Muse

watch the cupids fly above two hearts so sweet in love if the arrow strikes upon then there shall fly a turtle dove as a poem by dr. dan drinkle today's show is about healthy relationships did you ever have a soul partner did you ever have a love did you ever lose one or wondered how to keep it alive when it got old and brown? Your body's lonesome. It's gonna get sick, probably. Well, that's enough of this drivel-dravel. Let's find out what we want to know about. Let's check it out. Let's check it out. Key music. Key music. TBTL!

I've never felt this way about anybody before. Not even Bobby Sherman, who I completely and totally adored, but now I realize that that was just puppy love and that this is the real thing.

Dude, the craziest thing happened to me this morning. I got in my car, turned it on, had the radio on the alt station, and the song playing was freaking rabbit jangle.

I sh** you not. Blew my sh** mind. All I know is this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting.

If I told you once, I've told you a thousand times, I love you.

I like to hear what my man has to say.

Just get in there with some sexual jibber-jabber.

It will be welcomed.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

You know what I like to celebrate on February 14th? The 1920 founding of the League of Women Voters in Chicago, Illinois.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where love is in the air. On this Valentine's Day, they were saying that it was going to be a white Valentine's Day here in Portland. that there was a possibility of snow, which would have been kind of a unique experience for this mid-February day. And yes, I did say February. We pronounced things correctly on this program because it matters. But that didn't happen. In fact, it's like 50 degrees and completely fine outside. So we did not get our white Valentine's Day. But we do have a great episode of TBTL for you. It's episode 3880 Let the fun begin In a collector's series And we are going to feature Another earned media spotlight segment

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

This is where Some kind of company or corporation or entity Does something purely to get The news media to talk about it And we fall right into their trap Today two stories in the food space Welcome to Food News Today. The BK Have It Your Way You Rule song is a certified banger. And Panera is making a purse that is exactly shaped to put a baguette in so you can get a sandwich from Panera. They're making a perfect purse for your Panera baguette. So we'll get into that. And then also, we have a growing scandal on our hands, people. Well, there's a certain level of trust between us and the tens of listeners, right? You all trust that we will mess things up enough that you will really wonder why it is that you listen to the show day in and day out. You may throw your phone. You may scream into the void. Okay, that's the deal. But generally what doesn't happen is the listeners send us information that is loud wrong, as they would say over on the Dan Levitard show. But this audio drop that we assumed was from the television show, The Last Man on Earth.

It's the story of a man with a brothel of a home and a pool filled with human excrement.

And then we're told it's not actually from that show. It's from Flight of the Concords. So we both, Andrew and I both, fell upon our swords yesterday, apologized profusely to a listener in Germany who'd corrected us. And now we're finding out that that listener in Germany may have, in fact, been incorrect this whole time. We'll talk about that with this guy. Speaking of Valentines and people that we love around here, the longest-running co-bro of the show comes to mind. He may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

He's hilarious. He comes up with the best jokes and the best ideas, and he makes me laugh.

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. As you said, we pronounce things correctly on the show.

I realized as I was saying that about February that I had already intentionally said Valentine's Day about seven times.

The only podcast where we say February correctly, but Valentine's Day incorrectly. Hey, I need to start off with an apology to you, Luke Burbank. I could be in my head here, but I think I heard a little bit of an extra pause, a little bit of an extra beat between the end of the audio montage at the beginning of the show and you saying hello, and I think it's because I meant to warn you. We have a lot of Kristen Schaal conversation in the show today, and I ended the montage with a Kristen Schaal drop. Did that throw you for a loop? I feel like it did, and I apologize.

Nope. First of all, anytime we can work the term sexual jibber-jabber into the program, be it Valentine's Day or not, I'm into it. That was purely one of those things. Do you want to know, Andrew, what I was doing? I was booking an Airbnb. Oh, shit.

I retract my apology.

I was booking an Airbnb for Addie and I to go away for a weekend because it's her birthday this week. She's turning 29 years old. Wow. And we are going to go have fun ads and dads hangout time. and I was hitting go on an Airbnb reservation right as the audio, right as the Kirsten Schaal audio finished up and it was time for me to talk and it just took me an extra second. I also was having a sip of my coffee. So I don't want you on this Valentine's Day, of all days, Andrew, I don't want you carrying around any guilt around the audio that you chose. That was a solid intro for Valentine's Day and I loved it.

Well, that's funny because maybe now it turns out I thought I was being somewhat selfless, But maybe I was being self-centered to think that you were spending that much time because I had here's how I mean, I'm often deeply upset by the audio choices you make.

So you're right. You're right to try to read the silence and figure out what does that indicate. But just just this just wasn't one of those days.

It just seems like we had had a conversation. I knew that you were playing the other Kristen Schall drop in your intro. I mean, it was a rare day where we actually had that conversation. And I knew I mean, I didn't write it down, but I had a mental note to tell you, oh, by the way, also, we'll be ending with some shawl. a little drop from The Last Man on Earth. Well, can we get into that? Yeah, that last one was definitely from The Last Man on Earth. No confusion about that. Bernie, I don't want to hear otherwise.

Okay, so just to catch folks up, if they missed yesterday's episode, that audio that I played at the top of the show that we've played so many times on the program.

It's the story of a man with a brothel of a home and a pool filled with human excrement.

You and I have always assumed that would have to be from the show The Last Man on Earth because the premise of that show is that there's very few people left on planet Earth and Will Forte is one of them, Kirsten Schaal, rather, Kirsten Schaal is one of them and he's just using this McMansion and he's just going to the bathroom in the pool and Bernie, listener Bernie said, you know, I actually got the DVD of Flight of the Conchords and noted that it's not from Last Man on Earth, it's from Flight of the Conchords And I was shocked, and I think I even said this yesterday, I'm trying to understand what the context would be for the Mel character, the super fan of the Flight of the Conchords guys that Kristen Schaal plays, why she would have said that. But the listener Bernie seemed so certain, and they had referred to a DVD that they had watched, and I just – I folded, you know, I folded like a cheap chair. Chair? Like a Ford Fiero?

And I mean, and just for the record, I know that we talked about this yesterday on the show, but I mean, just for a little bit more background, like this goes back weeks now because Bernie wrote a very polite email to me saying, hey, I just want to gently correct something you you mentioned on the show a while back that that's from The Last Man on Earth. But I know for a fact I have such a fond memory of that drop being in Flight of the Conchords. I'm like, Bernie, man, I just checked my audio library. It's labeled Last Man on Earth. I know why that quote is what it is, because it references something very specific in that show. Like, the fact that you and I both have that drop, Luke, means that we probably both pulled it during the time we were watching season one of that show. Like, I just, that isn't one that just sort of tumbled mysteriously into my audio library. Like, I remember it. And it's with a bunch of other drops from that same episode. But then that's when Bernie followed up. Like, again, that was a conversation I had weeks ago. And I even apologized to him. I'm like, hey, I'm not trying to gaslight you here or anything. But no, like, that's Last Man on Earth. Then that's when I received the email like over the weekend saying and again, this is from Bernie in Germany and saying and I'm not sure if Bernie is an expat living in Germany or if he grew up in Germany. But the he had an email sent to me just saying, hey, listen, I rented these DVDs or I rented it on Amazon. And like the quote is in episode number nine of season. or whatever it was gave a gave a timestamp even now i didn't go and check out that timestamp i was just like well i guess bernie's right and i guess i've been wrong i mean and i how quickly did i fall in line with that too it blew my mind that we were wrong about that i just couldn't

believe it do you think that the do you think that it's because we are so often wrong on this show that we've just like like our our will to live slash our our sort of like instinct towards sticking up for ourselves or whatever has just completely atrophied or just been beaten down by the i'll only speak for myself the fact that i'm i'm just wrong so much of the time that now it's a you know it's like uh in the bruce springsteen song you end up like a dog who's been beat too

much and you spend half your life just to cover it up you sounded like a yinzer for a second you said you knew you knew has it been all the rooting for the eagles has it rubbed off on you well my

heart said eagles my pocketbook said chiefs win the toss and cover the money line your pocketbook said donk yeah it sure did by the way dude i cashed out my draft kings account like i just sent money back to my bank account oh that's a rare and wonderful experience but anyway i i i'm just saying that it's it's interesting because i am a i'm a very headstrong person generally and i I think I certainly at age 25 would have – my instinct is always towards, no, I'm right and you're wrong, and this is why I get married about every six years and more critically get divorced about every seven years. Like I'm a fairly obstinate person. I don't know why I just folded so quickly on this because we had an email from someone in Germany who said they saw it on episode nine, and I would say nine to that feedback, Bernie.

Shit. Yinzer is pitchfork. Scheisse. Not Philly. That's something you can correct me on right there. Yeah, no.

It's all, but you know what? It's in the same kind of linguistic neighborhood.

I mean, yeah, I mean, it's nearby, but when you say Yinzer, you wouldn't be talking about an Eagles fan. You'd be talking more about a Steelers fan. Sure, but. I messed that up. I'm sorry, Bernie.

Bernie, I'm sorry. That was Kirsten Schall from episode 10 of Flight of the Conchords, where she's a Yinzer, I believe, right? No. Anyway, I'm just I'm just surprised at how quickly I gave it up on that. Like, I just like, OK, even though somewhere in the back of my brain, I should have realized there's no reason that the Mel character would utter that phrase. I watched every episode of Flight of the Conquerors. I really like that show. And in particular, the two characters, of course, to me, are the standouts would be Murray, their manager, who we also play a ton, Reese Darby, and then Mel, Kristen Schaal. So, like, you know, I don't know why I just why I was so easily cowed by this feedback from listener Bernie.

Well, I know I was because, and again, I didn't I didn't look it up. But Bernie said, hey, listen, you know, I think Bernie had to pay for the rentals or the purchasing of this.

Oh, Bernie's going to pay this video content on Amazon.

I don't know if I would have had access to it for free or not as a prime member. But anyway, you know, it was the hey, listen, I promise you, I'm not sharpshooting. I love the show, but just so you know, you got me thinking about Flight of the Conchords. I've been watching it, and now I have his note from yesterday in front of me. It's in episode 10, season 2, around the 9 minute 32nd mark. I was like, okay, well, I don't need to look that up. No, that's a very specific... If you're giving me that, then I trust you. And also, I'm wrong all the time. I'm calling...

And why would a listener go out of their way? For some reason, the fact that Bernie is in Germany, I don't know why that matters, But like, why would a listener from across the globe take the time to give us bad intel on this? Like, I completely believe you're right. It's so specific. He's not going like, I kind of half remember this. He's like, no, I'm watching it. It's at this minute mark. It's like, OK, well, you're right. We're wrong.

Yeah. And now so we had that conversation on the show yesterday. I was like, I talked about my mind being blown. Your mind was blown that we were wrong about this for so long. And then a few hours later, we got some emails. The first one coming from our dear friend Lynn. so yeah unpaid associate producer on the show maybe executive producer of the show now i'm not sure exactly how the ring's bucking for a promotion that's right watch out sklaroff anyway um lynn sent us this email which i'll read i'm not sure i'm not sure if listener bernie is gaslighting y'all but i pulled the clip the clip in question of kristin shawl saying it's the story of a man with a brothel of a home blah blah blah in context where was it pulled from last man on earth in the episode alive in tucson slash the elephant in the room per hulu it's at the 25 50 mark with a link now i uh could play the link and but i didn't i once again trust oh my god our listeners what i love that i love that no matter like

No matter how many times this story changes and what we think are the facts, flip-flop, we're still never going to click on a link. We're never going to get eyes on this ourselves. We're just going to keep believing whoever the last listener is. If somebody emailed, no, you don't understand. It's actually from the movie Starsky and Hutch. It's at the 42-minute mark. I'd be like, well, shit. I didn't see that coming. But at no time will I verify this myself.

Well, first of all, you click on a link, you get a virus. I learned that in the cybersecurity training. But this did help. Lynn grabbed the audio with more context around it. So you can hear Will Forte. You can hear the characters. Here is the clip in question.

Just trying not to judge the book by its cover.

And what book are you referring to, Carol?

The book to which I'm referring is called Phil Miller.

Sounds like a good book.

It's the story of a man with a brothel of a home and a pool filled with human excrement.

Carol, there is no running water.

Did you ever try to fix that?

Okay, we have Carol, we have Will Forte.

She's so great. She is. I love her. I love her so much. What is the thing that she's also, there's a weird grammatical, that's also a weird grammatical construction. There's a particular way that she orients one kind of sentence on the show that's really funny and weird. Like, that is just a genius character, in my opinion.

Do you know that I actually have a little, I'm going to play this tape for you next. I think I have her correcting grammar. But it makes me cringe a little bit because I remember playing this for her when she was a guest on the show when we were kind of new to American public media. I remember trying to show off and get big names on. Yeah. And I remember and I'm not great with like celebrity guests. I become a little thirsty pretty early on. And that's funny that I can't find. I got some raisin balls talk at some Shawshank. Anyway, I can't find her grammatic correction. Anyway, I remember playing that for her and, like, trying to mangle it in some sort of, like, wannabe public radio interview question. And, I mean, Kristen Schaal is the most gracious person I think I've ever talked to on the phone.

I feel like we talked about farting more in that conversation than we meant to. Yes.

And then I intended to going into it. Yes. Then the conversation really took off when I stopped asking dumb public radio. No, no, I'm not.

That's not. No, no, no. I think playing some tape from the show would have been a more dignified way to treat the conversation with somebody whose work we really admire.

She talked about a lot about how she and her husband were the type of couple that talk about farts, because we feel like there's kind of two different kinds of couples in the world. Those who kind of avoid fart talk and joking and those who really embrace it. And they apparently embrace it. I think about that quite a bit, that conversation.

But so now I understand that you've been hearing also from Bernie. Like, have what did you reach back out to Bernie to say? I did. Bro, Bernie, comma, bro. What is up?

yes but first i'm going to continue lynn's email because lynn had a theory here okay lynn said i found an episode of flight of the concords that listener bernie mentioned i found on hbo max i could have done this too by the way thank you lynn um and i zipped to the time stamp what kristin shawl says there is well actually lynn sent in the tape so i'm going to play this tape too and lynn thinks that this is where the confusion lies now this is going to be a shorter clip it is going to use some language that luke and i don't use on tbtl this is in the context of flight of the concords it's kristin shaw saying it if you have kids in the car be warned here is the clip that

we think bernie was listening to yeah maybe i'll bring some girls home too just find some real authentic sluts and just turn this house into a whore home so by the way that's also a drop that

we have played on the show many times oh is it i didn't know that okay oh yeah let's just find

some real authentic flats and just turned this house into a whore home that's funny i don't

remember i mean it's funny like i don't think like if i came across that today even coming from her would we right play that probably probably not yeah because it's you know we used to be fun

yeah i know you can't play anything anymore no that could add to thanks a lot aoc i guess my point is that could that could have added an additional layer to bernie's confusion because there was a period of time where that i played that drop on the show pretty frequently yes and

also the fact that you know okay i'll say it here i do not want to hear this um isolated but you know she says horror home and of course in in last man the word is brothel but like you could see some connection here um and so i copied and pasted uh lynn's note i said bernie this is really interesting i wasn't like bernie and by the way like again i've been using male pronouns for bernie This is another assumption I think Bernie is a he So I could be wrong about This drama could go on for weeks If we just keep on making mistakes here But I sent Lynn's note

Let's just keep sending each other time codes

That we don't actually click on

you could really drag this out for some content

and the reason I bring that up too is I want to reiterate I'm not sure and I don't know if this plays into it but I don't know if Bernie's an expat or if Bernie is a German speaker a native German speaker and maybe English is a second language I don't I have no idea one way or the other that maybe could bring come into this as well although Bernie's English is better than mine

yeah can I just tell you if Bernie is a person who is German but you know if they're like any if Bernie's like any of the Germans that I know bernie's english is so much superior to ours but bernie will apologize constantly for their english right right right which is wild like i'm so sorry for my what are you talking about your english is

way better than exactly so i don't want to condescend there but i was it was just one

thought that popped in my head anyway bernie condescend is an english word for like us acting like you're lesser than or like you're the kind of person who would email in a wrong fact about A Kirsten Schull piece of tape

Let me explain what mansplaining is To you So I just copied and pasted Lynn's note And I said Bernie this is really interesting I think that we're getting to the bottom of it here or something I didn't want to yell Which is a different language And Bernie wrote back this morning Or maybe it was late last night

Oh poor Bernie Now I feel bad for I don't even know what Bernie said But I already feel bad for Bernie

I've gotten a couple of emails from Bernie You know what I said i said oh bernie this is really interesting your note brought a lot of content to the show yesterday because luke and i it blew our minds that we were wrong about it however we just got this note from lynn or whatever and i sent it along and then bernie wrote i don't know what to say i want to try to read this whole email but i want you to know that the first line of the email is i don't know what to say bernie is our kind of person yeah i know like i want to be clear about He was so nice in his correction. He's like, this isn't a sharp shoot. I love the show. Your newsletters are funny. But, like, I'm pretty sure I just rewatched it. It's from that line. Oh, man. Okay. I don't know what to say. I am wrong. I feel awful and I'm very embarrassed, especially knowing that you mentioned it on the show. Bernie had not heard the show yet. He had not heard yesterday's episode. This was not an attempt at gaslighting. My middle name is Ernest, for God's sake. Okay, that's not true. I honestly don't know what my mind did there. I literally heard something that was not actually said. I think I was so excited for a number of reasons. Finding the drop funny. It made me think of Flight of the Conchords. Engaging with you via email. Thinking I'd made a discovery. My mind melded a clip that I love with a drop from the show, even though the evidence was right in front of me.

Bernie, can I just mention, I don't think I've ever felt more connected to one of our listeners than I do to Bernie right now. Because what Bernie is describing is exactly what I do on a pretty much daily basis. And I've referred to it a lot because it obviously embarrassed me greatly. But the LeBron James SI cover is a perfect example where I described in in vivid detail something that literally never existed because my brain was telling me that it existed because I was excited about remembering something that seemed relevant to the news of the day. So, Bernie, I see you and I hear you and I'm holding you in my heart during this difficult time.

Bernie, when I hear a drop of Kristen Schaal correcting somebody's grammar, I cringe because of an otherwise fine interview we did eight years ago on TVTL. Like, I can't listen to that tape without hating myself. So, please, there's just you calm down on yourself. Don't beat up on my friend Bernie. um bernie goes on so gives the context of of that drop that from flight of the concords that we just played that lynn shared um and he says that that's what caused the confusion i'm actually dreading listening to the show now knowing that the discussion is in there but i'm glad that the other listener caught it and apologies to that listener for setting off to make them do their own research if i could pay back time i would okay so then anyway he says that's uh writing into shows is hard it sounds so easy i wasn't ready for the big show quite yet i need to train my ears more that was last night this morning i woke up got another email from bernie andrew a brief follow-up i'm listening to the episode on my way home from work and you're just setting up our email exchange it's making me so incredibly uncomfortable i have to resist the urge to skip ahead but i'll tough it out i've made my bed i'm sorry again for that f up i'll think twice before emailing again no Bernie don't you gave us like what is now what 40 minutes of content of tbtl do

not stop and more critically I believe that he gave a real bump to some of these streaming platforms because multiple listeners have had to sign up for services so they could find out if this was from the last man on earth or from flight of the concord I want to yeah exactly I

I want to give a shout-out to our friend, listener, Melly, who's like,

fine i signed up for the free hulu trial just so that i could prove that you guys were right about this um and i heard from some some other levi our pal levi said dude i did the research on this you guys are right so like people were actually putting work into this and signing up for subscriptions that they didn't even want so anyway hulu thanks you as well yeah honestly bernie

that please continue i would like you to think even less before you send us an email because that was really that was fun it was good kind of and most critically it means that me and andrew were right and that's my favorite way for these kinds of stories to end it's so and it is so rare exactly so rare that we actually were right about something that you've you've given us a great great gift bernie and we thank you for it now this is the where my mind has been for the last 14 or so minutes because when i was talking about how quickly i sort of acquiesced to bernie's email I said folded like a cheap, and then I trailed off because I knew it was folded like a cheap suit, but I don't think that idiom makes a lot of sense, and it is if you put folded like a cheap, what comes back is folded like a cheap suit, and somebody says maybe it's an allusion to the tendency of an inexpensive suit to crease more easily, But the thing is, I feel like if you're folding a suit, you're like, you know, you're folding it intentionally. Like, right. Like, it's like I sometimes will take a suit with me on a trip and I will actually fold it and put it in my suitcase. And I have a whole system for folding it so it doesn't get super wrinkly. I watch a lot of YouTube videos about it. I don't understand folded like a cheap suit. That would seem like a real that would seem like a real positive for the cheap suit.

Let me take a stab at this. Maybe you want to Google around while I throw out my theory, which could be absolutely ludicrous. But I'm going to throw it out there because I'm assuming this is a pretty antiquated phrase. And, yes, you might have to fold a suit when you're traveling. But if this was during an era when people wore suits more often, almost daily or something like that, and you have nice suits, you'd think about you'd hang your nice suits up. Right. You hang your suits. And I'm wondering if, like, you have a cheap suit. and again this isn't like the era where you pull out a suit once every couple of months for a wedding or a fancy event but like you're probably wearing suits on the on the rag like maybe your cheap suits you just kind of fold up and put into a i think you're exactly right that's what reddit

is saying that like back in the day um so this is you got two w's under your belt already andrew don't don't get cocky just because you're leading by 10 midway through the third quarter you could still give up a 65 yard punt return that could really flip the field but um yeah i think you're exactly right uh folded like a cheap suit would just be a reference to the fact that your cheap suits you would just fold them and put them in your dresser or something and the nice suits you

would hang um i mean i guess what i i had never thought about that before i'm very that's what

reddit says and it checks out i mean that makes logical sense because yeah i was thinking of it as like you know it's a negative i was thinking i was i was misunderstanding really what the negative aspect of it was or what where the because like fold to me was like like you folded like a cheap lawn chair or something or like folded i said a ford fierro once do you remember the whole thing around ford fierros back in the day no they were i thought they were a real jazzy looking car but they had like um they were sort of the pinto of their day that they tended to fold up upon impact like i think they were fairly unsafe from a driving standpoint oh but i see yeah

they were like those they were they look like one of those kind of almost futuristic zippy little

cars from the 80s almost delorean-esque and now i think it might be a pontiac by the way sorry i said ford i'm sure we'll be getting a correction from bernie oh yeah it is the pontiac fiero you know what's weird though is i remember being a kid well yeah i thought the pontiac fiero was a really cool looking car and then i heard that it had kind of some safety issues but now that i'm googling around i don't know if i'm i'm not on the wikipedia page i'm not seeing a large section that says this is why it was dangerous so maybe that was just a crash safety the unique plastic body on space frame design helped the fiero achieve wow the uh nhtsa frontal crash testing rating of five stars the highest rating available is it possible that i heard oh you know what Maybe they count on fire. Maybe that was the problem. Problems and issues. Safety issues escalated rapidly by the summer of 1987 when the fire count for 1984 models reached the rate of 20 fires per month. Okay, so again, you folded like a Ford Fiero would make no sense. You caught on fire like a Ford Fiero. Now, that's factually correct, it would appear. That's Hans Molman's favorite car, apparently.

Was that a recurring joke? I was saying boo-erns. Was that a recurring joke in this?

Simpsons are just once where it's like he's driving very, very slowly and his car just bumps into a tree and then it explodes. Oh, right. I do remember that. I forget what car he was. It sticks in my head.

Best car joke from The Simpsons, in my opinion, has to be when Homer is kind of basically becoming psychotic for whatever reason and he's chasing the Flanders and he's using, I think if I remember right, which we've already established is rarely the case for me, he's chasing their car down. He might even be using golf clubs as, like, sort of, like, you know, instruments by which to, like, grab onto the car and pull himself forward. And Maude is saying, drive faster. And he goes, I can't. It's a geo there.

You know, it's funny. The Simpsons have a lot of car bits because do you remember? Shoot. There was an episode of The Simpsons that I it was like 36 short stories about The Simpsons or whatever. It's kind of an iconic episode.

That Robert Altman kind of vibe.

Yeah, and I was trying to remember what it was a nod to in the culture at the time. I believe there was a Pulp Fiction parody within, but the whole thing wasn't a nod to it. But then there was also somebody's driving a tiny, tiny, tiny little smart car, and Nelson goes, ha-ha, and then the guy stops the car and unfolds. He's huge, right? He's huge. He unfolds himself out.

It was like the guy that chased me to the Skamania Lodge. right exactly it's not worth me bringing up do you find my body humorous as it relates to this vehicle yes right that's what he says i really wish that that would have been the energy from the guy that wanted to kick my ass right yeah can i just to satisfy my own because it actually just came right up this is the geo situation nitty nitty he's getting us i'm scared come on man move this thing i can't it's a geo

oh it cuts off come on youtube spread she it was 22 short films about springfield by the way was

the name of that was i feel like that was a big i'm thinking of like shortcuts right yes yeah i feel like that was a big mood i wanted to make a movie that was kind of like that back in my days when i had hopes and dreams um and i don't think it was even a good idea but it was something about in fact i believe that this ended up being a movie at some point you know that somebody else made but it was i think the idea was it was going to follow like a twenty dollar bill or something and it was like everyone who had possession of that dollar bill now we were going to jump into their life for the period of time that they had the money before they spent it and it went somewhere you know um this was my big idea because there were so many movies that were sort of like that like again shortcuts uh there was those um there was that movie smoke which had harvey kytel in it and it was about this guy augie who goes and takes a picture in front of his like bodega every day and there would just be these stories of the people that are coming in and out of the bodega i was really intrigued by that kind of storytelling when i was like 25 or was like that

a little bit as one person's story would then lead to another person's story i don't know if

you ever watched that early link later film i was put off by the cover art of it because it's the guy with the hat that's a flipped up bill i don't remember the cover i don't know why i would see slacker and it just never i really liked boyhood by the way and i like dazed and confused i would i'm the only person who would probably give dazed and confused like a seven like i was fine with it it did not change my life the way it changed appeared to change the life of most of the people

in my age cohort it was a really much it was very much a timing thing if i had not watched it at the time to go back and watch it now i might enjoy some parts of it but like for me like i started to watch it came out or we got obsessed with it around the time we were the age of the people in it it took place in 1976 which was um the year i was born and it was kind of the centennial thing going it was just like it just hit a lot of buttons for you know people who watched it of our generation at the right time like it was our it was our love language practically my junior and senior year but i also understand like if you if it didn't if it didn't hit you right then it's not going to hit you a couple of quick things that i've been building up in my brain that i need to release here uh also that the title of 22 short it's valentine's a day for release andrew the the title comes from 32 short films about glenn gold which i never watched but i've heard of right and it was inspired loosely by the the structure of pulp fiction also your idea about the movie where you kind of follow a dollar bill like the Red Violin. Is that the Red Violin? Is it a similar thing, too? There's some movie about a violin, but it's also very similar. We won't go far down this road, but I got to shout them out. My man, Livingston Taylor's dollar bill song, which we've rabbit-hulled on.

That's literally what you are describing. Can we have three months, a three-month period where Livingston Taylor

Thank you.

does not come i'm just saying like your movie is basically you ripping off that song which we later found out was not even written by him but written by one of those wfmu guys whose name i'm blanking on right now but oh best show guys uh best show guys yeah but not the one you interviewed we realize it's the other one anyway um i always get that i'm trying to avoid getting john worster we do that all the time we always do that but anyway um yeah so but i mean your movie is basically the dollar bill song essentially only your your your blood is a little bit richer so it's a twenty

dollar bill song well that probably was a dollar bill when i when i thought of it yeah thanks biden and and now like inflation i'm not even kidding like i got you know i paid i went to the um pet store yesterday because i gotta get something for the cats to scratch on that's not my couch or my very expensive and beloved rocking chair where bubbles likes to sleep now and it's just crazy i mean this doesn't seem to be the case in your home and i admire this maybe it's because i'm in an apartment it's that it's weird how like and this definitely happens when you have kids like when you have our listeners with young kids can totally relate it's like all of a sudden everything about your life as the adult who actually pays the rent or the mortgage or whatever becomes sort of subservient or secondary to the needs of this wild animal for instance i've got this rocking chair that i got from design within reach but it was like um my friend katie worked there and she got it for me for like $75. It was like a $2,000 rocking chair, and I love it. It's the only nice piece of furniture that has emerged from my various separations. And now, you know what it is? It's a place for the cat to sleep. It has this stupid pink blanket on it that I call her protest blanket. This pink blanket, I got it from the people I got bubbles from. It was in her cat carrier. They're like, she likes this smell. It smells like her mom. I was like, great. It's totally out of touch. It's not in any way consistent with anything in my house design wise it's a pink blanket with a picture small pictures of cartoons of cats on it and every single morning uh i come out and she has pulled it off of the chair and it is like somewhere on the floor that's why i call it her protest blanket and then i pick it up and i carefully refold it and i tuck it back into the back corner of the rocking chair so that it stays put and i never sit on the rocking chair i never get to use the rocking chair it has a stupid pink blanket on it now and what she likes to do when she's not pulling her protest blanket off is she likes to sharpen or whatever they're doing with their claws she likes to scratch her claws on the back of it and i yell bubbles please stop uh so i need to get something else that she is attracted to that she can like scratch on and so i went to the pet store yesterday and i i still think i bought the wrong thing i bought this kind of like because unfortunately the other thing is i just got done saying how like my apartment is now just like a cat habitat but i still do retain some hope that the stuff that i buy won't look really shitty like for the cat like they have all these cat condos and things i'm like i can't i just can't have like a carpet cat condo in the middle of my apartment it's just not that is not the vibe so i bought and even the scratching things like they have all different manner of them you know like cardboard whatever and i wanted to try to find the designiest one they had and they had one that was like a circle that had like the scratch kind of the cardboard part in the middle and then it had this little thing for these balls that were like a toy for them but mostly the side of it had like a fake wood grain that i was nice

it was like a very scandinavian looking wood and is the wood like kind of a rough wood that can also be used as a scratcher no it's purely for looks which is probably stupid right it probably needs to be more functional than it is i went with something that i thought well this looks nice in the apartment she kind of likes it she likes the balls what she's still not getting down with is I want her to go over and just scratch the living tweedle out of the thing that is designed for her to scratch it because then that makes me think she will be less inclined to scratch up my rocking chair or the couch her other obsession right now is where the couch cushions meet this is all a story about money by the way Andrew about cash still where the couch cushions meet on my couch she thinks there's something down there and I have pulled the couch cushions off 10 times and been like dude there's nothing in here what is going on and as soon as i put the couch back together she starts trying to like scratch the couch and because you know she's got these little toys that i throw for her and she somehow got in her head that one of them went into the couch cushions which it didn't and there's nothing i can do to convince her that there's that she should not be digging in that little area but all that is to say i went to the pet store and i bought these various things yesterday and i paid with cash and i felt like a time traveler the look on the face of the person at the pet store when i pulled out 60 from my wallet was like i had pulled out confederate money or something and did you say why you had the cash i just sometimes like i don't know i had had a hundred bucks from probably some gambling event probably when you and i

were out at the jolly roger or something so i just had some money in my pocket and i was like well i might as well use this i guess but it's so rare now that you pay for anything with yeah

well i carry cash you know if if you are a mugger out there um email me i'll give you my address and and my schedule so you can bop me over the head um but uh i do carry cash i like to have you know i like to have you know a few 20s on me at all times i think cash is still important um in you But you are right, like we kind of live in a day and age where people are also like, especially during the pandemic, they don't like touching cash. I also think that cash is sort of an equity issue as well. If you want to go into a coffee shop and they don't take cash, but you're not somebody who can afford a bank account or don't have your life set up in a way that you have a bank account, you just have cash that cuts you off from access to coffee and a bathroom and stuff like that. So that, you know, there's equity issues involved with cash, too. So I kind of I kind of have some feelings about that. But generally speaking, like, I'm just an old man. Like, I just like cash. Like, I have, I told you I won my fantasy football league. God, can I, can I mention that more than I mentioned Livingston Taylor, for goodness sake. But I really like the fact that the commissioner really wanted to meet up with me and give me my winnings in cash. And I don't know why, like, Venmo would have been so easy. But I really liked that he was just like, no, he just, like, gave me a big wad of cash. Which, by the way, I did not count. I assume that he didn't get his beak wet.

Oh, wow, you didn't count it. No, I think that that. Very trusting.

Hey, did I tell you, by the way, you mentioned that we were at this little dive bar in Oregon last weekend or a couple of weekends ago and just playing a little video poker, chilling, having some beers. And I think I left you there with our friends, but I don't know if I told you. And I know that you're an experienced gambler. I don't want to be like bragging or whatever. Like, I did win $13 that evening. Hey, that's not too shabby. Yeah, and left a little tip. But it was funny because it was one of those things where it was just like, it was just video poker. I had no intention of winning any money. I put in $5. It lasted me maybe like 20 minutes or something. Put in another $5. Eventually, I put in like $20 total on that thing and just figured, hey, listen, I've been sitting at this machine for two hours. Like, you do the math, whatever it is. It's like, you know, it's like a somewhat entertaining video game. Yeah. It's like you don't get cash for winning a video game in an arcade, but you still pay. You know, like the fact that you can just sort of milk those machines. Sorry. Are you milking that machine? You know what I was thinking was like, you know what I was thinking was, I'm a machine. Can you milk me? I was trying to do some Welcome to the Fockers. Or now what was a meet the. I don't know. What's the Ben Stiller movie with Meet the Fockers? Well, that was the first one, though. The first one is, why is my brain so bad? But it's got De Niro in it. Yeah, yeah. And there's this whole thing where Ben Stiller is like nervous. And at dinner, he starts talking about how any animal can be milked. And then De Niro says, well, I'm a...

You know what's weird is I have to... It's called Meet the Parents. Do you know what's really sad is I had to Google Meet the Fockers prequel. Yeah, I know. That's how I got there. Which tells me that Meet the Fockers is a better name than Meet the Parents. Because I can remember Meet the Fockers But I cannot remember the name Meet the Parents

Do you remember that scene from Meet the Parents though? I don't remember that scene

I remember Jack Talk Tie Which is probably casually racist Now that we say it out loud

Oh I don't remember that part Does that have to do with the carving of the

No it has to do with something about It's when Ben Stiller has a meltdown at the end And I think it has something to do maybe with Robert De Niro Isn't he like an ex-CIA or something? but he's saying jack talk tie but he's saying it in a way that could be interpreted maybe as a joke about somebody who doesn't speak english as their first language and how they would say it maybe not to overanalyze stuff but um i remember that and i remember the circle of trust i remember robert de niro talking to him about the circle of trust those are the two big oh and a huppa there's like a huppa that gets built and burned down that like owen wilson builds for them yes i

do remember that let's see i'm i found this scene here and i want to play for you youtube has this thing now where if you like kind of I mean it's been around for a while I think but we've not mentioned it on this show and we're running out of things to talk about clearly since you've limited my another email from Bernie since you've limited my Livingston Taylor quota but do you like this thing that YouTube has now where you can see what is like the most watched part of a video so I'm seeing that like I have a three and a half minute video here but I'm scrubbing to this part that looks like most people watch let me see if this pays off

They're definitely not talking about milking cats here.

What about this?

Into a little saucer.

And then took the saucer and fed it to Geppetto. That's what I named him, Geppetto.

I had no idea you could milk a cat.

Oh, yeah, you can milk anything with nipples.

I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?

I think that and what do you call the wedding altar that is made out of one single piece of wood by Owen Wilson. Those are the only two. I actually don't care for this movie that much I also don't care for I hate to say it, I love Ben Stiller But I don't like something about Mary And I know a lot of people do I'm not even going to say it's overrated Because that's saying that I think other people are wrong It's just like, I think that's maybe a Farrelly or Farley Brothers movie It's a Farrelly Brothers A Farrelly Brothers movie And I don't think, with the exception of some moments in Kingpin There's something about their humor that just never connects with me And that's got Jonathan Richman in it too I love Jonathan Richman

yeah it's very I mean the Farrelly brothers it's very um you know kind of like almost transgressive in a way like they're just gonna go there like their movies are always like you know something quite extreme is happening and a lot I was about to cite something specifically and I realized my nieces sometimes listen to the show so I'll just leave it alone but there's a moment where uh I forget what are the and there's something about Mary you know one of the characters is like this landlady you know landlord lady who tans too much is like wildly inappropriated it's like the idea of like having to have a sexual liaison with her but they do like it's just like they're the Farrelly brothers thing is like we're gonna try to be grosser and more extreme than other movies that are like not made by like uh you know Russ Meyer or John Waters or something like they're like we're gonna do a John Waters film for the masses and I'm with you like there are a couple of memorable lines from there's something about Mary but it's never really been I do love the movie Kingpin

though yeah i say kingpin is like the one outlier that i kind of like by them if i recall but it's

been a long time you know what i've started we really got to take a break but you know what i have started seeing on my tiktok and it is just so compelling to me andrew is old siskel and ebert at the movies oh put it in my veins dude it's an entire mood because what it reminds me of is, of course, my childhood, and it's a Sunday afternoon. It's about 4 o'clock or whatever, and I'm at Peter Williams' house, and I'm feeling a little wistful because the weekend is coming to an end, but I also love Siskel and Ebert, and what's really interesting about it is to see their opinions on these movies, and they really liked the movie Kingpin. They thought Kingpin was a really good comedy. They really loved the movie Leaving Las Vegas with Nick Cage and Elizabeth Shue.

At the time, I loved that, but I haven't gone back and watched it.

I didn't realize that when they made that movie, they didn't get it permitted. They were just shooting on the streets of Las Vegas, kind of like guerrilla style. Oh, shit. I didn't know that. Yeah, it was like a Mike Figgis film, and he, I think that's who it was. And what Siskel and Lieber are talking about is just the fact that that movie could have been so much different if a big studio kind of got their hands on it or got their hooks into it in terms of the characters. They're talking about how Nick Cage plays somebody who's drunk the entire film, but he's not over the top. He's not just playing a stereotype of a drunk person, which I thought was an interesting take. Anyway, it's just like...

Especially for Nick Cage, who does over the top. That's his whole thing.

Does Nick Cage sometimes go over the top with his characters, Andrew? Yes, he does. Seems like a good place for a break.

Seems perfect.

All right, back with more TVTL in a minute.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man, razzle-dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Everybody razzle-dazzle. Well, would you look at that. Just in time for Valentine's Day. I mean, how apropos that on this day of love, we get to thank some dazzling donors who we love so much and appreciate so much their dazzling donation of dough. We need to start by thanking listener Sarah Hayward out there on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Sarah texts us a lot in the text line. In fact, I think I just heard from Sarah this morning. Hi, Sarah.

Here's what Sarah wanted to do with her time. Here's a shout-out to the 10s. What a great bunch. To Sarah Miranda of Magpie Mouse. I've stopped replying on Instagram, but that's only because I quit all the damn socials. We're just using this now as a way to talk to each other. This is me talking to each other. I love it, yeah. I'm into it. So basically this Sarah has got a connection to a different Sarah of something called Magpie Mouse, but she wants to let the other Sarah know that she's not icing her out on Instagram. She's just not doing Instagram anymore.

Sorry to miss your awesome posts. And to any and all Bainbridge Island tens, is anyone interested in pizza night at Bricatio? Now, how the heck am I supposed to sort that out if I'm not on any socials? Great question. You should email me.

If anybody wants to grab pizza with Sarah, email me, andrew at tbtl.net, and I will try to get that note to Sarah.

Sarah says, I don't know. So finally, I participated in the Valentine's Day card exchange last year, and it was the most warm and wonderful experience. Would recommend. So I guess if you're hearing this on Valentine's Day, hopefully you had a chance to participate. If not, there's always next year. Thanks to Luke and Andrew for wonderful family-like TBTL. That's family-like in a good way. It's good to clarify, Sarah. Not everyone gets on with their family perfectly. and then Sarah closes it out by saying you're the best well we think you're the best I wonder what's going on at I'm probably saying it wrong Brucatio Brucciato Brucciato Andrew that's got the ring of truth to it that sounds like a rockin pizza place there in Bainbridge Island Bainbridge Island is just absolutely lovely and there's lots of cool spots there so i guess if you want to get pizza with sarah reach out to andrew

and instead you're gonna have pizza with me sorry sarah this is my way of just stealing

all of sarah's pizza dates because i love pizza um thank you sarah uh for the donation we really

appreciate you maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set man it's like riding a bike dude

We didn't even rehearse it We just fell right back into the groove We've got to also thank Danielle Walsh Who says it's pronounced like Walsh Helm Scream Danielle's in Seattle And I'm While we were in the break I was reading and re-reading the first line of Danielle's Message And I still can't wrap my mind around it Because it sounds so flipping cool I'm traveling with my 11 For the Wilco residency in Iceland April 6th through 8th. Okay. This is the first I'm hearing about a Wilco residency in Iceland.

Me too. I had to read that a few times to figure out what was going on. That sounds slightly up your alley, Luke. Yeah.

I'd say that's

something I'd be pretty interested in. You're looking forward to cracking up over

the music. I'd say that's something that i'm really looking forward to um wow sarah as sarah wants to or sorry danielle wants to know if there are any other tens going to these shows i'd love to connect and see you there gosh i'm i'm i'm at this age i don't really have a lot of fomo left in me andrew like but i have some fomo over seeing wilco in iceland so i hope danielle and her 11 and any other 10s who are out there, have fun. Danielle says, Andrew, would it be possible to please share my contact info privately with any interested 10s? P.S., what you do is so important. So this, Andrew, today, our first two Dazzling Donors, you are going to be the interlocutor, as Jonathan Goldstein would say on Heavyweight. You are going to be the interlocutor now for both of these scenarios. If someone wants to get pizza on Bainbridge Island, hit Andrew up. Or if you're going to be in Iceland seeing Wilco,

hit andrew up my email address is andrew at tbtl.net make sure that it's very clear in the subject line um that you're referring to one of these two things so that it'll stand out and i can get it to the right place but once again what's going to happen here is i'm going to be eating pizza with sarah and danny in iceland i mean let's face it i'm not going to be passing any of these messages along but you can try andrew at tbtl.net now i'm at there's a whole

website for it wilco in iceland.com that's oh that's how did they get that wilco's reykjavik residency is sold out click here to join the waiting list well thanks a lot sarah for not telling me about it well daniel bonus show well i think sarah's the one that's going right daniel's going to the wilco am i looking at this wrong nope you're totally right sorry i was mixing up our donors today but also sarah i hold you partially responsible i don't know why i can't prove it yet legally but um i'll figure out uh i'll figure out how you're to blame for this anyway i'm now i'm just like lost in the wilco in iceland website so i better stop also say i

went with danny for some reason i thought danielle walsh was one of our dannys i i i think danielle might go by danny but if not geez louise i just pulled a i just pulled a a bob walsh on you that's my dad he used to give my friends nicknames all the time when they didn't ask for him and i would be deeply embarrassed. Sorry if I just gave you

you a nickname you did not ask for that was a mistake um but please don't let that stand in

the way of continuing your dazzling donor status danielle please please we we beg of you please continue supporting the program uh thanks to sarah and danielle so much for uh keeping tbtl in business hello and welcome to top story uh 56 minutes into the show that seems about right Well, what happened really was the top story of today was the whole back and forth about that audio tape. And so we essentially started the show with a top story and then just kind of went from there, which is why I don't know if people are going to be that intrigued with the BK song. But I did want to just, if I could, take a moment to drop this into everyone's ears. And that is, of course, this Burger King have it your way song that they play, I don't know, roughly 50 times during every football game. And that I have to tell you is certifiably very, very catchy. If you don't want to have this in your head for the rest of the day, maybe turn your podcast down for about exactly 15.3 seconds.

There was an article by Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post.

Burger King's new jingle is a whopper of an earworm. And it just goes into how like incredibly effective this ad has been just because of the simplicity of the song and how many times it's now been parodied on TikTok and other places. some of the parodies by the way extremely adult in nature our friend jd of the stack of dimes podcast sent me and camaro kev one of them that was like whoa we can't play that on the radio but it's become kind of a phenomenon this song is it all over tiktok it's all over tiktok and again like people are playing it like one of the ways it's memefied is like something really bad is happening to you like you just lost like a massive sports bet and then the song starts playing or for instance i believe according to the internet this was the first thing that played right after damar hamlin got hurt so it was like a very serious moment oh the commercial air do you mean the commercial so it was like you know this horrific thing happens on the field and everyone's really traumatized by it and then when they finally go to a break it's which tonally just felt you know a little off for folks but like some of the memes are just like you just lost your entire rent for the month it's like a guy just like you know watching a football game he's just like so devastated and then the next thing you hear is

you know it's like it's like in the or your team just like you know got a terrible very ticky tack

holding penalty called in the super bowl that shouldn't have been called holding and like you're watching your hopes as a Philadelphia Eagles fan completely evaporate for the Super Bowl. You're in the depths of despair, and then you just, the next thing that happens is

Whopper, Whopper, Whopper, Whopper, Jr.

Do you like this song, by the way, or do you find this song to be effective?

Yeah, before I knew it was being memefied, I kind of, and I'm trying to figure out, it's one of those things where these things sort of live in your head subconsciously, and then once I started to see it memefied, in fact, I saw, did you see Who's Your Buddy Who Runs the Bar in Chicago Rico Rizzo's is that the name of the bar Rossi's Rossi's yeah yeah he posts Ramon yeah he's he's a meme machine and he posted a meme today of Rihanna's halftime show set to this oh wow yeah that's a pretty that's pretty good but before I started seeing it all over the place as a meme like I or maybe when I started seeing them like oh yeah that song is in my head like a good chunk of any given day that's why they say any given Sunday that's what that expression is about I think that and good luck in your senior year they're both about this song but I yeah I mean it's a great song it's like it's a great great jingle like when it comes on you want to hear more of it I I don't want to change the subject too quickly but it raises a question that I have about jingles that are the opposite that are terrible and I think a lot of people would agree that the cars for kids song is terrible and I think it's knowingly terrible I think they know what they're doing it's been running for a long long time it sticks in people's heads people make jokes about how awful it is but you if you're going to donate a car you probably think of cars for kids first before your local public radio station for better for worse um but i wonder also like if i'm if i get in the car and i turn on my sports radio station i'll listen to them sell siding and and hormone treatment for men and even these terrible lawyers for men commercial but if I turn on the car and it's that cards for kids.

song i immediately change the station and i wonder if stations have to like broadcasters whether it's a radio or tv station have to consider the tune out factor like can you literally will people switch away from your programming if a song is bad enough because you're giving these examples of this song being good and poppy and maybe hitting the ear slightly different after like a a sad thing happens i'm not going to go with the damar hamlin but let's say your your football team gets a bad call or something bad happens the whopper whopper it's relatively inoffensive and if anything it might cheer you up a little bit yeah that's a good question as far as the

tune-out factor i think i feel like there was a period of time in tbtl's history when we were a radio show where i think i wondered about that with some of the ads that would play during our show i would be like or i mean yeah i would the other thing that would happen to us because the real estate was it was the cheapest real estate you could get on the radio station was like during tbtl yeah so sometimes we'd have these like just like 10 12 minutes of ads that we're trying to get through and i was just like if we had anyone listening they're definitely not listening now i mean that's kind of a side issue i will say the reason that this well i have two thoughts and one is completely unrelated to this song but one thing is it makes me hungry for a whopper when i see it so it's effective in that way because one of the things that you and i uh and i'm sure you and genevieve on after these messages talk about this a lot there are lots of commercials that are catchy And entertaining and they do not actually Drive you towards the product And then there are the ones that are just very Effective but they don't feel creative I always Cite the like you know a car driving on a Winding road and they're just Putting up what the APR is or something So this one is is sort of Catchy and it does make me actually hungry For the product and there's no forgetting who it's An ad for you know like oh is that the all State commercial where they're singing whopper whopper Whopper whopper like no you know That it's for for Burger King so it's effective In that way yeah you don't even think of McDonald's

You don't you wouldn't even get confused with Wendy's or McDonald's like it's right there.

Other things in the space you again, you 100 percent know what we're dealing with here. Now, when you mentioned Rihanna being, you know, like a joke where they put this song under Rihanna's performance, it reminded me of an article that I read this morning that I thought was pretty interesting, which is the do you know the reason that they had you were mentioning that she was, you know, on that like levitating stage that was like really high up in the air, as were the dancers. Do you know why they did that approach? I read this big article in, I think, maybe Wired this morning.

No, why they set up the why they did this the stage performance the way they did it.

Yeah.

No.

To protect the grass.

Oh, oh, oh, that makes sense. There's been so much talk of the grass, the grass. Yeah.

The thing is, the grass is like that grass has been getting really kind of roasted, as it were, or at least criticized because there was some some like footing issues and stuff. But it doesn't seem like it's for lack of them obsessing over this particular grass. There's something – I should have had this article in front of me if I thought it was going to come up. There is a certain metric or there's like a scale that the NFL uses called the something scale where they drop a hammer into the grass. And there's – it's not – the hammer is not allowed to – there's some kind of measurement where it's like it has to bounce back at a certain rate for it to be – Like, they're testing the grass constantly to make sure it's meeting whatever their standard is. It's a very bizarre, like, measurement device that involved a hammer in this article. But a couple of things. One, I didn't realize that that turf, the way it works at that particular stadium in Glendale is it's on a giant, like, it's on a giant rolling tray. And the grass, they roll the grass. Like, all of the grass is moved on this, you know, on whatever system it's on. outside the stadium to get sunlight and grow yeah i i was seeing a lot did you watch the images of the of it rolling in and out they call no i didn't i didn't know any of that until this morning when i was reading it i guess maybe they were talking about that in the super bowl or that was kind of

a widely known thing i didn't know about i was just listening to a lot of like you know the radio yesterday and just kind of but also i couldn't hear anything during the super bowl but uh at one point i opened up twitter i wasn't on it for most of the game but a couple of times like i opened it up like when i was like wait i think rihanna's announcing a pregnancy like i went to twitter to like verify what i was seeing and like so i was there a couple of times i'm like justifying it like no no i was only i was only using twitter here and there um but at one point i opened up twitter and it was just like 17 tweets in a row from just random people i follow that were all about the turf like this turf is bullshit like everybody was mad about the playing field because it was my understanding though that also they had the reason the field wasn't so great was because they had made some accommodations for the halftime show but i know that they this this turf was two years in the making is what i had heard and it was it's like this sod that was

Thank you.

Grown somewhere else and brought in and then Planted and they would pull it out for the sunlight And the guy behind It is the article mentioned the sod Father Is that because I heard somebody Saying that I assumed it was real maybe I just fell

For a joke I found this wired Article and I want to give credit to Angela Watercutter who wrote it how Rihanna pioneered a new kind of Super Bowl performance the Exact kind of grass that they're using That the sod father presumably was in charge of is called tiffway 419 hybrid bermuda grass and it's on this big tray that as i've already mentioned is rolled outside into the sun during the week and then rolled back under the stadium's dome for game days there's a tool called the cleg impact tester that checks the density of the grass to make sure it's the safest possible surface for football the tool is also known as the thumper it does this by dropping a 2.25 kilogram hammer into the ground and returning a numeric measurement called a g max for how quickly it stops nfl guidelines indicate the value must be below 100 g max so it's kind of crazy that to think for all of this obsessing over this grass people were still slipping and sliding and having problems i mean i'm not trying to defend i don't ever want to defend the nfl like as an organization because i think it's sort of terrible probably but it's not like they weren't thinking we should try to make the grass at the Super Bowl be like pretty good right I mean it's weird that after all that it still kind

of sucked that it was worse than it usually is yeah I mean people were pretty upset about that by the way and again I don't know if your article got into this but the the sod father's name is George Toma and I'm reading an article from Yahoo now that was published before the Super Bowl on Sunday that was a feature on him he's 92 years old and this was he's done the the turf or he's prepared the turf for every super bowl but this one was his last one so he's not really apparently he's not quitting in disgrace after all the complaints he's 94 by the way not 92 94 years old and you see you look at this guy and you read this story and you're like oh don't beat up on the sod father but yeah a lot of people were really upset about this but again it doesn't seem like

it's for lack of you know there's definitely times in the history of the nfl back when it was a much less controlled environment where you'd have like you know a team playing on a field that

was still also a baseball field you remember those days you watch those games well the raiders were still doing that until they moved to vegas right right because i mean a lot of the stadiums stadiums

were multi-use so it'd be yeah you'd have the infield you'd have a guy breaking free for a run and then you'd be suddenly running off across part of the infield dirt that is just part of the actual football field i mean that was the level of care that went into this i mean this the the kingdom had like famously terrible astroturf just awful um and seams in it and stuff because it was all kind of stitched together so it's like it's very i mean the nfl is just so much more like carefully controlled environment now that it's not that the sod father isn't doing his best to try to get good

grass and i wonder why it still failed this is a good quote i almost want to play the video about the sod father here this little feature but it's three and a half minutes long i don't know where the good stuff is but um apparently he has connections to kansas city he worked there for a long time and apparently um he wasn't allowed to root for kansas city the commissioner goodell said to him i'm looking for the quote here i just had it um commissioner goodell told me george you work for the league the league pays you you have to be normal i can't cheer for anybody but in my heart there's the chiefs and on the other side is the eagles that's 94 year old sod father you have to well i'm sure goodell saying you work for the league you have to be normal i mean i i'm sorry

but i'm at 94 i'm going i'm giving a big middle finger to roger goodell that's like you know what i mean i was like what are you gonna do uh you know i ain't got much time left i'm gonna wait for my for my well that's what he's saying he's saying yeah good for him that's the exact right approach uh i'm sure that that only feeds into people feeling like the nfl for some reason wanted patrick mahomes and the chiefs to win right this has been a big thing that was going around again probably on tiktok and other places in the previous few weeks which people saying that like there was somebody who had discovered a quote-unquote script for various games people thinking that the outcomes are like predetermined by the nfl and it's like much like q anon it's like how dumb do you have to be to think that that's a thing that could actually be orchestrated in that way you're really going to get 22 dudes on the field to somehow magically try their hardest but in a way that leads to an exact specific outcome it's like get real

and i know that you were just kidding about the sod but also like how would that how how would a bad feel advance a bad field advantage the team with the quarterback with that ankle sprain well of course it wouldn't but i think one of if i'm remembering right like one of the slips that kept coming up i want to say well actually i think that might have been the chiefs was it a chiefs punter somebody was i think like trying to kick a ball and they kind of lost

their footing maybe that was an eagles i think that i'm vague i'm picturing it in is an eagles

uniform but i've been wrong before what did you think um about i actually found it extremely touching that the eagles head coach was visibly and intensely crying during the star spangled banner nick sirianni i found that to be very very humanizing i lacked the context for it i saw it on

the tv again it was kind of like there there wasn't like there there wasn't laser focus in the room on what was happening on the tv so i was like trying to pay attention and i didn't recognize him i have no i don't think i've watched any eagle did the seahawks play the eagles this year and i've already forgotten i don't think i watched any eagles games i mean for for a team that made it that far that was that good i can't believe how far off my radar the eagles were this year um until the championship weekend i'm not kidding classic yinzer and uh and it's weird not that i not that i think that i'm some sort of football mastermind you know that but this year like i just kind of knew about various teams and what they're what they were going through and what the the division stories kind of were um and for some reason the eagles were so when i saw that face i didn't recognize him as a coach i just saw a guy crying i think i thought it was a football player at the time like since then obviously i've heard a million things but like i had i just had a different reaction because like there's so much jingoism like i'm not trying to be a downer here but there's so so much disingenuous jingoism around around the nfl the beginning of the games the the tie-ins between the nfl which is the flyovers and again like i know that i'm complicit like i i don't have to get into like i know that i'm complicit here because i enjoy the product so much but it's like so bad for society the nfl and so when there's these things and even i don't want to go too deep here but even the the pat tillman stuff who you know like legitimately rest in

peace but the fact that like andrew make make no mistake i about three vodka sodas in made sure to let everyone know that pat tillman died from friendly fire i was i literally went around going like and by the way here's what they're not telling you guy died from friendly i didn't go

around but i definitely yelled it to the room and that like people like i got a reaction person aside and quietly said i need to share something i was just like didn't the u.s army kill pat tillman and everybody's like yep anyway um so i have complicated feelings about all that and so when i saw somebody like on the screen like crying during during that part like i i was not i was not moved because i was just feeling very cynical about the whole thing and my participation in the

whole thing well what i i agree with everything you're saying and i find all that stuff to be just really frustrating and the idea that like every week it seems like it's some different salute to the arm for for some reason everyone's always wearing some camo version of their freaking ball cap you know associated with their team it's like it's a very militaristic league and it's all paid for by the way by the army and by the arm you know services it's like the nfl cares about the military to the degree that the military is probably one of the largest advertisers and they probably spend the most money of any entity to be a part of the nfl that being said and in fact because of all of that because of all of what i think of as being very disingenuous like you said very jingoistic stuff what was going on with nick siriani was clearly a very real emotional response to the to coaching a team in the super bowl and what i was seeing i mean it wasn't like he wasn't um had his hand over his heart and he was singing or i'm trying to think of something that would be more controlled it was the moment it was the moment and the moment was getting to this guy in the way that it probably would for me i guess and maybe that's why i found it really relatable was like i sort of enjoyed the fact or i appreciated the fact that this is a person who was in his mind going and i'm going to use a swear here holy fucking shit i am this this happened i coached an nfl team and we got to the super bowl and it is all about to happen it was it was as if the the the intensity of the moment had had all settled on him in the same second and he was uncontrollably crying and again it wasn't like he was dabbing the corners of his eyes tears are streaming down his face and i was just like thank fucking god sorry now that i broke the seal on the swears today we got to earn that explicit rating i was just like this is how humans probably should react to these moments like because you know the the press conferences and so many of the things are also just so robotic like what they say well we just you know we gave it a hundred percent etc etc it's like this was a moment of real human sort of response to something like this and i i actually really

enjoyed it and appreciated it yeah I think in retrospect knowing all of that and that's what I had to kind of heard in the coverage yesterday that I misinterpreted that moment again I didn't even recognize his face in that split second that I saw him so I realized that later too

I also liked the guy who got the holding call I thought was a really bad holding call that that really iced the game for the Chiefs the guy from the Eagles his postgame press conference was like very very like i first of all i just felt terrible for the guy because he didn't like he didn't commit some heinous gaffe there i mean they just decided was the only pi penalty flag that was thrown the entire game and he was like yeah i held him and i was just hoping they wouldn't call it i was like all right i appreciate your honesty i really appreciate that way to take ownership for this thing because i mean i could see a very strong argument let me put it this way if it's me i'm going look a lot happens during a football game that they don't call it and i don't know why they decided i would have been much more defensive like i thought he was very mature about the whole thing in the face of like maybe it helped that everyone i think pretty much including chiefs fans recognize that that was a pretty bad call like in the moment like based on where it was in the game that was a really terrible call so he kind of as opposed to when someone makes a really boneheaded play like and then like the guy who uh the guy who tackled mahomes out of bounds in the previous game in the afc championship game which gave the the chiefs 15 more yards and basically a much better shot at a field goal like that guy was really i think probably getting a lot of shit and so that that would be a bad position to be when you make a real boneheaded play and everyone knows you did it that's one thing this was more like i think probably most people felt bad for the guy i guess but i thought i thought his press conference was was or whatever i i found it to be refreshing yeah apparently the

guy who um and i don't remember anybody's names but i had heard that the guy who hit who was responsible for that late hit in the playoff game was taking a lot of shit from his own teammates one teammate in particular was like really like screaming at him as they went into the locker room or something it was caught on tape i didn't i didn't see any of that but i heard tell of that

and that i mean that's awful yeah i i sort of like as a person who was a bad teammate when i played sports i can identify with that player being super mad like i would particularly when i was younger i think i got a little better once i was in high school but i just remember being like god i was just such a little turd out there i remember being like a pitcher for like domino's pizza and like you know a guy hits a ground at a short and the short the shortstop like boots it and me just being like really or something from the mound like what a bad look what a bad bad team

i remember coaches being like you really can't do that yeah yeah i mean i would imagine that in a professional in a professional instance like that like obviously everybody knows if if a lot of the responsibility falls on one player's head or even just maybe something like that happens near the end of the game but you would think that they're they just know to be really quiet and i'm sure you can feel the crackle of energy in the air but like i wonder how much in like an nfl locker room guys will sort of gang up on or voice it you know voice their their frustration as opposed to just like letting the silence do the work because i mean it is i mean you're putting it all out there understand that you are in a very different frame of mind but like you know not being a supportive teammate like that can really that can create bigger fissures i also my guess would be that

most of the time players like at that level are the most understanding of someone on their team making a mistake because they've been there yeah they know the work that goes into it they've like they know how easy it is to get a pass interference penalty or a holding penalty if you're like the you know one of the linemen or something like and this kind of goes back to like something that i think we were talking about maybe related to baseball or something how like sometimes i'm kind of mad that the players aren't more mad at each other or aren't more sad about the game's outcome like i guess actually this is more of a football thing but this idea that like once the game is over no matter how other than this example we're giving about this particular game that happened with Buffalo where a guy was mad at his teammate. It seems like you'll just have these teams playing in these, let's just use that Super Bowl that the Seahawks lost to the Patriots in the most devastating of fashions. My guess is that the second that the clock was at all zeros, they were like, Russell Wilson was kneeling in the middle of the field with Patriots doing a prayer circle, and everyone's hugging and talking, and it always struck me that the players seem much more okay with the outcome of the game than I am as a fan, and I've done nothing. I have no association. i didn't it's i'm just watching it on tv but i'm like i have to like deal with my emotions for the following week after a game and you're just looking at like these two guys that were trying to kill each other and now they're just smiling with their helmets off like hugging and talking like trading jerseys trading jerseys and i'm like how in the world are you this cool with stuff when i am like a broken person and i think it has to do with the fact that they've actually invested the effort in getting there.

And they sort of have, I think they just have a different perspective and a better perspective on the whole thing than I do.

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

Have we gotten any other emails from Bernie since we started the show?

Bernie has sent me another apology. No, I feel bad for Bernie. I've got to reach out. I tried to calm Bernie down this morning and said, my friend, you brought joy into our lives with this conversation. Hey, this is a serious topic, and I know that there are so many mass shootings in this country these days, and we don't talk about them, you know, on the show. We don't talk about all of them. We can't talk about all of them, and people use TBTL as an escape from some of that hard news. But we got a note from our friend Diane. Listener Diane called in a couple of years ago during one of our call-in shows, I think, when we were in our undisclosed location. Remember, Diane used to be a morning radio. Yes. In Michigan, in Michigan. Exactly. And of course, you know, last night there was that shooting at Michigan State. And I just you know, I know all of these hit close to home to people for various reasons. And it hits close to home for us as well. I think the three hours of students being locked out, getting text messages saying that they have to flee or fight like it was such a tough time for parents who were away from their students who are at colleges all over the country, let alone those who are at Michigan State. And listener Diane says, hey, I'm in Battle Creek, Michigan, and both of my kids are at Michigan State right now, and they're home safe right now, and thankfully, but it was just a tense and absolutely terrifying three-plus hours, and, you know, just wanted to – Diane's also offering up if she could be a resource for us or anybody that we can turn to her, but just wanted to appreciate being able to turn to TBTL for a little bit of reprieve from the NPR coverage this morning, but also just, like, it just reminded me that, like, again, And whether you have students at Michigan State or any college or any place, we're sending our kids out into the world. It's just such a scary time. So anyway, Diane, thank you for writing in. I appreciate it. I hope you and your kids are doing okay. I can't even imagine how rattled you and so many people are. I'm going to move on to something a little bit lighter here. How couldn't it be? This is from Jeannie in Port Townsend. She sent us a note a while back. Look, I've been meaning to share this with you. We had so much Funny Pages talk a while back on the show, especially starting over the Winter Games when we had our friend Megan Kelso on the show. And we were talking about my connection to Funky Winker Bean. I was really dining out on that celebrity connection for a while. But Jeannie sent us this email. It says, Funny Pages fame. I enjoyed your Winter Games segment, in particular the one about funnies and Funky Winker Bean. I want to let you know that you are officially one degree of separation from a comic strip character, me. The strip is called Gil Thorpe. Do you remember a strip called Gil Thorpe? That's G-I-L-T-H-O-R-P, Luke. That's one word?

No, I think it's a name, Gil Thorpe. And there's a link to the wiki page about it if you want to kind of check it out. But I'm going to go ahead and continue reading Jeannie's note. The story is this. Gil Thorpe is the athletic director of a fictional high school based on mine in New Milford, Connecticut. It's very closely based, I should say. Jack Barill, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, or Barill, was the creator and dad to one of my classmates. Somehow, Jack had his finger on the pulse of student athletics, and his daily strip mimicked the life at New Milford High. I realized there was a mole in my midst when I discovered Jack was drawing a story about me. I was the editor-in-chief of the school paper It was called the I'm going to mess this up Chanticleer, that's the name of the paper Anyway, forget I said that everybody I was the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper And my sports editor quit mid-spring In a huff to try out for the baseball team I couldn't believe it There was no one else to cover sports You can imagine my reaction when his exact words to me Appeared in the strip I was reading I was shocked to see a dead-on resemblance Of me with the name Diane McDuff

This story arc played out for about a month And if I remember right, Jeannie's got a Mick in her last name Is that true? I don't have Jeannie's last name here

So there you go, she was transformed into Diane McDuff This story arc played out for about a month in 1971 In both real life and in the comic strip The former sports editor did not make the team And ended up becoming the equipment guy Jack, the illustrator, then took the story down a different road Diane tried out for the boys' baseball team to show the sports editor that she could make the team. So although brief, I feel so honored to have been part of the history of this comic strip that...

It began in 1958 and continues to this day. Interesting that it was named for the baseball player Gil Hodges and the Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe.

So that would be Gil Thorpe. There you go.

And then also there was a character. I'm just Googling around on this now. There's also a character on Modern Family whose name was Gil Thorpe. Really? Yeah, and he was played by – who's the guy, Rob – I was just looking at a picture of him.

I never watched that show

You know this guy though Because he actually does a lot of football stuff He works with Phil Did you ever watch Rob Riggle I guess he's like He works with Phil Dunphy The Phil Dunphy character at the same real estate office But his name is Gil Thorpe And I wonder if that's a sly reference To the Gil Thorpe cartoon Most likely

Anyway I enjoyed that story Thank you, Jeannie. Appreciate it. Thank you, Jeannie. Thank you for sharing your fame with us.

All right. I guess that's going to be probably enough TBTL for one day, maybe even enough TBTL for the week. But we're contractually obligated to come back here tomorrow. And I want to tomorrow on the show, Andrew, I want to talk to you about a crew of people that I'm calling the pajama posse in my building. who i've been i have been like not rehearsing is the wrong word but i have been playing i've been playing something out in my mind a conversation that we're going to have about these folks and trying to anticipate what you're going to say to me and it varies between disagreeing with me and being like get over yourself that's the range so at a baseline there's any chance that

i'm going to agree with you on this because just based on what you just told me right now well i don't know from a single line that was written in the in the show sheet today that you and i have not discussed i literally i'm not playing here i do not know what it is but the single line that you put in the show sheet made me think that i'm going to absolutely agree well

i hope so but i want you to give me your honest answer tomorrow i don't want you to agree with me just to you know just to buck my expectations i'm not sure i feel like this is one of those things where i'm bringing a lot of i don't even know what it is that i'm bringing to this but i I don't love it, but it does make me angry. So we're going to talk about that tomorrow. What's up with the pajama posse in my building? And I'm sure a bunch of other fun, entertaining things that we'll find out about between now and tomorrow morning. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Happy Valentines to all those who celebrate. Or if you don't, that's also fine. I don't, for whatever it's worth. I actually meant to ask you at the top of the show kind of what your thing is on it.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't want to harsh anybody's buzz, but if there's also some people out there who are right now like, oh, I don't really do Valentine's Day and I'm sick of all the Valentine's Day talk. I'm with you. I don't really do it either.

You don't get a card for your partner?

Nobody gives me a card, no. Oh, you know what? I just realized, Luke, holy macaroons. I haven't gone to the P.O. box in a couple of weeks. I better go before they take it away because it's probably overflowing with Valentine's cards for you and me. I got to do that this afternoon.

But you don't get a Valentine's card for, you and Genevieve don't do that? You don't exchange cards? No, no. And you're, wow, that's impressive. I don't have the, I've never had the, whatever you'd call it, the chutzpah in any of my relationships to draw a hard line on Valentine's Day.

It just seems so made up to me. And I mean, I guess, you know, whatever. Vives and I have, we've been together for 22 years. I remember there was, I think, maybe some missed expectations early, early on, but, like, I just, it just doesn't seem like a real thing to me, Valentine's Day.

I agree with you that it's not a real thing, but I've also, I can never be the, like, I can't be the partner, whether it's the boyfriend or, at the times, the husband or the whatever, who's, like, looking this person that I love in the face and saying, yeah, I know your friends are getting flowers, but I'm not about that bullshit. Yeah. I just can't pull it off. I cannot pull it off.

It's amazing how, like, people think, like, of me as a nice guy, yet sometimes when I have my boundaries, it really just turns me into a cold asshole. No, no, no.

That's not the point. That is not the point of what I'm saying. I know, but it is true. Like, you know me.

Like, I got to have my little lines. I'm like, well, yeah, I don't cross those lines.

You are a nice guy, but you do. Your boundaries are firm. I respect that about you. Thank you. It's the only thing firm about me. I have. Well, you know, there's a medicine for that.

I was talking. Okay. Either way. Can we get out of here? This music's to the end. Yes, we can.

Is the song done yet?

Ah, get me out of here.

All right, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, have a great Tuesday. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. So what about you? What did you do for a job?

I was a temp.

Oh.

i'm sorry how old are you i'm 41. oh okay well you know it's not something i'm super proud of

you mean not something but you are super proud yeah were you an english teacher no i was an office manager at a hot sauce bottling company sounds like a spicy job no i didn't work with with the spices I was filing.

Power out.