored that people feel connected to what you and i are doing andrew and this thing but i just mean like when you're over the air radio broadcast and then something changes about i i feel like a lot of what makes radio shows popular is what time of day are they on sure yeah are you on when people are in their car and and then you know if their commute changes a lot of times people don't then rearrange their life to still hear the radio show they just start hearing something different i guess my point is i was really into the daily and then opb put on today explained and now i'm just really into today explained because it's like on in the car when i'm driving around at 6 p.m but all of that is to say michael barbaro who works for the times was tweeting and i guess this was kind of in response to a certain amount of criticism about hey why didn't the new york times figure out that this guy who's running for united states congress from the state of new york um was lying about his resume and what michael barbaro said was to everyone asking why reporters didn't dig up the george santos story before the election dot dot dot a fair question dot dot dot ask yourself when you last paid for your local newspaper like news day or on Long Island, which covers it day in and day out. That was the tweet from Michael Barbaro. The headline in Defector was, New York Times reporter suggests entitled reader culture has become dangerous and unacceptable. This is written by Laura Wagner, I believe, over at Defector. And Laura's point is that this is bullshit, that Michael Barbaro is basically blaming people people who expect to get free content or people who don't want to pay for a local paper like Newsday and therefore are going to have less local reporting and less uncovering of things like George Santos. His point, I guess, is since we think of media and news as being free now, we're getting what we pay for. And that's why the story wasn't uncovered. And he's getting roasted on defector for saying that sounds like you are more in the uh defector camp on this one

yeah and i'll be honest with you i haven't been able to read the actual defector article my subscription lapsed last month and i put that money towards a different subscription or pale danny o'neill's um podcast and newsletter which i've been enjoying um but um so i can't so i don't know exactly what they said and i have i don't want to you know you mentioned that we have different takes on this i don't want to overplay my take because i don't think i'm in a great position to talk about this i'm not super well read up on it but i saw his tweet and i saw some people reacting to it i think on instagram and kind of or actually you know what no i saw people reacting to his tweet on mastodon luke it's oh it's happening parker malloy was i kind of wrote a critical little piece about his his approach to this and the thing is and like i know that he technically is our colleague right doesn't uh american public media distribute that show still um and i think he looks up to me in a lot of ways and it would break his heart uh to have any kind of what is the word you always use internecine fighting is that the right word there um yes no but i mean he has a pomposity to him that i find very difficult very very difficult to swallow and this isn't the first time and i apologize i don't have it at my fingertips because this is a bullshit argument but I remember another time that he had tweeted something out that was sort of similar to this this is going back a couple of years and it was very finger waggy towards the news consumer no you know what it was finger waggy towards young journalists I feel like um he just sort of seems like you know he's at the top of his game there at the New York Times and he's a very well respected journalist for good reason but he's also not infallible like with the whole again i don't want to give the details of this because i can't handle them but like you know with the you can't handle the details i can't handle the truth because i don't know it is how that was originally written i believe but um you know like with the caliphate scandal and some bad journalism there but then i believe his initial response was pretty defensive about that yet he'll be very kind of um he'll kind of i i feel like sit up on his his throne of journalism and tell young journalists and news consumers like the... the way it used to be or the right way it is. And I'm saying he sort of seems to have a kind of a disconnect to kind of the real world. And he just kind of reminds me of a certain kind of guy, you know, who's really kind of reading his own press releases of his import. Right. And the tone of this tweet just sort of, it struck me. It struck me as like kind of blaming the wrong people. Like he works for the New York times, like the New York times has a budget. Like this is a New York story. Like, and I literally pay for the New York times. Many, many people do During a time that is terrible for news The New York Times has a pretty large operating budget And they do good work I'm a fan of the New York Times I'm not turning on the New York Times I feel like a lot of progressives are starting to feel like the New York Times

Is just kind of losing the thread I don't feel that way I'm a proud supporter of the New York Times I just did not like the tone of this But it's probably also because of a lot of context About where it was coming from

Laura Wagner's point in Defector was basically that the New York Times has the resources to report this kind of stuff, and they missed the story, and the criticism of them missing the story is valid, and Michael Barbaro blaming consumers for not supporting things like Newsday is – that's a very thin-skinned response. room i don't know i mean i guess i think it's a i think he's raising an interesting issue now maybe he's raising it out of defensiveness but i do think that it's a fair question of like sort of you know what is the media landscape going to look like or i mean what does it look like when you you have basically a few you've got basically you've got pretty much the new york times and the washington post and then some local papers that are just hanging by a thread it would seem always and we just don't have there's just not a lot of money going towards the you know local like on the ground people you know beat reporters that cover a certain area a lot and really know the story they're like there's just not a lot of money going towards it anymore and does it i don't know whose quote-unquote fault it is but i do think that it's it's it's an interesting thing to kind of think about like when you don't when you don't have paper and i don't know what news day's bottom line is i'm just guessing it's funny you mentioned like listening to whatever como's called now you know earlier in the show that's the same kind of thing like you know i wonder how many reporters whatever that thing is called now has like because you know i used to work at the same cluster of radio stations where como was back in the day and they had like 10 reporters and those 10 reporters all they did all day was try to find stories in seattle that were of interest And, you know, like that's really useful to a society. And it's like I do feel they're certainly wistful for those days. And I'm you know, I'm I think it's a reasonable conversation to have about what is the impact on on civic life, if you will, when we don't have local report as many local reporters able to do their job because no one wants to spend the money to read it. And I'm not blaming the readers, but I just mean, I don't know. I guess we'll never go back to those days.

I think for me, it's it really is the source of this comment. You know, like I think that if somebody from a small local paper that is in a different part of the country had said that everything that you said is absolutely valuable and makes sense and finally recognize finally your value. That's the that's the vaccine talking. I don't I don't value you. No, I I just think that when you're talking about a story that comes from New York and you work for the New York Times and you're somehow abdicating that. I think I said that a weird way, but I'm just going to keep moving. But you're abdicating that. I just feel like, really, you're the one who's going to stick your neck out on that one. Like you work for the New York Times. This was a New York story. Like, maybe the source on that, on this somewhat haughty comment seemed, I don't know, kind of boggles my mind. I mean, that that does make sense, right?

Yes. I also think that there is I don't read The New York Times cover to cover every day. I mean, I subscribe to it. I read it fairly extensively, I think. But like, I don't I don't live in New York and I don't get like the you know, I don't get the print edition of The Times. Maybe there is, you know, maybe the local section is more robust or the New York section is more robust than I'm remembering. But I do feel like the New York Times, I mean, look, if you're going to be from a city in America that is storied and is considered a cool city, New York is kind of the top of the heap. But even so, I feel like the New York Times doesn't think about it, doesn't think of itself as a New York paper. That's the main thing. They think of themselves as a national news organization that is sort of setting the news agenda for the whole country. And it's almost like to go out on Long Island and cover a local race for Congress is almost like beneath the dignity of the New York Times. Again, there's a metro section. They do write about what happens in the city of New York and they write about what happens in Albany and a little bit. But it's much more. I think that I think there's a certain amount of, again, the New York Times thinking of itself as the paper of record and not the paper that's like breathless. That's like let's leave that to Newsday. Let's leave that to these You know these other papers that are A little bit less you know Important with a capital I to the Rest of the country than we are

Yeah right Can I can I actually sorry I heard you transitioning but there's actually one thing on my mind That's sort of related to supporting journalism You love I told You about a year ago I signed up For the magazine Harper's You know I love Harper's magazine And I used to read it like kind of when I was in college or maybe post-college I'd pick one up at the stand and it just I was feeling very nostalgic for those days of me wandering around Boston or Cambridge with a Harper's magazine just looking for a place to sit down and get a cup of coffee and a Bloody Mary and dig into Harper's index or what have you you know like it's just a very specific time so anyway I um got a subscription last year and I have I enjoyed it but I was not I just was not keeping up with the magazines every month like I should have been so I'm letting my subscription lapse uh and just kind of knowingly which is a bummer because i'll lose access to the archives and everything but anyway i just got an email since we've been doing the show from the u.s postal service that shows me a digitized photo of what's in my mailbox today yes i get that too i love ever since i moved i don't know if i thought it was going to end eventually maybe it will after six months but anyway i'm looking at the latest note that they sent me because you know they start sending you like warning letters like you're gonna you know your subscription is about to lapse like you know and they get more and more sort of like frantic and then i got one that was like from the desk of the publisher andrew i don't know how it's come to this or something like that and now i'm looking at an envelope that is waiting for me in my mailbox right now that says in big font above my name and address we are sorry it came to this period and i'm like jesus christmas harpers back off a

little bit i love jesus christmas harpers a show title jesus christmas harpers that's where i do all my shopping can i take this from like a kind of a whatever you want to call it uh fairly non-soul-crushing conversation to a fairly soul-crushing place when it comes to mail okay this is interesting so i get that i get that same thing that you do it's like um informed delivery is what it's called which by the way sounds like something you need to sign before like they can donate your organs but now the guy who used to own this house that i'm working on uh still gets mail there occasionally and i'm scrolling through i'm trying to see if i can find this because i get because and it's super convenient because i don't live up there yet most of the time it's like i can see like if i'm getting a check sent to me from some side gig i've done or whatever um i i can see that it's up there and i know to you know make sure to try to get up there sooner rather than later so it's a very convenient service but this guy who used to own the house that i live in also uh was in or is in the nra andrew and i am trying let's see here god i get so i get one of these emails every day so this is taking me a long time to scroll through there was one that was from the nra that they sent me a picture of that i was so grossed out by it just said in like on the envelope in like size 85 font it just said gun confiscation and it's just clearly meant to tell some nra uh moron that their guns are being confiscated which is very obviously not actually happening but it's just to get you to open the envelope and then donate more money to wayne lapierre and it just was like such a gross i mean first of all just a gross organization but it was just such a gross way to scare people and it was such an obvious External sign of how How much they use fear In their membership to Make more money for Wayne LaPierre It's just it was really upsetting To me to see like it ruined my whole day And now I'm trying to ruin your day with that

No I know that feeling nothing Can get to me today Luke But yeah I know that feeling Because you've got Bill Gates' tracking Information in your body By the way this is No I don't think you said anything about garbage right now my brain just i'm loopy man do share i just share i got a note from the city um earlier this week and i gotta give them credit uh i think they hit my phone with a text i think they hit my email um and i feel like they got me a third way too oh oh yeah the the tracking mech And the vaccine telling me that they get you that because of the snowy weather, all garbage pickup service this week is being pushed back by a day. And so my usual garbage pickup is on Wednesday. Well, I put it out on Wednesday night and they pick it up on Thursday morning when I got this notification that said you can put your garbage out a day later than usual. I didn't trust it. I thought, well, I'll put it out there the usual day anyway, and I'll just keep it out there for a couple of days because I'd rather err on the side of caution. And I'm just now remembering with all my running around yesterday, I did not do that. So I'm really hoping I just had an intrusive thought. Like, first of all, I'm not going to one thing about the city. And I know I said a lot of nice things is they don't update the app. So even though they'll post things to Twitter or their website saying, hey, there's a change in service. the app itself that you sign up for still gives you the notifications on the wrong day so tonight I will not get that little reminder to take my garbage out and I'm just now realizing that this is living in my head a little bit I feel like we should probably just stop down the show I'll turn this gear into more of a field kit and we can record me as I go out and take my bins to the curb and hope I'm not too late

I just have to say one last thing about my mail which is that and this is kind of bad probably but because this dude is in the nra and gets mail like gun confiscation notice there's nothing that makes me happier than throwing away mail that's coming for him hoping that it's like vitally important like a check i mean i've never opened any of his mail but i'm not kidding it delights me when something seems like oh this seems important this seems serious i don't know what this is this this whatever this is he probably needs this and i'm throwing it right in the fucking garbage like that's some kind of weird acting out by me because of what I assume about this person because of them being in the NRA. I like the idea

of you also being a member of certain organizations that you get envelopes in the mail that say gun confiscation exclamation point. Everything about it is exactly the same except the tone in which you read it. Same words. Different meaning. Gun confiscation. And you have one. Yay gun confiscation.

No I get one from you know like whoever like the Who's the opposite of the NRA these days Like The ACLU I mean I know that the ACLU doesn't work on gun rights Necessarily but let's just say the ACLU Is to us libs the way the NRA is to Is to the conservatives I get one from the ACLU Saying they're giving guns away

Right exactly

That'll light a fire What giving guns away

It's so funny that you mention that I feel like I apologize the show is becoming more and more of me telling you about emails that i just received minutes ago but literally minutes ago because i um i think i might have switched credit cards and so therefore i don't actually donate to the aclu anymore but i i was you know giving monthly for a couple of years and so i'm still in there doug honig so i'm oh my god doug honig how's that for a blast from the local media past He was the head of the Washington State ACLU. I wonder if he still is. But anyway, I get a lot of emails from the ACLU, and a lot of them come from, like, I believe the person who is at the – what would his position be? The CEO is Anthony something, I believe. And they try to make these emails really look like they're coming directly from Anthony or, you know, like they have ways of making you open it. I got an email. Let me find this thing. It literally came in about five minutes ago at 11.07. um the it came from the the email address was alicia's iphone and the subject line is andrew just making sure you saw this email it doesn't say aclu anywhere in there it's like alicia's iphone something to me andrew just makes i mean is this something from 8pm and i open it up and it's alicia's iphone at aclu.org that's very smart they're like you know they're learning

yeah they're figuring out ways what kind of an organization andrew would send emails out to

supporters seeking money anthony romero is the executive director sorry i stumbled on that you

know we got we got me today because we have an email that's going out to some folks um to various folks and it is a fundraising email from tbtl but it's from our boss beth perlman and because our boss beth perlman also reaches out to us sometimes because she's our boss or a supervisor i i just saw in the um in the inbox beth at apm and i was like oh we're in trouble and then i opened i was like oh no this is from us this is this is from our company uh looking to raise money you know for apm by way of email but like i got got by our own mass email today yeah that's a pretty funny email yeah beth has a great sense of humor i gotta give her total credit that's all we ask for in this come is that our bosses think it's funny that I don't do any of the training. It's a simple request.

Well, looky here, Luke.

It's the final Blurs Day segment of 2022. Nice. We're doing really good work this year, everybody. Thanks for sending in your Blurs Days. We will resume the other side of the Winter Games in early January. You can send your Blurs Days to me, Andrew, at tbtl.net. Put Blurs Day in the subject line. This one came from Steve, who says, Last week you acknowledged my wife Mia's birthday When my kid emailed you about it And said I'd probably forget to write in Well I didn't forget I just thought I had a little bit more time Can you tell Mia on your next Blur's Day segment that I did write to you If there's anyone deserving of two shoutouts It's my gorgeous wife Mia She's a passionate advocate for worker rights And has been fighting for progressive causes For decades Happy Blur's Day again Mia Steve didn't forget

I was hoping, me as a passionate advocate for TBTL, but we'll also take workers' rights. Yeah, sure. We would also accept workers' rights. Jake says, Stephanie, in Portland, Oregon, you are a magical creature. I can't wait to watch all the musicals with you for your blurs. Next year is a golden slash super blurs, but this year will be golden and super because we are celebrating you. I love you, XOXO hyphen CB. Nice. Do you think CB is a pet name that Stephanie has for Jake? And is it Cuddle Bear?

I don't know the extent of their relationship. I was wondering about that as well because it came from Jake, but it was signed CB. So I'm just going to assume that.

Jake, your new name is Cuddle Bear. Cuddle Bear.

Cuddle Bear. Cuddle Bear. Exactly. I was trying to think of there's a magical creature that I'm trying to think of the name of and this isn't making the show any better me trying to come up with it on the fly it's not it's not gremlin I would never call Stephanie a gremlin but isn't there what's a I feel like there's some sort of flying creature that is only a centaur I don't think centaurs fly but we'll go with centaur like a

you don't see Stephanie as a half human half horse I do

just majestic I do Actually, do centaurs have wings? Do some of them have wings? Can they fly? That's a pegasus. That's a pegasus.

Let's call Stephanie a pegasus.

Yeah, I like that. Fluffy says, happy birthday to Eric, who lives in Walla Walla, Washington. He was the first 10 that I met in the wild. He is the son of a very good friend of mine. And great. He's a great all-around human. Have a great birthday celebration from Fluffy, pronounced Fluffy. Fluffy spells their first name. It starts off with two Fs. F, F, Fluffy.

Are we getting Blur's Day messages from the one, the only, Gabriel Iglesias, the comedian known as Fluffy? Oh, I don't know. I'm out of my league on this one. One of the highest earning comedians out there. People love Fluffy. Really? I don't know about this. Or maybe there are two Fluffies out there. Thanks. Thanks, Fluff. And thanks, Eric. Happy Blur's Day. Lisa in Bellingham. Oh, our friend Lisa. Yeah. Hi, Lisa. From the Pickleball District, I believe. I will be celebrating my 69th birthday on December 26th with my 11, my daughter and family and my brother and sister-in-law. I haven't spent Christmas and my birthday with my brother since 1991. We were just kids. 30-something year old kids, but still kids. Oh my gosh. I'm not ready for 1991 to be 30 years ago. I know. I didn't think of 91 as being fairly recent. I'm like, yeah, I don't know.

So Genevieve was watching Gremlins the other night. One of the podcasts that she listens to is doing like a recap of it or something. So she dials up the Gremlins and I was not watching it, but I walked into the room at one point and they had an old black and white movie on the TV in some scene. right now gremlins came out in 1984 and i think it was supposed to be like you know there was a reason why in the background they had a black and white movie it was supposed to evoke something right of a time gone by and genevieve said uh that movie is invasion of the body snatchers and i did the math on it and invasion

of the body snatchers was much closer in age to gremlins than gremlins is to 2023 i'm putting that in a very bad way no i know exactly what you're saying and i don't like it exactly gremlins and we did the am i right about this that it's almost 40 years old now if it came out in 20 or if it

came out in 1984 well well yeah it would be nearly it would be 38 years old yeah and body snatchers

That came out, I think, in the late 50s and, yeah, in Gremlins.

There's a lot of examples of that now, which are deeply troubling to me, where it's like, you know, like, I can't think of a good example off the top of my head, but it has to do with music often. And it's kind of like that song when we were growing up, which seemed like it was 100 years old, was actually much more recent to whatever the moment was than, like, Schubert dip is now. Right, exactly. Like, we're 40 years out from a lot of music that seems, that feels to me like, okay, Huey Lewis, Sport, which I'm guessing probably came out in, like, 80, what, 85 or something? I'd guess that, yep. Like, 84, 85. That feels to me like a, not a new album, but it's not, like, a broadside ballad. It's not from the 1930s. Yeah. But, like, it might as well be. Like, it's really a long time ago.

I remember renting that album, a vinyl, from the library as a kid. Huey Lewis Sport? Yes, I did.

Where they're like, are they like standing around a pool table or something, I believe?

Is that the pool table one? I'm not sure. Sport, album, cover. By the way, Griffin. I think Stephanie in Portland might be a Griffin. I like Pegasus. Yeah, that is the one in the billiard hall. But okay, we can go with Pegasus.

I was watching an interesting... We've got to speed through these because I have to go to Ron Tonkin Mazda and get my oil changed here. But I was watching some clip of Huey Lewis recently. Lewis! And he was saying how the... Huey Lewis and the News were so hot in the 80s that the producers of the movie Back to the Future came to him and said, will you write a song for our movie? And he was like, I don't want to write a song called Back to the Future. And they went, we don't care what the song is about. We just want your song in our movie. So he wrote Power of Love. He had just done Power of Love and sent it to them. And they were like, great, it's in the movie. And it has nothing to do with time travel or things like that, things of that nature. Crab Rangoon or things of that nature. But he just was like, I just thought it was funny. I was imagining that the time when Huey Lewis and the News were so hot that movie producers were like, we just have to get some of that in our movie. It doesn't have to have anything thematically to do with Marty McFly. We just need Huey Lewis in the News.

But they also did offer Back in Time Back in Time, right?

They did, and now I don't know if that was in maybe Back to the Future 2 Maybe Or maybe that was back I'm guessing that maybe that was in Back to the Future 2 And by that time, Huey Lewis was like, you know what I like? Printing money So I will happily write He also wrote a song called Flux Capacitor for Back to the Future 3

Sure, yeah He wrote, I need a new lake house for Back to the Future 4, which is one of my favorite Huey Lewis songs. All right. John says, happy Blur's Day to my girlfriend and my favorite person, Ray. I can't wait to have more adventures with you, including this one. We're on together right now. I hope you have a great birthday. With any luck, you'll hear this while we're driving through the snow to Jerry Johnson Hot Springs in Idaho. Whoa. Sounds great. Stay safe out there, guys.

Happy Blur's Day, Ray. Do we think, did Jerry Johnson discover these hot springs, or did he buy them? I think he maintains them. Okay.

I think he has a hose that he has attached to his house that he goes out there.

I wonder who Jerry Johnson was. Yeah, I don't know. That feels like a very new name. I'm reading up. It's a primitive and popular natural hot springs. I feel like Jerry Johnson is a new name for a primitive hot spring.

Yeah, it sort of feels like the Jerry. Here you get the Jerry Johnson promise.

That's right. What's the Jerry Johnson promise? We promise to give you more hot springs for less money Come on down to Jerry Johnson Hot Springs

I just realized I wanted to give you a heads up There is another poem in this week's Blur's Days And it looks like that one is falling to you, Luke

Love it It's from Veronique Who has a poem It's called Sybil's Birthday I'm getting ready for this First, you blurs me Then, I blurs you were just a couple of crazy blursing bosom buddies oh beauteous bestie of mine how i love you so bewitchingly talented exquisite bijou of mine you bemuse those about you with your brilliant light i'm realizing this isn't one of

those rhyming poems.

I was waiting for the rhyme.

You are the buoy in the bewildering sea of this bonkers life. Oh, bother and blast it all. How could I bumble on without you? It is not to blove when I wish you the happiest of blurs days. Aw. Nice. Cute. I think that last part might be a Princess Bride reference. To blave. I think Veronique is saying that They're not too blaving. They're not bluffing when they tell Sybil that they wish them the happiest of Blurs Day.

That's very sweet. Harley says, hey, co-bros. I want to wish my wife Amy a happy Blurs. Thank you for being the best mom to our four beautiful children. And thank you for being my very best friend. I love you, Ames. Power out. Now, I want to tell you one thing about this. I shouldn't say this because I'm seriously, I'm not dunking on Harley here. But this is the this is the importance of having an editor like me. The original line said, thank you for being the best mom to our four beautiful children and my very best friend. And I sort of it sort of sounded like Amy was the mom of Harley's best friend. And so I added some words in there. So I see. See what I'm saying? Why would I bring that up? I don't know. I just wanted people to headless man.

I applaud my work bar. Oh, sometimes those. Oh, that's just a good headline, I guess. There are sometimes, you know, eats, shoots, leaves. Sure. There are times when a well-placed comma or semicolon or some kind of thing is critical in denoting who is being referred to in a situation.

Exactly. So my point is, while we're celebrating Amy, let's take a moment to celebrate me and my editing skills as well. Happy Blur's Day, Amy. Sorry I ruined it.

Speaking of Amy's, this is also an Amy, although it looks like a different spelling. So I'm thinking this is, it's a two Amy Blur's Day. Amy says, I want to wish my five Rockwell a happy 15th birthday. This year, he grew taller than me, slayed in cross country, and started high school. At this very moment, he is experimenting with water balloons and below freezing temperatures. He has a plan to visit Guatemala and work on his Spanish. Rock is one of my favorite people. Love, Amy and Brett. Brett, by the way, who didn't write this, but feels the same way. so happy blurs day rockwell good luck with the espanol yeah i believe we have some voicemails

it's rockwell um the person who came up with the tbtl sandwich i'll look in my um i'll look

in my audio that sounds familiar that rings a vague bell so so it's very possible all right well happy blurs day to everybody out there i hope you're having a fun week uh we are at the end of today's episode of tbtl but i've got some great news for you we will be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you i will possibly be pulled over on the side of the road on interstate 5 somewhere near yelm i don't think i5 even goes through yelm that was a terrible i've driven i5 between portland and seattle many times in my life and i had to pick a city that's

not even on i5 what's wrong with me you didn't want to go with an obvious one and yelm is fun

to say i went so non-obvious that it made no sense i accepted it i was not going to question that Yelm pepper. I self-administered my own booster this morning based on some things I've been reading on the internet, so I've also got noodle

brain. Unfortunately, my noodle brain is a little less noodley than it was before, so if I take a nap now, it feels less justified. Oh, my friend?

My friend, you do not need any justification to take a nap. Take it from me. King Napper. I'll nap for the both of us. Thank you. That's the Jerry Jones promise. Jerry Johnson. Jerry Johnson. Sorry. No, I'm talking about the owner of the Dallas Cow All right. Thanks, everybody. See you tomorrow. Until then, have a great Thursday. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

Hi, Luke and Andrew. My name is Rockwell, and I really, really like the show. so once i was just thinking about tbtl and food then bam i came up with a tbtl sandwich made of tomato bacon turkey and lettuce i hope you mention it in the show no mountain too tall and good luck to all power out