Muse

Dad, the rice, you have really outdone yourself. The rice is great. Oh, thanks, man. You know what? That means a lot to me. Dad, the rice is perfect. I mean, it's moist. It's perfectly cooked. You timed it right. Uh-huh. Yeah, so tender. But it's not mushy. You know, it yields to the bite. But not without a little struggle, you know? I mean, you've got to still open your mouth and chew it. It's not that it just goes right in. Well, it's not going to bite itself. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah. And, you know, I've noticed lately that you've been drinking more than usual. You know, I'm wondering if that's a problem. I think the problem is you've been noticing it more.

TBTL!

I feel so full of... What's the opposite of shame? Pride? No, not that far from shame.

Less shame?

Yeah.

Tell me an opinion that you have about something. Just one opinion that you have about anything at all. Just share an opinion. Anything. Share an opinion. Share an opinion. Share an opinion. Right now. Share an opinion. Just off the top of your head, share an opinion, anything.

Try everything once, except celery is pretty much bullsh**. Don't even bother with it, big waste of time. You sound like you might be a little bit jealous, babe. No, and I know a little something about being jealous because people have been jealous of me my entire life.

Were you just using a synthesizer? Nope. So you mean to tell me that all of those sounds were coming from your body? Yup. I'm the president of rap music, and I need to work with you right away.

All right. Hello. Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Let the great experiment begin!

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I hate to be a gossip. Just kidding. I love it. Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is. It's not Oregon, by the way. Peace and love to my friends who are east of the Mississippi. If you ever find yourself out here and you really want to fit in, don't call it Oregon. Call it Oregon. But then also don't call it Oregon like G-U-N, like because that's a thing out here. You see people with the bumper stickers that say Oregonian because they are very interested in their, what they perceive to be their Second Amendment rights. I'm just saying there's a sweet spot between Oregon and Oregonian, and it's how I just said it. So, there's a lot that you all can learn here on episode 3866 of the Collector's Series. Let the fun begin. Boy, that's a snooty way to start a humble podcast. There is a certain part of this preamble that I have planned out in my mind, and then there is a certain part that I do not have planned out, and I bet that you, the listeners, can tell which was which uh anyway here we go they have got a situation out in massachusetts where at a certain high school the lights have been stuck on for over a year hey what happened they literally cannot turn the lights off at this high discussing thousands of dollars a month and nobody has like the software access to turn the lights off and it appears that at least some part of the story was broken by one of the high school students at the high school newspaper who wrote a piece about it um which is kind of cool journalism uh we've also got some not cool

journalism for you i'd like to point out to anybody watching this is really bunk journalism

from us aka tbtl i'm the bunk journalist i'm talking about where we're going to debut a new segment called earned media spotlight that's where we play right into the hands of a major corporation who is just begging for free attention and we will give it to them because we are in fact bunk journalists it's um welcome to food news today it's uh in the grocery space where the today's earned media spotlight is turned to uh we're also going to turn the mic over to this guy the longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships i I consider him not just to be a co-bro and a colleague, but a true friend-o. Their friendship survived many years and multiple hairdos. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I told you before the show that I had a story for you. But in the three minutes that have passed since we last chatted together off air, I think I'm going to swerve here Because I realize In one hand I hold a story And in another hand I hold a conundrum And the conundrum See which one fills up faster The conundrum my friend Is home repair related And I realize

Does it have to do with our value Andrew?

It has to do with our value, Luke, as a podcasting team. You were telling me about our value as a way of measuring the efficiency of insulation before the show. This does not relate to that. This relates to electricity. This is great. You know what? Because I was about to send a text message during your intro, and I thought, no, before I send this text message, let me ask you if you think I should send this text message to an electrician. See how I say the word electrician, Luke? Not electrician. Some of those lowbrows. Well, the first time you said it, you did say electrician. Did I already say that word and I messed it up?

The next two times you said it. Listen, I'm sitting here in a glass house of Volkswagens, okay? Volkswagens. Wait, I actually said it right.

No, you said it right. You got it right, yeah.

Now I forget how to say it wrong, Andrew.

It's all about elocution, Luke. Thank you. okay um here here's a true story um Genevieve and I not to brag are the owners of a coffee maker it is not a fancy coffee maker in any way it's actually a pretty stripped down one but it's kind of cute looking we've had it for about four years um and we have it plugged into a socket in our kitchen as you might expect and it's one of those GFCI sockets you know like most of them are the fault interrupt exactly so if something happens if something shorts out or if this outlet detects something not being quite right it'll pop its little button out and stop working right i think most people are familiar with this technology you can usually just hit the reset button and it goes right back to being normal unless there's a real issue well on sunday

you know why that is by the way what what the ground fault is usually for i thought it's usually

if something is like kind of shorting out or if there's moisture or what do you well yeah exactly

that it's often around water so that if the hairdryer fell into a bathtub that had a person in it, it would throw the switch before it would electrocute the person.

Yeah, in fact, I mean, while most houses have them or most homes have them, I think pretty standard everywhere, I think it's a law or regulation that you have to have them in kitchens and bathrooms.

Yeah, I'm sure it is, if you're permitting something, which everyone should do when they're doing any kind of home project.

funny you would just throw that in there that's not a conversation we had but I think I can read between the lines there a little bit anyway I so on Sunday morning Genevieve went to hit go on the coffee machine I am the type of fella as I think you would expect who makes and preps the coffee the night before but I don't really use the timer mechanism because we don't really know when to start the coffee I just have everything set to go the water's in the chamber the grounds are in the basket Whoever wakes up first just hits go on the coffee maker On Sunday morning

The eggs are in the fridge, the jellos jiggling, the game's over Sorry, I just wanted to check Hearns Whenever you say that Because this has actually come up on the show previously You were sort of laying it out And it sounded like you were doing That was the legendary Lakers announcer Who used to say that The butter's getting cold, the eggs are in the thing That was like his The game's over thing

Ever since they moved to LA I stopped watching I was more of an original Lakers fan I like the old Kanye anyway I'm sorry that I'm making this so long I just kind of don't know where to begin these things point is Genevieve hits go on the coffee maker and it trips the GFCI thing it kind of shorts or whatever not surprising necessarily because again it's in the kitchen there's moisture around the coffee maker is there but it trips it and then she resets it she hits go on the coffee maker it trips again and now it won't reset so now the outlet essentially won't work we futz around with it for some time we you know we kill the power to that circuit and mess around and we can't see any problems i say listen these outlets are not very expensive we go to home depot or whatever later on today we buy one for 20 bucks or something we install it it's a matter of hooking up like two wires and a ground wire right and just like see if it works and then if the new one doesn't work then we can return the socket or we're out 20 bucks you know it's like at least let's start there you know so we do that on sunday we come back we install the new socket and it seems to work and it's like joy you know it's like that that feeling of it's not a big task at all but it's also something we haven't really tackled before and yeah kind of a new troubleshooting thing so it's like oh and you know me luke i love my troubleshooting um so like okay great so it works works all day sunday works all day monday i think and then tuesday or i'm getting my timeline a little bit messed up here works for a couple of days and then genevieve hits go on the coffee maker one morning this week and it goes out again it pops out all right it trips the gfci thing it will reset now it's not totally blown like the other one it did reset um and we just kind of left it alone for a while and we reached out to this electrician um who was actually record Recommended by a listener, our friend Kirk Honda recommended this person who's great.

Dr. Kirk Honda?

Exactly. He provides all kinds of services, including connecting us with this really great electrician named Colby, who is exactly our kind of guy. You just text him. You say, I don't know. This thing's coming. This thing's happening. Can you come out? He's like really casual. He's not associated with some company where you have to kind of like get on a calendar. You can just sort of work it out. and he's just like you know kind of like a handyman type of electrician just and especially in this economy and getting folks out I mean it's just he's an absolute godsend I love this guy yeah and he hasn't been out here for a while I texted him on I believe it was Monday saying hey listen this thing shorted out we replaced it it's still sort of tripping the the thing could you come out and take a look at it's like yeah let me just you know I'll hit you up later in the week and I'll let you know since then out of curiosity we plugged the coffee maker back in and it's working again the coffee maker is working again the coffee grinder is working again it's not tripping that thing at all and i am now ground fault to be tripping exactly now so here's here this is where this all leads now it is wednesday right and it's been 48 hours since colby said i'll hit you up later in the week and let you know if i can come out or not and now i'm like maybe i should call him off like it seems like it's working i know specifically coffee makers this will happen because as you mentioned there's moisture involved but also coffee makers have some sort of a fuse in them i was doing a little bit of reading about this and sometimes the coffee maker fuse will trip but it's not like or the coffee maker fuse will sort of blow out or something and that'll force this thing to trip and you can look at replacing that but i'm also like well the coffee maker isn't tripping in the other sockets it seems fine and this is where i am so in other words like it's the it's not following the coffee maker around so we we know it's not the coffee maker we assume it's not the coffee maker or is it a combination of a coffee maker that's somewhat acting up with a particularly finicky outlet this outlet also seems to be completely on its own

circuit by the way we can't find any other finicky outlet syndrome yeah i think we do i mean we really

We do. I mean, the wiring here has been very before we moved in has been very, I think, sort of half asked as a rental unit, you know. So my question for you is it's been about 48 hours since the coffee maker has now been working in the in the outlet that we swapped out. We haven't been able to recreate the issue, but I still have this outstanding text to Colby, who's going to be maybe coming out later today or tomorrow. And it will probably be a very last minute thing. He'll probably hit me up and say, hey, I could be out there this afternoon at some point, you know. And I sort of feel like, well, here we are at a precipice. Like it's working right now. Why would I have somebody come out and say, hey, this is where it wasn't working before? On the other hand, it's electricity or electricity. Why would we not mess? Why would we mess around with that? Like, why not have somebody come out and just like poke around a little bit with their little light up tools and make sure that we're not like some sort of creating some sort of fire hazard because we're not addressing something more problematic within the walls? You see what I'm saying? What would you do?

I guess Well Could you do me a favor? I don't know what you can see From that Kind of The area you're broadcasting From in your basement But can you look out the window And see any of those Trees in your yard? Do you see money Growing on them, Andrew? Yes Are those money trees You have there at your house?

We have one We have one It's a money shrub Actually It's a money shrub Yeah

Do you see some new dollar bills Sprouting the first tendrils Of spring? I see one roll of pennies Coming out of the middle Of a flower You're going to want To prune that back so it can grow out to be paper money next time. I would just 100% cancel with my guy because, like, if it's... I mean, here's the thing. It's now working. Worst-case scenario, you get up on Saturday morning, you really want to have your morning coffee, and that outlet has now gone back to being finicky. The coffee maker is working in other outlets. You have the ability to make coffee at your house. Now, some listeners are going to get mad because they're going to say, you know if that outlet is being finicky then what what lies beneath i prefer to not know do

you guys have knob and tube wiring i think so yeah that's the really old kind right yeah and

it's the kind that uh any good electrician will take one look at and go yeah i don't know about this yeah i've noticed this and i'm not i'm not i don't want to paint your friend colby with this brush because um he sounds like a really rad chill dude but what i have noticed now that i am dealing a lot with contractors is the number one favorite thing for any contractor to do is to be just deeply confused about whatever the previous contractors were doing i've never seen anything like this i don't they sistered that in together i do not know what they were doing in this place Every contractor, when assessing the work of any contractor from, say, 20, 30 years ago, is just shocked at whatever went on. So I feel like if you have somebody come out and look at the finicky outlet, probably they'll try to trace it back to the box. And then we'll probably tell you, well, this knob and tube is active. We need to run, you know, some Romex, you know, back to the box. But maybe that involves tearing, you know, a hole in the wall. I would just leave it alone if I were you.

Just so you know, I don't know why I feel the need to defend Colby, but Colby is not like, and he's not even, I don't even know if he would use the term contractor. Like, again, he's got these kind of handyman vibes to him. And this is one of the reasons like that, that I kind of like working with him so much. First of all, he is incredibly affordable and it's almost like Vives and I live in this house and we see what the previous owners slash tenants had done to this place. I mean, I told you, I literally, when I was messing around with the light fixture in my office, I saw that somebody had literally used scotch tape to secure a couple of wires. So it's, you know, when Colby's here, he's relatively diplomatic. He's kind of like, yeah, you know, the wiring is a wiring of an old house. But he's never like, hey, listen, here's the plan. You need to tear this all out and put it together. He's just like, yeah, you know, it's not great, but like, let's just do this. You know, like he's just kind of fixing like he's in fact, and he doesn't really charge much. we felt like you know like whatever i don't know if you usually tip these guys but we tipped them because he's just like he's just like a guy i can't explain it he's so great and so i think that if he were to come out he'd be like yeah i don't know you know it's a little bit funky here but it's pretty good i tested it like and he would say you know at some point like you know maybe you need a more holistic look at these things but he's not going to be pitching it because he's not doing that kind of stuff you know um so and that's why for the money i have some not great

news andrew actually i'm just seeing this colby's not available for the next six months because he's working at my house yeah i know right i was just able to reach out to him and he's really great putting him up i'll be putting him up at the local red lion while he does that sounds like a dream that's all he's so great man the people who don't know how to fix stuff that's all we ask from the people who don't know do know how to fix stuff is please don't freak us out more by going like oh god yeah and never seen anything like this i'd rip it all out if i were you and so that's why

and you asked if money grows on trees i mean that's kind of exactly it like this is not going to be like we got to pay him 500 just to show up you know what i mean it's just kind of like not that scenario so i was sort of saying to veves like you know it's not going to cost us that much money and if there's some peace of mind and having this guy kind of come out and take a look at it also we already you know kind of initiated this contact um well let him come out i mean honestly oh wait i was already starting to write this text message now now you're well no now that you gave

me the full let's have him out i mean if he's a but will you ask him if um if i can get away with

running 10-3 romex to a tankless hot water heater i'm getting a text from him now something about r values i don't know what that i don't know what that means um about flash bat versus just going straight spray foam okay okay will do but anyway okay so now i don't know what to do because i

started well i would i would have them out you know what and this will also listen this will our listeners are very rightfully so very concerned more i think for me than you because i'm a little bit more cavalier with stuff but i'm sure there are some listeners freaking out because you know if if an outlet is being weird and you've replaced the actual outlet itself then it does mean there's probably something going on between the box and the outlet and if that's a wire that's shorting out in your wall it's not a great thing so it is probably ever the thing is in the time between i told when i told you to just leave it alone and now there have been over 50 emails that have been sent right sent out like uh you know little fingers birds from game of thrones or something um but no i think you're right i think just have them come out i mean it sounds like a very low stress interaction for you and it's probably better to err on the side of caution okay i'm

going to keep an eye on it for now i'm not going to reach out when he reaches out to me we'll see by the way james hardy that is uh what is james hardy that's something to do with it's a it's a

siding oh okay they make hardy panel hardy plank i've originally recently purchased 34 4x8 sheets

of smooth primed hardy panel vertical well we got a uh an email here from listener brian which i don't think you would have seen it because it came in through the kind of tbtl web form thing doesn't matter anyway brian says james hardy employee here i work for james hardy i loved hearing your sighting hunting trip in the please clad episode if you need any help i would be happy to assist so maybe this is your Colby I

was that email sent to both of us this is almost no this

me check the email no this wasn't so this is it was sent through that web thing so you don't see

could you forward that to me because i literally have some specific questions for a listener james i said this and now i james thank you wait what's the listener's name it is uh the listener's name is brian the brian at james hardy yeah it's it is i've had other people kind of say like i'm sorry this is so so overly specific and kind of niche but like it's a it can be a weirdly complicated thing to figure out what's going on with this particular siding product because it is what they do sell it through like the big stores like home depot and lowe's but a lot of times the folks that work there don't have a huge amount of familiarity with the product like there's not a person who is the james hardy specialist at your local lows so if you call them which i have and you try to ask them questions about like h channels and caulking and vertical installation they just kind of refer you back to the internet and then when you go to the internet you get the james hardy website which is trying to then just send me to someone who does siding in portland it just ends up being this kind of you know kind of loop that none of which none of which really is answering my questions oh bt dubs andrew i made another trip to that house in my neighborhood with the nice young couple and their vertically installed hardy panel.

You did not get any of the contact info from them, so did you just knock on the door again?

I did. Well, first of all, I wrote out my information. I said, hey, this is Luke, the person who asked about your sighting. Would it be possible to... I have another couple of questions. Would it be possible to drop me an email? And I included my email address. Good. And I went up and I knocked on the door, And I would say it was – I was still standing at the far, far back of the front porch. It appeared to be maybe just the wife was there. But I still felt – I felt about 50% less panicked when I was talking to her because we'd established a rapport. And I asked her a few questions about H-channels. And she said, you know, my father in law did this and I'm not totally sure some of that stuff. But I said, well, could here's my info. Would it be possible to get his info? And she said, sure. And so we're on the road to that, that that communication bridge has now been crossed, although I haven't heard back from them, which if I don't hear back from them, me going a third time and going, hey, could you throw a guy an email? That would be weird. So the ball is officially in their court. I will either hear from them or I won't, but I am not going to be visiting their beautiful home any longer unannounced.

Yeah, I'm glad that at least you guys have traded contact information. We didn't trade. Oh, they have. Yeah, that's true.

I just gave her. I wasn't going to ask her for her number. Sure. You're like, I know where you live.

I don't need your number. Did you say that?

Here's my info. It would be awesome if you could have your father-in-law just shoot me a quick email so that I could ask him some questions about Hardy Panel. But I don't need him anymore because I have Brian at the James Hardy Corporation.

And did you tell him, like, don't tell your father-in-law, like, yes, I'm kind of an L.A. guy, but I'm very approachable. Like, you know, I'm just up here from la-la land.

But I told him I'm a New York guy.

I'm trying to just keep them guessing.

I never want to let them know my next move. It's really smart. Hey, just up from Denver. Hey, I'm Port Townsend guy checking in. Yeah, right. Anyway, thank you, Brian, for reaching out. I will really absolutely be sending him an email right after the show because I do have – I have some questions. OK. We should maybe take a quick break here and then when we come back – oh, wait. We can either talk about this on the other side of the break or we can keep it contained in what I'm considering to be the home improvement part of the program. I want to know what's going on with your chimney. Oh, yeah. OK. So we talk about that after?

You know, let's not keep people hanging on that because there's not a lot to hang on that, I would say. So we have a house and in the house we have a fire. Sorry. Yeah. No, we realized recently when we had our chimney inspected and potentially swept that it actually needed to be rebuilt from the roof line up. And we ended up hiring some local masons who specialize in fireplaces and do this sort of work. We did not go with the original people who came out, who I found through Angie, a.k.a. Angie's List. And we made the right move.

Take a hint, Angie. Not interested.

I will never. Yes, I will never go through Angie again for whatever that's worth to people. But these local folks have been really, really good. It is a father who is a little bit quirky in his messaging. It was pretty funny. Like he ended his quote email by saying, I won't ask you to pay until all the work is done, because if I can't afford to do it up front, you shouldn't be hiring me. We're just like, all right. I love that yeah he was pretty cool man That's my concrete guy Richard Same thing he's like I don't ask For any money till I'm done he goes I like Doing concrete because it's the first part Of the job and the people still have money to pay Me Ominous Note to self don't go into Finish painting Whatever the Last touch on the house is Don't do that one because that's when everyone's run out Of money don't go into gardening

um right but uh and anyway so it was really cute first you know he's I think it's a pretty small company somebody who worked for him whose name was Andrew came out to tear down the old chimney we never actually met Mitch the guy who's the dad but I believe he was out here I believe he was on our roof but our paths never crossed but we met his son who is I'm gonna say a guy in his I'm gonna say maybe somewhere in his late 20s I would say and he was and I think I can say this because he wouldn't be listening just adorable like he's learning the business and he was so excited i think he was one of the um you're gonna blanch at this but he's just now earned the trust of his dad to start laying the bricks himself because his dad is such a um perfectionist about these things

which is what you want in a person who's putting stacking bricks that are going to be on your house

for the next 50 years. Containing the smoke of a fire that is inside my home, right? And so, and I guess he came to the door one of the first days he was here and he showed Genevieve the two different style bricks he was going to be using. And he was very excited about how beautiful the bricks were. This is the young man. And then I got to talk to him a little bit when we were settling up and he's just so passionate about it. And he's so excited about how good it looks and how excited he is to be kind of laying the bricks now and like learning this side of the business and like it was exactly what you want out of some some contractors and as of right now it's still not quite usable because they needed to keep it wrapped in plastic for a while um and i think they're going to come out tomorrow or the next day to uh just do the very last thing which is take off the plastic and do some sort of acid wash which i don't really know how that applies to chimneys i'm more of an acid wash jeans guy sure but uh i kind of go more stone wash myself yeah no that makes sense yeah and i like to cut the little slits in my chimney too because it's kind of cool but anyway yeah so one more little step and the the dad even said in an email yesterday like we'll have it done before the cold snap comes and i was like i didn't even know there was a cold snap thank you for that information as well so that's where we are it's a good experience

do you think because you know you were a little bit when the when you first realized that you had some problems you had this whole odd interaction with a company that was maybe based out of supposedly locally but they were calling some funky 800 number it was like the whole thing was a bit confusing and they were charging to come take a look at it and then I believe was there an estimate that seemed pretty high to you or you just wanted to compare did you end up getting didn't it paying more than you were thinking this job would cost or how did that

part come out you don't have to give me any numbers obviously we paid exactly what we thought which was $25,000 um I'm just joking um Genevieve got a Genevieve got a it's an electric hearth um Genevieve got a couple of quotes from other people and I got the quote from this original company they were all hovering around the same although I did I mean I just did like the vibe more of this company it just sort of seemed like they were more like kind of um I don't know accountable in certain ways like it just seemed weird that this other company like all the reviews on Angie like the first half of them were from LA and then a few of them were from the Seattle area and the one guy had a silent partner who came out to the house when I say silent he literally wouldn't talk when i talked to him i think there was a language barrier there um and also like the fact that like um i can't remember the name of the the young man who i was just describing who was excited about the bricks but like after um they got done building the chimney i said so are we able to use it now or do we need to still get it cleaned or any repairs on the inside and the fireplace itself and he came in he just took a quick look with his flashlight he's like no it looks good you know maybe next year call us maybe we'll give it a clean in a year or two but like you know and that was very different than what the original people were the original people came in and looked in my fireplace just like okay well we're gonna need some work here and and i was kind of like okay the more i sort of hear from these folks who i trust a lot the more i you know i don't know if i was totally getting taken by these other people the quotes were around the same but i'm just really glad the communication and everything is so much better with these folks

it worked out that's i mean that's the biggie really i think with all this stuff obviously there's the quality of work is a is a big question but it's also just like do they respond to your phone calls are they communicative do they get back to you on text like it's do they tell you when they answer the phone before they say anything this call is being recorded remember that electrician i call

who answered the phone by saying this call is being oh right right he was like and then gave his name yeah he was almost aggressive in his he was very weird but yeah the the communication

style and things like that is in the top like three most important things because otherwise you just have no idea what's going on it's stressful you if you when you don't know anything about a process you feel like you're constantly getting taken advantage of because you just you're just trusting them that they're doing it right and that this is what it should be costing

and stuff like that so what about this what if i just text colby this is such an andrew move and i think this complicates things and you're going to say no to this what if i text colby and i just say are you interested in making this relationship taking it to the next level no what if i just text colby and i say hey listen the outlet's weirdly been working for the past couple of days now i don't want to waste your time if you think that it could this could be a cause for concern of something bigger come on out otherwise we'll just keep an eye on it i guess there's no huge

downside to that um because then the ball's kind of in his court yeah and if he's like well this

is the type of thing because again i actually trust this guy he's had opportunities to charge us more or you know what i mean he's not he's i trust that he's not that kind of guy um so having said that and if you believe in my trust then it's kind of like well he'll be like yeah just keep an eye on it or if he says you know what sometimes this could mean you have some moisture in your walls i should maybe just poke around a little bit i would trust that answer too

well i i yeah i just shoot him a message i guess and then it saves him the drive if he doesn't think it's necessary it means also because this is really the let's get down to brass tacks here if somebody says i'm coming over at this time of day now your whole day is mentally revolving around 3 p.m or whatever right because like when i know this in my case when i have an appointment like that then i'm like stressing about it like i want to make sure everything else is done or if i'm trying to get a haircut it's like not having an appointment is also a major relief so if he says i don't worry about it then it's like you don't have to worry about it yeah all right i think i'll i think i'll do that i'll take the middle path why don't you send that now and then probably by the end of the show we maybe we'll have an answer to what colby has decided the situation i like that idea great okay oh hey speaking of electricity andrew when we come back One of our top stories is about a high school in Massachusetts where they literally cannot turn off the lights. We'll talk about that in a moment here on TVTL.

Hello and welcome to Top Story. Did you hear back from Colby yet? No, in fact, I'm still working on the text message.

Oh, okay. Wow. I really think these things through. Would you like me to just tap dance for a few minutes while you do this? greetings and salutations um there is a high school in wilbraham massachusetts which is not a name i've heard before wilbraham massachusetts no but it sounds very august it sounds like abraham but with a different it's like uh you know you loved the names abraham and the name will and so you decided to throw them together wilbraham mass um at the uh minichog regional high school the lighting system has been on since august 24th of 2021 by the way this is uh the um suburbs of springfield massachusetts if you're if you're uh familiar with the area um apparently what happened was they have some kind of lighting system there that's actually a green lighting system and it is fairly complicated as far as the operation of it and it uh it's the only high school in the district by the way has about 1200 students um when they redid the lights the school board insisted on a green lighting system run on software installed by a company called Fifth Light. This was to control the lights in the building. The system was designed to save energy and thus save money by automatically adjusting the lights as they needed. But back in August, staffers at the school started noticing that the lights were not dimming in the daytime and that they were burning brightly through the night. By the way, I'm reading from NBC News. This was Corky Simazco who wrote this piece for NBC. They reached out, the school district reached out to the original installer of the system, only to discover the company had changed hands several times since the high school was built. And when they finally got to the current owner of the company, they couldn't find anybody who was actually familiar with the lighting system. So the place that did the work no longer had anyone around with any institutional memory of how to fix it. Now, this is the part that jumped out at me, Andrew. The story of Lily DeGrand. In the meantime, Lily DeGrand, who is now a 16-year-old junior and co-editor of the Smoke City,

Signal, which is the high school newspaper, published an article in November with the headline, What's wrong with the lights? This appears to be the first media coverage of the situation with the lights at the school. There is a photo of Lily DeGrand accompanying this NBC article. And I'm telling you, if I could adopt, I don't think Lily needs adopting. But if I could adopt this this this young journalist and just I don't know, I don't really know what I have to offer this person. But I just have so much so much affection towards her being a gumshoe and a muckraker of sorts at the I mean, can you imagine actually writing a meaningful story in your school newspaper at age? I think Lily might have been 15 when she wrote the piece. We've had a few of these types of stories pop up over the years. Right. And I was good. There was the one in where was this? There was the local newspaper that a young person was the Orange Something News. And she was like an investigative journalist. Right.

She wasn't she looking into. I feel like she was even looking into law enforcement and acting as a as a watchdog to law enforcement. I can't remember exactly what that story was, but I was going to make a comment like, boy, it seems like more and more we're hearing about student newspapers really breaking, you know, big news and then i'm just like oh that's probably less of a statement of school newspapers and more of a statement of the rest of the media landscape you know what i mean like our high school newspapers and college newspapers the last bastion of good journalism i that's exactly right i mean

george santos wouldn't actually be a member of congress if we weren't relying on the 16 year olds of wilbraham massachusetts to do most of our journalism these days right so uh it turns out that they the school district has now reached out to everyone and anyone including folks in china where the system was actually designed to try to figure out how to turn these lights lights off it's some kind of a software thing it led them all the way back to this company reflex lighting they're now called that originally installed the thing they were able to order some kind of parts that are i believe coming over from china and are supposed to show up in february so they will starting in february finally be able to actually control the lights at this high school but there it's been like thousands of dollars a month i just realized as i was as i was kind of reading the article aloud i was like how long before this shows up on tucker carlson because of the fact that it was a green lighting system that it was supposed to be kind of a smart system that was self-dimming and you know a little more on the high-tech side but because it's controlled by software and not just a series of you know on and off switches it it sort of fritzed out i mean my guess would be that over the course or if you take the entire united states and you take everywhere this system has been installed i'm sure that the net energy use is down but it's an example of something that's a green technology that's had some problems which would give people who are first why would you ever be against green technology by the way like how what would the unless you work for the oil companies like what would the downside be of us trying to just like

hammer mother earth a little bit less i'm this is controversial i'm pro black lung um and i feel like you know like when we take people out of the minds we reduce that too much i am gonna say something here luke that i mean i want to apologize in advance for where i'm taking this because unless this sparks anything in you i've really i've really screwed this conversation here but this story about the lighting being controlled from a faraway location have we talked about something very similar to this recently and maybe even in regards to the lights around green lake here in Seattle I don't think you and I have god damn because like I it's just I had a conversation about this recently but it's almost like um shoot now I forgot the word what is the word for when you think you've lived something before but it's actually just you haven't you you have this feeling of deja vu I almost have a feeling of deja vu right now except I think it's just a bad brain on my part I had a conversation with somebody who was talking about how the and I thought it was on a podcast but maybe it was in real life um how there was some issue with the lights around green lake and then when somebody called to like to the city to try to figure it out they're like we don't handle that that's like out of like arizona or something and then that led a journalist to do a whole story and i hope this isn't a story that's in the works that i'm blowing their lead i don't know who I had this conversation with about how big chunks of municipal like lighting are actually operated out of one place in the American Southwest somewhere. Wow. Yes. And now you are not talking to me about that driving me bananas that don't have

more details for you. I think I have my next CBS Sunday morning piece though. You know what it's not Erica Barnett or whoever Andrew was having drinks with

it. I wish you know I she's a great journalist. I think that I was having a yeah I don't you know what it literally might have even been listener anna who volunteers uh on the weekends with me in the roosevelt neighborhood now and i'm wondering if it was her if i'll ask her this weekend this is driving me bananas i had this was not deja vu my friend but i like i said i'm sort of sinking the conversation here by just telling you about a dream i might have had sorry i have a little update by the way or not an update

but a uh just in case the listeners were throwing their phones it was called the orange street news which was a newspaper in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, run by a young person named Hilde Lysak. And I think part of the reason that it made news was because, A, just that this young person was pulling this off, but also because of some of the stories that the Orange Street News was covering, including murders. This was a story that they put out in 2016, exclusive murder on 9th Street. and Hilde had gone to the scene of this crime and had made some video and had been writing about it and there were some other people saying this is maybe a little mature for a nine-year-old journalist to be covering. I think that Hilde's parents were saying, look, you know, she's interested in this and we're going to let her kind of learn about this in the way that she wants to, et cetera. But that was called the Orange Street News.

Yes, I think she even went on the road at one point I thought that she was, I thought she was even trying to cover something about border issues.

Yeah, in Patagonia, Arizona. February 2019, Lysak was in Patagonia, Arizona. Sorry, Patagonia, Arizona. Arizona. Researching stories including the opinions on Border Patrol there and the proposed border wall. She was stopped by the town marshal, Joseph Patterson, who asked, are you taping me? And then falsely claimed, if you put my face on the Internet, it's against the law in Arizona. How do you think our politics line up with Joseph Patterson's, Andrew?

I know. This is what always calls me, too.

Perfect alignment?

Just making shit up and intimidating journalists, and in this case, young journalists, just bullshit.

But check this out. She posted the video to YouTube and to the Orange Street News website, noting that it was permitted under the First Amendment for her to film this town marshal. The town disciplined the marshal, who later resigned because of the derisive international attention.

So take that. I don't think we got to the resignation part of that story. I remembered, as you kind of restated it, I remembered everything up until the resignation. I think that's kind of new to me. That's great.

that is really great and just for the record just so people know i'm sure our listeners know this it is completely legal to film law enforcement when you're in a public space and it doesn't amaze me i kind of it sort of checks out but it's i guess i would say it surprises me that they still try to pull off that bullshit that you're not allowed to tape them you 100 are allowed to tape them

you're allowed to but it also doesn't mean that they're not going to beat the shit out of you

with impunity well that's not great um if that happens but i just mean if any of our listeners find themselves in a situation where they want to be documenting what's going on with law enforcement and they're told you're not allowed to film this they're that's just not correct you are allowed to film it you know yeah um and uh i mean whatever i don't know how my tiktok has just ended up on body cam footage now oh that's upsetting like law enforcement body cam stuff but let me just say this and this is what i used to say when we were doing like ross and burbank and stuff and every police department at least the spd that's who i was talking about in those days was coming up with these convoluted reasons to not have body cams it's like uh and i was like yeah they would rather we didn't know what was going on because these body cams are actually pretty effective at documenting things and they were like well you can take it out of context you don't you'd have to be trained to understand what's going on it's like i don't know man i'm watching a lot of body cam footage and i'm seeing a lot of shit that shouldn't go on and it's because of the body cam so yeah i think overall a good thing for us to have yes um so uh gosh this um things have been pretty popping off for hildi lisak by the way um uh she was the youngest person She got to interview Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, of course.

She was the youngest person in U.S. history to deliver a college commencement speech, which she delivered to the graduating class of West Virginia University's Reed College of Media. She had a TV show made about her. She's really – things are really going well for old Hilda. Maybe we could see if the Orange Street News is hiring. Yeah, I know. It's one of the few media organizations that's growing.

I was going to say, yeah, maybe I should offer to take her under my wing, teach her a few things about journalism.

Maybe we should ask if she could take us under her wing.

I'm on this show being like, okay, so was it a dream? Or did we talk about the fact that the Green Lake Lights are operated out of Arizona?

Hilde, what do you know about remote light operation? By the way, you say remote light operation. That sounds like a topic on coast to coast. Yeah, it does. From an area near Dreamland, this is Dreamland. I'm George Norrie. Now joining us, Linda Moulton Howe to talk about remote light operation.

I didn't even listen to that show all that much, but unless I just know from you saying it all the time. That's probably.

She's one of my go-tos. I believe Linda Moulton Howe is one of the remote viewing experts, which is this idea of basically warging into other people and other locations to see things from afar. I have not heard that show in forever. I think mostly as a result of moving to Portland because I just don't – I don't know the radio landscape here at all. I have two saved radio stations in my car, and they're the only things I listen to. And the first is OPB, Oregon Public Broadcasting, and the next one is called Jammin'. And it's like the kind of like throwback hip-hop station. And that's it. There's no in-between. I don't know what station, if any, play coast-to-coast. Still can't find the Mariners down here. like i've just gotten very in a bubble with my radio listening in portland which is just either

opb or jamming well they're not uh there are no specifically portland stations that coast to coast is on but i think medford might be the closest to you far away though is medford far away okay pendleton roseburg the dolls the dals the dals uh to tell you climate falls eugene none of these

are that close to you huh do you remember wild wild country did you watch that yeah about the baghwan shri rajneesh yeah well before that was the sort of prestige doc that it was there was a you know that show i used to love forensic files there was a forensic files about so one of the things that had happened was the adherence to the the the people that were you know in this sort of big cult thing with this guy Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, they were in a kind of a battle with the local town, which was the Dalles, Oregon, and because of like some land disputes and stuff and so they were trying to take over the city council, they were trying to basically get their folks elected so they could sort of change the rules, and somebody got the bright idea to try to poison some of the local city council members, and so they basically poisoned a salad bar and the dalles and it's like a crazy story and um the thing that killed me though was nobody told the announcer for forensic files that it was pronounced the dalles and so it's a whole half hour episode where he keeps going and then the citizens of the dales were in and i just like every time he would say it it was just like it was like nails on a chalkboard and i just thought you got to get it together um hln you got to just call just call a gas station in the dalles and just ask how do you say that right how did the name of the town not get figured out before you had uh the guy record all of the voiceover for the entire episode right and it wouldn't you know

yeah and it wouldn't be his fault you know he's out there hung out to dry right but he's just going into a booth and they're saying here read this and this is the pronouncer on this are you familiar with the radio station 1190 k-e-x out of i'm gonna say tigard i also did not get a pronouncer on that tiger you said tigard correctly okay good and that's very close to portland i think that's your station my friend news radio 1190 kex i'm gonna look up the broadcast

schedule but i'm guessing and they okay but but do they say that they uh do play coast to coast

well they are listed um on i was on the coast to coast website looking at like everywhere they are broadcast and this is the one closest on their website uh that is listed as a carrier of their show so i'm looking up the the actual um schedule now to make sure that it's still up that they're still playing it yeah um all right now here it is 10 p.m on weekdays there you go 11 90 11 i'm literally writing it down oh good you're gonna love the station too make sure you leave it on during the day because right now the clay travis and buck sexton show is on god i know i mean that's

That's the problem. That's the real problem there is I'm going to have to hear so many ads for, like, Sean Hannity or something while I'm just trying to enjoy some remote viewing talk. The Glenn Beck program. Can I tolerate that is the question. Also, I'm just not – this is the life of being an old man, Andrew, is I just – I'm not out driving around late at night anymore. Like, I'm pretty much home. I'm settled in. Like my radio pattern is just different than it used to be, where I would find myself in the car listening to Coast to Coast. I mean, it's very – to me, Coast to Coast is very much in the car listening. So I'm not going to put it on at home where I have access to other media. But it was for a lot of my life a pure joy to be driving around at 11 o'clock at night and listening to either Art Bell or George Norrie.

Yeah, although don't totally sleep on the idea of turning on the old AM radio late at night to listen to some of that weird programming even at home. Yeah, that's how I got addicted to the Whistler. And like there is something I was giving somebody a ride back to their Airbnb a few months ago around the holidays. And on the way home, I think it was like maybe a Friday night or Saturday night. And Genevieve had plans. I didn't. Everybody take a drink. And I was coming home. Actually, don't.

It's 11.

Not when I post this. And I was coming home and I knew I just had an evening in front of me. And I turn on the radio, I'm flipping and like Kixi is playing their old, you know, their old time radio dramas programming. In fact, it was even holiday related. It was so, so, so corny. But it was some radio show from the 1940s with some moralistic tale about a little about a little boy who stole a statue of Jesus. But it was for all the right reasons, Luke. And it was it was like some Christmas miracle story involving a priest and a poor kid.

And the reason the kid took the baby Jesus was because father Coughlin because he prayed that all of a sudden he's like talking about like basically how we need to go easier on Hitler.

It was it was that no it was like the kid was like well I you know like I was blessed because somebody did bring me this wagon for Christmas and I prayed for it for so long and I prayed and I told Jesus that if I ever got the wagon the first ride would be his. i'm messing up some of the plot line here listen it wasn't a good story but i'm just telling you

like turning it on in my car yes the kid was going to give jesus a ride in his wagon you know i caught

the last five minutes of this i did not hear the whole thing i caught the last five minutes of this really hokey holiday story from like probably literally 1944 or something and i'm just telling you that gave me such a cozy feeling i came home i turned on the kitchen radio we all have kitchen radios right the funny thing is my kitchen radio is actually i think from the 1960s um and i turned it on and i just listened all night to like just corny radio dramas from the 40s god i love it so

much so much better than a podcast what i need to do is integrate more of that kind of radio when i'm doing projects on the house that i'm trying to work on because the problem is when i'm here in my apartment in portland there's just not that it's not a big place there's not that much puttering to do you know what i mean so like i feel like for you this is the backdrop to all of the little kind of tasks i mean i'm am i assuming right or are you playing darts when

this kind of stuff is happening no you're actually right like for some reason when i'm playing darts i it's just weird we have these patterns right and especially me i'm very ritualized i realize But like I actually don't usually listen to this shit when I'm playing darts like that's a different vibe like I'm listening to Levitard or music or something. But it's like you're right. It's absolutely it's like usually weekend kind of late at night puttering. It's like you know what I'm going to do a whole bunch of laundry and I'm going to fold it. I'm going to I'm going to refill the ice. I'm going to make the coffee for tomorrow. I'm going to try not to get the wall too wet so that Colby doesn't yell at me when he comes to look at my sock and all that.

Stop hosing down your wall. i feel like that might be part of your electrician situation i'm gonna you're gonna end up saying it

incorrectly because it became a joke on the show and then you're gonna get poisoned by this and then at some point somebody's gonna say to you why do you say electricity and i feel like i

will be to blame for that you absolutely will be it'll be me at a bar in portland and then i'll try to explain my podcast and then it will go south from there um i guess we're probably kind of running out of time to get into earned media spotlight today which is just as well because should we give trader joe's should we give trader joe's what they're asking for here andrew which is the the coverage of their like uh 14th annual customer choice awards it's such it's such

bullshit but i'm also such a sucker for this as well and i actually love that you called it the earned media spotlight i think that's kind of hilarious only because it's the second day in a

row that i have personally fallen right into the trap of some bullshit i'm actually into that let's Let's maybe save it for tomorrow, though. I had a couple of things I want to run by you in the email segment here. Okay. Okay, great.

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.

Emails or V-mails? Yes. Very quick, I'm going to start with a text message. I guess you would call this a T-mail, Luke. Yesterday on the show, I went on and on, as I want to do, about the Arby's in Edmonds, right? Not too far from here, just north of where I live. And I told you how it hasn't been remodeled since the 90s. Like, the last time I walked in there, which was a couple of years ago, a few years ago now probably, I was just amazed that it still had all the purple booths. Now I'm, is it booths? I keep saying, I keep on asking you that. but like everything is purple and it's just it's i didn't remember it being in bad shape necessarily but just like a place that time forgot and i was like wow i haven't been in a fast food restaurant with this decor in quite some time um and as soon as the show was posted and people had time to listen to it maybe a couple of hours later i got a text message i don't know who this listener is because it came in as a text i'll give you their phone number though no um it came in as a text And it's got two little emojis of alarm lights, you know, those little siren lights or what do you call those flashing lights that you can send to somebody when something is important. And it says the Edmonds Arby's is closed while being remodeled.

Wow. Are they using Hardy panel? I don't know. I don't know what the R factor is. Brian on the case. What is the R value?

I don't know what the R value is, but it's the Arby's value. show title hey earn a media spotlight um so i mean it's first of all the first words of that sentence are arby's is closed that's bad the fact that they're being remodeled is ironic because i was praising the old decor but at least it's a temporary closure because in this day and age you hear about an arby's closing you don't expect that to come back right no yeah when you said the

word closed i was like oh man we could have done we could have done more we could have bought more big montanas there and tried to keep them going um i almost made a schindler's list reference and i feel like the stakes are very different but you know that scene where rafe fines is kind of like as oscar schindler he's he's saying he could have done more he's saying this watch could have you know saved a life it the problem is it's like it was a very it was a good no it wasn't a good comparison it was a terrible comparison because these things do not relate to each other and one is super serious and one is not serious but I still wanted to make the comparison because it

seemed apt in some way in my mind I actually have not seen that movie but speaking of Ray Fiennes I was listening to some podcast I honestly don't remember which one I listened to like two now but anyway um somebody on the podcast was talking about how they get liam neeson and rafe fines confused and that never even occurred to me and i'm not great you know what celebs but like they seem different to me but i can also sort of see it wait a second what's wrong i'm just double

checking um i'm i did i say ray fines you said actually oh it's liam neeson oh it is liam wait wait they're both in it oh they are no but liam neeson is oscar schindler he's the guy who says i could have done more no the story was like oscar schindler was a person who saved the lives of many jews um during the holocaust by by um forging documents and protecting them and and selling off his possessions etc um but uh so they're both they're both in the movie but i had them wrong andrew i had i was i was saying that ray fines was oscar schindler and he was not it

was liam neeson's that makes so much more sense now now i'm remembering it was the lebitard show where i heard this conversation because they were making fun of greg cody who knows absolutely nothing about movies so they made him what should have been the easiest movie quiz of all time and he did not do well um and i think he was saying or somebody was saying they get ray fines and liam neeson confused i gotta say i'm now looking at their photos next to each other as they appear on imdb for schindler's list and i realized like if i had seen schindler's list back in the day before i knew who either one of these fellows were they would be probably inseparable in my mind and i can now totally understand why you would maybe get these two fellas confused because they're not totally dissimilar in build right right kind of presentation and then if you saw them in a movie together in the 90s then i could see them being inseparable in your mind okay Okay.

they're both european but they speak you know flawless english like there's just they kind of occupy whoever that was on the was it cody who was saying that who was saying that on the levitard

you know i know they were they were um kind of quizzing cody and i don't remember if it was him i it might have been him who gets them confused i think it was also somebody more reputable with these things who gets those two people confused but uh yeah i'm back more reputable Yeah, exactly. Oh, my God. Oh, God. What was it? He had the he literally had the best back in my day that I think I've ever heard yesterday. And I'm already blanking on what the topic was. But that's OK. I've blabbed enough about another podcast. Let me just play for you this one minute voicemail from.

Wait, I have more to say about the Holocaust.

Let me play you this voicemail from our friend Jake in Chicago. Oh, hi, hi, friend. This is Jake in Chicago. Oh, you know what? I need to set this up a tiny bit. This is him referencing back to what we were talking about, about how we were talking about cologne and how people have sort of signature scents. And, you know, like you have, I think, a cologne that you wear, Luke, and combined with your other care products, you probably have, you know, a signature smell. which I find pleasant for whatever that's worth, and that's what Jake's responding to here.

Oh, hi, hoi, Brenda. This is Jake in Chicago. The CEO of my company doesn't come into our office often, but he has a very signature scent, so much so that we rebuilt the downstairs of our office from storage space into office space, and we had him install his own office in the very back of the basement. Now, the stairway is open, so when you start to walk down the stairway, you can already smell his odor, and it smells like a middle school boy's locker room. and i kid you not my eyes start watering anytime he is in the office and i am within 50 feet of him it's horrible but i don't know what to say what do i say to this person like that says uh your your musk smells bad uh power out okay bye what he didn't mention there is he works for starbucks

He's talking about Howard Schultz.

God. First, he ruins my basketball team. Then he makes listener Jake's eyes water. By the way, Jake, congrats on the engagement. I think Jake and I maybe follow each other on Instagram now that I'm Instagram's oldest user, TM. And I think Jake recently got engaged. Congratulations, Jake. I didn't know that.

Also, I think Jake recently broke his leg. Hope you're healing well

I thought you were going to say broke it off You've got to follow your journey Jake Whatever that looks like for you Congratulations or condolences I don't know I have so many questions about Jake's story Starting with this is the CEO of the company That's what he said But they got the CEO to build his office In what sounds like the least desirable quadrant of the building

He's down there asking about a stapler. He was.

Exactly. That's what I was picturing. Like somebody is somebody has his ear because if I'm the CEO of a company, I'm not building I'm not making my office like this, you know, Milton from office space kind of deal. So whoever that is that got the CEO to put their office there, that person should also kind of just mention there's something kind of physically maybe going on that we would really appreciate you addressing. And I know exactly what Jake is talking about when he says a middle school boy's locker room because that's exactly that. That's that moment where bodies are changing and where a lot of people, a lot of young people are not yet wearing deodorant because you haven't needed to. And I think a lot of our listeners who are teachers and particularly teach that age know that there is there's a point when it's advisable for a lot of the students to start wearing deodorant. And usually there's about a month or two in between getting that memo and when your body now needs deodorant.

And I could be wrong here, but I'm also envisioning, you know, having been tortured in those locker rooms myself and having some some very solid memories of them. I feel like it's also it's that smell combined with like maybe just like very basic bar soap sort of and also like a tinge of like what's the word I'm looking for when towels. get a little bad and mildewy mildewy that's exactly what i was looking for and it's a little bit of that sour smell but it's also somewhat masked by like some sort of basic dial or irish spring smell and you know what i mean like it's like it's a weird swirl of smells which is also a weird swirly is what i was receiving in those rooms oh no i never got it i'm just joking i never

got a swirly it was i did see what you're doing with wordplay there and yeah that's what i was going for you that was why you they would give you purple nurples because you're always deploying wordplay in the locker room now okay on the subject of folks who are sort of a bit like malodorous remember i talked about the guy in my building who um wears a lot of cologne and it actually smells nice to me and i you know if i get in the elevator after him um it's a nice smell for me well there is another uh fellow i have to whisper because this is maybe my most direct neighbor i don't know but i thought it was just the first couple of times i had interacted with him that he had a very a very unpleasant odor and it's not bo and it's not i cannot put my finger on it it's something that just seems to be sort of um kind of radiating pheromonally from this person and um i mean i'm not gonna certainly not going to address it but what i can tell you is i'm also not going to get in the elevator yesterday i was going to get my my door dash that's when i was taking mass many photos of the various rock and rollers that are now in my building that i sent you so i was i was going down to the lobby to wait for this door dash delivery and um and uh this particular person got out of the elevator um and i the thought went through my mind huh the last couple of times i bumped into this person there was something that was kind of a little bit pungent going on and i had that thought but i was like whatever and i got in the elevator and let me tell you andrew it was so thick in the elevator and i just had to sit there for five floors um and i don't have a power out to this story other than just to say i i'm gonna i guess i'll just try to you know i'll try to take the stairs or something but i mean it's i guess you never know what's going on with them it sounds like what based on what jake is describing maybe this is a per the person who's his ceo that's more of a like a if you say middle school locker room it feels like body odor like bo like somebody's not wearing enough deodorant this was something else and i don't know what it is but i'm gonna try to steer clear and is it also

one of those things not unlike a uh restroom a rest a public restroom for one occupant where somebody might have left a scent in there that you inherit and then you're leaving that room and somebody is walking in after you and you want to pass them a note that says it wasn't me do you feel that when you leave the elevator well this was the first time that it had gone in this

exact direction which was this person is exiting the elevator i'm entering the elevator i'm riding it down but i was very worried that when the elevator opened on the ground floor i was going to walk out and someone else is going to walk in and they were going to think and again this is not like the guy you know passed gas in there it isn't it's it's weird it was just a it's just a weird very malodorous thing i mean really what i thought was i think that this person might live with a partner and um and i just think wow that's i don't think for me i don't know why we're taking this here or why i'm getting into this but i think i would personally have a really difficult time living with someone particularly living with someone romantically if they had that going on i don't know if maybe you just get over it over time or maybe you just like we say nose blind to it or something but i just i couldn't i could barely be in the elevator for 40 seconds with it i was like man that's a that would be that'd be tough for me in a in a partner type situation

i think a lot of attraction has to do with scent even if we're not oh my thinking about it you know so i top of my list yes really top of your list i would say i uh probably the top of my list

If I were to be single and I were to meet someone who I was tremendously physically attracted to, but pheromonally there was something that just didn't agree with my nose, like the person's kind of, you know, their biome, I guess. And this is, I've had experience with this. I've had experience with people who I was very attracted to physically, but the biome and the pheromone was not right. And that I can't get over. Like that's, you know, looks fade, but a smell is your smell.

It's got to be it's got to be something that works for me or I'm out when you know, I guess when I started saying that, I was thinking like when you meet somebody, you wouldn't be physically attracted to them. If and even if it wasn't like a top of mind thing, but more of a subconscious thing, I was going to sort of propose that like you just you you wouldn't be attracted to them.

i guess that's ridiculous and i guess that really shows that i've never done like online dating where you look at a photo of somebody and you say okay this is somebody who is my type and somebody who i'd be into and then you meet them and you're like oh wow your biome isn't uh doesn't yeah match or you see them across the room yeah i guess i could cross the bar yeah yeah and you're kind of

like oh well that you know what i'm observing about this person is is is throwing up some green lights but then as you get to know them maybe a little more and i don't just mean like physically but just kind of being around them and you start to notice that there's a kind of a um yeah a biome thing that's not totally meshing uh it can be like a again i've specifically specifically had that happen i i would say probably smell is or not even just smell but like breath smell hair smell all of it it's gotta be in the top two for me the other it's it's one and it's either first or

second two are they rich because you hate wealth and you want to be well exactly if they're rich

i am out i am as you know i've taken a vow of poverty with this podcasting right business so

yeah i don't have that experience and you know it's funny i mean that really i think underscores my lack of experience in dating like i just didn't date that much in my life so um but what you say makes total sense because i was like well you just wouldn't your body would just like kind of like find other ways to say i'm not interested in this person but of course that doesn't make sense so yeah that's interesting i'm lucky i think number one on my list and this sounds really corny but i feel like would they let jesus ride in their wagon would they let jesus ride in their little red wagon i just can't like genevieve and i spent all of our time i think not all of our time we spent so much time trying to make each other laugh like if i didn't have somebody who is like that like i don't know oh yeah half of our life is doing bits you know which is probably annoying but like i just can't imagine like being with somebody who's like stoic humorless yeah

oh yeah forget it that's i mean that's also like very very much in my top five and it's probably you know right up there with smell and are they rich because like if you can't joke around it's also why i'm the world's greatest ex-husband i mean and is anyone where's my barbecue apron that says world's number one ex-husband. I'm on very good terms with all of my, well, two out of my three exes I'm on very good terms with, and I think it's because I'm a pretty fun hang via text messaging and the people that I was married to previously are people that I shared a sensibility with, and now it's all of the upside, which is spoofing around on the memes, and none of the downside, which is having to deal with my bullshit.

Right. You know? intermingling finances for instance uh yeah so it's like it's like that whole i mean that that's

always been a really big important thing for me which is like does the can't is it fun to talk to this person do we do we have a do we like the same things can we joke around do they have a sense of humor can we you know that's really big for me because that's most of life like you said it's you know the other stuff is a very small amount of being with someone and the getting along part and the making each other laugh part is a big part of it.

I don't care if they're funny. They better just laugh at my jokes. That's what's important, right?

Oh, did I say they're funny? No, I mean, do they think I'm funny? Do they find me delightfully charming? Exactly. All right. That's going to do it for today's program. But guess what? We will be right back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. So please, if you can, 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. I haven't heard back from Colby. Oh, thanks. So what if I smell like roast beef? This whole place smells like roast beef. Power out.