Muse

You've got to let go of the illusion of control, brother. And you're the one that can do it from the inside out, like the blossoming of a flower or a peacock in the universe. Like, I tried to control my son. I was going to make him the head mushroom dealer of the high desert. And he went off and he got all involved in the corporate Cold Stone Creamery and using the cell phone and brainwashed. He's wearing suits. It's not what I wanted. It's what the universe wanted.

Everyone says great things about you. The posture, the haircut, the tiny feet. It's amazing they hold you up, but they do. Ha, ha. Ah, they do.

Okay, I love you so much, but sometimes I love you the way that, like, I feel sorry for a monkey. Like, they're just, they need so much help and they're in such an ugly cage. You know what I mean?

Well, I've heard all the facts and it's pretty obvious what I have to do. Get a big ol' mug of hot chocolate, put on my thinking PJs, and get back to you.

Years from now, they're gonna think that's poetry. I don't believe you're seriously considering listening to these men.

Well, alright, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. A beautifully wrapped, glossy, sweet-smelling show. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I'd rather check myself before I wreck myself.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is a very rainy day. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. A couple of nice days in there this week earlier, but that has changed and it is soggy here. But the good news is it is warm and dry here in the Broadcast Center where I'm fending off the...

Kittens! Inspired by kittens!

is fending off bubbles the cat who has it's a real wily coyote road runner type situation here between the two of us where i'll do something to try to thwart her actions i've kind of created this weird barrier for her getting from this one kind of bookshelf up onto the table where i do the show where all the important equipment is but now she has figured out that she can jump on the fax machine yes i have a fax machine and then onto the garbage can and then as soon as i take my eyes off her she's like a cobra you know a snake if they if they're venomous and if they sense that you're taking your attention off of them that's when they strike that's when she just jumped onto the table wall we were doing the intro here for episode 3861 in a collector's series let the fun begin i think this is going to be a fun fascinating program today including probably more information about pizza boxes than you woke up expecting today sometimes you gotta stop and smell the pizza uh it turns out that the pizza box was invented the pizza box as we know it was invented in michigan in the 1960s by a guy running a local chain of pizzerias called domino's and basically nothing has changed in pizza box technology since then and it's because of a lot of reasons chiefly there are five companies five families if you will that control all the cardboard in the united states i know this sounds like i'm talking about the illuminati or something i'm talking about the loo malnati's oh man i hope three people understood what a genius joke that was that i just invented on the fly uh anyway so we'll talk about that and um tell you somebody who's probably not appreciating my genius, these folks that live sort of roughly in the neighborhood of where this house is that I'm working on in Washington State. I did the unthinkable last night. I drove up a long driveway, got out of my car, walked up a long set of stairs, went to somebody's front door, and rang the doorbell to ask them some questions. I wish I hadn't done that. And I may have alienated the few cool people in my larger neighborhood, so we'll talk about that, too. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. You did a great job, by the way, at least for this audience of one, pitching that pizza box story, because I'll tell you what, I started reading that story yesterday, because I was like, oh, pizza boxes, this might be a good story for TBTL. I got like, I don't know, five graphs in And I hated it so much I stopped reading it Oh man I don't think I got to the good stuff My takeaway was this guy and I have very different tastes in pizza I'm sure he has much more refined taste in pizza But I hated the opening to this article And so then, and I'm a little bit behind the

ball today as you know i kind of ran in here cold or did i run in here hot i'm not sure you

started out hot and then we put you in a cardboard box and what happened was you steamed off yes all of your important heat and now you're kind of cold and soggy and now i'm cold but like as

you're talking and as the music is running i'm going and i'm grabbing your show sheet i'm like oh what's on the show today literally as the show has already began i'm looking at what's going to be on the show and i'm like oh no it's this pizza guy but then you start talking about it i'm like oh interesting interesting history Lou Maltinato joke which I looked up and get

I'm not even kidding Andrew I none of that was scripted none of that was planned I spend a lot of time on the show making fun of how bad I am at hosting this show and and by the way it's well deserved I am bad at hosting this show but it is just weird that I made an Illuminati joke and that there happens to be a pizza place called Lou Malnati's, which I did not know.

But when you said when you called yourself a genius, I'm like, oh, I'll I'll see what I'll see what a genius this guy is. I'll give it I'll give it a bell ring, certainly. But anyway, yeah. So now I'm interested in the story. You took a story that I was actively disinterested in and made me interested in it. So I'm here.

I know exactly why. And we can talk about it when we get to it in top stories. I know exactly why you lost interest, because there was a very it starts in a very sort

of anti-Andrew snobbish kind of way sort of or or i will just say that this fella has a very refined taste in pizza and we probably just like different things and you know what we have a song from a young listener saying that it is okay to like different things i sing that in my head sometimes you got myself it's like therapy what did you do your neighbors well i'll tell you in

a minute i just want to say this is this is a time when i think america rejoices that i don't have twitter anymore because i'd definitely be trying to make a lou malnati illuminati yeah like like i would be right now i nothing that would happen for the next hour or so between us would even be going through the like part of my brain that creates memories it would just be like it'd be completely circumventing my brain because my brain would just be thinking about the fire illuminati lou malnati tweet that i would be composing for after the show so this is why it's

good that i don't have that anymore what is your relationship to twitter these days i had mentioned i think sort of in passing on the show yesterday that i hadn't been on twitter even to even to open it or look at it for i think a couple of weeks um but then during this football weekend i started opening the app because i didn't delete my account like you did and i didn't delete it from my phone i just kind of took it off the home page of my phone i turned off notifications i said i wanted some space because of some you know just more and more bad news coming out of um out of the company and what a piece of garbage Elon Musk is. I was like, I don't know if I want to participate in this product anymore. But then during the football weekend, I joined again as an observer. I opened up the app. I was reading tweets. I was not retweeting or liking anything, but certainly kind of enjoying the experience again of kind of more of a global conversation. And I think you mentioned that you were dipping your toes in that a little bit in some kind of anonymous account. Are you still doing that?

No, I did start up a burner account and I just started following basically like Chris Hayes, Maggie Haberman, just people that I generally like the content or I find the content they're generating to be interesting. And I saw it as kind of a cool opportunity because I could sort of start over and just follow, you know, the people in the feeds that would be delivering me interesting stuff. And then I told you it just for some reason was showing me a lot of nudes.

Oh, you did mention that Yeah, because it must have I don't know, maybe it just thought

This is a new person Let's hook him in with the nudes Or something I have to say, this sounds like a humble brag This would be my second brag of the day Of course, my first was related to my Illuminati joke Second would be I'm really surprised at how much I haven't missed Twitter Since I've been gone When you mentioned yesterday That you've been sort of dipping back into that world I thought, oh yeah, you know i don't miss that very much and i'm really surprised because it was such a big part of my day and my self-esteem and stuff and it really is one of those things that if you just as they i believe they used to say with your teeth ignore them and they'll go away

it's like i don't know if i've ever heard it i don't think i've ever heard it put exactly that

way before yeah i think i had a dentist that said when i was a kid he was like well you know ignore your teeth and they'll go away um i also went to the public health dentist so i don't know

if they were getting yeah was that the best was that a warning story or good advice i mean honestly

it was like during the bush administration they were probably slashing budgets uh for social services but um you know it's just strange because in not being on there Thank you.

the part of my brain that was just so much blood was coursing to it and was spent thinking about Twitter has just kind of been starved of its kind of oxygen supply or whatever. I'm just using so many weird, mixed, slightly medical examples of something tumorous slash oxygen debt in the brain, which is never good. Point is, I'm not on Twitter. I'm not even on my burner Twitter. I just haven't thought about it a lot. I've been focused heavily on posting pictures of the cat on Instagram, and that seems to be going fine. I mean, it's pretty one note what I'm doing on there. I'm not going to lie. I get my reliable 100 likes when I post a picture like I did today of the cat, making it largely impossible for me to fold my laundry. I really need to talk about this neighbor situation. i rehearsed telling you the story yesterday as i was driving back from the house and i realized it was going to take too long because it was going to get way too deep in the weeds on different kinds of cladding for the exterior of your house

sorry my brain was just tonight oxygen what'd you say

um and so uh we do need to get to that but um but i was just curious what is your laundry folding

technique? Where do you do it? Do you have a table

for it? Do you throw it on the bed? What do you do? See, now your brain's going to go to sleep

because nothing is easy with me, right? I had a bit of a routine here that I'm now considering changing up. So funny you should ask Luke, but we have a washer and dryer upstairs right now. They're kind of clunky and in the way. We're looking to rectify that with a stackable unit at some point. But the way it's been working in our family for a while now is is uh vives and i's clothes i usually am the person who's like kind of usually the one who's maybe running the the cycles um but then when it becomes folding time i pull all the clothes out of the dryer and then i folding time i i immediately sort out genevieve's from mine because i don't fold genevieve's clothes i don't really like folding clothes but i'm happy to do my own but i also don't think that genevieve should have to do mine so i usually grab the stuff first my very first thing is i for the past six months i've been dumping the entire uh basket out on my uh dining room table upstairs which you can picture and i will put on a podcast often i will listen to the whistler that's kind of my whistler time and i might have a beer and i will just slowly like kind of fold my clothes and then once they're all stacked up like i keep my clothes down in the basement an old kind of dresser thing little hutch thing that i need to replace um and so then i would make several trips with like tall stacks of t-shirts and socks and underwear whatever and bring them downstairs and then certain towels live down here too the other day though i was downstairs in the basement and i turned on one of these football games i keep referencing and i was like i usually like to do this up on the table where it's kind of like i can stand and do it but i'm like i want to watch this game so i brought all the laundry in the basket downstairs i dumped it out on the couch i'm like i don't like this this isn't me i need a table um but then i was like wait a second i'm folding all these clothes like the majority of my clothes are being folded mere feet away from where they live in these drawers and so from now on i think i'm going to be a basement folder luke i don't know if this gets at anything that you were possibly interested it absolutely does but i'm gonna probably bring this laundry down here sort out genevieve's put it back in the basket let her deal with that and then i'm going to fold my stuff

up and put it right down here in the basement it exactly answers my question because my my ritual here in this particular apartment is um and by the way i don't have a proper laundry basket i own exactly one laundry basket here in portland and it has it's in my um closet in my bedroom and it has the other set the spare set of sheets and the like duvet cover the spare duvet cover that's clean that's where it lives and then when i change the sheets that comes out goes on the bed and then when the um the now the new backup pair is washed they go folded and into that laundry basket so every single time i do the laundry and i get laundry out of the dryer i pull it out i have like an armful of laundry the worst system possible i drop like eight socks i go and i go into the bedroom and i dump all of it onto the bed and then i have a system where i i start throwing all stuff that's related to running and exercise that just goes to one corner because that doesn't need special careful folding that just i'll deal with that in a minute so i separate that stuff everything that's going to go on a hanger which is going to get steamed later anyway i've never figured out the system for pulling a collared shirt out of the dryer and it being okay like I'm talking like an on. oxford it being okay to just wear it like that so really those things i get everything that's going to go on a hanger and i put it in a different pile and then i put socks anyway i have a whole like what little system i do but since i've got this cat i've found that the bed system is really not ideal because she loves to just roll around in the laundry and not only does it make it harder for me to sort it and fold it but she also gets her cat hair on like i have a lot of black t-shirts and they come out of the dryer fine and before they've even gone into the closet they are going to need a lint rolling and so anyway i took a picture of that today and i put it on instagram

that was the point of that story andrew so that so you're no longer going to do the bed thing

you're going to do it on a table then i might need to start doing it on a yeah some kind of a raised surface that she's less likely to get on because it's cute what she's doing which is why i put it on instagram but it's annoying to me and also it what you talk about with watching your football game and and folding the laundry reminds me of really one of the great joys of my of my young adulthood in my 20s i used to let when i you know like had one of my first apartments and i would have addy there you know half the time and i was in i was probably like 21 or 22 so i was still kind of learning the ropes on like housekeeping and kind of just cleanliness i guess you would say and i would just let my laundry get so out of control so so out of control and then there would always be one night where this would be my ritual i would go to the store i would get a tube of cookie dough and then i would begin the process of taking just massive amounts of dirty laundry down to the very scary basement of my apartment building on capitol hill the dank basement that just felt like something out of saw those are the worst before yeah that was even a twinkle in eli roth's eye and uh and then i would get the laundry done and then i would bring it up you know load by load and eventually i would have a massive pile of clean laundry on my couch and i would sit there and i would fold it while i was watching conan o'brien and then i would have eventually a huge pile of clean folded clothes right about the time the chocolate chip cookies were coming out of the oven and at about 1 a.m i would sit there with a huge glass of milk and eat probably i don't know 20 chocolate chip cookies and feel totally blissed out and you my point is i want to

return to that yes yes um you know that you mentioning and let's honestly i do really want to hear what happened with your neighbors i know we're a little bit tight on time today but I did just want to say that that that little bit of that story you told about how you have to like you're grabbing as much laundry you can and two arms and it's falling and you're like I know that I can easily solve this with just another laundry basket and you can probably stack that basket with the other like I have so we talk about this more and more on the show. I have so many things like that in my life where I've just learned to live with something that is an inconvenience that is so solvable. But for some reason, I just don't. I mentioned the other day that, like, my current setup in my basement bathroom, there's no toilet paper holder, right? So I need to make sure that the toilet paper is within reach if I'm going to be using the bathroom. And, like, now, like, it's just part of the routine. I'm just so used to it. One of these days, I'm going to install a ding-dang toilet paper holder, and I'm going to remember what it's like to live, like, 99% of adult Americans.

Well, I was in Fred Meyer yesterday morning, walking around, buying like, well, you can't buy Tide Pods anymore. You have to take a card. Yeah, you have to show your ID. Is that from kids eating them? I think. Because I was able to, you know what I ended up getting? A giant ass thing of gain pods. I don't care. Oh, because the gain isn't locked up? Oh, maybe it's a price point thing then. The gain was not locked up, and I got like a giant, you know, like Costco-sized tub of it. Is it liquid or pods? They're pods.

So they are pods. Interesting. They are pods. Maybe kids just don't like the taste of Tide. That was their advertising campaign. Kids love the taste of Tide.

Tide has actually stopped making Sierra mist-flavored pods. They weren't performing well with the kids.

They were with millennials. We never got to that part of the story yesterday. Starry.

now it's called starry yeah um anyway i was walking on fred meyer yesterday morning and i was literally like had under one arm a giant thing of game pods and uh the other arm a bunch of wet wipes so yes it was a glamour trip everybody was talking about it but my in my mind i said you know what i because i was thinking about laundry and i said i really need to go buy another laundry basket so that i can just carry the stuff from the washing or the dryer to the bedroom without dropping all of it and then i just thought but i have i don't have anywhere to put an additional

Laundry basket yeah that's a thing

Because I am in this apartment and so I just Like I talked myself out of it I don't Know why like I could have Solved the problem for $12 in about 45 seconds yesterday, and I chose not to. I'm in this weird holding pattern because I'm, you know, planning on moving to this other house that I'm working on. And it's starting to really impact my brain because it makes anything that happens here in Portland feel like a waste or silly or something I'm going to end up reproducing somewhere else. So it's like my life. And, like, Becca was over the other night, and we were making dinner. Well, she was making dinner. And she was just really pretty shocked by just the paltry selection of like kitchen items and even bowls and things like I'm living a very like I don't know what you'd call it a very bachelor life here. And she was like, you need to get some stuff so you can actually cook here. And I was like, yeah, but I mean, I want to wait till I'm in my real setup. She goes, you know, your real setup will happen someday. But in the meantime, you live here and you have no bowls.

Like, yeah, and it's not. And at the end of the day, like one more box of kitchen. I totally understand this from both perspectives. What she is saying makes 100 percent sense. But I also know what it's like just to sort of have that mental block of feeling like you're in a temporary space.

Yeah, I need to kind of get over that because, you know, it's again, I I can turns out I could bring two laundry baskets with me when I get up to the other house. OK, speaking of the other house, let's take a quick break and then I will tell you why I can probably never have a meaningful relationship with my one set of cool neighbors coming up here on TBTL. Let's thank some of our daily donors who are making the show possible with their support every month. And my goodness, are we ever thankful for that? Because we would not be here without folks like Chandra Benjamin and Keith Scholl out there in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Idyllic. Sounds very, I mean, I'd stay away from that one tree, though. The one that you were told not to eat from an Eden Prairie. I'd go ahead and just. I don't know, though.

Can I just offer a counterpoint to that? Okay. I hear the fruit is really good. And also, who's watching? Really? I mean, nobody's paying attention to that tree, are they?

Very serpentine of you. I'm not going to turn my back on you. You'll strike like bubbles trying to jump onto the broadcast desk here. Thanks to Chandra and Keith. Thanks also to Max McDaniel, who's in Seattle, Washington. We have a lot of Maxes that listen to our show. I feel like we overperform. For a show with a relatively boutique kind of appeal, I think we over-deliver on Maxes.

I can think of two right now, including Max here in Seattle and Max in Brooklyn, I want to say. I thought we had two Maxes in New York. Maybe we have two Maxes in New York. We definitely have one Max in New York. It's Max to the Max.

When you have three Maxes, what is it? A headroom of Maxes? It is, yes. Thanks, Max. Thanks also to Margo Feather in Kent, Washington. Margo has been a longtime friend and supporter of the program. You don't forget a name like Margo Feather, Andrew. It's a great name. Thank you, Margo. It sure is. Eclipsed maybe only by Lauren Powers down here in Portland, Oregon. I believe Lauren, is Lauren one of our architect listeners? I think so.

Yes, and a big basketball fan. I ran into Lauren at a basketball game once. I hang out at basketball games now

Sounds like you do Man we got some solid names on the list today Denver Dorsing

Is out in Ellensburg, Washington Nice, Denver Dorsing That's a weatherman's name

It's a lot of D's dude Are you thinking of What was the Dallas Reigns Down there in Los Angeles Who was that

I feel like I maybe missed the peak of that

is that Dallas rains was big on I don't know one of the stations when I moved down there you know it's odd because in LA the weather is other than the June gloom generally speaking in LA the weather is kind of one thing it's either going to be like 70 something and kind of sunny or it's going to be like 90 something and kind of sunny like there's just no this it's not like it's going to snow today and yet the weather people seem like they're big stars and I'm kind of like you don't have that much to report on for being you know a big star like dallas reigns or johnny mountain the story that i always tell is there was a guy down there when i moved to la named henry de carlo who was a big hit and i remember when he was in seattle his name was henry webbrink and i watched him on fox and i was like i know you i know what you did last summer henry de carlo but you just think that the weather people in and like Jillian Barbieri because

became quite known on the national scene i think doing like the weather on good day la or something it's funny that the weather folks in la are as big of a deal as they are considering they have

the least interesting beat at the television station yeah i wonder how that um la based sunday morning news anchor is doing remember she switched networks and then yes former colleague of hers went like absolutely off on the air and online and then he lost his job and he sounded

very unstable i wonder how she's doing the new gig my guess is she's doing fine because it sounded like throughout the whole thing she was the least yeah the least nuts person she just like had a job she wanted a different air shift they wouldn't give it to her so she found a different station in town that would give her her preferred preferred schedule yeah and just

her big mistake was being friends with a nutcase people have said in fact our next donor has said the same about me i believe jessica pinter jessica pinter good friend of mine cleveland ohio so this your friend you go to baseball games yeah we yep jessica visited me out here in seattle we went to an amazing mariners astros game the greatest comeback that i've ever seen in person it was amazing jessica and i went to homecoming together we super serve listeners that i went to homecoming

with so also it's been a real chance for you to brag about all the different kind of sports you go to yeah that's true basketball you saw lauren at a basketball game you went to baseball with jessica you in denver uh went to an ice hockey match once what is that i feel a little bit bad

about my shout out to lauren because what is it blazers no what is the basketball team because i know that lauren's a big portland yeah what's the portland the blazers oh they are the blazers i'm pretty sure that portland's a big or i'm pretty sure that lauren's a big blazers fan i just didn't have it at the tip of my tongue a moment ago see that would be interesting to me

I love we're just talking about Lauren in absentia because Lauren, I know, is a relatively new transplant to Portland. Yes, but maybe it was a Blazers partisan even when living in Seattle. Now, that's interesting. That's like that's one of those moves where it's like your house Sonics, but then you're taken over by like, you know, I don't want to paint. I don't want to paint the Trailblazers as Ramsey Bolton because they're not. They're not bad. It's not a bad team. They're not bad people. but like when i was growing up the blazers and sonics they were natural enemies it was the i-5 rivalry right and and yet and then the sonics go away and then you have this like you know vacuum and the most natural thing would be just to root for the team that's two hours away and it has some really likable players like damian lillard and at the time cj mccullum so it was like a it makes sense to embrace the blazers except it's like you're embracing the team that you used to hate just because you don't have a team anymore. It feels like you're flying a different flag over your house now.

Yeah, that is an interesting dynamic. Yeah, I don't know what her journey is there, but I mean, I guess that could be an interview that we have down the line.

Sure, we're always looking for content, so get at us, Lauren. Thanks to all of our donors for making TBTL possible. We would not be here doing this if not for y'all. Thank you. hello and welcome to top story so here's the thing andrew there is a lot of different kind of cladding and the sort of standard please get a lot of people please clad you that's the show title so few people will get it but it's such a good such a good idea um so you know most houses typically have siding that is horizontal. You can picture it. You probably have it on your very own house. But it has become sort of in style of late for certain kinds of houses to put in vertical siding. But a lot of times, there's a particular kind of siding that I am really enamored with right now. I think it's called shashugiban. And it's this kind of Japanese wood-burning technique where you burn the wood so it turns black, which also means it's insect-resistant and weather resistant and then you install it vertically and it's a very very cool effect problem is it's also like really time consuming and expensive and like everything in the world of construction right now probably an eight month wait so i have been trying to figure out because i'm going to re-side the tbtl studio that my dad and i have been working on i've been trying to figure out a way to try to do something on the cheap or at least on the cheaper uh that maybe i could even try to do myself for the siding of that house and then eventually the other place the actual house when that's actually done to re-side that now it's a weird world of siding right now there is and i'm not even kidding i'm really doing this andrew this so like three people will find this entertaining or interesting the main like place that you get siding from We'll be right back. like the siding materials like that you can put on a house is like the kind of slightly cooler stuff. It's called James Hardy. It's called Hardy panel or Hardy board. And it has cement in it. And it's very good in the Northwest because it, it, uh, you know, protects your home from the weather and there's a lot of weather out here, but it is the most bizarre thing trying to contact them because if you try to go to their website and put in an order, they won't sell it to you. You have to get it through a distributor, and you have to find someone. Basically, they will not sell you the stuff. You have to find somebody who will install it on your house, and then they buy it from them, and then that's like a six-month wait and also prohibitively expensive. So I have been trying to solve this riddle of how am I going to clad the TBTL studios, and as I've been driving around the world or jogging around the world, I've been obsessively peeping the siding on people's homes. Just the siding I'd like to be clear about,

but there is a house um that's near uh the house that i'm remodeling and it totally stands out in the neighborhood because it's the only actually architecturally interesting house anywhere for like an eight mile radius almost all the houses where my house is are just kind of like they were probably built a lot of them were built like in the 80s and 90s and they're just not really an architectural style that i love they're also not a lot of them aren't particularly old like i like an old craftsman house i like um a victorian sometimes and i like mid-century modern and modern stuff there's just not much of that out where this house is um except this one place that i keep driving by and i you can only see it uh during this time of year when the leaves are down because it has a lot of trees and it's way up off the road it's usually obscured by all the foliage but i could see it and as i was driving by it last night i looked up and i realized they're doing something very interesting with their cladding and i need to know what that is and i continued driving down the hill because i thought well what am i going to do drive up to their house and knock on their door and ask them about the siding on their house at 5 p.m that's weird and as i kept driving i thought well it's probably as good a time as any it's possible that both people will be home which would be good like I wouldn't I wouldn't want to show up at noon when maybe just one of the people is there and that's extra weird I thought five is not like so it's not so late in the day it's not like nine which would be weird but it's also not one in the afternoon which seems random I was like this is it's probably before dinner basically I spent about a mile driving away from the house talking myself into doing a u-turn and going back to the house and asking them what the deal was with their siding and sure enough i got up the gumption i did a u-turn i drove back i drove up their driveway got out of my car and i walked up the stairs to the house and then i rang their doorbell and then andrew i stood so far back on the front porch so that i was almost falling off of it because i wanted my body language to say i know it's weird that I'm ringing your doorbell at five o'clock at night and you don't know who I am. And I thought being as far away from the front door as possible would send that message.

Were you picking your fingernails with a Bowie knife?

Well, yes, but that's kind of my signature look.

That's what I thought, right. The cowboy hat sort of tipped down so they can sort of see your strong jaw, but maybe only just like one glint in one of your eyes.

Yeah, and then what was really unfortunate was I also had some broccoli in my teeth, so later I was cleaning my teeth with the knife. when they opened the door. So I can see into the house, and it's a very idyllic seat in there. It's a mother, maybe in her late 20s. They're very adorable children. And then in the other room is her very adorable husband. He's doing some work on the computer. And I ring the doorbell, and the mom answers the door. And I just start with the biggest apology of, I am so sorry that I am standing on your front porch. And she's looking at me like not with any kind of trepidation with like, hey, it's fine. Like, hi, how's it going? I was like just ready for them to answer the door. I mean, the reason that I'm making such a buildup out of this and the reason that I was also feeling so weird about it is because we've been talking about how unusual it is in this day and age for someone to just go up to someone's door and ring the doorbell unannounced. And I was feeling the full weight of that kind of weird social thing that's happened now where we don't do that anymore. Like, I felt like it was on me to somehow telegraph to them within the first 30 seconds that I was not there to do them physical harm and that I was not selling Amway or telling them the good news about some sort of religion. But it was I don't think I've been that uncomfortable in my body in probably, I don't know, a year. And I'm uncomfortable in my body like a lot of the time. Like I was it was it was took all of my gumption to go.

up there and ring the doorbell and again these folks were so nice and i just it comes like pouring out of me i'm like i'm so sorry to be ringing your doorbell but i i'm remodeling a house kind of in the neighborhood by the way that's not that's i'm this is like a mile from my house that's why it wasn't it's not even really my neighborhood but it's just a cool house that i note as i'm driving to the home depot to get materials and this is where things really went sideways for me Andrew I don't know why I decided to say this but what I was trying to say what I wanted to say to them now the husband has also come to the door he's holding one of the kids the wife has the other kid on her hip they're all smiles what I wanted to say was I really like the look of your home I'm doing a remodeling project um that I would like to try to achieve somewhat of a similar look um this house reminds me a little bit of some of the houses I used to see in L.A., which I'm a fan of that architectural style, and so I'm wondering, what is this siding that you have? Because I might want to see if I could buy that, too. But what I said to them was, I'm from L.A. Like, I just said, I'm from L.A. Like, that was how I pretty much opened the conference. After apologizing for being on their porch, I just said, I'm from L.A., which is so not true. Like, 15 years ago, I guess that could have been true, but it has not been true for a long time. I was trying to express something about how I enjoyed the architecture of both Los Angeles and the architecture of this home, but it got, in the fog of war, it got compressed to, I'm from L.A., and they were like, oh, that's so cool, we're from Seattle. My immediate thought was, well, I'm actually more from Seattle than L.A., that would be a better thing for us to talk about, but no, I'm locked into this now, I'm from L.A., and I'm remodeling a house, and I wanted to know what this is, and they were so nice, and they explained exactly what it was it is by the way hardy panel for four by eight primed you paint it to whatever color you want has small battens on it andrew which is what i'm really looking for but again i don't want to bore you with clad talk is there another cladding joke i mean i love please clad but i feel like there's also another so the problem is i will probably end up they were so nice and they were like hey if you have any other questions like stop by

absolutely like you know did you exchange information did you get phone numbers i i wanted

to get off that porch so quickly yeah i felt so uncomfortable not just because i had lied to their face for no reason but because i just felt like i i could it's hard for me to express how weird i felt just asking questions of these people who had never met me before despite their completely warm

affect you know and did you like did you see did you see or sense them getting more weirded out by you on the porch it sounds like you were uncomfortable with what you were saying randomly lying um but um it sounds like they weren't like you didn't leave and they thought like boy that guy he got weirder and weirder as the conversation went on i don't think so although

this whole conversation probably took 45 seconds and i closed it with well i've taken up enough of your evening uh-huh which is kind of a weird it was a weird exit line but i don't think no i mean

ideally you would have left that you would have said hey you know since we are kind of neighbors or at least in the same area here's my phone number if you ever want to reach out and just like give them an email or a phone number or something that way you're not forcing them to give over any information but they have a way of getting a hold of you that would have been ideal because now to share that information again you have to run into them at the aldi i don't know So I assume that's the grocery store in town. Or you have to do the porch dance again, which nobody wants to do that.

No, I mean, exactly. They literally said, stop by any time if you have any more questions. It was a perfect opening for me to say, here's my contact info. Maybe we could trade numbers, and if I could ask you a couple more questions, because I do have more questions, Andrew, I really do, about Hardy Panel. But I didn't take that opportunity. opportunity and now the problem is the next time i like if we were to actually become sort of friendly because these are the only people that i have seen or interacted with in this and the place where this house is is kind of it's sort of nestled between like two or three small southern washington towns and they're small southern washington towns that when i go down to the home depot or go to the aldi or whatever it tends to be a sort of a cultural thing that's really different than let's say my cultural milieu it's a lot of uh trucks pulling trump flags and it's just a different scene than the scene that i typically live in or vibe with and part of that is actually kind of interesting i went to a bowling alley which i sent you a picture of which On tomorrow's show, Andrew I have got a stack of basically loser, like they were pull tabs that were not winners, but they all came with either a trivia question or an inspirational statement.

Oh, nice. Are these like the big square kind that have, or like rectangle kind that have like five strips that you pull, or are they singles?

It is a rectangle, but you pull one strip that are called the Beer Brothers. Okay. I'll just read you one. When all eyes are on you, wink. Hmm. Uh-huh. Those are words to live by.

I'm thinking it's a thinker. It's a head scratcher. Sure, it's a way homer. Yeah.

So it's a lot of that in these towns that I've been, you know, visiting for supplies and the like. And that's fine. And there are some cool things about these places. And, again, like there's a great active bowling alley in one of them that I definitely want us to go to. Like it is, as I sent you a picture of it and said, I've touched the divine. It was like a perfectly preserved, fun, small town bowling alley with all the stuff that we love about those kind of places. But on the other hand, I guess my point is this family, they were the first people that I've ever talked to in this area who I thought, oh, I could be friends with these people. Like we could totally like I bet you they like the same kind of stuff that I like. And I bet you that we could, you know, have a beer and a brat at some point or whatever. So the first time I've ever encountered anyone who I could see myself actively socializing with, I lie to them within the first 20 seconds. Like, how do we move forward in this potential kind of, you know, friendship or knowing of each other? Because it's going to come up again, and they're going to be like, oh, what part of, like, did you move up from L.A.? And then I'm going to say, well, 15 years ago, I moved from L.A. to New York, and then I moved to Seattle. And then I lived in, have you heard of Port Townsend? And that's like it's just like my it's such I don't know why I did that. And I feel like the next time if I clarify, I seem like an insane person.

Well, next time, if it comes up, hopefully you can have it. And I'm not saying that I would. I'm a very nervous person, too. I have a lot of social anxiety. So this is all very relatable to me. But, you know, hopefully you'll be able to say at some point like, oh, yeah, you know, I don't know why I said that. I was kind of nervous.

I'm not knocking on people's doors at the dinner at the what do they call the what do they call the hour on the red zone when you're I started watching the red zone by the way I don't like the red zone scares me I feel like it's it's like mainlining an opioid versus yeah taking the occasional ibuprofen like I need the I need to see what happens between the 30 yard lines it's no I'm with you like what happened was I was playing

fantasy football this year in the red zone for people who don't know it's just like it's a it's like what is it it's like a 12-hour broadcast with no commercials that just constantly shows you what on Sundays when there's a whole bunch of football games happening at the same time throughout the day they'll just show you what's going on in the red zone when another when another team starts approaching a scoring position then they'll switch over to that with a little bit of uh analysis not analysis but just a little bit of information about what's going on and it's good for gamblers and and you know again i was watching because of my um because of my fantasy football team and they're the seahawks weren't playing at the time all of that is to say i do understand it's addictive nature and it is just like mainlining football it is a weird experience

but yeah they just keep jumping around like it's just like it only it they only cover like you said when a team is like about to do the most exciting part of the game it's like zero it'd be like the baseball equivalent would be like they cut to a game as the ball is like starting to clear the infield and it's on its way out of the stadium i heard somebody none of the like there was they

tried a baseball one or their god that'd be impossible i don't even know how you would do that but all of that is to say they have something called the witching hour and i don't know why they call it the witching hour and i don't know why i um i literally don't even know why i brought that up i was trying to think of the term the witching hour but all of that is to say hopefully sometime if you run into these folks again or are able to strike up some sort of a communication you can just say hey listen i was really you know it was weird i was just like nervous on your porch i don't knock on people's doors during the witching hour is what i was going to say um but i'm not actually from la i lived down there for a little bit but really i'm in seattle you know what i mean like

if you were normal and notice yeah i mean i could also play it off so it could be a thing where if we ever hang out or we're talking again and they're like oh uh you said you were from la and i was like oh well a while ago i've been living in the northwest for a while like maybe i could just play I'm sure it loomed less large

I think you're overcomplicating it though I would just be like yeah I don't know exactly why I said that I lived there for a while I think you can just admit that be vulnerable

Don't you think me saying I don't know why I said that would be more of a red flag to them rather than if I said oh yeah I lived down there for a long time but I've been in the northwest for a while I'm just new to this community doesn't that sound like less of a crazy person than I actually am I lied to you because I was nervous

It sounds less true I actually think

Somebody being like you know what I was nervous Because I was standing on your porch and I haven't done that Since I was a child trying to sell phone books

The truth sounds less true because the truth is I used to live in LA but I've been in the northwest for a long time

But your original statement was I'm from LA and now you're backing off of that To say well I lived down there for a while But the vast majority of your life you've lived in Seattle And Portland or the Pacific Northwest Like what percentage of your life Did you live in LA So it's the from that you think is

Potentially

The fact that you identified yourself as from LA originally And now you want to make things right by sort of softening that as opposed to just saying the utmost truth, which is, you know, I was nervous and it came out of my mouth weird. I did live down there for a while, but I'm actually from here originally. Like that just seems more normal. I feel like the more you try to like kind of, I don't know, kind of isolate this and sort of slice it up, I think that you're creating more and more opportunities to be weird.

Most recently I've been in the Northwest, but I did try to buy a bowling alley in L.A. I was going to say, when you sent me that picture, I'm like, let's buy it. I tried to buy that. Yeah. You know, what's kind of interesting is that you you mentioned that as somebody who tends to get some a bit of social anxiety that you can identify with what I'm describing. I really don't have a lot of social anxiety. I mean, I think as I get older, I'm less like being in in big social situations like, you know, something related to my work, maybe where there's like a lot of people that like I'm talking to. or you and I are talking to at a TBTL event. I think there was a time in my life when being on and being in really hyper-social situations like recharged my batteries, and I think now it kind of drains my batteries. And it's also, it's like part of our job and part of my job, so it's like I don't begrudge doing it, but it's not the kind of thing that I, at the end of it, I think like, oh my God, where's the next thing? At the end of it, I'm like, okay, wow, that took it out of me, which is different than when I was younger, and I think those kinds of things really, like I said, kind of energized me. That being said, I don't have a lot of social anxiety, and I don't know if I can always identify with what that feels like, but I think I can after being on that porch because I was so nervous and acting so strangely or acting so not the way that I am. I'm a sort of fairly confident person, although, as I said on the show recently, I present a real interesting combo of massive crushing insecurity and unbelievable overconfidence. um that's kind of those are the two those are the two settings the dial only clicks on two positions in my brain and it's one of those but like i'm just not the kind of person that's generally walking up to a door or walking up to a social situation where i'm like almost being like just breathe just get through this just don't be weird like i don't ever have that feeling and i had that feeling yesterday and i wonder if that i'm i'm not trying to say that everyone's experience with kind of social anxiety looks exactly the same because obviously it doesn't but that was a feeling that i have not had a lot uh in my life and i wonder if that isn't a view into how a lot of other people actually experience a lot of interactions that feeling of saying things

where you don't even know why you're saying what you're saying rings a bell to me like my social anxiety is the anxiety that you had on that porch would not describe my casual um social anxiety that i have like this past weekend we had two different like um social engagements at people's homes for like dinner or cocktails one couple a very nice couple but I don't we don't know them that well it was kind of a get to know you thing and like you know like I that I definitely and I had lovely times at both places especially if anybody's listening who was there but a big part of it was like I really was looking forward to getting to Sunday and to getting those things over with because I don't know it feels like every social interaction is an opportunity to say something i regret like i know if i stay home i'm not going to go to bed that night wishing i hadn't said x y or z you know and there is a part of that having said that it is a little bit different than the acute experience that you're describing which is a very sort of foreign situation where you're so nervous that literally your first words you're just like what i mean i

understand i understand a waterfall of words that were just trying to like i said very rapidly communicate that I'm not a weirdo and in the process, fully establish, like remove all doubt as to the question of if I'm

a weirdo. Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

Alright, we did not get to talk pizza boxes, but I promise you, unlike a pizza being delivered, Andrew, this is going to

hold until tomorrow. This story is going to be so Soggy by tomorrow.

Well, unless we go with the pizza box that Apple, you know, the Apple Corporation has actually patented a special pizza box to use in Cupertino for their own staffers.

No, I didn't. OK, I did not get to the good part of the story. I'm embarrassed that I gave up on it so quickly.

Let me fulfill the obligation that Strong Bad has set up for us here and play a very quick voicemail from you. This is On Location. This is boots-on-the-ground journalism here from listener Chris.

Hey, dummies. It is your less famous listener named Chris from Brooklyn. Still pretty famous to us. from JFK Terminal 4, where the Clear line is actually longer than the TSA pre-check line now. It's gotten out of control, and I actually beat someone through security who got into the Clear line the same time I got into the TSA pre-check line. Hope that $179 was worth it.

Now, it's interesting there. So Clear is the private company that you can sign up for, and they'll get you through security quicker. And then there's TSA PreCheck. Do you know what the difference is? He just dropped – Chris mentioned $179 maybe for Clear. TSA PreCheck isn't free either. That can be kind of expensive, right? I think PreCheck is like $80, but it's good for five years. Whoa, okay. That's not so bad. I thought it was going to be more like $150 a year or something like that.

And again, as we talked about when this came up originally on the show, the issue is that the TSA PreCheck thing, You do have to go and you sit at a desk with somebody who is, you know, a trained interviewer who is, you know, asking you questions and running your background and stuff. And so the idea is if we can establish people who fly frequently and who are, you know, don't seem like they're a risk, we can just get them through quicker. We don't need their shoes to come off, et cetera. There is a security aspect to it. The clear thing is just you can walk up to them in the airport and let them scan your eyeball and your fingerprint, and they will just take you to the front of the line. In fact, when I was flying home from that trip to Las Vegas, it was quite maddening because I was in the TSA pre-check line, and every time I would start to inch forward, they would bring somebody up who was a clear customer, and they would take them to the front of the TSA line. So I don't know what's going on that listener Chris was seeing as far as the line being long. I guess just a bunch of so many people that have clear and not enough of the clear employees to escort them to the front of the line. But the only way I've ever seen it unfold is if you show up with that, you go to the front of the line ahead of the people with TSA pre-check, which is the other thing we talked about that is frustrating is it's both the it's the reason for and the solution to the problem. of there being a lot of people in that line because they're sort of getting you coming and going.

Yeah, right. And they take you to the front of the line. They're carrying a table with a white tablecloth on it. It's very...

This is how I make my living. Yeah, exactly. Oh, the other thing I'm going to talk about tomorrow, along with pizza, Andrew, is Nick Cave is at it again from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Somebody used an AI program to write a Nick Cave song. and it's, first of all, unbelievably on-message, on-brand, and Nick Cave's response to it is typical for him. It's unbelievably funny and heartfelt and acerbic. It's really good. So I want to talk about that tomorrow along with Pizza Boxes. Sounds good. In the meantime, we're going to need to wrap this on up for this edition of the program, but I've got some great news, everyone. you too can make money from home by placing small classified ads I'm trying to think of what the worst pitch I could have given to those people at the house with the hearty plank would have been no the good news is we're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you so please do join us for that in the meantime have a great Wednesday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

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