Muse

What happened? Oh well it's really quite funny. I was in bed sleeping at two o'clock this morning and my wife comes in and says someone ran into the shop and I said oh what? So I jumped out of bed and all I had was my undies on and I've walked out the front and I've seen the car smashed and I've seen the bloke walking back to the car and so I've walked outside and I said oh what are you doing mate? Like you can't be leaving the scene and he goes don't be a hero mate and I said I'm not trying to be a hero but the police are coming and he just decided he'd scoot up the road and I just said nah it's not going on like that mate so I jumped in my car and I started chasing him up the road and then he went down a side street and then the police were coming and I flashed him and sent them off in the direction of him but mate all I had was me jocks on and I was chasing him up the street and I'm just like mate. Do you feel like a hero? Oh not really it's just something you've got to do for the community mate it's like you look after your mates and your mates will always look after you

guess what day it is guess what day it is

it's friday friday gotta get down on friday everybody's looking forward to the weekend in this business

of show you have to have the heart of an angel and the hide of an elephant

you are in business with a couple glue sniffing squish

why don't i tell you all about it over a hot steaming mug of beer and a cup of cold corn i'm such as a sucker for content

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show it just might be too beautiful to live i heard about that thing on the am radio my name is luke burbank i'm your host you can do whatever you want to in life just make sure you do it well and you do it with passion coming to you from the hollywood broadcast center right here in portland oregon yes i am back home it's the story of a man with

a brothel of a home and a pool filled with human excrement i mean in the sort of timeline of the

program this week that you'd be forgiven for just thinking well i don't know did the show from home and then on thursday you were at the other place and now you're back like what's the big story Well, in that time, I went to New York. I went last night, went to somewhere called Skamania, Washington, which is a very beautiful part of the country on the Columbia Gorge and stayed out there. Becca had a work thing that at this very cool like lodge type of place. Got up this morning, came home and found, well, today it's raining. I mean, it is really, you know, you like to get wet, though. I was thinking about this, you know, I love to play that clip of Denzel Washington from the movie Training Day, any time of training. We have had, I think, one of the driest Januaries on record here in the Pacific Northwest. So for those of you who dislike that drop, you got lucky. I didn't have a lot of chance to play it in January, but now we're in February. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. Excuse me, now we're in February. More on that in this week's newsletter, by the way. Watch this space for that fun journey, courtesy of our friend Andrew. Anyway, I came back to find it raining, and also that I've got just a house full of cats.

If we understood Fluent Meow, our cats would tell us that petting is passe, because your cat wants a massage.

By that I mean two cats, because since we were at this work thing for Becca's, the plan was to just have Bubbles and Holly hang out here. And they have been, and they are, and they're in this room with me, and we are going to see how it goes here on episode 3,873 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Speaking of the cats, I got up this morning, again, at Skamania Lodge, and was able to observe something about Bubbles the Cat.

Really? I'm trying to build my beef castle?

Bubbles is part of the sort of family fitness trend that I've been trying to institute here in the new year. We can talk about that. We can also talk about Netflix and the fact that they're trying to crack down on people sharing passwords.

I love television. I've got to have that thing on 24-7. I love the patter.

There was a statement, an official statement from Netflix regarding password sharing and what it costs them that I'm pretty confident saying is one of the most corporate statements i've ever read in my life like it really just it it sends a chill through your entire body how corporate it is we'll read that coming up plus music for your weekend on this friday Friday, and we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Don't listen to what you've been hearing at the Eagles and Teddies and various watering holes about him.

They're trying to say I was drunk. I drank eight beers yesterday. That was all I drank. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I, um, God, do I want to start it this way? Okay, here's what I'm going to say at the top of the show. You know how at the top of the show When you introduce me I always do Kind of what I'm doing here I kind of come in with something that you haven't prompted me on That I just want to tell you about And I don't think it's always been like that I think when I first started working with you I had a much more passive role I would sit here, you would say hello Andrew And I'd say hello Luke And then you would just take it from there Maybe you'd say how was your weekend Maybe you'd ask me about my new haircut

I actually, for many years, on the show sheet, it would say, hey, Andrew, exclamation point. And then underneath it, there would be like a sub little line that said, how's it going? Like I needed to remind myself to ask you, how's it going? And you know what? I have dropped that line from the show sheet because you usually fire in hot. And I love it. Honestly, it's great. I'm tuckered out after that four minute little intro package that I like to do. So I'm ready for a break. I'm ready to tap out. If this was like tag team wrestling, if we were the British Bulldogs, I'd be tapping up. If you were Davey Boy Smith, I'd be tapping you in, and I'd be going over to the side to catch my breath.

Well, I do think even at one point, since we've kind of gotten into this rhythm, I think one time I didn't take the ball for a while, and I was just like, what's up, Luke? And you were drinking coffee or something. You were like, wait a second. I'm done for the next three and a half minutes by my clock. Yeah. So, um, they was trying to say he was drunk. Here's what, here's where I'm going with this. Actually, wait, one quick question before I go on. Um, did you, do you remember when you removed that? How's it going from the show sheet? No. Like, was it a conscious thing? Like, you know what? Andrew's always blabbing at the top. I don't need this shit anymore.

No, it just was, it wasn't, I don't think it was anything particularly intentional or conscious. I think it just, through the various iterations of the show sheet and cutting and pasting it and, you know, It just ended up falling off at some point. And then I just trusted myself to remember to ask you how it's going if I needed to. I decided to just fly kind of without a net, as it were.

Right. Yeah. Sometimes we have dinner and we just sit in silence until you look down at your phone. Then you're like, oh, Andrew, how's it going? I wanted – so here's where I'm going with this. And I hate to say it, but it's a little bit negative. But I'll erase all names and likenesses from this little –

Can you bleep it out like you did yesterday with the adult content I was discussing? Did you listen to that? No, I didn't.

I think it's funnier with the beeps anyway. Probably.

So how much of it, how much of the actual name, it was just one section bleep or the whole thing?

Just the very, very end. Just the, so it's very, I mean, you can figure it out. Yeah, exactly.

I thought it would be pretty funny if you bleeped the entire thing, but then people were trying to go, because I said it's a Three Musketeers sort of parody. And it'd be funny if all they heard was, and then we bought this movie called Beep.

That would actually be funny.

And then I was like, it's obviously a Three Musketeers reference. And then they're just like racking their brains going, what is the angle here?

That could have been so funny. And also because it's kind of a long name that beep would seem very long. Like when you beep something that is like a reasonable sized word, but then you add a beep over top of it, it seems so much longer.

It seems so filthy.

So here's the truth of the matter. I sometimes think about it how I come in hot on this show And sometimes when I have really nothing to say It's just like, Luke, I'm going to tell you about this dream I had Where I ordered a sandwich and got chicken instead Which was literally something I think I did to you earlier this week So I'm like, yeah, why have I become this Look at me Louie, as they say on the Dan Lebitard show Have I become a real kind of obnoxious guy at the top of the show I don't spend a lot of time thinking of it, but every now and then I have that thought And then, and this is where I'm going to be a little bit rude, a lot of people don't know this, but I have a favorite radio station here in Seattle, Washington that I won't mention, but I turn to them for music that I enjoy, a certain genre of music, but it's not a very popular genre of music, and so they've been trying to monetize their operation over the past couple of years by bringing more varied content into the station. I'm sure nobody has any idea what I'm talking about, if you've ever heard the show before. We'll bleep all of this out. And at about midday now, the station carries like on Monday through Friday. Each day it's a different show. It's like a rotating show. And it's basically they're kind of like hour long. podcasts right and i think they are literally podcasts that the the hosts or producers of these podcasts which are made here locally in seattle can pay to get their show on the air for one hour and i don't know like i say it's mid days right and i've talked to you wow so this is now this is

not just on the weekends because that's a fairly standard thing in commercial radios you know you turn the the radio on early on a saturday morning and you'll hear some kind of elder care law advice show or something but this is they've achieved escape velocity from the weekends and are now just fully in the middle of the day paying to play yeah and they've been doing this for a while now

and i think i've mentioned to you that one of them is like a computer show where one time like these guys who seem like nice enough guys it's not totally without any kind of broadcast merit but they were like literally talking about how to like control open apple p to print or something like that it was some very basic information actually i don't think i knew that i think i'm making that one up that if i say open apple i'm referencing something i learned in third grade because i haven't used a macintosh computer since then but um didn't work although i did like that you got

to hear in case you you think that i'm just pretending to test these things out no that was absolutely me trying to do control apple p i don't think that apple's even on the keyboard

anymore i know the open apple right that just even me just saying that took me back to like being in this little computer lab we had like long before the internet in like 1986 where we would make banners on dot matrix uh printers and play oregon trail but anyway all of that is to say and this is where it gets a little mean and why i don't want to say the name of the show or the station which nobody could identify based on my description of it but yesterday i happened to hear the beginning of one of those shows okay so it was like midday um and again it's kind of it's just a it's a chatty podcast that is being broadcast and probably you know massaged a little bit to get into the into the radio broadcast schedule but it is i guess you would say the format is very similar to what we're doing on tbtl it's chit chat uh i don't know what they had on their agenda for the day they don't set out like kind of uh forward promos the way you do at the beginning of this show which i think is good radio fundamentals it was just the thing about that

and we learned this from our training is you've got to deliver on those forward promotions exactly if you don't when you promote a top story you you've broken the trust with the audience if you

don't get to those top stories i remember fighting with hosts that i used to work with in public radio who would like let's say we had created a 30 second promo that ran for i don't know like not even 24 hours right like after the show where we start planning the next day's show you create a 30 second promo say coming up tomorrow on the show we're interviewing this author about this topic but then something happens and there's some more important news the next morning you're like well we gotta we gotta bump that segment with the author and some people are like no no we promoted it we have to we have to stick to that i'd be like nobody remembers like all those promos do is just reminding people that you exist and that something is going on like there's no radio there's like no that's not right there's one radio listener you know who is i'm trying to even think of a sort of think of a clever la suburb you know there's some older person in some la suburb and temecula who's kind of like well they were supposed to interview uh you know whatever this tech author is and for some reason it's not on the show i'm going to write an angry letter but i won't get there until four days anyway because i haven't discovered the internet yet like yes there's one listener who cares but aside from that you never let a promo dictate what you do

on the show not to mention that unless you're talking about like maybe if i were to hear a promo for fresh air where dave davies says i'm dave davies in for terry gross doing this promo coming up on the show I'm trying to think of somebody who George Saunders I love George Saunders I'll listen to him talk about anything coming up on the show today George Saunders talks about his latest writing project that might in my brain cause me to make a note like oh I want to catch that maybe I'll either try to catch it in real time or listen to the podcast version what's never going to drive my behavior and this is the real meat and potatoes of local talk radio whether it's public radio or commercial is like coming up on the show today bno tax under review like you know how are we going to pay for the new i5 bridge uh between portland and vancouver washington like things that are news topics that are being promoted i just don't think that drives a ton of interest i think you're right i think what that really does is remind people that there's a show on at a certain hour of the day

that talks about local issues and it's good to have them specific absolutely you know i like that Sure. Yeah. But don't let it drive the show, which is why we will never, ever, ever talk about our top stories on the day that we promote.

them that's all i'm saying there yeah we do we're not we're not we don't like listen we're not um

letting the tail of this dog wag us exactly exactly so all of that is to say this show that i heard yesterday for the first time i heard the beginning of it and it was and it might have might have been the first time i've heard the show at all um it was so painful at the beginning and this goes back to me being a little embarrassed about maybe coming in hot and pretending like i have something to share with you and maybe it's just a dream about a sandwich but like at least there's something and it like I it was one of those weird moments where hearing somebody else do their version of what we do and finding it so painful made me feel as we say less shame maybe not pride but as Barton Simpson says less shame and again I don't want to be mean to these people like they're hustling they got they they're paying to have their podcast on the radio there's something kind of cool about that maybe i'm a little envious but i was just like but they kept referencing how they could just talk all day and how everything is a tangent with them and then they clumsily land on a tangent and then they interrupted themselves to say oh look we're on one now and i'm like yeah but you've been flopping around like a fish out of water for like two and a half minutes here like the only thing that kept me listening was like i was i i couldn't i mean maybe that maybe that's a marketing tactic like it was so i found it so awkward i couldn't stop listening well maybe maybe we should do that yeah you know what as i'm saying it i'm like oh

yeah they got me you're feeling i'm glad you're feeling less shame today because i'm feeling more shame i'm feeling like i really botched the taco time conversation yesterday because i felt like i was just kind of all over the map i just wasn't i wasn't doing a particularly great job of laying out what was interesting about the story i just thought and that one was really like that one jumped into the boat for us like i have been obsessed with taco time since i was a little kid and someone wrote a great article about it and i just from the moment that i realized i didn't have the author's name at the ready uh because i was you know not at my normal house and didn't have printing capabilities i just felt like i was just kind of all over the map with that which was a bummer because i was born to talk about that story and i felt like i kind of i didn't really Deliver as well as I wish I would have So I'm glad you're, I'm glad one of us Is feeling confident today because I mean that's really the conservation of self esteem On this program, we can't both have self esteem At the same time If one of us is feeling it, the other one has to be not

Feeling it. Yes, and there are times When neither one of us feels it, that's okay But there are never times that we're both Feeling it, that is Definitely impossible, I like to think On the days where both of us hate ourselves There's somebody out there who's having a better Than usual day, that energy She is just aligning at somebody's shoulder, yes, and they don't know who it is.

It is kind of funny how, like, I, you know, I have become a sort of a, I'm very thin-skinned and I'm very defensive. When I'm not dragging this program to the listeners and telling people I meet in the world, definitely don't listen to it. When I'm not doing that, I'm feeling fiercely defensive of the show. and so and and just the format and the idea that it is actually interesting to hear two people talk to each other and it doesn't have to be um overly scripted you know i i'm and because i've found myself in a lot of projects i've done where the the producers who often are maybe more from a traditional public radio or news background will be like well what okay so but what's the point of this conversation i'm like nothing it's just to be entertaining right like i feel like i'm sticking up for small talk a lot in certain areas of my professional life because people would be like, yeah, but I mean, what, you're just talking about your cat? And I'm like, yeah, a lot of people have cats and they find it interesting or maybe not a lot of people find it interesting, but enough people that TBTL still exists. So on the one hand, I'm very like, I just, I feel like there doesn't have to be always some big driving kind of focus and plan to the conversation. That being said, When you hear a very aimless conversation, I immediately become one of those people going, well, you've got to have some sort of a plan here, and you've got to be going somewhere with this. Like I quickly switch into that other mode that I hate when people are applying it to me, but I am very quick to apply it to other people.

When somebody challenges what you do on the show and says, you know, it's just small talk, say, there is no small talk, just small listeners, and just glare at them and just do not break eye contact until they're a podcast. Yeah, right. Exactly. There were a couple of conversations we had recently that I didn't feel like I don't I didn't feel like we had done the topic a disservice by any means. Like you were mentioning yesterday. I didn't know that you were bummed about our presentation of the not your whatever. I was bummed about my carry it together. We carry the show together. But there are sometimes I succeed and you fail. In fact, I have a list right here. Let's go back It's more of a spreadsheet I can share, it's a Google doc

But there are a couple of things And this is kind of a bad feeling Where the topic ended And we moved on And then later on in the day I forgot that I wanted to make A specific point about something And I swear earlier this week There was one I know there was one About the White Lotus That I don't need to It's not worth me Like kind of unfolding All of the plot points Of the White Lotus Part 2 But there was one thing That I really wanted to mention That I didn't mention that's a bad feeling you ever get that not like oh i could have done this better but oh god wait hold on the whole thing was i had this one nugget that i wanted to share that was related to the

story i do have that occasionally and it is kind of it's uh it's an unfortunate feeling because you're right it's usually not worth revisiting but it is kind of like sometimes when i'm particularly lackluster on the show and i'm thinking wait why did i even want to talk about this topic because i forgot what the uh kind of point was do you hear the yeah are they are they are they wrestling or are they just trying to get out no what the situation is um i'm going to send you actually a photo right now related to the thing i alluded to at the top of the show but so the deal is bubbles and holly have been here uh since wednesday because becca had to be at this location so they've been here um living just like i assume like felix and oscar from the odd couple These are cats, by the way

In case somebody didn't hear the meow in the background And they're wondering if these are your children or what These are cats

Bubbles is a bangle cat And Holly is a tuxedo cat And Holly's personality They're both very adorable In their own ways But Holly's personality is very low-key And when she's been here at my place before She has, as you would say, Andrew gone to ground for like two or three days she'll just be in the furthest back part of a closet she can find or her cat carrier is here and currently she's in her cat carrier but now i'm really glad

that i specify that they're cats because people are like why are you keeping children in cat

carriers aren't you yeah people aren't you proud of me everybody stop you don't have to call the authorities i believe this is legal whatever's going on here but so holly is just in her cat carrier just hunkered down kind of just like nobody look at me nobody mess with me and then bubbles is of course trying to climb into the cat carrier with her is kind of you know bopping her on the head with her paw i tend to think that this is actually good for both of them like it's good for bubbles to have another life form that is a cat to kind of hang with and it's good for holly because even though holly pretends not like it i think it's good for her to get a little bit of attention to like i think it's socially i mean you know a lot about this from when you had theo and the professor i don't know well they they like to snuggle a lot if i understand right but like and of course now you have bingo too so you're more familiar with the like two cat dynamic the two cat solution i believe is how it's being talked about by anthony blinken right now it's

a little rough in our house i mean it's kind of the dynamic that you're describing only it's gotten to the point where we're a little concerned about bananas never being able to relax because she's constantly getting bopped she's constantly being stalked and jumped on by bingo who's a very sweet cat and he's just trying to play he's really not like he's so good at like keeping his claws in with us he's just such an amazing little animal but it's a lot for bananas so i feel a little bit

for holly here i tend to think that holly is like the kind of shy kid who doesn't want to go out and party and bubbles is like the cool popular kid and she's just trying to get holly to go have fun in the way that she likes to have fun and how has that ever gone wrong yeah right exactly sounds

very it sounds very much like this is not there's no parallels to your own life or even possibly

our own friendship here yes hey i'll see you at my father's place this weekend andrew we can talk about that too you and veeves are going to be coming down to beautiful portland oregon yeah

we're all getting dinner tonight i know i know i'm excited i'm very excited about it all of this is

to say um the cats are here and this morning when i woke up um out at this kind of you know this place called the skamania lodge i because the cats are here i've been checking on them constantly through the camera that is on the remote control cat feeder that i have so i have this thing that i can use you know from my phone it can just dispense food and it also has a camera on it and i can also talk into it as a little speaker so i've been the whole goal has been to try to get holly just to see because bubbles is fine bubbles is just wandering around the place the apartment it's all fine we're just hoping holly's okay so i'm like trying to talk to holly and i'm checking in every few hours and so this morning i get up it's like i don't know it's six or something and i like turn on the camera and i look and just stoically bubbles is just walking on her treadmill like a straight up human being who made some new year's i sent you a picture of Like a human being who made a New Year's

resolution to start working out every morning and she was on there for like 10 minutes like she has never ever been on there for 10 minutes when i'm around i have no she will gallop on it for like two seconds if i'm putting a laser pointer on it but this is a totally interesting view into her world when i'm not here which is she just gets up kind of bleary eyed she like you know probably like makes herself a little cup of coffee then she's time to go get on the treadmill and just like stoically walk by yourself for 10 minutes on the treadmill it was funny to me hey new year new cat that's what i say absolutely it sucks though when you go to the gym and it's all cats

like january 1st it's like all right everybody here calm down i've been doing this all year round now suddenly all the cats are on the round treadmill so that's good also i mean that thing was not um not inexpensive yeah and so you must be kind of happy kind of a hunk of junk really

it's not a it's not a you know why i said hunk of junk because i'm looking at a sign that says three brothers junk removal and then a phone number do you ever do that where you're like just looking at a word and then your brain without realizing it integrates it into what you're talking about it's literally how i start the show every day it's just word it's a word cloud walls and pencil that was another thing in bubbles cat carrier uh which you know again she's been going in and out of for the last two days i just found one of my pens like she got up on this desk she got a pen in her mouth she jumped down she walked over got in her cat carrier and deposited like i don't know what that process was for her but she wanted to have that pen from montalupo market uh which is a cool italian restaurant here in portland over in her little

carrier you know who else has one of your pens by the way i've been meaning to tell you about this you left one of your fancy little high low pens here you love your little cute little clicky pens is it high low like hotel or something maybe it's a it's a very handsome pen it's a black and white pen it's the divide is right at the like the thread mark where it kind of breaks in half um and i know that you love these little clicky pens right you like to keep them in your

pocket they're very in style right now like you go to a lot of kind of trendier hotels and even restaurants that's why the one i have for montalupo i was they gave it to me to sign the bill and i was like you're coming home with me it's very in style for companies for like again often for restaurants and hotels to get their own sort of you know um sort of custom pens made and i really like that style i like that look i have about five of those andrews so you can have that

oh okay because i because i thought you sort of really like to keep a keep track of them i remember i brought you back one from that um yes from that place like palm springs i can't remember the name of it. Tropical? Yes, yes. The Tropicana, maybe?

I used that until it actually broke. I literally used that pen until the plastic on the tip of it, kind of where the ink thing, whatever you call that, comes out. It literally broke, and I couldn't use it anymore, but I mean, I drove the wheels off of that thing.

We gotta get more of those. You know what? That's what we gotta do. We gotta get APM to send us down to Palm Springs to get more. I mean, they're office supplies. It's a totally legit business expense, if you ask me. Absolutely.

And I've been, as far as my accountant knows, I've been spending over $40,000 a year on office supplies here, Andrew, if anybody asks. Anyway, the treadmill is not junk per se, but it was not cheap. It was like a few hundred bucks, if I remember. And when you buy something, I was like, I've bought human-sized treadmills for less than that on Craigslist, right? So I don't know what I was expecting, but it came. It was just a box, and I was like, how did this whole thing fit in this box? And it's because it's just, like, 8 million, like, pieces of plastic that you snap together. And, like, as I was putting it together, I was like, this has got to be under $5 worth of plastic that I, you know, presumably came from, like, maybe China would be a likely place or something. Like, I was really underwhelmed when I got this thing to see what it really was. I don't know what I expected, but I thought it was going to be fancier than it was. and then she did like playing on it but the video on the website for this thing of course it's like a cat running in slow motion on it and you sort of have this in your mind like my cat that's high energy is going to just be like going it's going to get all their yaya's out on this thing but i realized the entire video was four seconds long it was in slow-mo because the cat was on the treadmill for four for three seconds like that was and that was the clip advertising the product Like, that was the longest they could get a cat to stay on this thing. So I, you know, would do I do this thing with the laser pointer and these other toys where I try to, like, entice her into doing it. But it's always like a limited it's like she'll be on there for about four seconds. Now, today, imagine my my excitement when I just see her on there with her cup of coffee, just like work going to work, just getting after it on the treadmill. It was like, well, OK, that was my three hundred dollars. Well spent.

I don't mean to yuck anybody's yums here, but I will say while it's cool that she used the treadmill, you sent me this photo.

So it looks like she did not wipe it down afterwards, which is a real, I mean, that is so boorish, man.

Joan Rivers' voice, can we talk, Andrew, can we talk about the subject of wiping down, actually, can we break? Yes. And then can we talk about the subject of wiping down workout equipment? Because this is something that I think about a lot, actually. So stay with us here on TBTL. hello and welcome to top story um i don't know if i've been talking about this on the show but i've been trying to exercise more in the new year and there's a few different things that i do some mornings i'll do my weird one man basketball game uh some days if the weather's nice i'll jog outside um more on that in this week's newsletter actually oh yeah you put together a really nice little video for the hay dummies it was kind of a parody of these called come get ready with me videos which are very big on tiktok come get ready with me before i go work at a at a state prison come get ready with me before i go do my job as um a large animal veterinarian and it'll just be a person who's often you know people who identify as women i guess um kind of like doing their makeup or like getting their outfit on or like here's how i make my smoothie in the morning it's kind of like a process video this is my kind of slight joke parody of that um which has come on a jog with me in central park but anyway point is i do a variety of little things some mornings when it's really crummy out i will go to the treadmill in my apartment building and i will um put it on like a what for me is a really fast speed and i'll just like run as hard as i can for a shorter length of like mileage but at a pace that's really pushing my limits and when i'm doing that andrew because i am a schvitzer because i am somebody who really sweats like once i once i get sweating it's uh it really gets out of control i drench the treadmill in my own sweat and in fact there are two treadmills and i'm always hoping that i will have both of them to myself because if there is a person on the treadmill next to me i am now consumed with the fear that I am going to be, sweat is going to be flying onto them and the reason why is because many years ago when I did actually buy a treadmill when I lived on Beacon Hill I bought a treadmill and I put it in the basement of my house and it was a very burly one and it was so on really crummy days I could just run on the treadmill in the basement and after using it a couple times I thought well there must be an oil leak because there's all this water on this treadmill but makes no sense where it's at, it's not like on the display screen or whatever it's out on the front edge of the treadmill like how could that be getting wet is there something in the mechanism of the treadmill that's leaking or seeping out and i just remember thinking that's really bizarre i don't know what that is well what i've learned

over time is that's me my sweat will fly for feet in any direction and again when i'm doing this particular kind of workout that's a very intense for me it's really ups the sweating component and so a i'm worried about sweating on other people i can't imagine how gross that would be if someone adjacent to you in the gym if their sweat flies off of them and onto you the other thing is i do an incredibly incredibly theatrical performance of wiping down the machine when i'm done with it like you could eat off of that thing by the time i'm done because i have so carefully and thoroughly wiped every inch of it down so that anyone in the gym can see it or and i thought about this the other day andrew i think on tuesday i ran on that treadmill i thought i want the security cameras i was by myself i was like i want the security cameras to see that i'm cleaning this machine off in case there's some kind of legionnaire disease outbreak in this gym i want them to know that i did my best to wipe the machine i literally wiped the machine down for the benefit of anyone who might be looking at the security camera later

now is i i thought before the break when you were kind of gearing up for this i maybe this is just again the negativity that i'm bringing to the show today but i thought maybe it was a pet peeve of yours to see other people who are not wiping down the equipment that is not that's not that doesn't take up a lot of space in your head oddly enough considering how petty i am

it actually doesn't like uh it just does does not bother me um i also don't go i don't use a treadmill or workout equipment in a large gym setting very often this is like an apartment building exercise room so there's like two treadmills two ellipticals some weights that i don't i don't mess with so it's more the case that i'm in there by myself then there's somebody in other words i don't have a lot of chance to see someone getting off a machine and not wiping it down if i did that more i might get more ticked about it

Thank you.

but as now this is the thing that i have noted though and i don't know what the deal is like at the gyms that you've used but in my apartment gym and in i was using the treadmill at a another hotel somewhere recently maybe when i was in when i was in las vegas i think i was at the cosmopolitan they both use the same system which is the wet wipe it's like it's like a roll of them and it's mounted somehow in like the top of the garbage can have you ever seen this

Oh yes yes I can picture that yeah I think grocery stores sometimes have that

Yeah yeah you've seen that before And you kind of pull it out And then you rip it off you know and you get like two or three sheets of it Or whatever and then you use your thing The problem with that system is that The top paper Or the top wet wipe in the The one in my gym Is always bone dry So it's like you have to pull that one off And that's like you have to rip that one and throw it away

Yeah that's a waste

That thing which is a sacrificial it's a total waste and i feel like i'm being wasteful but it's of no use to me because it has no alcohol whatever soaked into it because it's been sitting out in the open and i feel like it might be a scam by the company that makes these things think about it they're getting away with selling you an unusable section of this how many of those you know at the end of the roll is that

like 50 sheets of that that's a good point they're not they're not being very environmentally friendly I suppose by doing that although I'm just the reason I'm pausing is I'm just I'm trying to think of a solution that isn't completely irritating from a user perspective I know I guess ideally only a tiny bit of that top piece of paper sticks out so you can just grab the very tippy top of it but like I don't know I don't know I'd be fine with them just having a spray

bottle of some kind of disinfectant and some just paper towels that of course involves someone having to maintain the spray bottle in the gym which is you know like just one more thing for someone to do so i guess this is the system that we have but to answer your question about wiping down equipment i'm very big on it it's i bring the same verve to wiping down the treadmill after i'm done that i do to picking up dog poop if i'm walking like when i used to walk rudy like i've i've made this joke before but i was like joe bluth doing an illusion like i'm like i am producing the bag i'm waving it above my head i'm pulling various scarves i get in like a coffin for some reason and it's like i want the world to see that i am picking this poop up the fact that you keep

the bags tucked into your sleeve is really i mean that's when you're getting ready to go out and

you have said that like when i throw the um like fire out into the air that disappears immediately

that that's overkill yeah but i think the lighter fluid would come from when i'm at the gym see even though you gave that whole setup explaining that you're in this room um with just two treadmills and in your apartment building for some reason my brain automatically just starts filling in the gaps and i'm picturing you at a place like 24 hour fitness like where i go right i'm sorry where i pay to go not where i actually go as has been brought up uh in the in the household recently um but uh i do need to get back there but their system is a squirt bottle and just like paper towels which i actually which i actually like i think better although you're right if somebody is not maintaining those squirt bottles then they end up you know just being empty and laying around and that doesn't do you any good but yeah when i am wiping down my machine and you know me i'm somebody who truly believes in cleanliness i'm not doing it just because it's

the right thing to do or just right whereas i'm only doing it for appearances i would rather leave

that thing just encrusted with my sweat like no matter how many times i do that like i'm realizing now that it does a big i am picturing everybody in the gym watching me do it i'm like thinking like where did my which buttons did i press you know what i mean like so if you're on like i use like an elliptical usually right so there are the two places where you can put your hands from time to time on each side of you so obviously you're going to wipe those down those are going to be really sweaty um then i'm wiping it down more i'm like oh i guess i should wipe down the screen because even though like sweat isn't flying off of me um like my my gross fingers i guess did push these buttons when i chose whatever program that i chose so i like wipe that down and i do i think you're right in the back of my head i'm picturing everybody in the gym like watching me do this when you know honestly i've judged people for not wiping it down at all like if i see somebody get off their machine and just walk away I that really irritates me but I've never actually watched the job somebody does as long as they're there as long as they're wiping it down as long as they're waving a man as they have a dove that comes out of their hat with where the dove come

from throwing a letter into the ocean blowing backwards anyway it's like though it's like it's like how I feel about handwashing.

the men's bathroom at the airport or anywhere like that i'm not analyzing how long somebody's scrubbing their hands if they're singing twinkle twinkle little star or whatever you know or how much they're getting in the crevices of their cuticles i'm noting if they walked directly from the urinal out of that door or if they walked over to the sink and if they walked over to the sink and they started applying water to their hands they're good by me you know what i mean like in the same thing with the swiping down the machines if you go to the machine with the spray bottle or the whatever and you do even a cursory wipe down you're good by me you did you did the thing that we should do as civilized humans you know i this has come up on the show

before and i was really surprised by how much pushback we got from listeners men and women alike saying that like the idea of having to um wash your hands uh after you use the restroom is way overblown and i just couldn't believe that people were taking the time to write into a show to make that argument like including one person and i can't remember who this is and that's for the best it's probably the host of that show i was listening to yesterday um but one person was even saying like you know you don't have to here's all the reasons why you don't have to wash your hands after you pee blah blah blah blah and that that's why i don't do it unless i'm at a restaurant and i'm like well what is the difference if you're at a restaurant if like that belied everything

that also life is a restaurant if you get your scummy hands on something at the um you know know the target that you're shopping at and then i get it on my hands and then i go eat later i might as well be a restaurant like if you're contaminating the environment and i don't listen i don't even think that there's a health danger i just think it's like it's just a gross idea i was uh i didn't listen let's be honest it was probably at the casino because i was probably a few in and i was probably losing so i was probably a little salty and i remember washing my hands and just watching a guy just like go up do his thing and then just walk right out and i think i said something like hey thanks for washing your hands and he turned back and amazingly this didn't lead to a physical confrontation he just said i don't pee on my hands as he exited the bathroom and i've been re i've been replaying that conversation if we can call it that in my head for a long time because he misunderstood i didn't think i hope no one's peeing on their hands in that bathroom but you were holding on to a part of your anatomy that i would just assume

not come in contact with and there are if you're using urinals there are sometimes like splash back that you might not even know about and i'm not saying that like it's super gross in there and that like we're getting urine all over the place like i understand that that is not the case but like there are particles there are things and like my point is like what is the harm like in the time you spent to writing an email to me like long emails you could have just washed your hands and like i just don't understand what the argument against it is i was at a nice restaurant in honolulu on new year's eve with genevieve not to brag and um but yeah genevieve i'm dating her um and i you know it was near the end of the meal i think maybe before dessert or something i go i use the restroom and there's some guy who does exactly what you're describing he gets done using I believe a urinal I'm not sure it might have even been a stall and just walks right out of the bathroom and Luke I can't be in society anymore I'm serious like I wanted so bad like you you called that one guy out I know it will do no good like these people who defend this or just think that they don't that they're above it for some reason like you're not going to convince them and if you're going to challenge them like you say it's just going to lead to me getting bopped in the nose or something but like I wanted to grab going to be on your nose after they a bell and yell shame shame shame behind him i wanted to out him so badly i wanted to yell to the restaurant this man didn't wash his hands shame shame could have been me but you playing

um all right uh we got to talk about this netflix situation you sent me this article actually from yahoo finance netflix reveals first details of password sharing crackdown now uh it turns out that uh this currently applies to chile costa rica and peru um according to the help center netflix's help center uh which updated its faq page netflix accounts will remain shareable but only within one household and this article written by the way by alexandra canal uh from yahoo finance basically speculates that pretty soon they're going to move this to the u.s maybe they're just kind of like testing it you know they're beta testing it in some places that aren't the u.s presumably the u.s is like their biggest you know market and i guess the way that they think it's going to work is that you're going to have to identify a primary location for all accounts that live within the same household users will need to sign into the home wi-fi of the primary location at least once every 31 days to ensure their device is not blocked so If I were to give you my Netflix password and you had been using it up in Seattle, let's be more realistic. If you had given me your Netflix password and I had been using it down here in Portland and I was not checking in at your house often enough, I guess, then they might block the device. What I don't exactly understand is if you had your Netflix account in Portland or in Seattle and I had your and I had your Netflix account here in Portland and we were both kind of alternating. I was watching it some nights. You were watching another. Wouldn't that wouldn't that constitute checking in?

No, no, it needs to be on the home Wi-Fi of mine. So let's say that you're borrowing mine. No, let's not even say you're borrowing. Let's say that you and I actually live together because this is a scenario that I like to imagine better. You and I are roommates, right? And so we have a Netflix subscription that we share. You're allowed to do that. You watch a lot of Netflix on your phone, but also you travel a lot. That's a real story. That's why I agreed to be roommates with you. I knew that you'd be covering your part of the rent, yet you're mostly not here. It's a great deal for me. I really appreciate it. Also, please clean your room. Jesus Christ. But anyway, so you're out on the road covering all kinds of CBS stuff or whatever, and you're using your phone or your iPad or whatever you are while you're on the road in various hotel rooms. And then after you've been on the road for 33 days, Luke, your phone is like, nope, you can't log into Netflix anymore. You've got to get back to home base. You've got to log in. My device has to check in. Your device has to check in on the home Wi-Fi. I have a little experience with this when we were Xfinity customers, which is like, you know, your kind of standard cable package. But these days you could watch your cable online, which I did a lot of, and I really enjoyed it. So if I wanted to go take my laptop to a coffee shop, plug in my headphones, which is key. Please, people, use headphones in public and wash your hands and, you know, watch something on my DVR, I would have the ability to do that. And I did it. But if there was a live Seahawks game, I could not take my computer to a location that wasn't on my home Wi-Fi and watch that live sporting event because of all kinds of rights issues. Like they know whether or not you're on your home Wi-Fi or not. And so they shut that down. So if I were to share with you my Xfinity password, you might be able to watch Chris Hayes' show in Portland, but you would not be able to watch the Seahawks.

and i've run into that a lot because i'm and it's very frustrating because i you know obviously pay for cable here at this place and i can watch it on my laptop so sometimes when i'd be somewhere else i'd be like oh the seahawks are on i want to watch it on my laptop i'll log into my xfinity account yep and i'm in denver or something and i'll just watch it because i'm paying them money and they'll be like nope you're not on your home wi-fi you can't watch this it's it's pretty it's pretty locked down uh netflix claims and they they had a quarterly letter to shareholders and they claim that uh today's widespread account sharing which they estimate at more than 100 million households undermines our long-term ability to invest in and improve netflix as well as build our business listen that's i guess that's a reasonable thing you sell something and it's something that can very easily be sort of passed around and used by a bunch of people instead of just a person like I don't have necessarily a problem with that because again they're trying to run a business this was the line that really really chilled me to my core well first of all this part also was bad news Netflix will rely on its newly launched ad supported tier to lift profitability so that sounds to me like we're about to start seeing ads on Netflix unless we want to be in like the you know pay the most premium price you can so that you don't have to watch ads which that feels a little that's frustrating to me because one of

the big appeals of these kinds of things was no ads well i think we are on that tier at our place we're definitely on that tier for hbo our hbo service will insert ads not on everything and i don't know exactly why but we got some deal on an hbo package that isn't is not ads free which was that was weird to me because hbo just traditionally as a premium product even you know before the internet was an ad free experience um and but if we could get it way cheap and every now and then they'll insert like you know two quick commercial breaks per rerun of barry or whatever i'm watching like it's not a huge i mean when you're paying for cable tv you're paying for cable and also

getting ads in a lot of cases yeah but i i think i i agree but i tend to think of the premium the things like hbo and stuff and netflix as being like the to me the business model feels like we give them money directly and then for that because we don't get them with the regular cable package then for that we don't have to watch carvana ads wait a minute that hits a little close to home what about what about two carvana ads in a row andrew are you or are you not interested in being driven happy here's the real quote though from netflix that i just can't get over um this was also in the shareholder letter Thank you.

As always, our North Stars remain pleasing our members and building even greater profitability. Have you heard two ideas that are more diametrically opposed than pleasing your members and building even greater profitability? Those two things are natural enemies. One of those is a cheetah and one of those is an injured gazelle. those things exist to destroy each other in nature first of all if you're pleasing your member be

careful you're gonna go blind secondly the first time i read that i really thought because it was kind of um buried in a lot of kind of corporate gobbledygook i thought it meant pleasing our shareholders because that's the real thing there i mean they're i mean that's number one for any public company and they're public yeah it's not yeah they're public so um that's really number

one that's all they care about but how could they with a straight face write this into the thing as always our north stars remain pleasing our members and building even greater profitability over time like that's i just that's that's so it's not even sinister because i guess they're saying the quiet part loud but like it's insulting to me as a reader because i know that those two things you know how you could really please your customers uh make it free i mean god that would please a lot of people like or don't make it extra hard for me to log into my netflix if i'm traveling you know or something i mean i don't think this will hit me personally because i'm not sharing my account with anyone but like just obviously if you're there to make money you're there to make money that means pleasing your customers is not your north star if the other north star is making the most money off of those customers that you can't yeah you know you're kind

to i don't know if you're forcing me to do this or not but i'll try to maybe take the other side of that a little bit if you take this sentence on its own divorced from the conversation about passwords but just talking about hey hey we as an organization this is what we want to do we want to create a product or service that is so good that it pleases the people who are our customers and by keeping those people happy make more money i mean i do think that that is a traditional business model right you want to create something that people want and then thus It pleases them, and therefore you make money because you're pleasing people. I mean, ideally that's what we do with TBTL. Ideally we would. That's a good point.

I guess what – that is a good point, but let me, if I can, create an extremely tortured example of how this could unfold in a different kind of business. If you were Chipotle and you said our North Stars are pleasing our customers with great food and also increasing revenue, then yes, I'm with you. You could increase your revenue of selling more fajita bowls by making them so delicious that people were, you know, just loved it and wanted to have more of them. And I know you already said, like, leave the password thing out of the conversation. I'm already violating that rule. But imagine if Chipotle had instituted a policy where you couldn't share your Chipotle food with someone. Like, we've put some technology in here where only the person who buys the Chipotle can eat it. And then they're like, our North Stars are pleasing our customers. and increasing revenue it like so there are business models where i think that what you're saying it can be totally true where you can you can do both those things if it is though in the context of and we're going to restrict who can enjoy this product so as to increase the profits that you know feels anathema to the idea of pleasing their customers i feel like that analogy

works best if um chipotle is a buffet style thing because like if you buy a burrito and you're saying hey i agree that the worth of this burrito is i mean eleven dollars now i mean they're big burritos i don't know how much they cost um but you know it's a it's a burrito luke what could it cost ten dollars um so then you take that back to your table they don't care whether you throw it in the garbage can split it in half give half to your friend give the whole thing to your friend eat it yourself it doesn't matter they said we just sold you this amount of food and the service that went into it for that amount of money and that's what but if you have a buffet where you can kind of come in and pay but then it's like oh also i paid so my friend's gonna eat and my other friend's gonna eat my other friend's gonna eat and then chipotle's like okay we gotta start making sure that it's not just one person pays and everybody eats we're gonna lock that down

but i do think but here's the thing it's this is the classic sort of free rider issue right because netflix is gonna make the shows and they're gonna put them on the internet and if 10 people watch it or one person watches it presumably it doesn't cost netflix any different amount of money by the way welcome to my ted talk uh welcome to the wharton school of business as run by luke burbank where nothing fully lines up as a concept but like um don't you think that i guess the argument about them saying you can't share your burrito would just be because

then it'll make your friend hungry and they'll have to go buy their own burrito no i mean it's

not that it's just that we've we've put a value on this thing that you know it took us this amount of work to make it these amount of ingredients and it's this value we need to make a little bit of money to keep the lights on and make profit or whatever like that's all it and so here it is we put a price tag on it you here's one burrito do whatever you want with it but when you're providing something to to and say hey eat all you can then you do need to put some sort of limits on and be Like, well, that doesn't mean that, like, you can pay $10, eat everything you can, and also your friend can eat everything you can, too, because eventually we're going to run out of money. I mean, the thing with Netflix is, you're right, like, me sharing the password with you, it means that, like, if I didn't share my password with you, ideally you would then become a member, and then Netflix would get more money, and then they could put that money back into making those shows. I mean, you're right. Once the show is made, it's not costing them any more money. But if they want to make more shows, I mean, in the same way, I mean, it's literally if we had one donor versus 500 donors on TBTL, right?

Yes, I agree with you on that. Speaking of delicious Mexican food, Andrew, or quasi-Mexican food, I 100% went to Taco Time yesterday after our conversation. And I sent you and P. Fletch a video of the Taco Time drive-thru in the small town near where I'm working on this house. and it might have just been the time of day it was like maybe one or something the line in the drive-thru went out into the highway like the main arterial road like I didn't end up going to that taco time I ended up going to a different taco time because it was a mob scene and you know this is down in southern Washington I was saying to you and Phyllis like I can't imagine these are all Seattle Met readers but then I think it was was it you or Phyllis somebody said well i mean maybe it could have be the seattle met effect and then i started thinking well my dad saw the story probably on facebook my dad's also not a seattle met reader per se so my dad saw it somehow it must be making the rounds on facebook which is how it would reach people like my dad and let's just be honest everyone in that line at that particular taco time in southwest washington so i don't know we may have seen there may be a measurable bump

from that article making the rounds i'd be really interested to know because yeah you sent that And you said probably not because of the article. And I think I was the one who said, well, maybe, but maybe not. But, like, I don't know. Like, I've never been to that one before. I've never passed it. You know, like, I have no idea. You were – I think you were there kind of – was it late afternoon, early evening?

No, it was like 1. Oh, okay, so lunchtime. It was literally right after the show. We hung up, and I walked out to the studio, and I said, Dad, I'm going to Taco Time. What do you want? Okay. And then I went and got our lunch and brought it back.

So that is kind of yeah. So it was kind of it would be kind of a high traffic time. I would guess that the lunch rush might start dying down in the early one o'clock hour. But still, like, you know, that's basically lunchtime. So maybe it always looks like that. But also, I could definitely see a world where like you said, like, I'm not logging on to Seattle Met all the time. But everybody sent me that article because we talk about taco time so much on the show. So, I mean, it goes back to the conversations we have sometimes on the show, just like, hey, talking about M&Ms, even if we're complaining about the M&Ms marketing strategy, does it just plant the idea of M&Ms in my head? And the next time I'm in the store, I might end up throwing a bag, you know, as an impulse purchase into my cart or something like that.

Not to mention that if you did happen to see the article, let's just say on Facebook, you clicked on it. I mean, it was a lengthy article. I don't know how thorough the average sort of person is as far as reading all the way to the last sentence or whatever, but the beginning of the article really goes into great detail on the kind of love and care that goes into preparing the food fresh every day, and it was mouthwatering. It actually made me hungry reading about the preparation process because of how they're putting – like they get all these beans that are grown in Washington, I believe, and then they start stewing them. My dad actually – I was talking about this with him yesterday as we were eating taco time amidst the construction project. And he went – I was telling him, oh, yeah, all that prep they do. He goes, oh, you know what? The other thing they do is after they cook the beans or before they cook the beans, at some point they spread them all out on like huge baking sheets and make sure there are no rock particles in them because I guess that's a thing that can happen with beans. I mean think about it. They're pulling them out of the ground. There's only so much you can do to make sure That no little bit of something else Makes its way in So they actually go through and make sure there's no There's nothing that shouldn't be in there Like I mean the levels of You know work and prep that go into it It actually made me hungry In fact if we had a proper taco time here in Portland I'd probably go there for lunch today Andrew

Makes me want pebbles It's good for my gizzard though

Alright how about a little music We'll be right back.

for the weekend uh i'm trying some rebranding here andrew music for the weekend huh i feel like

how to music your weekend how about that change how you music i'm music how you weekend is that a show title maybe it's a show title what did i write before i wrote sticking up for small talk before um let's see here so there's a band a duo i don't know uh this came into my email a while back and I sort of had it on the bench for a while here and now I realize I don't remember much about the musicians themselves but they go by the name Gliders G-L-Y-D-E R-S. They are out of Chicago. I believe that they are just a duo if I'm to believe my eyes as I watch the video for this song which I like. It's again kind of, I don't know why I said again. I just pulled the ultimate John Clayton there. I just said again as if I was reiterating something when And I never iterated it in the first place. But they are, I said again, because we kind of play this music a lot. It's like new kind of country infused pop music that when you hear this, I think you'll be like, oh, yeah, this is the type of country infused pop music that Andrew would dig. So this song is called Smooth Walker by the group Gliders. This is not the song at all that I was setting up. I told you everything about gliders, and that is not... I was really waiting for it to sonically take a shit. You know what? That is also gliders. I have two gliders songs on this playlist. I didn't realize that they have such a different sound. The song that I wanted to play is this one. And I'm going to leave this all in because that's a different sound that I also like. But the song I was thinking of is this one called Wrong, Sometimes Right.

guitar solo I walk through the door from the wrong side Taking my time, taking my time It's been hard before, never look up I've walked down the road On the wrong foot Taking my time Taking my time

So you got two little flavors of gliders there, and I think it's ironic, or no, apt maybe, that I got that wrong and the name of this song is Wrong Sometimes Right.

That's good. I like that. It reminds me a little bit of a band that I'm a big fan of called Bonnie Doon that I would recommend folks check out that's just got that, like you said, kind of that country. Are you a fan as well, Bubs? Kind of got that country sound but, you know, not full on Garth Brooks or whatever, a little twang.

Yeah, a little twang.

Got a little twang in your indie, as it were. The song that I would like to suggest is a song called These Days by the singer Nico. Were you familiar with Nico? She's not alive anymore. She died in the 80s. Well, Velvet Underground, right?

Velvet Underground and Nico?

Exactly. And I think I started seeing her. Yeah, she was closely associated with them. She was in the movie Chelsea Girls. She was also in La Dolce Vita. She was like a German model who kind of fell in with the Andy Warhol scene. And I have to tell you, this song, I had to listen to this song probably 10 times before I stopped disliking it. Have you ever had a song like that, that you're kind of like, I don't really like this, but then you keep hearing it, and then eventually it just wears you down, and then you end up loving it deeply? I've had albums like that, yeah. Because I just tend to hit the eject button very quickly if I'm not feeling a song. I'm not good at just experiencing music as something that might not be fully tasty the first time you listen to it. I either like it or I don't like it And if I don't like it I avoid it going forward

But for some reason, probably due to algorithms and the fact that I've been listening to a lot of, like, Bob Dylan from this era and, you know, Lou Reed stuff. So this song started coming up on various algorithms, and now I just really love it. It's called These Days by Nico. It's from, like, 1980-something, I think. I don't know when the song came out, but anyway. Would you mind playing that from there in Seattle? Okay. All right.

I've been out walking I don't do too much talking these days These days These days I seem to think a lot About the things that I forgot to do And all the times I had A chance to

All right, we probably can't play much more of it than that without getting in trouble with Spotify. Were you familiar with that song?

Yeah, I know this song. A little correction, though. This is from the 60s. This is a 1967 record. I don't know why I thought that was the 80s. I think it's going to be pretty late for that. I think it's around the same time that that iconic Velvet Underground and Nico record came out, which is mostly how I know her stuff. In fact, I know this song, but it's not on that record. So I don't know why I know this song.

Are you sure it wasn't on the Weird Science soundtrack in 1983?

Wait, hold on. I do love that. I've never seen that movie. But yeah, so it's funny because I think I probably, I know I've heard that song a bunch, but I'll bet you I always assumed that was one of her tracks on the Velvet Underground song. I didn't realize that that's part of her solo thing.

What I think is kind of interesting is, so she was originally from Germany. She was born Akrista Pafkin, known by the name Nico. But much like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I know is not from Germany, he's from Austria, but let's just say kind of same corner of the world, I really never liked Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting when I was a kid. I was like, it's so bad, it's so not convincing. But he's just been around so long, and mostly what it is, is they have a really funny Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator on The Howard Stern Show That I now kind of have a sort of like Enjoyment of Arnold Schwarzenegger In movies With the accent and everything And with this Nico song It's like her singing is a little you know kind of It's not typical her accent Is a little not typical for me But now I kind of love it It all kind of makes the song better for me Much like I kind of now love Arnold Schwarzenegger Just like goofy Non-convincing acting style

Oh I have okay I know we got to wrap up at some point here, but well, you got to you and V's got to hit

the road and get on down here to the Rose City.

OK, a couple of things, though, if you'll allow it. First of all, do you know the name of the impersonator on the Howard Stern show? I don't not to put you on the spot. It's not a comedian who also has like who would be sort of known for doing the circuit or whatever, because some people were talking on one of my Levitard podcasts the other day About this guy who kind of reinvented the Schwarzenegger impersonation sort of By kind of focusing in on parts of his accent that other people were ignoring before And I wasn't sure if it was the same person

Well, okay, I don't know This is, I mean, this is, sorry, this is going to be so boring for people that aren't listeners of that show So basically this is me talking to Phyllis right now But like, it's really interesting what they have going So they have a number of basically performers that are just on standby for the entire show so that if, like, they're talking about something – and I do think this one guy, I think he does, like, a bunch of these different people, and it's uncanny, Andrew. It is uncanny how good this guy – but he's never identified by name. I've tried to, like, internet stalk who he is. I think he's just this guy who's really good at it. what's amazing is not only does he have the actual impression down but he can just improv in the character so it's not like he has to like have a script of what he's going to do so they're talking about you know bodybuilding or something and then like well he i somebody on the show now does mark walberg this really funny mark walberg impression where the bit is mark walberg is just working out 24 hours a day and just thinks basically like everyone else is just like weak and sad like Howard is weak and sad.

because he's not blasting his quads all day. And so they'll be talking about exercising, and then you'll hear a knock at the door, and they'll be like, oh, who is this? And it's like, oh, Mark Wahlberg's here. And then the person is just talking exactly like Mark Wahlberg, but riffing in a way that's really funny. There's no way you could plan this stuff out. So I don't know. I think the same guy does George Takei, William Shatner. I think he's the guy that does Schwarzenegger. And he's just amazing. They're all really good impressions, and then they also have a woman who does a lot of impressions, but it's just an interesting – like from a production standpoint, I would love to go like just be a fly on the wall at how that thing gets produced every day because they somehow very seamlessly do this thing where they're having a really free-range conversation, but then people are constantly showing up, and by people I mean impressions that are being done that clearly some – the impressionist was like, okay, here's who I could be right now that's relevant to this conversation or not relevant. Like, oh, I can show up as Jennifer Witts, the head of Sirius XM. That's one of the characters they do. That's literally the name of the head of Sirius, too. And then they're going to call in and then they're going to do their shtick. Like, I don't understand how it all gets sorted out. Like, who talks to who about, like, I've got this impression ready to go. And then they patch them through. And, like, what Howard knows about what's going to happen. It's a pretty cool process. And it gets, for me as a listener, pretty cool results.

For what it's worth, and I could be wrong here because I'm just kind of Googling on the fly. But I think I have pretty solid evidence here on IMDb that the person who does that voice on Stern is Josh Robert Thompson, who's a voice actor.

That's who I've seen. I've been to his website.

Oh, OK. So you've been bopping around on this, too. So I don't think that's the person that they were talking about on Levitard the other day.

But I will tell you this. There was a guy who, when Schwarzenegger ran for governor of California, there was a guy who could do an uncanny Schwarzenegger at the time. And he was showing up everywhere Calling into shows and stuff And he was like a sensation Because Arnold Schwarzenegger was really in the news And this guy, I forget his name I don't think it was the dude from the Stern show Maybe, I don't know There was somebody who was really good at doing this Schwarzenegger impression And I almost remember it being literally like CDs That were going around Which tells you how long ago this was Like you'd get a CD of him doing these impressions And it was so good Well, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger was my white whale when I was the booker for that show day to day because we started that show about the same time when there was the recall of California Governor Gray Davis and my big coup as the booker was I actually got Gray Davis to come on the show for our first episode which was really hard to do at that time because he was getting recalled as the governor of California and it was probably my proudest accomplishment of booking ever because it took a lot of work but anyway I could never get Schwarzenegger and it was always this thing my bosses were always you got to get schwarzenegger and i'd call and i'd leave i'd you know try every angle so on my last day there they got that how that um arnold schwarzenegger impersonator to call in and they basically played a joke on me that we had gotten schwarzenegger i love that that's and they're like we need you to go you got to go patch him through we had and like alex um uh chadwick was in on it everybody was in on it we're in a meeting and just like emergency call comes in they're like we don't know schwarzenegger's people just said he can do But he has 10 minutes in the car And I'm running to patch him through To do this interview

It was the impersonator That is so great I love that they did that One time when I was working at New Hampshire Public Radio And I don't know why Or what the occasion was But everybody just decided to dress up like me Did I ever tell you about this? I came into work one day And everybody was wearing flannel shirts And oversized khaki pants And whatever else my bullshit was at the time Which hasn't really changed all that much So it was like it wasn't you know I don't dress outrageously but I definitely As Genevieve says have a uniform And back in the day it might have been even a little bit more of a Crunchy uniform and And yeah one day I showed up at work And I don't know I don't think it was my birthday I don't think it was my last day I don't know What the occasion was but Everybody in the station decided it was dressed like Andrew Day which was very sweet I don't know why I tried to one up your story it just reminds me you've forgotten about that and your story is very sweet no no listen i'm

really glad to hear that you took that as sweet because that also i could see that being a lot of attention for you in a way that would maybe be a little bit like uncomfortable well i think it

was you know i think it was to a degree but it also was kind of like it was just yeah i mean it definitely i don't love attention on me obviously but it also was it wasn't like hey it's your birthday but i told you i don't really like my birthday it's okay we couldn't let it pass everybody go to the conference room and we have a cake with one of those silk screen things on it with a baby picture where are they getting baby pictures um but uh

I don't like that kind of stuff, but in this, again, I don't remember what it was. It was a true surprise, and also it was kind of like, oh, I can't explain it. It was like, oh, I exist in your minds in a way that I never even considered before, and it was really hard not to feel touched by that.

I am, before this wild ride called TBTL and wilder ride called Our Friendship is over, Andrew, I am going to surprise you on your birthday with a cake, with a picture of you as a kid plugging your ears. while having a happy birthday song to you. You want to wear that cake? That's the ultimate photo on a cake for you is you as a kid hating being subjected to birthday stuff. I'll just do it on like your half birthday. I will do it on a day that's not your real birthday. I just love the deep sort of meta-irony of that. That would be pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. We have a suggestion from listener David for some music this week. it's uh by the band quasi and the song is called doom scrollers david said i hadn't heard of quasi until i heard this song on kexp i guess quasi has been making music for 25 years though yes they have i love quasi uh great duo i think maybe originally from portland the images i'm looking

at on this music video that david sent in i does is so this is the type of thing where if you saw these images before you heard the music luke i do not think you would like them it's very Did you watch this video?

I did, actually.

It looks very scary. I'm just watching it now in the background.

It is, but because I was already sort of familiar with the sound of Quasi, which is generally actually some really beautiful harmonies and some very listenable tunes. Let's see. David says, Quasi is based in Portland. Okay, so I guess we've confirmed that. He says, honestly, it's a pretty depressing song, but somehow it's a real toe-tapper at the same time. It's also, in a weird way, the best artistic reflection on the experience of the pandemic that I've come across. And the music video is well worth a watch. So we're going to go out with the song Doom Scrolls. This is new music by Quasi. If you're a Quasi head and you didn't know, they've got, I think, either a new album or a new EP, something coming out, because this is like as of February of this year.

I'm intrigued. I'm unfamiliar. I'm trying to even think if I've heard of them before. It sort of sounds like a band I would have heard of, but it also sort of sounds like I could be conflating them with something else. So I'm excited after that.

I think as a person in living in Seattle at the time that I did and being kind of interested in the indie music scene with quasi being from Portland, I think they were kind of, you know, you heard about them a lot in the 90s in Seattle. They may even be I'm not sure, but they may be like, you know, husband and wife duo or something, but they've been playing forever. And I know they did a like a thing with This American Life many years ago where they like I don't know if they scored a whole episode for them or they did something on stage. I remember hearing them on This American Life and being like, oh, my God, it's happening for Quasi. So anyway, we're going to go out with Doom Scrollers by Quasi, suggested by listener David. That's going to bring us to the end of this broadcast week. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back here on Monday with more Imaginary Radio. Until then, have a great weekend. Don't Doom Scroll too much. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

To everyone sleeping in their car

And all the teenage TikTok stars And everybody baking bread

Doomscrolling going out of their head Blackberry pie

Alamo Black coffee

No future

No future

Will you help me pick a password from my email?

I'd be honored Excellent Okay, start brainstorming No bad ideas Banana 13 Leave No, no, no, no, no, no Please, please Blue comma Yankee 27 Will, get out Karate, karate This experiment is more than over Power out