Muse

Okay, Moira, you're up. I just noticed the time. Wow. And you're all very busy, so why don't we reschedule this for two weeks from now, when you're all more prepared. Oh, no. We were done early.

We got plenty of time. Come on, Moira, audition. I would love to learn from a professional singer.

Someone helped me all that long. It should have been you. Someone's arms were big and strong It should have been you I warned you I was lonely But you didn't seem to care, no, no, no But you could have been too stupid I'd have been a heat of woman's tears Woo-do, step and a shankalo And someone loved me all night long It should have, it should have been you You That's the end Wow. That was different.

TBTL. Music is very powerful. Like that Cards for Kids commercial. Before I saw that commercial, I wanted to donate a car to kids. But that song changed my mind.

And that's satire. Right? And that's irony.

and that's coincidence is a metaphor it's a 16-4 with a loop at the hook freeze the bars and mute the quarter tones if it ever feels like we're dragging we're not it's just that kind of tune well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live my name is luke burbank i am your host get on the magic carpet ride coming to you from the hollywood broadcast center right here in beautiful portland oregon where it is actually kind of beautiful out today it's dry i guess we're going to see some unseasonably warm temperatures for a couple of days i feel warm and i'm levitating before another atmospheric river moves through this area i know a lot of folks in california and on the west coast are dealing with that even right now hope you're doing okay wherever you are i am currently hiding here in the broadcast center hiding from

the roomba does this sound like our musical robot like three minutes before we started the show

randy the roomba kicked back on now uh bubbles is not here right now bubbles is at becca's so i know the cat was not responsible but i also know that i already ran that roomba this morning so that thing's got a mind of its own it turned on and started careening around the apartment which is you can hear it on the recording if it's like outside of this office door so i went in the other room to try to get it and it was underneath the bed but like way under there like not unlike a pet that knows you're trying to take them to the vet or something and i just didn't have the energy to crawl on my hands and knees underneath my bed and drag the robot out so I just shut all of the bedroom doors and now it's trapped in there it's going to be the cleanest that carpet in that bedroom has ever been this is going to be probably the most interesting TBTL has ever been as we let the fun begin arrive at episode 3855 in a collector series now we were doing the TBTL winter games the last couple of weeks and of course the news doesn't stop just because we're doing some pre-recorded content

watch the news

because i'm a kid uh so we'll run through some of the stories that happened while we were out today we will uh bring you up to speed on the important news of the world and can you can you verify can you give me some 411 most of it about the cartoon funky winker bean that's the news that the world was glued to as we were out the last couple of weeks uh so we'll talk about that and some other stuff and we'll talk to this guy the longest running hermano of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ship dead ass you high he's andrew walsh and he's joining

me right now good morning my friend good morning luke i worry that i'm jumping the gun here i hope it's okay to take the conversation in this direction right off the bat um but a lot of these top stories that you've put on today's show sheet things that we kind of didn't get to talk about during the winter games, I was sort of assembling my own

list kind of in the back of my head, as I would see headlines and thinking, hey, that's a good TBTL topic. And mostly our lists kind of match up remarkably. Whoa. I have a sense of, I don't know, less shame. But I did see one that I want to lay on you here quickly. I'll give you just the headline. We don't have to go deep here. But did you happen to see that the copyright on the earliest version of Mickey Mouse has finally expired? Did you happen to see that story over the break?

That finally? I thought that happened a long time ago.

No, it's my understanding. And again, first of all, I read this article, well, what feels like four years ago, but it was probably two weeks ago. So it's a, what's the equivalent of windchill when it's about our memories? Right, the feels-like temperature? Yes, exactly. The feels-like date was four years ago, even though it was just a couple of weeks. But Disney has a way and has had a way over the years of really manipulating copyright law so that, you know, because I can't remember exactly what the dates are when you copyright something. that copyright only stands for a certain period of time then it becomes public domain and that is a way of kind of you know letting people create more art and establish things and not just constantly monetize everything um and so somehow disney has avoided letting the copyright expire on mickey mouse but now the earliest mickey mouse not even the one that you probably picture but the very earliest steamboat willie that's the one has finally entered the public domain but there are still a bunch of like little caveats around it you can't use it in a way that would be confusing to the original you'd have to kind of use in a way that is so different than the way they used it like do you remember they did this with um winnie the pooh recently there was some terrible b movie called like winnie the pooh murders people or whatever some horror movie involving winnie the

pooh are we looking at the same internet we are a special version that i don't know about where all the good stories that anything about a winnie the pooh horror core google google winnie the pooh

horror movie or or don't and that was like a way so the the copyright on the earliest version of winnie the pooh also expired i think that was like a year ago or something or maybe more um but like later versions didn't hit public domain so you can't pick you can't portray him carrying a honey pot with like a little red shirt that doesn't quite cover his belly with his signature hat right like that's still copywritten but the idea like the name Winnie the Pooh is now public domain and the ways that you portray him can can you know as long as it doesn't conflict with what they're making money off of so somebody said well nobody would ever confuse Winnie the Pooh the horror movie with the Disneyfied Winnie the Pooh so somebody made a just like a terrible terrible movie in which I believe Winnie the Pooh kills people

But anyway, so now all of this is to say, if we want to make a movie with an early Steamboat Willie, but not have him operating a steamboat or doing anything that would confuse the brand or the trademark, we now have we have access to.

Exactly. If we want to make a slasher film, it's called Steam Knife Willie, and he's going around slaughtering people.

We can now be so dark that could be Steam Friend Willie goes around befriending people. That's weird, though, because I was I was while you were talking, I was Googling the story. And it looks like the the sort of real Mickey Mouse will go into the public domain in 2024. It says the copyright for the earliest version of Mickey Mouse will expire in 2024. What does this mean for the world's most famous mouse? And this is where the this is where the whatever you call it, the little pull quote from the Internet stops. So that's also where my knowledge of this story stops. But it does seem like there's, like you said, kind of different different versions of Mickey Mouse or are entering the public domain during different years and with different levels of what we can actually do, I guess.

Exactly. Yeah, that's right. It isn't quite yet. It is next year, but it's on the horizon. But we can prepare for it because it takes a while to make a steam friend Willie movie. And so we need some time to, like, kind of, you know, get our budget together, start hiring. It's all in the preparation. I don't even know who the best boy or the gaffer is going to be yet. So these are decisions that we're going to have to make.

I have I've never worked on a real film film, but I've worked on a number of, you know, productions, video productions and film productions that have a crew. And I've never heard of someone referred to as the best boy. I don't know what that job actually is on the set. I know what the gaffer is, but the best... Best Boy, I dream of one day working on a production that's large enough that we've got a... And by the way, I would say probably now it's Best Person. I would guess.

I think in the past, like Best Boy, even though it was a gendered term, I don't think it was just given to men. But I do wonder at this stage, like, would you even use that term? I don't know.

Or if you were working on, like, a movie like Air Bud, would somebody be the Goodest Boy?

That's...

Who's my Goodest Boy?

Who's my Goodest Boy?

If I sound a little extra energized this morning, Andrew, it's because I did possibly the most stereotypical thing that you can do this time of year, which is I went to the gym this morning, which I joined the legion of other people who think they're going to actually be different because this arbitrary thing on this calendar has changed to, say, 2023, and now it's New Luke o'clock. Really what happened was I called the gym that I had signed up for during the pandemic. Remember, I kind of got into trying to do my little weird like one man basketball practice deal. And I was sort of having fun with that. And then they they changed the rule to have the mask mandate again in the gym, which I totally respect. But for me, it was difficult for me to be really exerting myself and wearing a mask. So I just went ahead and and kind of shifted what I was doing to like, you know, little jogs outside or something. But I thought, you know, it's 2023. I'm trying to, you know, kind of be a little healthier for the for the foreseeable future. And so I thought I should probably call that gym and see if I've been paying them every month. There's also a way to check probably my bank account, but who has the time? so i called because i put the thing on hold when the mask mandate came back in i had said i'm going to go ahead and pause my account and they said okay um but i had a suspicion that that that was something where like it was going to unpause itself at some point which it did and so i called them up yesterday and they were like oh yeah your account is good to go you are fully and totally signed up and i was like shit so that just means for the last 11 months or whatever i've been paying every month for this gym that i haven't darkened the door of but that made me think this morning or really last night i'll be goddamned if i'm not going to go in there and get more use out of this thing that i've now been paying for for two years or something um so i went this morning and it was a zoo it was as advertised it was like you couldn't find any park well first thing that happened was i went to this is a chain of gyms whatever it's 24 hour fitness i don't think anyone's going to show okay yeah that's mine too yeah and i signed when i signed up for this however long ago it was again because this is how my brain works i thought you know there's a couple different kinds of memberships one is you just join a club a specific location and one is like a regional membership and a number of the 24-hour fitnesses here in portland have basketball facilities and i was thinking like you never know man i might just be in some i might be in this part of town i want to slide in for some hoops or go over to that part of town and and i'm just a super maximizer so if there's an account

quick question you said it's just regional it's not universal because like i i've had the 24-hour fitness membership for i don't know like a decade now i i've never had to change i've lived in different states so you can just go into any i know that there are sport memberships where some of the facilities are slightly nicer so you need to pay a little bit more for the sport one but are you sure that it's it's regional like that it's not just like the sport thing it's a utica

thing huh okay um well no the reason i know is because i'll tell you in a minute that involved me paying somehow more money to pay less money but the way it works around here is so are you so when you've moved from like la or whatever up did you have to register at um the like the the 24-hour fitness in seattle you started going to i mean did you have to say anything to them when you walked in or did you just walk in punch in your number and just go to the treadmill i've

never had any the only issues that i've ever had when i was going in la seattle whatever i never had to i just check in punch in my number as usual the only thing that complicated things was they and again maybe this has changed but there were two tiers there was just like your average 24-hour fitness and then something they had called 24-hour fitness sport and that was supposed to be slightly nicer i can tell you from experience that whatever they used to do to make it nicer no longer holds but it is just a slightly more expensive membership and for example the the one i go to now which is in nor again i'm not worried about being mobbed and the treadmill the two times in there a year but like the one i go to now there's nothing special about it from the outside but it is technically a sport so i did have to like pay a little bit more for a sport membership so now i can go into any but like la seattle wherever i And...

go even if I'm I mean I figured he had to be in sport but he wasn't in sport you can just walk

into any 24-hour fitness well that wasn't how it was pitched to me I'm not disagreeing with you but I'm just reporting when I signed up it was like I could sign up for just a location or I could sign up to be able to go to any location in this region and again I don't know if it's state by state or if there are franchisees or I don't know why but I just this was the conversation we had and at the time i was like imagining a world for myself where i'm just like out and about and i just never know when i'm gonna need to like dip in and like you know just like hit the weight machines or play some basketball or whatever and also just my inclination is towards well if there's more of something i will do that you know as opposed to less of something well so i signed up for this slightly more expensive membership i want to say it's like 40 bucks a month or something and i had that one but the problem is i i only find myself going to one location and i will actually not mention what that location is on the minuscule chance that it would be easier for folks to show up there but what i realized was all the other locations kind of suck for different reasons there's like one good location and then all the other ones that are closer to me and have certain things i like like i went to one this morning so it was pretty early and there's one that's like a mile from my house and they have a gym a basketball gym and i went there and it's like six in the morning and i'm standing at the front counter and there's no one there that happens but i also thought this is actually a pretty high traffic time for a gym you know like not for me like the reason i'm bringing this up is so people know i was just standing at the gym at six in the morning i want to i need to get some points for that like this is not my lifestyle but it is for a fair amount of people right like especially on january 10th eggs thank you exactly like let's see how it's going in august right but um and so i was standing there standing there standing there and i was i was i wouldn't say annoyed but i was kind of like you really if someone has to use the restroom for like an extended amount of time there should be some system where we're kind of swapping folks out like this is something that now i guess part of it is you can punch in your phone number and your fingerprint and then walk through so maybe that's what they figure most people are doing it had been so long andrew i forgot what number i was supposed to punch in like i didn't know if it was like a pin number i literally punched my atm pin number in to see if anything would happen um didn't work so i'm standing there for a while five minutes no one's coming and then i look over at this chalkboard that says drop in volleyball wednesdays and fridays and um you know whatever whatever and then down below it says basketball still prohibited for

your safety and i was like come on man like whatever that is i will definitely take the burbank on that whatever it is it is not your safety in 2023 i mean i guess their argument

could be basketball involves a lot of uh vectoring a lot of people who don't know each other bumping up very close to each other whereas maybe something like volleyball is a little more spread out i mean it's a stretch and you know me my guess is there's something there's some part of that basketball all existing that's a hassle for them and so not having it is less of a hassle but i was like so because i had been sitting there debating whether to go to the one i like or the one closer to me and i went to the one closer to me and sure enough i was punished for that decision and so i then had to get back in the car get on the freeway to go to the one that i like where it was uh the parking lot was super duper packed it was just like just teeming with people i've never seen it so busy Although luckily the gym itself The basketball gym Was the window of time I was in there, the hour or so I was in there I actually mostly had it to myself Which was kind of awesome Because then I can just do my weird drill Where I have to make two right-handed layups Two left-handed layups Two free throws and two three-pointers But I can go the entire length of the court So I start out at one end of the court I dribble all the way down, I do a right-handed layup Then I dribble down to the other end of the court And do another right-handed layup And I just go in this kind of circle. So that was fun. Whatever. Oh, my God. The first couple of, like, little shots that I took, it felt like I had never seen a basketball hoop or basketball. I mean, it felt so foreign to my body. I was like, have I ever done any of this? Because my muscles are not remembering it. But then things kind of settled in. Now, the part that was especially embarrassing was I wanted to get a little extra kind of workout in afterwards because really what I'm doing is basically just kind of shooting around. I'm trying to run a little bit. I'm trying to keep my heart rate up, but it doesn't feel, for me anyway, where I'm at physically, it doesn't feel like I got a total workout in. And so what I do after my little drill, because I have to do this drill successfully to basically get it, I mean, be done with that. Then I run lines, Andrew, and there is. There's nothing sadder than 46-year-old Luke Burbank running lines in a gym by himself in full view of all the people lifting weights because there's these big glass windows between the, like, buff people who are over there just, like, putting up heavy weight and me awkwardly and 46-year-oldedly running a set of lines by myself in a gym.

No, I do think there's something sadder than that, which is not doing it. And I'm not even just saying that. OK, I really don't think that like whenever I'm at the gym now, I'm I'm in much worse shape than you and you're portraying yourself as being really out of shape. But like you are at least doing it like no matter what the age is or how fast they're doing it. When I see somebody at the gym kind of doing something because I am I'm so pedestrian when it comes to it that, well, all I do is walk on sidewalks. So my exercise routine, but, you know, like I'm just doing my, you know, whatever, I'll be on the treadmill or the elliptical or whatever. And I see somebody who's doing their own thing and it kind of doesn't matter age or body type or whatever. Like, I'm always kind of impressed with that, that they're just like, fuck this. I'm going to do what I need to do because this is working for me. And so honestly, I listen, I'm not trying to negate your feelings. And I'm not also not saying this to make you feel better. I just don't think I mean, you could try to make you feel a little bit. No, you didn't earn it. I just don't think that people are looking at you. They're in their own world, you know, and you're in there just getting your sweat on. God, I wish I hadn't said that.

I agree with you that no one is – really, I'm not registering on anyone else's radar. And I also want to be very clear. Whatever anybody's physical body is letting them do, I support that. You know what I mean? Like I'm not – I don't want this to sound judgmental about anybody, again, doing whatever it is that their body sort of allows them to do. I just – I guess really what it is is a personal journey for me because I haven't run – So a set of lines, if you didn't do this for some, I don't know, gym class or sport or something, is you start out on the baseline, right, which is where the hoop is, and you run to the free throw line, and then you reach down and touch the ground, and then you run back to the baseline. And then you run to midcourt, and you touch midcourt, and you run back to the baseline. Then you run to the opposite free throw line, touch it, and run back. And then you run all the way down to the other baseline. You touch it, you run all the way back. That is one set of lines. and i don't think i've done it with the part where you bend over and touch the ground since i was in 12th grade doing high school basketball and there's something about doing at 46 doing a physical activity that i haven't done in that because when i'm like if i'm dribbling the ball and i'm shooting i think i look like or i feel this is not even about how i look i feel like okay this i remember this this you know i'm my body's different than it was when i was in high school and i can't jump as high and all that stuff but it feels more or less like it did when i was younger the act of like shooting a free throw or shooting a layup what doesn't feel the same is the act of running to a spot bending over touching the floor standing back up and running back to the baseline like that's just a weird activity that you don't usually do in middle age or at least i don't and because there has been 30 years practically in the interim it was a shock to my system and i just felt like so slow again this is not about anybody else and comparing who's where in my own body i just couldn't believe how different it felt to do something like this at 46 than it did at 16 and and that was kind of shocking i'll the only thing i was missing were the rec specs i needed those like yeah i needed the i needed like big old sweat bands on my wrists rec specs like when jim carrey shows up to play basketball and the cable guy just way too much gear on that's the only thing i was missing for this whole production this morning get the a croaky

strap do you remember croaky straps i know that that's a dude i owned a croaky strap like two

three years ago i got into i was because when i was talk about that maybe i bought some and i was using them because when you're out on like doing something on a boat and your glasses fall your sunglasses fall off which was happening to me remember the time when i had to hire a scuba diver to get my glasses back in port townsend no i had some sunglasses that had like fallen off of my head in the little marina where that boat I had was and it wasn't that deep but it was like you couldn't just dive down there with you know goggles on it was probably 20 feet and it was freezing cold but there's a diving school right there and I walked over and I said would anybody like to make 50 bucks to get my these were very expensive sunglasses they were like persols would anyone like to make 50 bucks to get my sunglasses back and someone's like yeah totally and the dude did a full on he didn't do that We'll be right back.

one move that i love which is where you fall backwards into the water i would love to do that i'll make it 65 if you do the falling back once in my life i would like to pull that move that's the most cool ass move ever he didn't do that but he jumped in he's swimming around and the next thing you know it's just like uh it's like in the princess bride when wesley emerges from the um the the quicksand with buttercup on his back it was like just a hand with persol sunglasses came

shooting out of the water that's really great i think i would have remembered that i don't think

you mentioned that that's hilarious but uh anyway um yeah so um i was get i got croquis after that because i was i got some that i actually were were a kind of foam that would make them float so that if my sunglasses fell off again which they never would because now there's a strap they would also float um but i remember it's like it's so i hadn't thought about the many things i the divorce and i don't know why carrie went that hard on those but she did i just remembered like

you know everything that i even the things i i like now like my love of the beatles and and donovan and so much of that music came from my friend tony who was just such a outsized influence on me growing up right and um he i just i'm now remembering that like he somehow like got into croaky straps and so therefore we were all in the croaky straps like me certainly and i don't know if there was another kid or two who got into it but me and tony would be like we'd like because i had like five different croquis straps and one had little dinosaurs on them and like we would collect like for me like my childhood i'm now just realizing was composed of basically fancy croquis straps um california raisins memorabilia and archie comics that was basically you cut me

open that's what i bleed not a bad childhood did you ever did varney make its way out to ohio that was a big i mean i wasn't i didn't have varney money when i was a kid but that was like the real kind of preppy kid thing in the northwest um it's like a french brand obviously and never heard of and they had a big like the logo was a circle with a big v in it and like if you had like a varney t-shirt or varney sunglasses you were really you were really somebody in 1988 seattle you said the

big v i'm gonna look up these um i don't remember them as glasses wear but i wonder if i know that logo i wonder so people might have rocked it like on a sweatshirt or something yes okay i'll bet you

i can yeah let me see it's a red v inside of a blue circle and it says varney france okay and uh it was a i think it's primarily an eyewear company but they also did have sweatshirts dude i had one

of these t-shirts i remember that yes when you say that like when you said that v i almost i think i'm looking at i'm looking at one that was very close uh to it right now yes because i remember that v in the middle of it and now i'll bet you i called it vornette or something i don't think i had any idea oh i'm sure that i probably did too until some rich kid was like uh that's varney yes i'm looking at this oh now i want one okay put it on the list i just ordered four croaky straps and a varney t-shirt preppy andrews in the building the thing is i didn't even see it as preppy because like i'm looking at these and they were like really splashed out with really bright kind of almost neon colors in some of these and like yeah it almost fit like a nash skateboard

kind of vibe you know you know maybe preppy is the wrong word i just meant rich like like am i that i just mean like kids who seemed like they had uh more money than me uh seemed to have a lot of like nautica varney there were some other things that were kind of signet uh signifiers of of of having like you know of having a little bit of money or maybe some of these kids were even just pretending you know what i mean like i don't actually know what everyone's finances were but i was very much tracking that kind of stuff as a kid because i didn't have a lot of that stuff uh or if i got like my hands on an international news sweatshirt it was the one international news sweatshirt that i had that i would wear for years because it was like a cool shirt to have so i was i think you're i don't even know varney is necessarily preppy but it was in my mind it was in that category of like something that a cool kid had whose life seemed totally figured

out and effortless like a young andrew walsh well the thing about me is like i didn't i wasn't cool at all and i was very very dorky but it really underscores that i didn't um like my parents just bought my clothes for me like i don't know like i don't remember coveting a varney you know i had this and i remember like other shirts i had to i had a georgia bulldogs uh sweatshirt for some reason i didn't even i wouldn't be able to point out a football in a lineup luke like i don't know is it an egg i don't know but for some reason i loved the sweatshirt i had that had a big bulldog on it you know we need to take a break but i actually have a thought on that Thank you.

I had a sort of an epiphany last night while watching some of the national championship game. One, I should never bet sports because and I didn't last night, by the way, it was like it was a real sliding doors situation where I saw what my life could have been if only Ben Affleck would have gotten on that train. But also that. OK, so let me just I'll try to do this in three minutes. Put three minutes on the clock. Gotcha. um so last night of course tcu texas christian university was playing uh georgia the georgia bulldogs for the national championship georgia was undefeated they uh have i don't know roughly 36 000 students or something tcu the horn frogs uh have 12 000 students and they've you know they've had like decent football teams at times they are also the uh ladenian tomlinson graduated from there was a really good nfl player but they're not usually in the national championship conversation they made it to the championship game which was pretty cool actually are we following any of this at all is this something that was maybe on your lebitard radar or anything

oh the when it came down to the four uh what would you even call them the four teams who were going to be playing in the championship playoffs i had followed that and then i know that ohio state lost uh by missing a you know makeable field goal in the last seconds of of their game so i knew that they didn't make it but so who was it again who was playing i know it wasn't michigan or ohio because they got eliminated as the yeah it was georgia who's the defending

national champion which is i thought of this because you said you had a georgia bulldog right that's right yeah yeah and then they're playing tcu right now tcu was a heavy heavy underdog because it was just sort of like seen as one of those cool cinderella stories that they got into the actual national championship game but they weren't going to be able to probably beat the very good georgia bulldogs now you know what old lb sees when he hears that there's a team with no chance getting into a big important game he sees dollar signs for draft kings as in please have all of my

I feel a draft because I can't afford a door anymore.

I open my wallet in a draft. A cold, cold wind blows out of my wallet where there once had been dollars. So last night when I finished watching All In with Chris Hayes, oh, man. No, I don't want to be mean. I don't want to be mean. I think Chris does a fine job. Why would you be mean? No, I don't want to be mean about something that I saw on his show that I – I had a snarky thought, not about Chris. It was about a lawmaker. It was about a Republican lawmaker who got into a tussle on the House floor. But anyway, I switch over to the game, and TCU is losing already, but they're losing, I think it's like 10 to nothing. And the thought goes through my mind, I bet you anything, if I go on old Drafty Kings right now, I bet you if I put down $20 on TCU, it would pay. if they win i don't know a thousand bucks like it must be unbelievably long odds at this point because they're already not considered a favorite and now they're losing right and i was but then i was like and then the next play so tcu has the ball they're losing uh 10-0 and the next play they throw a 70 yard pass to the like five yard line and then the play after that the guy scores a touchdown and this is how defective my brain is andrew i decided not to do the bet because i was like i bet you anything now now the lines like if i could have got if i got in at 10 zero like i'm a genius but if i get in at 10 seven it's like it's probably not gonna like i'm not gonna get these insane like i'm always trying to shoot the moon with these silly bets right that's why they don't win that much because i'm i'm going for very unlikely scenarios so i didn't do it i was like whatever and then i just like just did some other things got on with my life next time i look over 65 to 7 georgia has won the game and 65 points to 7 that was oh my god holy shit scored i did

not i had heard georgia had won now that you say that i'm like oh yeah i did get that news alert last night but i did not check the score holy shit 65 to 7 wow now here's the other here's the

other sorry that this show once again is descending into sports bet talk which we will be doing a no point later on today yes exactly so please uh do watch this space for that but do you know who this

guy mattress mac is oh i know that does he donate a lot when he wins or something he's like a hero

in the community right i feel like we have you know we have lots of uh houstonians listening and I think I think Mattress Mac is actually a force for good because I think he's he. owns these um you know these furniture stores uh primarily i think in like in texas and in the houston area and one of the things he's done i think that's pretty cool is when there have been hurricanes and storms and people have been um dispossessed from their homes he lets them come in and just stay in the store like i think he's a good dude now what i don't like about him is that he is a freaking diehard houston astros fan and he bets like that whole like last uh you know postseason for baseball where the mariners were just getting gutted by the houston astros and then houston was continuing on to just run roughshod over everyone what i was mostly watching was a tiktok feed of mattress mac just walking into casinos and putting down like five million dollar bets on the astros and then like doing that move where he's wearing a collared shirt but then he puts on an astros jersey over it to go like sit in the box and watch the game which is one of the worst looks you can ever do it's like pick a lane don't do the collared shirt under the jersey mattress mac but anyway mattress mac in my mind started to represent like not him personally because i don't again i don't i think he's a very probably very good person for the community i my guess would be if we got down to politics mattress mac and i don't see eye to eye elderly white guy from houston um maybe not maybe maybe he could surprise me but that whole thing about him consistently betting on the astros and then the astros winning it felt like he was somehow complicit in the whole thing so now i do have some sort of strong strong kind of like i don't know it's again i think mattress mac people are going to email us and be like you don't understand what a mensch this guy is and he probably is but after i did not put my 20 down on tcu later that night i'm scrolling you know what i was doing in bed andrew i had the paris review and i had my phone And my plan was to read the Paris Review For one hour before I went to bed I looked at TikTok And I saw Mattress Mac losing $3 million On TCU And I felt fucking great

Now I have An important question for this conversation And I know we said we're going to put three minutes on the clock And we're now up to seven minutes But who did you say is in Sliding Doors Did you say Vince Vaughn gets on a train

No Ben Affleck which is kind of a callback joke Because he's not in that movie

Okay, he's not. Is that a mistake that you made in the past and it lives in the air?

For years, I mean, I think maybe for almost the entirety of this show's existence, I've been saying that Ben Affleck is in Sliding Doors and he's not.

Okay. Well, very well done because people were probably ready to send another email out not knowing that you were saying that knowingly because I was just like, what? I don't think he's in that.

Well, here's what I would say. If you understood, as the listener, If you understood that I was making a joke About the other times when I thought Ben Affleck Was in the movie Sliding Doors Give yourself a point Yes Because you're deep in the lore Of this show at that point So anyway That was what I thought of when you mentioned Your Georgia Bulldogs Yeah, I should get that back It's probably worth a lot now Probably is, dude Okay, although I will say People sometimes go what do you and andrew talk about every day and i'm like whatever comes into our mind and this is an example of that the quarterback for the georgia bulldogs again probably a lovely human being he actually did a nice press conference afterwards he was like i love my team i love our fans i love the band i love everybody that's it was a nice sentiment but his name is stetson bennett oh yeah right yeah yeah i've heard that yeah stetson bennett yeah i would bet you know what i would bet three million dollars of mattress max money that a kid named stetson bennett comes from a household that does not align with my personal political view it sounds to me like it's funny

like what what do you think like for me at first it sounds like a real i don't know if blue blood is the right word but like it sounds very wealthy to me sort of like totally and bennett but on the other hand it's very like southern in a certain way right like stetson like the stetson hat and Bennett it also seems it seems like a gentleman rancher or something what are you laughing at

did I say something I'm no not at all I the level of research I've done on Stetson Bennett is hearing them say his name and thinking god damn that guy's definitely from a McMansion in like sub like ex-urban some neighborhood adjacent to a southern city but like in a massive house like you just your name you name your kid Stetson like the hat it's like I just I personally take a lot away from that as the person hearing that that's your name. Now I'm looking up his Wikipedia page. Stetson Fleming Bennett IV.

It sounds like, it does sound like one of Mr. Burns' friends. I mean, was he on the island

with Gilligan? Right, yeah. I mean, again, now here's our Bulldog fans. Oh, I gotta tell you one other thing really quick. Our Bulldog fans, and we have I don't know. many of them in Georgia are going to be like, lay off our guy Stetson. Again, he's probably a sweetheart. He's one of those Baker Mayfield-esque stories in that he didn't have a scholarship. He was a walk-on, and he's done really well for himself. So I'm not trying to hate on him, but I just think the name Stetson Bennett just really feels like, again, maybe what I'm trying to say is that I have a lot of hang-ups myself, talking about clocking the kids that had Varney and Nautica. And so I just still have a massive class chip on my shoulder. And when I hear someone who's named Stetson Fleming Bennett IV, I don't feel like they clawed their way to the front of the line of life. But anyway, what I was going to say about the Bulldogs is I have long resented, growing up as a Husky, which we also have always called them the dogs, the D-A-W-G-S, the Huskies, the U-Dub dogs. The fact that the Georgia Bulldogs Are also called the dogs Are they spelled that same awful way Same way same awful way Or beautiful way if you're talking about the way We spell it as Huskies

By the way my first exposure to it Was the Cleveland dog pound And growing up it was D-A-W-G I've always hated that I've always always hated it It's so stupid

I didn't realize that the dog pound In Cleveland was spelled with D-A-W-G Now, let me make a slight defense for the University of Washington. There is a W in the name. I know. Yeah, I know. But it's still dumb. In fact, you know what? When I used to write in the sports department under one Danny O'Neill at the UW Daily, he said, we never call them the dogs. Like, he was very journalistic even back then. But what I was going to say is I've always felt kind of overshadowed. Like, last night there was some play and whoever the announcer was was like, the dogs score again. And I was like, ouch, man, you're really stealing our thunder. And then I realized, you know, they're the Bulldogs. At least they have dog in their name. The Huskies, we're not even, like, we're the Huskies. Like, that's actually, like, a stronger argument for Georgia having it than us. Because at least dog is in the name, Georgia Bulldogs. We don't have, we have had to make a further journey to get from Huskies to dogs.

That is true, but when they say that they're the Bulldogs, it's with an O. so why do when they shorten it do they shorten it from three letters to four it's so dumb i just there's just not that dog i mean i understand that with the u-dub i don't know if it's you or genevieve who've made that argument to me before and it's like okay fine like i'll just concede that okay there's some w connection but for everybody else who does that it's like no it's just like a cooler way of saying dog like first of all no it's not it's just it just comes off is so lowbrow to me. Dog. Like, why are you spelling it that way? You're a cle... You live in Cleveland. You don't spell dog with an A-W. Ah, it irritates... It, like, really... Meet me on the lanai for us to hash this out. My dog. It irritates me so much. It's like the equivalent of a no fear sticker or something like that that was around in the 90s.

What is going on with us and the nostalgia today? How about Bad Boys Club? Did you ever see that one?

on the back of a truck how about a co-ed naked pedantry that should be my shirt just like me well is that was that a thing oh that you know this has come up before of all these things like you don't know about the like in the 90s but we were well pedantry is me being pedantic about the way dog is spelled so that was the joke there but did you were you not i got nervous

because i was like ped sometimes the letters that come after that really change the meaning of that word i don't think i've heard pedantry in that form so i was like what co-ed naked and then something that starts with ped i was like that was on trucks in ohio no so please explain okay

first of all you scared me but i did look it up yeah pedantry is excessive concern with minor details and rules so um and then the co-ed naked thing like was your culture like swimming in these t-shirt like growing up in the 90s i felt like everybody and again i had a distaste for them and it's similar to like kind of the no fear phenomenon of the same era of just like co-ed naked paddle or it would be like now would be like co-ed naked pickleball we do it with both balls or whatever and it would be always be like some sort of a little twist at the end of just like some sort of play on words that was you know a double entendre or sexualized in some way like i just felt like we couldn't escape those in the 90s the ones that were big in seattle in the mall

that i loathe and this is this may explain andrew how you and i ended up doing the show together and being good friends and just kind of like i don't know vibing because like i it's interesting for me to think about you walking around a mall in ohio and seeing one of those you know co-ed naked kayak clubs and just being like really and me walking around seeing a big johnson yes t-shirt and just being like really is this the best that we have humor like big johnson's bar and casino liquor up front poker in the rear right right right just the just the dumbest like you know entendre like you said and i even as like a 12 year old kid i was like this is so so juvenile so i think the fact you and i both hated those things which in a way were i mean they're meant to titillate 14 year old boys or 45 year old men who have the

emotional maturity of a 14 year old boy exactly my shirts that go hard are varneys thank you very

much shirts that go hard i forgot about that moment in all of our life all of a sudden we

were all just being subjected to shirts going hard no no i got soft shirts actually you know

what that would that would that would work with the big johnson if you're gonna go if you're gonna go uh entendre that at least that lends itself to it but okay let's do this let's take a break Finally, 46 or so minutes into the show And then we'll come back And maybe talk about We'll just talk about Funky Winker Bean

Because we're not going to have time for the rest of it

I've got a long list of stuff And it sounds like you have a list as well Which I didn't, we'll talk about on the other side We'll get into this in a moment on TBTL let's thank some daily donors these folks could be blowing their money on varney sunglasses croquis and big johnson's shirts and they're not they're blowing it on tbtl and we thank them for that folks like alice davy in seattle washington thank you alice appreciate it realizing andrew you know i um i i try to stand i i stand up when i'm doing the show with you now when i'm down here uh because i got the sit stand desk and i'm realizing one of my legs is quite sore from my exercise of running lines like we shall see how i'm doing tomorrow because it's the kind of thing Where you know you try to do something You ask your body to do something it hasn't done in a long time And it's not even the day of It's like the next day when you realize

It's usually for me It's almost like 24 hours later I'll really stiffen up so in other words

Exactly show time tomorrow

Yeah if I work out like on a On a Monday Tuesday I might be a little Stiff actually it's Wednesday morning That might be the stiffest for me

Yeah we will We'll see how tomorrow goes anyway thanks Alice Also thanks to Douglas Prindle Of Bothell, Washington Once you pop, you can't stop With Douglas Prindle Troy Totorich Of Lake Stevens, Washington Home Of Chris Pratt

That's true, yes And also

I think the guys who directed Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs The kind of animated one that people love I think those are all people Who are from Lake Stevens, but of course Most famously, it's Troy Tortorich. Thank you, Troy. Thanks also to Lucy Wu in Renton, Washington.

Thanks, Lucy. Long, long time. Has Veeb's been down to the ladder district lately? That's right. I got a line on a ladder down in Renton.

Some guys, I think, well, actually, I don't know. I thought up at the house that my dad and I have been working on. You know, I had a whole, I don't want to get into it, But I had a kind of not great experience with the first contractor who I hired, and there was just some disagreement about what services would be provided, et cetera. It felt like ultimately it ended up costing me more money than I wish it would have, but I thought that they left a ladder there. And I was like, well, free ladder. You know how you'll just grasp onto anything in those situations where you're just like, well, that takes $100 off of the money I burned on this bad business deal?

You mean like when some dirtbag stole our Honda scooter off the street and then I eventually I got it in the like repo lot or not the repo lot but in the impound the impound lot and I'm like and I'm suddenly realizing oh somebody stole this and like and then I open it up and inside was like I think I think it was maybe a half a bottle of whiskey which I did not drink a full unopened pack of cigarettes which I wasn't a smoker at the time. So I threw them away and then a couple of tools that I'm sure were also stolen, just like our little motorcycle. And one of the tools was a reach a kind of a mini rechargeable drill with a screwdriver bit in it. But it's like easily recharged, like you just plug it into like a phone charger. And I still have that thing. And every now and then I'm like, well, I guess it was more of a trade. You got my bike and I got your drill. Well, that was exactly me with this ladder.

I was like, okay, well, that's a $14,000 ladder. And then when I was working with my dad, we were working on the outside. of the of the studio and he goes oh you might want to grab that extension ladder that's down around on the side of the house and i was like oh yeah uh the one those guys left behind and he was like oh no that one was here that was that was in the garage when we first started that was from the previous owner of the house and then i was just like well now i'm out fourteen thousand

dollars because that ladder was already mine yeah but now you got the nra gun nuts ladder so there

you go that is true so he's down 14 000 take that wayne lapierre also thank you lucy thanks also to genevieve tolickson of arlington heights illinois nice i always say this i think but arlington

heights just sounds like a very nice place it sounds like it sounds like a place where john

hughes would set a movie it probably was yeah that's right i mean that was his um zone of influence right the greater chicagoland area yeah yeah thank you genevieve and then i'm skipping ahead now andrew to the city that our next donor is from and i know that it's been a topic of conversation because it is a very fun place to say we're thanking sarah longino dekalb of moxie

washington right moxie spelled with two e's not an ie which is interesting is is the ie the

traditional spelling i think so someone having moxie yes or as they used to say on a radio show uh give shy people the energy to get up and do what they need to do wait what is that well that was me trying to make a garrison keeler reference without okay fully mentioning garrison keeler but he used to do like ads for you know made up things and i think there was like a powder milk biscuit thing that said giving people the get up and go giving shy people the get up and go to go do something or other. Right. Now, of course

Moxie is also, and we've talked about this a lot a soda that is still around. I believe it's one of the world's oldest soda pops, right? It's like some New England soda that tastes like medicine that I would drink sometimes in New Hampshire, but like you only drink it so you can say look, I'm drinking Moxie.

Well, and then the other thing that I probably said last year and the year before that and that I always mention when that word comes up is The comedian slash magician Although I think you could say magician slash comedian Penn Jillette I believe his child is named Moxie Crimefighter Oh, you have mentioned that, yes I believe his child is named Moxie Fleming Crimefighter

The fourth, yes Esquire Thank you, Sarah

Thanks to all of our donors For making TBTL possible hello and welcome to top story speaking of moxie crime fighters what's going on with

funky winker bean oh yeah so this is interesting so uh when we were doing the winter games we had our friend megan kelso on the show and she was quizzing you on some that was such a that was

so fun yes i don't know if it was fun for megan or for the listeners but i really enjoyed that trip down seattle times memory lane and megan is is a cartoonist who has a new book out i'll plug

it once again it's called who will make the pancakes check it out fellow 10 also i've seen

the book now it's beautiful isn't it beautiful it is yeah gorgeous and i handsome handsome tome

yes definitely so check it out if you want to support another 10 and just enjoy some reading but anyway so she was on the show and she was quizzing you on the funny pages of seattle newspapers in the 1980s or whatever and I brought up a comic strip called Funky Winkerbean which had been around like in the in the you know funny pages that I read in the Cleveland area and I also told you that our family had a connection because one of the characters in that comic strip which was based on kind of a high school uh in the greater Cleveland area I now realize uh one of the characters the band leader was based on a very close personal family friend of ours Henry finkston um and it's henry finkston by the way a real name funky winker bean a fake name anyway

but like let me ask you this was the person that your family knew is that what funky winker bean means is that the name of the fictionalized version of that person or is the strip called funky winker bean and there's a character who's based on your old band friend there is i'll i'll

answer your question by backing up a step so funky winker bean is a comic strip about a teacher in a high school and that teacher's name is Funky Winkerbean the band director is a different character I don't know what his name was he was like a secondary character he's not the main out the character that our family friend was based on was not the main character of

this I see he was a stable Winkerbean

he was reliable Winkerbean he was classical Winkerbean actually but um or four-time Winkerbean so every now and And then like in the exploits of this school. and this teacher and these students you would see a band director and he was a beloved band director who was based on our family friend who IRL was a beloved band director at a I can't remember the school off the top of my head but you know Cleveland area school and anyway I believe you had not heard of the comic strip funky week or bean I don't believe Megan had heard of it although I could be wrong about that I might be misremembering but I was standing in the TSA line For some reason, Genevieve forgot to use her pre-check for herself on her flight out to Hawaii, so she had to slum it with me and the rest of the non-pre-check people. Oh, I want to come back around to something on that in a second. You know, this is – I almost posted this to Reddit, and I'm glad I didn't. This is why I have a podcast, so I can share thoughts like this.

Save that sweet, sweet content for us.

Yes. I was like, I need to vent to somebody about this TSA thing. And, of course, I have a podcast, and also you will enjoy that story. So let me hurry up through this. Anyway, on the way to Hawaii, and I don't even think Megan's show had aired on TBTL yet because we pre-taped it. It might have. It might have just aired, like, the day of or something. I'm standing in line with Genevieve, and because Funky Winker Bean was on my mind, which doctors say just when that happens, just get lots of rest, I was talking to Genevieve about Funky Winker Bean.

lasts for more than four hours you need to see if it do not take funky winker bean if you're

allergic to funky winker bean they have a process where they can just like drill a tiny little hole behind your ear and release some of the excess funky winker bean it's honestly it's an outpatient procedure it sounds it sounds grotesque but i'm telling you what they can do with lasers these days is amazing um but anyway so i'm standing in line with genevieve and for some reason funky Winker Bean is on the brain And I said to her you know Do you know about Funky Winker Bean we were talking about On the show for some reason I bring this topic up While we're waiting in line and For some reason I decided to go to the Funky Winker Bean wiki page And I'm telling her About it I'm like oh look it was actually based On it was actually based on The adventures of this guy who grew up in Medina County Ohio where I lived at the time I had no idea that everything was This close to home although it makes sense And while I'm reading the Wikipedia page to her, I get to the last line and it says, Funky Winker Bean will end its run on December 31st, 2022. I'm like, what? We were kind of on top of the news. Like this this thing that kind of this comic strip from my past, which just happened to rear its funky head on our show. Funky little head happened. That podcast aired on, I believe, the week or maybe week before the guy who wrote it was retiring. And then coincidentally, well, not coincidentally, after that show aired, I started to get a lot of emails from listeners with news articles about Funky Winker Bean ending its 30 or 40 year run or whatever. So R.I.P. Funky Winker Bean. I did not read the last strip I don't know how it ends

I'm looking at a piece From this summer in the Washington Post How Funky Winker Bean Became the darkest strip On the comics pages Over it's 50 years The sensitive comic has evolved From such subjects as high school gym class To suicide, abuse, and cancer And it's a very nice interview I'm just scanning it with Tom Batuik Who was the person Behind Funky Winker Bean Who, by the way, lives in Medina, Ohio So there you go And he said He's talking to this Washington Post reporter, by the way Michael Kavna, writing in the Post I started out I guess writing this comic since he was 25 years old I started out writing about kids in high school Who worry about trying to get a date And climbing the rope in gym class Now I'm writing about going to financial seminars And getting colonoscopies And playing pickleball It's a whole different world

In one of the articles I read While I was actually through the TSA line and then waiting on our flight I was reading an interview with him And apparently He came up with the name Funky Winkerbean because he wanted a silly name And so he, again, he was a teacher at this school And he told his students, hey, come up with the silliest names you can think of I'm trying to work on a character And then they submitted them all and he took them all home and went through the sheets of paper and apparently one kid suggested Funky and another kid suggested Winker Bean and he and his wife said, hey, those would go well together or whatever. That's definitely a silly name. But then as the years pass and it goes from being a silly comic to a comic that actually grappled with some real world issues, he said that that name became a little bit harder to work with because it was such a silly name and he was trying to have serious conversations.

That is really interesting, actually.

as a name they're lucky by the way it did didn't get named cartoon mick cartoon yeah right well this is what happened now yeah exactly i'm scrolling through this post article and it's kind of it's sort of dovetailing and overlapping with uh with some stuff that i was out there looking at when i was remember when i was in columbus um doing some filming for that cbs story about this um trove of of basically newspaper comics um but tuic was born in akron and grew up in Ohio, the famed cradle of cartoonists from the pioneering 19th century Yellow Kid, writer-artist Richard Outco, which Yellow Kid, that was well represented in the collection of these cartoons I was looking at in Ohio State University. He also graduated from Kent State. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Patuik did, right? Or whatever his name is. And this probably came up when we had Megan on the show, but I didn't realize that he also co-created Crankshaft.

Yes, Crankshaft was a spinoff, and don't worry, Crankshaft will continue. That's about the cantankerous bus driver

who, again, is part of the same universe. I liked the illustration. I don't think I really knew what was going on with Crankshaft, but I would read it every day because I just thought the drawings were really cool.

I also like the name. I think it's a good name for a cranky bus driver named Crankshaft.

I don't think I remembered that he was a bus driver. I just knew he wore like a kind of like a not a trucker hat, but, you know, yeah, yeah, like a ball cap kind of thing. But like the kind of ball cap that the guy you go into the auto parts store and you buy something and he's standing in line. You tells you you're buying the wrong thing. Mm hmm. I was at a three fifty. You can't put that in. No, the three fifty is actually backwards. So you're going to want to go get the like that hat, like is the kind of hat that you probably has like a, you know, what's an oil filter company that was like. it was like napa napa there you go some napa know-how yeah like i feel like that hat crankshaft was wearing definitely had some kind of oil company yeah on it like motor oil company and he knew a lot about uh well auto did i tell you two things uh first thing i'm just going to close the loop on something no i'm going to start with the automotive related thing oh and don't let me forget my tsa thing right did i tell you that my daughter changed her own alternator on her subaru by watching youtube and it works cool i mean dude i am shocked and proud and slightly emasculated but that's fine i'm slightly edadsculated because she called me and she was like my battery light's coming on and i was like you should take that to the people that fix that kind of stuff and then uh like a couple weeks later she was like yeah so i put that new alternator on i was like what she's yeah youtube she goes like 100 bucks for the alternator she goes the belts were a little tricky but i just went out there with my cup of coffee and i just kind of banged away on it for saturday it works i'm like so impressed so that's automotive related can i ask you a detailed

question about that that is probably not interesting but always gets me because i think you've said this on the show before i think it's okay to say that adelaide lives in capitol hill which is a you know very kind of urban part of the city here i assume does not have her own parking space did she does have her own parking does have her own parking space is it covered

It is covered. Wow. She lives in a really cool but very old building that has some little covered parking in the back for the residents of the building, and she has one of those spots.

Gotcha, because I was really picturing her kind of on the car's parallel car.

Pulling a real L.A. mood. Yeah, I mean, that stuff is intimidating to me.

Someone just parked on a regular street under their car just pulling shit out from it. Or they're doing it in O'Reilly's parking lot or whatever.

Where a crankshaft walks over and says, you're going to hit that with a stick. That was me and Camaro Kev's big reference was, I believe Camaro Kev, and he got the name because he drove like a 1980 Camaro or something for a long time. And things were dying on the car constantly, and he was in the parking lot of like a shucks, and he was trying to get it started. And there was some kind of a weird like flat spot on the solenoid or something where the car wouldn't really turn over. and some guy was under a different car fixing his own car and he popped out from the car and said you gotta hit that with a stick. And it worked

right? Didn't Kevin start carrying a stick

around? I believe he had some kind of stick. Well he had a stick for holding the hatchback also didn't work so he had to have a stick for propping the hatchback open or whatever you call the trunk of that style of Camaro but he also I think could use the same stick to whack the starter to get the thing going. I believe the T-tops also leaked but he would line those with Vaseline which would act as a seal for a long time you couldn't open the front door the lock didn't work so you'd have to climb in through the back to the front door

to get it open from the inside well not that cool though

I think it had power windows He'll give us a full download next time we're at the Eagles, if we ask, I'm sure. Okay, other thing, real quickly, and then we'll get to your TSA story. I wanted to just close the loop on why I know that, at least in Oregon, there are different price points for my 24-hour fitness. Because today, as I realized, this is the one that I went to, the good one. I was like, this is the only one I go to. I'm not going to pay to have access to three other ones where they randomly close the gym or whatever. So on my way out, the very helpful people at the front desk, I said, hey, I want to go from my regional account down to just your location. And the guy said, okay, sure. And he poked around, and he said, that'll be $27, please. I was like, wait, huh? And it's actually $100. It's actually $100 if you want to downgrade your account from regional to just one location. What?

You mean like a one-time fee or something?

I had $74 of credit, also news to me, and so I only owed them, Andrew, I only owed them roughly $27 to have the right to now only pay $19 a month and only be able to go to one of their locations. That's such a screw, man. It is ridiculous. So the guy was actually super nice. Like he was not on him, but he was like, yeah, well, the deal is when you signed up for your regional membership, there's no join up cost because that was whatever reason. Right. And so now I'm doing something different technically. And so I I guess it's to keep you from getting around the join up cost by joining at this one level where they incentivize you to spend more by not charging you. But then if you downshift, which, by the way, would be a pretty clever scam. actually um but then how did i get 74 of credit yeah did you ask that or just let it monetizing the treadmill did i generate some electricity somewhere or something yeah like running those

lines turns out nobody's done it in so long that you that's right they're like you know what bonus

you provided the people in the weightlifting area with a much-needed laugh this morning

we're crediting your account 74 for that sir we you're actually part of our jester plan I'm not sure if you realize that, but when we call you the court jester, it's the basketball court jester. That's right.

We call it the get a load of this level of membership. Get a load of this guy running lines. Okay, now, on to the TSA. Although, actually, Andrew, should we do this now or should we do it in lieu of emails? How much do you love the emails and V-mails?

Actually, I think this will dovetail well. Let me tell this story quickly. I don't have to belabor it. Well, you know, I'm going to belabor it because it involves the TSA. I think here's the deal. I just found something irritating with the TSA, and maybe this is a sort of Luke Burbank-y reaction here, because I will say this. Generally speaking, I'm not kind of anti-TSA or even anti what they put us through, generally speaking, in a way that I feel like you and Genevieve were or maybe continue to be calling it protection theater or security theater or what have you. I'm always like, well, if they're doing stuff to keep me safe, err on the side of caution, I'm a nervous flyer, sure, whatever. I don't generally have a chip on my shoulder against the TSA, but I'm going through the line. Genevieve, on the way home from Hawaii, Genevieve did use her TSA pre-check, so she just went quickly to the gate, and I had to get in with Gen Pop, right? And it was kind of crowded. It wasn't a zoo.

Have you been watching Oz again?

general population is throwing that around I've been watching Return to Oz which is a scary follow-up to The Wizard of Oz, true story it's got Veruca bulk in it, anyway Ferruza? Ferruza, what did I say Veruca? Not to be confused with Veruca salt, yeah I get those confused, anyway here's the deal, I am going through security and it's just kind of like a somewhat unpleasant experience, not my worst experience going through TSA line, but like the line was It was just kind of hot in there. The air conditioning wasn't on because I think it's kind of an open air airport sort of. It was a big crowd of people. It was a noticeably kind of scuzzier line, like somebody who was going through probably some family didn't use the garbage cans to dump all of their like bottles with liquid. So like at one point you get to a part of the line in the stanchions and there's just like this big pile of some family's garbage plastic bottles half filled with liquid. There was just like kind of a lot of detritus on the ground. I get to the person who's supposed to check my ID and my and my boarding pass. Right. Or at least traditionally, that's always been the process. You show them the ID, then you show them your boarding pass or in the electronic age, you kind of you scan your own boarding.

pass off of your phone into their little device there that's been the way it always is well i get to the front of the line this guy is immediately curt with me you know how some tsa agents act like they're cops you know and um i hand him my id and i'm always you know i'm usually pretty polite to those folks i go up i'm like here's my id and he just says look up i'm like all right you know and he's some i don't know he's like a white guy who's probably 20 years younger than me or something look up all right i look up at him for a second glare at him he hands me the card back and then just sort of stares out into the distance and i'm like okay do you want me to scan do you want me to scan this now no and so i continue to stand there and then he says you're done and i'm like oof okay so i keep on moving level four hollering for some reason they did not need to for me to scan my boarding pass at this checkpoint I don't know why the people to my left were scanning theirs I don't know why he didn't need to scan my boarding pass fine he was rude as hell and I was so whatever I get I get back I go through the have to take your shoes off or whatever and it's one of those back scanner things or whatever they call it so I gotta get in line and then after I get all of my stuff on the on the uh on the treadmill or whatever the the scanner device uh they're like okay step in here hands over your head and then the woman who's like kind of handling that part of it is like i i really resent the having to put my hands over my head like a common criminal just to get an airplane she's like hands up i'm like all right so you were in that back scatter thing yes exactly and so she's like hands up and i'm like okay one of my best impressions i do by the way it's also my impression of kit that's more that's more about oh yeah almost like a like a pigeon anyway so i'm like i just felt like everybody was a little gruff and at this point i'm standing in my socks but there's like paper kind of on the ground and again it just feels like littered and this feels unclean and the people were like kind of curt with me in a way i didn't like and hands up and look at me and all this shit and i'm just sort of like getting increasingly irritated by the experience but i get through okay they didn't they didn't toss my bags or anything so generally speaking that's a win i'm then um they don't have a good area to like put your shoes back on and and put all your stuff back together because i had to pull my electronics out and do all that like you have to walk 20 feet to get to the area where you can kind of like reassemble yourself so you're like walking around the airport in your socks which i resent like i just kind of i thought the entire experience sucked and then right as you're leaving the tsa area there's a big sign like one of those kind of banner signs where you kind of if you were going to do a live radio remote somewhere luke you might throw this in the back of the van and then you get to the site and then you pull it up and it's kind of like a banner that goes the promotions team might roll up exactly right roll up in the van with

this as one of the items and on this sign for the tsa is a picture like kind of a stock photo of somebody like kind of tying their shoe a close-up of a nice dress shoe a businessman tying his shoe apparently and then it says at the top isn't getting dressed once per day enough get tsa pre-check and i there was something so galling about them putting us through this shitty experience and then getting to the end and being like wasn't that a shitty experience we just put you through you should get tsa pre-check there was something about that sales pitch that irritated me so much does that translate to you or was i overreacting just to that sign i wanted to burn

that fucking sign down well if that sign said isn't getting dressed once a day is enough sign up for clear yeah that would make me more mad because as we talked about i think before the break clear is just a strictly for-profit business to cut people to the front of the line the thing i will say about pre-check is that at least allegedly it is something where people who travel a lot and are willing to go in and have that little interview then can cut get through the line faster and we don't need to strip search them every time and make them pick their shoes off etc so i guess i find that to be five percent less infuriating than if it was clear because tsa pre-check is run by the tsa it is still part of whatever that governmental agency is now if i could really quickly you have touched on and this is why andrew we really uh should not bring these topics up unless we have a tight four hours for me to unload because i i have got a lot to say but i'll try to keep it try to keep it um uh pretty tight here i the thing that you described that really grinded my gears crankshaft style is the curtness from the tsa uh folks about which particular thing you should be doing or not doing because what

What they do not realize, for whatever reason, is it is different in every flippin' airport. I travel, obviously, a lot. I cannot tell you in any airport, unless it's PDX now, what the specific rules are, because they're always different. Some places, it's just give them the ID. Some places, it's give them the ID and show the boarding pass on your phone. Some places, it's like you've got to stand in front of this area, and some places, it's different. But for the TSA people that work at a specific location, it's always the same for them. It's always whatever the rule is, you know, shoes on, shoes off, this, that, no belts, AirPods out of your hair up. Glasses off. There's still so much light in here. It's always the same for them, and not everyone, because I have had some great interactions with folks at the TSA. I'm not trying to tar every TSA person with this feather, but there are some TSA folks who clearly are over it, and they act like you're a blithering idiot if you don't do the little thing the way you're, quote-unquote, supposed to do it. But what they're not accounting for is that the little thing is different at every airport, and I speak from deep personal knowledge on that, and that is what really makes me mad. When we were flying home from Palm Springs, it was one of those things where, and I mean, also, let's just throw this out there. Is there anything less fun than flying home from your vacation? Like, it's all of the hassle and none of the reward. You're just like, whoa, we still have to do all of this stuff just so we, and now maybe for you. I disagree, yeah.

I was saying to Veeves, like, with our flight delayed, I was like, why does this always happen on the flight home? Like, there's nothing I want more than to get home. shaving a day the first day off of my vacation is much less worse than me just getting home

i'm going to put you in a very very very small percentage of the american population who would rather lose a day of vacation over a day of being home after vacation um but but um so we were flying back and it was this thing where the per the tsa person was in a very tightly what's the word barricaded like lucite situation so you it was difficult to hear that and they were wearing a mask again i fully support folks wearing masks particularly if they have jobs where they're in contact with a lot of the public that makes perfect sense but what it means is it can be very difficult to hear someone when they have a mask on and they're in a like they're they're basically like um you know in the superman's fortress of solitude they're trapped inside one of those giant like um you know crystals or something and this person who was working there i handed them the id because i was watching what everyone else had done so i was like okay this is an id only thing i hand them the id they say something to me i don't understand what they're saying i think they want me to put my phone out i'm thinking that's weird because no one else did but okay i get my phone and then they just say something louder and then they yell it basically and it's stand in front of me now by the way where i was standing was extremely visible to this person like i imagine you know this like cube that they're in i'm just standing on the side of the cube that they can just look at my face but they're yelling at me to stand in front of the cube so they can look at my face from that angle and it was just like that's one of those moments where it's like i'm i'm just trying to get through this like you are do we need to yell Do we need to act? I mean, that's the thing that really that really kind of bums me out is when you get a TSA person. I'm not even mad anymore. I used to be annoyed by the the self-appointed TSA yeller. Just the person who decides it's their job to yell about like, you know, no liquids and take your shoes off, etc. Like that kind of bothers me, too. But I'm not even mad at that person. I think they're just trying to present the information and speed the line along. okay fine it's when the people act like you are trying to make their day harder when it's just

unclear what the rules are yeah exactly i agree and the good news here is this conversation has set us up absolutely perfectly for the voicemail that we will play in a love it sometimes it just

works out 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 right welcome back you may or may not have just heard a mountain dew Call of War commercial Call of Duty If you did, we apologize

If you didn't, well, it's your lucky day Go buy a lotto ticket No, we saved those for the very, very beginning of the show Oh, good, we want to set a tone Set a tone if we can Okay, so I do want to react to something that you said As we set up this voicemail here Because I was talking about my irritation With that TSA sign And you said it would be more irritating If it was that that pride.

Private company clear that was trying to upsell you on their services to get through lines quicker, you know, like the TSA lines quicker. I think the thing that galled me the most about the fact that it was TSA that was advertising their expedited service was it's the TSA that's making my life miserable and then trying to upsell me on their thing. I actually think TSA pre-check is a good thing. I was considering getting it. But it's a little bit different. And like if it was clear making that advertisement, it would be like, OK, the TSA, isn't that kind of tough? Hey, we have an outside private solution for that. The thing that galled me about the TSA advertisement was they're trying to sell you something that makes the terrible experience that they just put you through better. better right now one thing that you mentioned about clear though that is irritating was like the implication that clear this private company is hoping and sometimes maybe even making the long lines at tsa worse in order to make their product more valuable and then sell you on it right because if you have your clear pass the you'll just get walked right to the beginning right to the front of the TSA line making the TSA line longer for everybody else

they're both the they're both the the source and the solution in a way for this problem of man I'm waiting a long time because they keep bringing clear people up to the front and so the only way to solve the problem is to sign up for clear which feels pretty um you know Brazil

exactly now that's where Marissa's voicemail comes in Marissa left us this now when Marissa calls in i'm usually a little bit irritated not because i don't like marissa marissa has called into the show a bunch and is a absolute lovely human being but she is also remember i think marissa is a former um morning radio host right and so when she leaves these voicemails wait they're so good do i have the right person or is she just great at leaving voicemails well i know i think that

we had a person in michigan who was who who had worked in local radio and i remember we talked to them during one of our um oh i might be tb telethons i thought that was also no i i guess

i may be conflating i thought it was marissa in maryland um who was the radio that's also possible i mean i'm not tracking all of that marissa if you're not in radio you've got a future exactly the only reason i say it irritates me is because you are so much better at talking on the radio than i am as uh you will hear here in a voicemail that is a nice tight one minute hello boys it's

Marissa in Maryland. So I was listening to the thing about Clear and about how Clear's financial incentive is actually to make lines worse because then more people want to pay for Clear. And there was recently a Wall Street Journal piece about how Disney is basically in the same game now because in the last year or so, they've started having people pay to skip the line at certain attractions, which was never the case before, like 2021. So the Wall Street Journal was talking about how now they're incentivized to make lines as bad as possible which includes stuff like deferring maintenance you know so if a ride is down for a lot of the day that's actually better for them financially in the short term because they can sell more people on paying to skip the line so it's like an overall worse experience so you know for me personally we're going to orlando next month um and i made the very deliberate decision not to go to disney for more than one day because um like that is like a really gross business model to me we're gonna spend more time at universal okay happy holidays everybody and power out which is a good reminder to me that those are two

different places i honestly until marissa said that i was like oh yeah universal because i didn't i don't we never went to any of those as kids we would go to other like amusement parks like bush gardens or whatever but the whole disney universal epcot all of that stuff is like very much a well

you know where that's never gonna happen andrew nice boat willies our new that's right theme park we're opening legally because we can right 2024 now it's interesting one thing that is maybe a

caveat here is and again i just admitted that i don't know much about this culture but like i believe that disney always had some sort of a fast pass right or at least in modern days because wasn't it a bit in Patriot remember that TV show Patriot we did a podcast on remember they were in like they were somewhere where a police officer pulls them over and you think they're all going to be in like the worst trouble but it turns out it was just like a blinker wasn't working on their car or something and then the the cop gets out and starts telling him like you have to have the fast pass you have to have the fast pass at Disney does that ring a bell to you at all it doesn't

I'm but I think I believe you by the way because you were very good you took that job very seriously I didn't You watched You watched every episode At least twice

So did you

I'm quite sure you did I don't think I did I'm not I don't like to re-watch things I mean, even if it's our job, even if we've established with the listeners, we're going to do a podcast about something, and it would help me to have watched it twice so I would have more detail, I chose not to.

But I thought you watched the entire series before I ever even got my grubby little hands on it.

I did do that, but then... So you must have gone back and watched it again.

I must have. Yeah, I think you did, because you came into that, to give you a little bit of credit here, you came into those shows with a lot of notes and a lot of thoughts. No, you're right.

You know what? i must have watched it twice and just kept notes the second time yeah um maybe you didn't watch

maybe is there a chance that you didn't watch the entire third season before we started the

podcast very possible maybe that's it because maybe but like that whole let that again i know we've got um you know we got people who are big fans of the disney experience i will say i didn't i didn't grow up going to dis here's my theory about disneyland i think if you if you got to go as a kid it imprints on you like a baby duck and it becomes for a lot of people that I know I mean as they say the happiest place on earth but it really is something that's really special for a lot of folks because they they maybe went when they were young and it really made an impression on them I sort of think that if you miss that window like I did it doesn't really work the same way like I the first time I went to Disneyland was with Addie when she was probably you know nine and it was because she was at disneyland with her mom and i was living in la or something you know what i mean so it was enjoyable but that whole world of fast passes and we had something her mom had managed to hook up some kind of deal where we were able i don't think it was a fast pass it was some other deal where we could go to the front of the line but Let me just tell you something, Andrew. Hell hath no daggers like those being stared at you when you're just walking the opposite way of the line. Because it's those like endless like cattle shoots. Yeah. And then you're it's not like there's a little velvet rope. At least my memory of it was it wasn't like there was a velvet rope that they undid and kind of let you in the back door. It was like somehow you're walking past everyone who's waiting in some way that you have to go past all of them. And it's like it's a thousand degrees in Anaheim and you're just like going to get on Pirates of the Caribbean or something. So, yeah, I don't know much about that world of who has access to what in that in that land. But it sounds like Marissa knows what she's talking about and is now becoming a card carrying fan of. What was the other one? Universal. Universal. Which I've never been there either.

Still haven't found the Funky Winker Bean final comic strip. I think I would have done this before the show, but it's probably like Patriot. I think I remember I think there's something about like European dimes or I'm trying to remember Oh no, I'm now remembering the ending Yeah, it's so weird Do you know I don't remember the end of Patriot, Andrew?

Well, I kind of remember it I think they find the kid's body Wait, that's my dad remembering the end of

The Missing That's your dad misremembering Also, by the way, I brought up in that conversation yesterday The Midsummer Murders Or maybe it's just called Midsommar Murders And I've been getting some emails and text messages From a lot of listeners saying like Yes, do it, I'm a Midsommar fan And also, like, apparently That show's been on for 25 years According to someone who texted today So I didn't realize it was such a long stand Well, I have good news, Andrew

You know what, I'm probably starting this evening Beck and I are going to start The White Lotus

Oh, season two, okay, good Yeah, I've said what I said about it

Just in time for some trenchant Commentary on the matter That everyone has moved on from

I feel like you're especially critical Of like your tastes Are very Discerning of what you like Especially when it comes to When it comes to Non-documentary style storytelling And just knowing what a huge Huge fan you were of season one I do think as season two goes on Just so you know it becomes much more soap opera I think so be prepared for that I think you can enjoy it but I just don't want you going in thinking it's got yeah season one was imbued with so much mystery and so much things not being said and just tense moments did that'll just sit there this one is a little bit less of that but there's still some really fun times and some good performances well the reason that the

first season really got to me was because i i mentioned this i was watching it literally on an airplane flying to and maybe from hawaii oh yeah so it was like i was in that idea which is why i'm flying to sicily tomorrow andrew oh good really immerse myself in the the white lotus verse actually i will be flying to las vegas wait not tomorrow thursday i'm flying to las vegas after the show uh for a tv thing but um anyway i don't know if there's any white lotuses set in las vegas but i will be

a little bit of traveling. All right. That is going to do it for today's show. We are going to be recording a no-point conversion, though, so please look for that if you care about our under-informed musings on sports. And we'll see you real soon. Until then, have a great rest of your Tuesday. We'll see you tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. Please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

How I is beautiful, it is beautiful. You are able to sit at the beach and be happy in the sun. You can have pineapples and watermelons, too, mangoes, and coconuts are what you can eat, too. Those are what you can do there And sometimes you can visit Hawaii Power out