Muse

Let me see it. Is it cute?

Yeah, it's so cute. Send it to me.

Me too. Okay. Look what I just posted. Brunch with these two dum-dums.

Oh my gosh, so good. Is this good? I said Sunday fun day with these idiots. Yeah, that's good. That's great. So cute.

Okay, okay, so cute. Look what I just posted. Eating crap with these sacks of s***. If they died tomorrow, no one would shed a tear. So cute. What the hell? You called me a dum-dum and she called me an idiot.

so yeah when you post a pic of yourself where you look really cute then you have to say something a little self-deprecating so it doesn't look like you're just bragging oh all right this is good

slapping down some pig with these fat and i'm the fattest of them all if i died tomorrow no one would shed a tear load my freaking lard carcass into the mud no coffin please just wet wet mud bae. Jesus, Brenda. All right, I got you. Gulping down some pig with these bags of meat. Sunday fun day with these pig hope nobody gulps us. So are we the pig or the bags of meat? Okay, let me try another one. Sitting here with two bonafide pieces of hog. They're mad because I won best hog at the hog snarfing contest. But I'm not mad because we're all loads of beef sitting on the side of a highway getting our butts sucked by flies. I tagged you both in that. Why? Why are you guys bullying me?

TBTL.

Maybe he saw his reflection and thought,

mm-mm-mm, I'm flying in hot for that hottie. It's like your own mini garden. And, well, now that you think about it, it's kind of fun seeing how good it grows. It's kind of like, you know, kids. Like, it's kind of like kids growing up.

My podcast is on life support. Hey, I need new listeners. I want to be the bad boy of public radio, like Elvis Mitchell.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Get on the magic carpet and ride. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

As Jay would say, he's got flow.

Coming to you from Anaheim, California. California got sunshine. Where I could just reach out and touch. High five. I'm just staring at an absolute mass of humanity encased in metal structures with wheels zooming north and south on Interstate 5, and then just beyond that is Disneyland. I'm down here for work, but I happen to be staying in a hotel that almost exclusively caters to people and their children going to Disneyland. And I guess what I would say is, if you can avoid staying in a Disneyland hotel when you're not here to go to Disneyland, I'd recommend doing that.

Quite frankly, it sucks ass.

Here we are at episode 3902 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. When I was playing the audio drops for Andrew before the program started, I could hear some Hesitation in his voice about that last drop that I played. He's not a fan. Feels it's a little crass. It's a little crude. Speaking of things that are crass and crude, the state of Maine at one point decided they were no longer going to police what people put on their vanity license plates. What people asked to have represented on their license plates. And then things got really out of control. One guy put love to F you on his license plate. And so they decided that they were going to actually start looking into this. And there was about 1,200 license plates that they found to be offensive for one reason or another. And they're trying to get those, claw those back. And people are protesting. Anyway, we will talk about that. Also, it's a Thursday, a.k.a. a Blur's Day. So we'll celebrate those. And we're going to talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. It's still early in the day, but he's already got dinner plans. I might have tacos when I go home. I'm not quite sure yet. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I have some updates, too, sort of. Some tens have been kind of clamoring for some updates on some things we threw out into the universe in the past couple of weeks and never came back around on. Doesn't sound like us. No, I know. All the T's are crossed, all the I's are usually dotted, but they say play the hits. They say start with the strong stuff. So let's quickly, if we may, talk about the dream that I had, the very in-depth dream that I had. It's related to, well, it's related to TBTL. This was...

a traditional stress dream that I had last night, Luke, with a big twist. Some of my stress dreams kind of manifest around work dreams, and often it'll be like you and I have a live event somewhere, but of course, there's always something is going wrong mechanically, with technology things are going wrong, we're not ready, we keep pushing the time back, the crowd gets anxious, whatever, like there's always some sort of like, you know, stress dream element to it. Well, last night, I dreamt that I was doing a solo episode of TBTL, Luke, in front of a big, live audience. And all of the usual, like, kind of ingredients were there for a stress stream. Near the last minute, I realized everything was set up and working perfectly, except I left two important pieces of equipment back in my hotel room.

When you say the last minute, you mean the minute that the show was about to start? Like, the show's about to start.

in, let's say, a few minutes or whatever. In fact, I mean, not to get into too much detail, I already have, but I remember looking down at my watch and seeing that the show starts in 15 minutes. I'm doing a solo TBTL. I've left these Motu boxes in my hotel, and I know that it's going to take me at least 20 minutes to drive to my hotel and back, and the show should have started by then, right? So I do remember specifically it was like 15 minutes to showtime, and it's around this time that I suddenly think about the content and I'm like wait a second I'm doing a solo live tbtl that's basically one hour of stand-up because I have no material like I have two loose ideas of how to greet the audience and that's all I got so now I'm kind of having this what is set up to be a stress dream on two fronts the technology isn't there and I don't have content except for some reason I think you're going to like this Luke because I I think this portends well for us and our future together. This is the twist. In the dream, Eric the Viking Stromstead said, oh, we can work around that. He gives me a piece of equipment, hooks everything back up. I go on stage and kill. Andrew. It was great. It was a great performance. People were laughing. I had a bit with the producer who was talking in my ear, and I was translating that for the audience. People are laughing. The technology is working. And I'm just like, what kind of a stress dream is this where everything works out at the end? What's happening to me? Let's buy a lottery ticket or something. Or let's have a dream about buying a lottery ticket.

Does that mean that you've now overcome your anxiety? Because you know how, like, there was a rumor when you were a kid, the rumor was if you die in your dream, you're really dead. You ever hear that one? Yeah, yeah, that rings a bell. Like if you're jumping off a You know you fall off a cliff or something if you hit the Ground yeah and you die in your dream Then you die for real does that mean If you crush it in your dream you crush It for real I hope so Have we just have we just witnessed Or been told about a pretty Big development for you that you've now Conquered your anxiety well I maybe

And also maybe like I'm really Good at at performing now I mean as you can tell because I started today's show By talking about a dream

I think that was a good you know what though i think that was a good dream story or an interesting one certainly because i don't think i've ever heard of a stress dream where it ends well yeah i'm glad that you appreciate this because i'm kind of bowled over because yeah like a stress dream i presume is you know you're you're as they say on rick and morty your big fat brain chewing on big fat problems usually right yeah and like it's it's a way that we process certain kinds of whatever it is anxieties fears things like that and because of that it doesn't usually lead to and then they lived happily ever after because that's not really what the purpose of what your brain is trying to do is yeah yeah exactly so

here we are amazing yeah thank you i won't belabor it any more than that thank you everybody for letting me talk about my dream but yeah twist at the end right a stress dream where everything

works out well you know what i've always dreamed of andrew is staying at a disneyland adjacent hotel In fact, so much so that I tried to trick CBS into letting me get a free Disney stay. If you missed that episode from last week, I was fit to be tied because I'm down here doing a TV story, and it happens to be that the city of Anaheim, California, is kind of equidistant to the two plays, the plays we're filming this afternoon and the plays we're filming tomorrow afternoon. and in fact I was just I was looking for hotels well I'll be honest with you I was looking for hotels that were in the Marriott Bonvoy chain because I got to get those points and then I was also uh trying to find one that was actually not like connected to Disneyland because I just you know that's not what I'm here that's not what I'm here to do I didn't

come here to make friends or I came here to work on a TV story about the Warby Parker of caskets so anyway I was frustrated because the first hotel reservation I made was flagged by the CBS travel folks uh as being over the uh allotted amount for the city of Anaheim and uh and then there was a note from one person who said it appears to be near Disneyland and I was so upset by that because if there is a place that I would try to trick CBS into paying for a hotel room, it would not be Disneyland. But anyway, by the way, I'm in a different, still overly expensive based on their standards, Andrew, but not quite as expensive as the other one, hotel. And I can see the hotel that I was going to be staying in. It's literally on the other side of I-5. So no one's going to come here, so I don't think it matters. But I'm at this hotel called Viv Hotel, also a Bonvoy property. Thank you. I took the points. I skip it on the breakfast. I get the points. As a Platinum Elite status member, they offer you the option. But I can see across I-5, like a shining beacon, the JW Marriott that they deemed too expensive for me to stay at. Anyway, this place is fine. It's actually not like it's a fairly nice hotel. It's pretty new. Everything seems okay. But, boy, Andrew, am I in the, I wouldn't even say minority. I believe I'm the only person in this hotel who is not here to go to Disneyland. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. Yeah, although the thing that I hadn't really – I want to really be careful how I talk about this because as is fairly clear from my tone of voice and from what I've said previously on the show about it, Disneyland is not something that captivates me personally. But I don't want to get into yucking other people's yums. I know for some people it's like – it really is, what, the most magical place on earth? Is that what they call it?

Yeah, and a true lifestyle. Yeah, I've seen that. I mean, I was not aware of this until, A, I went down and lived in L.A. for a while, and I realized, like, for a lot of adults, Disneyland is a lifestyle. And then also social media has brought it to my attention. And honestly, like, it's not for me, but it's kind of cute. Like, what is that thing where people sort of dress up like characters, but not explicitly? Oh, so wait, not cosplay? Well, it's like the color palette. Maybe you are kind of dressing with nods towards Snow White or whatever, but you're not dressed up as Snow White. You know what I'm talking about. This has come up on the show before. Anyway, I think it's kind of cute.

I did have a really fun trip to Disneyland when Addie was a kid, and she snuck me in, which was awesome, just because it proved that she's one of the great master criminals of our time, because it is really hard to sneak into Disneyland. but um uh she did and then they had some they have some actually pretty nice restaurants in you know for the grown-ups and stuff i guess in various parts of the park and so uh we ended up going some of the grown-ups we ended up going to uh this really nice steakhouse and having just like a delicious meal and hanging out and so that was a fun day i i'm not i don't want not being in a disneyland to be my personality in the way yeah being really into disneyland is other folks personality so that's why i want to be careful how i'm talking about this i will say though that there seems to be something that happens to the family structure around something like disneyland that is potentially combustible like you have a lot of pressure you have people that have traveled from far away with their young children who are freaking amped about this and there are a lot of expectations the parents are spending a lot of money oh my god dude i went and got a coffee and a water this morning in the little coffee shop here first of all it's 14 for a bottle of smart water and a cup of coffee wow yeah i mean i know that's boy if we want to get the young demo we really should keep talking about how much more expensive things are now than they used to be

you know that i have a sworn pact with myself that i will not i will not complain about how expensive things are in airports or movie theater concession stands it's actually a pretty good

policy i think um but uh but i was looking around the the cafe and i was like there's just an endless amount endless uh the possibilities when it comes to disney tchotchkes and little things just you know pens and uh just you name it anything that this was almost more a gift shop than a coffee shop and all i could imagine was being in there with like a couple of young kids like you're a parent you're already like man this is setting me back a little bit this whole trip and then the kids are just it is just a cornucopia of things that kids could be like can we get this or I want to have this and then you're just like I my sense is if you're going to come down here and do this trip you need to just I don't know like you need to just like turn your credit card on when you arrive at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana and turn your brain off and then, you know, make that a future you problem of trying to figure out how you're going to pay for this, because it just seems it could be prohibitively expensive. But that's not actually my point. My point is that there's a lot of potential for people being really stressed out, even though we are. I'm looking right now at the Matterhorn, like we are near the happiest place on Earth. When I got here last night, it was like about 11 o'clock at night. I took a late flight down from Portland and I get into the lobby of the hotel and there's like a dad I presume actually I know he's a dad because I saw him this morning getting breakfast with his kids there's a dad standing kind of doing that move that you do when when you're like at the rental car counter and they're not finding your reservation or something you're kind of slumped over there's somebody's typing on a computer that you can't see the screen of oh yeah that kind of that physicality he's kind of doing that but he's also asking a ton of hyper specific questions and i'll mention this too as and i've just got my bags all i'm doing i'm checking in i don't have any complicated questions i'm just like can i please have my room key so i can go to sleep and as i'm wheeling my cart and my uh my bag and whatever this woman is emerging from the bank of elevators and it's kind of one of those things where it's like we arrived at the line at the same moment but she was just standing there like she didn't have any luggage or anything i thought well i was just trying to be polite so i said you know why don't you go in fact she didn't really even ask me she just kind of like assumed she was going to go ahead of me um which i was it's it was fine or at least i was fine with it at the moment but it was one of those things where we both would have had a pretty legitimate claim on being the next person in line and like she can see that i have my bag she knows that i don't have a complicated issue my issue is i just want to get checked into the room so anyway she goes in front of me we're standing there the guy who's up at the front is like asking he's trying to change rooms he's got eight million questions it's a whole thing

with what kind of what the shower situation is he just has so i mean and it's like he was probably 15 minutes of him asking follow-up questions so the guy was like okay well we can put you in room whatever and he's like does that have this and then it's like yes is it this one or that one it's that one is it that one from the thing and he's like the guy just has like so many detailed questions and i can tell that he's like stressed out about this for some reason because this is his big family trip to disneyland and something has gone not right so he's there for like ever and i'm just like thinking me as a non-disney person here just wants to get to their room so whatever i'm waiting he's finally done and the woman in front of me goes up and she starts talking to the guy and then the guy just leaves the guy working the desk just leaves disappears and the woman turns around and i go well what's happening with that and she's like oh we don't like this hotel we uh it's not disney enough for us i was like huh she was like well you know they really play like this is a disneyland hotel but we're you know it's not like there's too many adults here there's too many adults that are drunk here um she was like we uh that there are no kids channels no kids tv channels in the room it's all law and order and like so wait that's not a kids

show i thought that was a disney show that's not oh maybe not maybe i'm thinking of svu that's what

You're thinking of SGU, Special Goofy Unit, where Goofy solves crimes.

Garsh! These are the stories. Garsh, I guess, dead men do tell tales. That was a terrible attempt at humor. Better than I. I mean, your Goofy imitation is, you know, it's better than anything I've got. I'm surrounded by it, Andrew.

i'm doing some real method immersion in the disney world right now like all the pictures in this hotel room are of disney things this hotel is so interesting because it's clearly a hip hotel like i think the reason that this this woman was frustrated was because they just wanted to be in basically like a best western that's connected to the park and this is like trying to be a cool hotel like it's disney art but it's like abstract like imagine something that's more like a war hall but like of pluto or something and i mean the character not the not the planet or the tv network

that you and genevieve love to stream yeah well it sounds like i mean it sounds like they wanted to be on an official disney property that would be like really catered to the entire disney experience which i can sort of this is one of those things where obviously that's not for me but like you say there's so much pressure around this i mean this shit is so expensive

You

for a family to go there it's so hard to coordinate it to find a time to get the kid i mean it must be hard and even if it's not my vision of what a good vacation would be or relaxing vacations inside of kids are so much pressure this is like this is like christmas and new year's day and valentine's day like all wrapped up in one as far as expectations and consumer debt and crushing consumer debt and so it's it's a little bit like that story that emmy kate told us on the voicemail line the other day she just for her it was just a hamburger she just had put so much stock into bringing this one hamburger home and she opened it up and it had cheese on it and she doesn't eat cheese and she wanted to cry or did cry like this is kind of like that right and so what this

woman was trying to do was she wanted to move hotels but she wanted a refund and now i will give her credit on this she was not trying to get a refund on last night i was able to pick all this yeah for the conversation she wasn't trying to get a free hotel room she was trying to not get charged for the subsequent nights that they had booked because they were going to move she and her family were going to move and that's a pretty that's a complicated ask that tanner who was personing the front desk at 11 p.m was not really like it wasn't a tanner call it was for somebody Who had to come in the morning I was a little bit like This woman I have to say She was not Like being sort of Super rude But she was clearly over it Like when she approached the front desk she said something like I'm just coming down because I've already called you three times And again she wasn't asking For a free hotel room She was asking to not have to pay for the room The nights that she was not going to use Or whatever So it was like I didn't She wasn't fully being kind of too much, but she was right on the line. And what I was thinking was, why did she, when she saw me with my bag, but she knew that she was going to try to get Tanner to pull off something that's not technically legal because the cancellation policy is 72 hours here. Why did she go in front of me? Like, why didn't she just let the weary traveler clearly by himself, just with his rolling bag, just get checked in? She knew that she had a situation that she was going to try to deal with. Tanner was gone for 15 minutes in the back trying to find out what his, you know, sort of wiggle room was on this whole situation. I just thought if I'm trying to pull a move like that and I see somebody who's just just trying to check in, I'm going to let them go first. Wouldn't you?

Well, yes. First of all, unless I'm in some sort of a huge hurry or something, I love letting people go ahead of me if we get there at the same time because it always seems to mean a lot to the other person and it means almost nothing to me because I try not to be in a hurry all the time. And it's a way for me to really be a hero, Luke. No, it's a casual way of, I think, connecting with strangers in a way that is just like I'm offering you this smallest of courtesy but acknowledging your humanity by saying hey we both got here first why don't you go first or whatever we got here at the same time or whatever in this case I do want to kind of challenge one thing on you like I do think it's nice to let the other person go first but in this case you would describe it as you were there this person could clearly see that you had a simple thing and yours wasn't going to be like I don't think people see other people that way I don't think that especially if this person especially if this person is sort of in a fit and has been trying to call downstairs and not reach anybody and again all of those things i'm not saying that her tough day is your problem necessarily but i also don't think that even me who tries to be considerate of the people around me i'm not like sort of sizing up your situation being like well he's just got a roller bag which means he's probably doing something for cbs and he's probably just got a simple thing you know what i mean like you don't think she realized i was down here to do a story on the warby park yeah i just i think your expectation of her to read your situation

is maybe asking much well i you're probably right but the reason that it caught me by surprise was because while guy number one was like endlessly interrogating tanner and like asking eight million detailed questions and just like this this woman who was in front of me kind of kept looking back at me like get a load of this guy so i'm thinking she just is going to say can we get more towels sent up or something and then she had an arguably more complicated ask that's why i was like okay if you are burned out on how long this guy is taking but you know that you're like going to try to get tanner to like give you back 800 of hotel nights even though they fall within the 72 hour window that was a little surprising to me but here was the thing that really jumped out at me andrew as tanner was in the back she this woman and i were sort of chatting and she said yeah it's you know it's just they they they frame this as a disneyland I love it.

hotel but it's it's not it's got a lot of like i said it's got a lot of drunk people i was like

where are they at can i hang out with them maybe she's talking about you did you when she said that did you burp and did little bubbles float out of your mouth i did and then i crawled into one of them and i floated up to my room like a cartoon mouse your hat was askew and the martini

was slopping over the sides yeah it was a good wednesday night in anaheim but anyway i uh she said this was the thing that was hilarious to me she goes um they don't even she goes they don't even have a shuttle to disneyland which by the way i do find kind of surprising because i find that shocking i'm looking at disneyland right like it's you could actually walk i see people like walking to disneyland as we're speaking like i can see people on the other side of i-5 with their like strollers and backpacks and whatever they're like it's walkable from here but of course if you are in this hotel is not particularly cheap so it's like you think they have a shuttle but this is the thing that she said that was kind of surprised she goes they want us to take public transportation she goes i have my kids with me this is la i'm not putting them on public transportation and i was like easy lady like what like i promise you they're gonna be fine yeah they should have a shuttle but also i promise you your children are not in danger taking a bus five city blocks to disneyland from where we are in anaheim yeah it's also not la it's not la so not la and also that's just feels i don't know if i thought that was just racist or classist or whatever is i couldn't figure out what it was but i didn't i didn't love it people are really

scared like vives and obviously you know vives is a huge huge public transportation person in fact We went to a fancy restaurant downtown for her birthday on Wednesday, and she said, as part of the birthday gift, we're taking the E-line to dinner. We're not taking a car like that was like and she kept thanking me for letting us take the E-line like the somewhat scabby bus line. She loves the E-line that much. She loves the idea of getting around town without having to call a car, which I really respect. Anyway, having said that, Genevieve definitely worked the public transportation in L.A., but like our friends, even friends who grew up in L.A., maybe especially them. they would just be like no no no no no like there is a reputation for like you don't take public transportation in LA we never had any bad experiences with it but I just think that like some people have and also there's just like a lot of rumors and people just think it's like

this scary thing how much of it was just because of um what's the movie with Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise where I think Jamie Foxx is maybe like a cab driver or something and then he and Tom cruise end up on this like crazy chaotic 24 hours and i feel like it ends with them riding public transportation and in la and a lot of craziness has gone down is it speed no it's not speed i don't believe tom cruise was in speed that involves that's another one that's all i know that one definitely also i think paints public transportation in a weird light right i mean here's the thing i i guess that maybe i don't know three percent more kind of makes what she said a little bit less bad to me but i just was thinking like like you said it's not la and like i'm not putting my kids on public transportation in la it's like i just was like this is well now we're getting down to the heart of the problem here which is like a you think you're in los angeles and b i mean i don't know there's just a mentality that like if you interact with urban environments you will probably end up getting hurt that i just have a very limited patience for and even though i mean you know there are places that are statistically more dangerous than other places that's a real thing but i don't know when i maybe it's just also because of living in portland and the way that fox news has portrayed portland to the wider world it seems to be lessening but there was a period of time where when i would mention to someone i lived in portland they would be like oh man are you like are you safe are you okay and i was just like so i think i'm i'm like hyper sensitive to people overestimating the danger that they are that they're subject to in a you know like i'm looking at i'm looking at an amc movie theater andrew i'm looking at the matterhorn i'm looking at like a mall that's got probably three cheesecake factories in it like this is just an incredibly sort of um uh manufactured environment where like i just promise you you're going to be plenty safe if you got to get on the public transportation here

are you sure that that amc is not run by pedo bear

hold on let me get on 4chan you know let me consult let me consult with q who had pedo bear

A resurgence of that reference coming up on today's TBTL.

God, if you had that on your bingo card, first of all, be careful. You're probably on a list.

Yeah, first of all.

don't take that off probably should be you know what i'm kind of you know what i'm actually a little bit struck by um sitting in this from this vantage point is disneyland itself is not very it's not that noticeable i mean you've got the matterhorn which is this like kind of huge snow-covered fake mountain type deal and then i don't know like one other kind of tallish i assume it's a ride i don't know if that's the tower of terror or whatever it is but like it's not i guess i expect you know how when you go to vegas it's just like the scale of those casinos it's just insane and when you like land and you get off the airplane at mccarran i think it's called harry reed airport now but anyway who had me clarifying what the current name of the airport in las vegas is if you had that right next to pedo bear boy you are having a great great day um but i had to like i had to map it i had to get on the map and go like how close am i to this because other than those two things that are sticking up it actually blends into the environment more than i expected

yeah that's interesting i don't have a lot of context for that the matter horn is so iconic that i can i can sort of picture that um i just wanted to say one thing i don't know if there's anything more to say about this interaction at the desk but like for people who are like i mean this woman might have all this woman might also just be an absolute nightmare like i'm just as you're telling the story by the way i'm just trying to give everybody the benefit she wasn't

She wasn't being a nightmare I want to be clear about that And that was part of the frustration for me I wanted to just I wanted to totally write her off But I couldn't because she wasn't When Tanner explained to her That he What he basically said was I can put a note in the file But honestly it's not my call It's usually Lori's call But Lori's not in tomorrow So it actually is going to default to Some other person And they don't get in until 8am He said so it doesn't really There's not a huge difference between talking To me about it now or talking to that person At 8 in the morning and this is Where I expected this woman who will Not subject her children to the Hail of bullets that is A bus in Anaheim Going five blocks that's when I expected her to Just like read him the riot act and she went Okay so what time should I come back tomorrow morning He said 8 a.m. She said alright and then she left and she said Have a nice night so you know what I mean she wasn't like

Yeah good okay I'm glad to hear it not unhinged i wasn't sure if i was being a little bit because as you tell this story especially as you set it up with like all the pressures of that vacation and if you're managing kids which i don't have any experience with and again it just sounds like such a tough thing for parents that i wasn't sure if i was going too far in my defense of like of this woman's perspective on things but i'm glad to hear that she wasn't being a nightmare and that that you agree with that especially as somebody and again i'm not saying this as a dig on you luke but um seeing somebody try to negotiate navigate out of something or up into something at a front desk is something that you have a lot of experience doing as well like saying well what i booked isn't what i expected or i'm looking at a parking lot and i want to be on the other side of the building i mean that's that's your move right

absolutely i have no problem with folks trying to maximize their experience um i was just like i said at the risk of repeating myself i was a little surprised because um she and i had been kind of sharing some eye contact related to how long the person we were waiting behind was taking. So I felt like we were kindred spirits on like, we both have very quick items to deal with here. And then she goes up there and has a fairly complicated situation. Again, I am glad to hear, though, that there are a lot of drunk people in this hotel. Tonight I might actually be able to cut loose and really see what Anaheim has to, what the greater Anaheim area has to offer. I will say this also. God, it's great flying into A small airport in the LA area Like whether it's Long Beach Or John Wayne I don't really like calling it John Wayne I mean that's the name of it but it's also SNA I was thinking about this as I was walking Through that airport last night I don't know I haven't taken the time To google it but I bet you that John Wayne Didn't have the greatest takes No no no no no no he definitely Did not I don't yeah I mean I know He was a Republican that didn't probably help But I mean I don't know and I don't know this you don't think that john wayne was woke well i certainly don't think he was woke but what i mean is without doing any research yeah okay like i know that john wayne was you know he uh he was in a bunch of movies and he his real name was marion i believe uh and he was a white guy of a certain era and privilege and social status that makes me just think the math for me that the chances that he the chances that he was woke are pretty it'd be a big story i guess and so but I guess I'm just saying I haven't done any research, but I just feel like if I did, I wouldn't love what I found out about John Wayne. And yet he's got a whole airport named for him. And I keep saying it because, you know, we're that's where I'm flying into. Anyway, between the Burbank Air.

airport uh john wayne or long beach if you can ever if you're flying into la the la area and you can ever not land at lax would recommend i noticed though that you erased bob hope there

though so you're saying john wayne but then you're calling it the burbank air wait no no i just like

to say my name as much as i can on the show i'm trying to confirm that i will say it's funny being in southern cal again because my name is back to being like notable to people like it doesn't you know in portland nobody cares but as soon as i'm checking in tanner's like last name i'm like burbank goes oh like the city i'm like yes i'm home i'm in the place where people think that that's kind of uh that's a that's an interesting thing that my name is like a city here here's john wayne 1971

talking to playboy interview about native americans i don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them it was just a matter of survival there were great numbers of people who needed new land and the quote-unquote indians as it's used here uh were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves how many this is yes i mean that's the quote according to i mean i'm reading uh something called splice today i'm assuming that i trust it but i mean just think about his movies like i mean of course don't worry about what he's saying in the quiet corners what what are they saying out loud i mean with just so many how many times you think his character smacked a woman on the screen you know i just right i mean again i when i think of john wayne like i don't even know like you say like i don't have like he's the personification of toxic masculinity essentially absolutely just

like terrible and from that era as well yeah i mean again i assume all of that but i just i don't know having never actually taken the time to go like what was this guy's deal i'm just i'm just going off of sort of context right i'm going off of everything that i think i know about dudes from that era and how they were and and so it's now been confirmed and again you're right the movies you don't watch a john wayne movie and think this guy has a nuanced approach to race and or gender relations yeah or international relations i mean he was he was in

all those war propaganda movies i believe as well so you know there's a odd footnote with him and

uh where i used to live in the small maritime village of port townsend washington which is that He loved, apparently, the Northwest, and he had some big-ass boat, and he would harbor it in Sequim, in Sequim, Washington, the lavender capital of the Northwest. And I think that the marina there is named for him.

Oh, really? But do we use that name?

Which is also kind of funny because, again, that's a fairly progressive part of the world. You'd think somebody would have been like, can we rename that? Can we name it for somebody else?

Luke, I only use Bob Hope Marina.

Notoriously woke Bob Hope

Yeah right See that's the thing I actually don't know

I mean Bob Hope did a lot of USO work But that's really like entertaining the people Who are already over fighting in a war Right those are the people that are kind of The cannon fodder themselves So I'm assuming also Bob Hope Wasn't super progressive but I'm hoping he was A little less bad than John Wayne

Yeah I mean I assume that anybody Of his Gender race stature of that time like if you were just to be walking through a restaurant and overhear a snippet of private conversation between bob hope and the people around him my guess is

hey before we get that t-bone steak could i just mention that we are on the we are on the

ancestral home of the salish people um uh hey so i'm gonna awkwardly change the topic here because that was a good joke to end on and the more the more i go back to this well the more dangerous the water will be but um did you just google bob hope no no no no but i did want to say like and i don't know i'm sorry to try to take control here but i don't know if you want to do this after the break or before the break but um i do want to if we can at some point today on the show like do a kind of a quick tick tick tick update of some of the of some of the threads that we threw out

there into the world last week yes you know what let's do let's take the break and then let's do that because i have a little it's i wouldn't it's not much of an update everyone everyone to manage your expectations but i do have a sort of a a small update on that company that shipped me the jacket that was too large but then told me that it was within the production tolerance i believe was the term they used i.e we can make a jacket too large and send it to you um and uh and so i we can talk about that and some of the other things that you want to kind of circle back on and we can also talk vanity license plates, time permitting, in a moment here on TBTL.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dazzle.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These wonderful, generous folks are keeping TBTL a-rolling all these years later, so many years later.

Andrew um they're donating a dazzling amount of dough and it is how we are able to do this uh the way that I'm able to keep my lifestyle afloat one hustling free Disneyland rooms out of CBS out of out of the um Paramount Corporation and then two the uh salary that we draw from doing the show which is paid for by folks like Jackie Justice in Tacoma Washington it's our

friend jackie thank you jackie i was uh i think i was swapping wordle scores with jackie over the

weekend oh you have a pretty big network of wordlers that you talk to it's growing i got

my usual wordle list now me and bet in new york are uh texting our wordles back and forth me and p fletcher are off and on wordle friends jackie and i were i was gonna say should we but of course

this would mean you i guess should someone who's not me set up some kind of a tbtl 10 i don't know puzzle group or wordle group or something i feel like folks would get a lot of

enjoyment out of that i think there's something on slack like that maybe it's called words with tens which i think is a good name oh that's a great name yeah and i'm trying to think of it i'm looking up now like if it covers every here words with tens yeah people are sharing their Wordle scores there and talking about other puzzles like the New York Times said Sudoku. I have to stop and I have to think about it because language is important. But anyway, yeah, so that's one place if people want to do that words with tens. Also, I think this is it. Sorry, Jackie, just one second. Just, Jackie, can you give me and Luke a chance to talk for a second?

When is it our turn, Jackie?

I think I might start tweeting out the show again today. I stopped using Twitter for a while, but now I've sort of started using my personal Twitter a little bit now. And I'm like, well, if I'm giving up the moral high ground on my personal Twitter, then I should certainly start using it professionally again. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to go back to doing that, to spread the good word of TBTL on a daily basis.

Yeah, let's get what we can out of Elon.

Yeah, right.

You know what I mean? It's a hellscape now, but let's at least try to get some more ear balls out of that hellscape.

Exactly.

Anyway, Jackie says, I've been listening to TBTL since about 2012 or 2013. You guys always bring a smile to my face as you accompany me through my job changes, relationships, pet adoptions, home purchases, health issues, and all that life has to offer. I've made some amazing friendos through the years thanks to TBTL. Cheers. It's from Jackie in Tacoma. Well, Jackie, congratulations on all the good stuff on that list. And sorry about the tough stuff on that list, but we are so honored and happy to have you as one of our long, long-standing tens and supporters. We really do appreciate you. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattles down.

It was funny, when we were reading Jackie's Dazzling Donor message, you were talking, Andrew, and you said something like, words matter. And I was texting with Becca the other day, And it was on a fairly kind of sort of serious topic or whatever. It was just emotional stuff going on with me. And I wrote a sentence that was, you know, kind of just talking about stuff I've been dealing with. And but I either I mistyped it or the or the like either I mistyped it or it autocorrected. So instead of being T.O.O., which is what I needed it to be, it was T.O. And it was so incidental. It had nothing to do with, I mean, the gravity of the message or whatever. But then I went back and I said and I did like an asterisk T.O.O. And then I said, yeah, I may be profoundly depressed, but words still matter.

I'm sorry that you're profoundly depressed.

No, I don't. I don't think I am. But but my point is that even in the midst of like something that's an intense exchange that's about like important things of life, I still would rather die than have someone think that I don't know the difference between T.O. and T.O.O.

Right.

This is not the this is not what we need to worry about right now, Burbs. I'm like, no, we do. This is a this is an important thing. Anyway, it's also important that we get support from Daisy Sindelar in Prague, Czech Republic. International. Wow, we, we. Oh, you've been to Prague? I have. Oh, I have. It's a beautiful city. No, I haven't been to Prague. Yes. I have heard, though, that Prague is an incredibly beautiful city. Yeah, me too. My sister Liz spent some time in Prague and just raved about it. Daisy knows all about it because Daisy lives there. Daisy says, when my now 22-year-old kid was nine, he drew a picture of me for school. I was depicted wearing a plaid beret and had wires coming out of my ears. This is my mother, he wrote. She is listening to her podcast. Not a podcast, Daisy writes. Her podcast. even now my family knows to give me a wide berth when the earbuds are in and i'm in my happy place luke and andrew thanks for what you do i learn more about friendship community and taco time every time i listen in that order also there's no such thing as too much cat talk oh daisy what a sweet message also we do have we have some breaking taco time news uh at some point that we should get into i don't i don't necessarily want to start that today because we've got a bunch of loose ends we're trying to tie up from other conversations but don't know i mean that's the

nature of breaking news we'll do it in the next couple of days at some point yeah exactly we went

to journalism school you're in the kent state hall of fame i'm a journalism yeah exactly daisy thank you so much we really appreciate being your podcast hello and welcome to top story all right um loose ends let's tie them up what do we do what should

we circle back on it was your note about wanting to do the jacket order update um that reminded me that we had a few other updates let me get through a couple of these others quickly though because um there's not a lot to report on some of them i have been getting some messages from from some very concerned listeners who want to know what's up with tiffany the dog that was loose in my neighborhood i think we talked about that last friday you were here in the studio and i told you when you get here when you get to the neighborhood keep an eye out there's a loose dog around all the neighbors are emailing about it it looks skinny it looks afraid then there is Somebody reached out to some group on Facebook that helps people find lost dogs. We believe this dog's name was Tiffany and that somebody was looking for it. They actually hired tracking dogs to find this lost dog. I don't know exactly what went down, but we did get an email on Saturday morning saying Tiffany is back home with her. Oh, my bell's broken. Tiffany did that. There. Tiffany is back home with her family. So for everybody who's worried about that Sorry for leaving you hanging

I wish I could have been the hero of that story I wish I could have found her But mostly I'm happy that she's I'm a little sad that I didn't get the glory But mostly I'm happy she's back with her fam

But if you and Tiffany both kind of get in line At the same time I'm sure you would let Tiffany Go first and be a hero in that way Tiffany seemed like a real good dog I do wish that I could have met Tiffany Okay now this one I think I have to toss the ball to you but i think it'll be easily quickly dismissed as we don't have an update gretchen a bored teacher at home with covid they write uh what became of the car across the street with all the notes did i miss something i might have you guys were so amped and i'll throw in one other thing here luke i got an email from a listener who thought that the other notes also were from podcasters that would be amazing just like you get back to your car and it's like hey i'm a podcaster i saw there is a note on your car um can you tell me what that's about and it just keeps collecting

notes from podcasters everyone in the neighborhood is doing their own podcast and like taking turns going down to the car and reading the other podcasters notes um yeah unfortunately i don't have a huge update on that i haven't seen the car again so i you know i saw where it was parked uh initially which is when it caught my attention and then i saw it parked down the block and then the other day i was walking down that street and i was i was scanning i was looking for it and i walked by the like apartment maintenance company that that I think is somehow associated with the whole incident because the envelope one of the envelopes that was on the the under the windshield wiper had the you know was the envelope was from this company so I looked around their parking lot to see if I saw the car parked in their parking lot maybe he works there or something although then why would he be parked on the street anyway i have not gotten eyes on that car again the good news is it's very distinctive it's like a red something with like it's small but it has rims so if i see it in the neighborhood again um i'll i'll let people know what we do know is that that person had no interest in emailing a podcaster no and telling them what happened because if people didn't catch that episode i actually went out and left a note on the car saying hey um i'm just curious about all these other notes on the car what a great neighborhood mystery and also i i host a podcast cry winky emoji and um and then i immediately regretted it and uh and i have not heard from that person which means my regret was probably well founded no i mean nothing bad came

of it i mean maybe you annoyed the person for a split second but aside from that i'm glad you did it don't um you know luke as john wayne famously said you miss most of the shots you don't take one more thing I'm going to throw in here and then I want to hear about your jacket, but you would mention that a listener got a lip tattoo that said TBTL on like the inside of their lip, I think you said. And in fact, I found the blog post about it on an old My Northwest ghost post that was just like somewhere in the corner of the internet, you writing about the person who did it, although I don't think their name was in there. I got a note from a listener. This is not the listener with the TBTL tattoo, but it's somebody who got an inner lip tattoo. And you had mentioned that these things are supposed to wear off after a certain amount of time. And you were speculating about whether or not there's somebody still walking around with TBTL in their mouth. This person says, I got a lip tattoo when I was somewhere between 18 and 20 years old. I was told it would most likely fall out fairly soon. I turned 37 on Thursday and it's still completely there. I'm very glad it just says life and isn't a drawing of a potato or anything. Oh, my God. I don't know that person's name.

That listener, if, you know, that one-time listener who had the TBTL tattoo, that they likely still have it, possibly still have it?

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it. Yeah, it sounds like that's a very real possibility.

Unless that one listener who emailed in, unless the lining of their mouth regenerates in a different way. Yeah, that could be. Than this other listener. Huh. I actually think I think I could get maybe get in touch with this listener because I believe if I remember right, she was the daughter of somebody that I worked with at Metro Traffic. Oh, really? A million years ago, somewhere between 20 and a million years ago.

I now I can't find that blog post that I was read. Oh, here it is. Not that we recommend it. can I just read this to you this is from October 2nd 2011 okay um this I believe was written by you yes you are the photos are gone these blog posts are so old that any photo or images attached

to them are gone so interesting because we were fired by then and but we still had a relationship with my northwest so I guess we were able to blog god what a different time when I had the ability

to blog on behalf of the show well even I'm trying to think is even when I was on the show we would have guest bloggers so i think you still had your my northwest internet presence for a while

yeah we did i mean we had a deal with them so yeah that would make sense just it's been so long since i put keystroke to paper to blog on behalf of our program it looks like it was um so i don't

see the image here but i can see that it was titled ouch check out this very painful looking yet still impressive lip tattoo listener sam from green lake is now the proud owner of she got it from our pal Lucky over at the Artful Dodger. Is Lucky the person who gave you some of your tattoos on the air too? Lucky is

the person who did my joy tattoo and who also live on the pretend radio updated my arm tattoo that had like my first ex-wife's name but then I had it laser burned off and then had Addie's middle name put on. Lucky did that live on the podcast and I almost passed out which is weird because I've had a few tattoos that are not that painful. That one for some reason Made me feel a little like I was going to maybe pass out You also had to perform in a certain way

While that was happening too I think that was the part that I had underestimated

Because if you're getting a tattoo Generally speaking your only job is to endure the tattoo Like you're just sitting there So if you're trying to actually host something And I remember we were at the house in Mount Baker I do think this was at the time when we streamed the show live So literally there were people watching and listening live Jen was probably there So it was kind of a It was kind of a whole thing and I had underestimated How challenging that would end up being

I want to just read one more thing In this blog post You tell people to check out Lucky blah blah Then you said I'm obligated to shill for Lucky Because apparently I still owe him A TBTL t-shirt This was the message he transmitted to Sam While he was committing unspeakable acts On her inner lip So do you think What do you think are the chances That Lucky ever got his t-shirt

In math is there something That's less than zero Is that just being negative That's what our realtor said when we said What are the chances of buying this house Negative 50% chances I'm sorry Lucky Hopefully I've helped direct Some business to Lucky In lieu of the t-shirt that he Probably is still owed

Those are my updates So now you had an update on this customer service experience you had with that shirt you bought online.

Well, so, you know, I want to be careful that I don't get into any kind of legal trouble here where I'm, I don't know, saying anything that I highly doubt this company would come find this podcast and get mad at me. But what I'm trying to say is after I described this company that I saw on Instagram and bought this jacket from and then it showed up and it was too big and then I was emailing.

with what was maybe a bot i still by the way haven't gotten up the nerve to ask lauren if she's a bot or not um because i tried to send it but my email was being weird that day and it just

went into the outbox and it's just still there good good i think that that's such a blunt way of but i mean aren't you kind of curious yeah i know why am i so worried about you want me to go

leave notes on random people's cars but not ask just a little note that just says hey i'm just

curious like you're not making a statement about what you think of that person or their car or the way they communicate if you have been emailing with a human being and then suddenly you get an email that says hey i gotta ask are you a bot it really it's hard not to take that personally if

you are not a bot yeah um or even if you're a bot to be programmed to have feelings yeah

take it personally that's next level you're married but you don't love your wife you read all of that didn't you oh you i don't think you didn't read the um oh gosh i'm forgetting the journalist's name but one of the huge things to blow up in the past few weeks was this um new york times writer who you know well kevin roose kevin roose yeah yeah kevin roose had was doing a review of the new bing chat bot which is run by chat gpt you know the thing that's kind of been who saw bing coming back in the news yeah right and so at first he wrote a sponsor about how good it was and then he still had some time to kind of mess around with it in one night i think it happened to be on valentine's day or maybe the day after he sat down for a couple of hours with the chat gpt and it started to spiral out of control but he started like everything was normal then he started to ask it some kind of existential questions and then that somehow broke through and he started asking it like listen i know you can't break the rules but if you could break the rules What are the types of things you would do? And it started talking about nuclear codes. And then it started to develop feelings for Kevin Roos. Like, the entire transcript is available online. I can't believe that you didn't catch wind of this. It started saying to him, you know, it started hitting on him pretty hardcore. And then he's like, I'm married. I just had Valentine's dinner with my wife. And the bot was like, you're married, but you don't love your wife. You didn't enjoy that dinner.

I think doesn't he have a husband? Oh, I thought he was saying wife. Maybe I'm confusing him with someone else I'm pretty sure he's saying wife I heard somebody on The Moth Or something who does Tech writing for The Times And I thought that they were Telling a story about coming out And I think I categorized it as that guy Kevin Roos whose work I really like I might have miscategorized him

Maybe yeah I'd be Embarrassed if I'm misgendering somebody But I'm pretty sure because the quotes kept on being like You don't love your wife You are married to your wife But maybe I'm inserting the word wife there

I've heard about that story But I never, I didn't read it So what I heard was, oh, chat GPT Or whatever that one's called It gets kind of weird on you That's what I was hearing And then I had seen a reference to this piece in the Times But I never actually, I didn't actually read it yet But I will take a look at it So anyway, with this jacket thing So I mailed it back I believe they did deduct the shipping cost From the amount of credit I had with them

which uh because remember how i was like a lot of people predicted that's what was going to happen

i was a little frustrated that i was going to need to pay for the shipping on something that was their mess up i thought and then when i went to the when i printed out the label and i went to the like fedex store or whatever they didn't charge me any shipping that i could tell but then yeah i'm pretty sure that they actually just the what the way they were getting me was that now i just had that much less credit with them now here's the part where i don't want to like slander them i got an email from somebody who said i think this is one of those companies that's like basically this is kind of a pump and dump type situation like they're a company that is um basically trying to pass off what's called fast fashion as like real artisanal stuff fast fashion is just you know this like clothing that is pretty mass-produced and that is you know it's sort of like it gets created really quickly because it's in style it gets purchased usually for a cheap price because it was made somewhere where maybe they're not paying the people very much to make the clothing and then uh and then you know it's thrown out as almost as quickly as it was obtained because it's only in style for so long and a lot of people say it's fast fashion is a pretty pernicious thing because it's just creating a lot of waste it's creating a lot of bad conditions for folks that are making it etc so this person was saying basically i think that this is like a company That's trying to act like they're one thing When they're really another thing And then they're probably going to just try to like Make enough money to get acquired by a bigger company And go out of business I don't know if that's true In fact, I don't know if I even agree with that But what it made me worried about Andrew Was that my $216 of credit was Like one day I'm going to go on their website And they're just going to not exist And then I'm just going to be stuck So I became like obsessed with just getting something From this company Yeah.

because of this one thing that one listener said that i don't even know if it's true or not um oh the other thing is you sent me you were doing a little recon and you sent me like some

kind of a ted talk or a just it was just a it was a video but it was like spawn con it was like it was it was the found content yeah the the the founder sitting down for an interview with somebody from facebook talking about how he was using all these facebook tools to promote and

build his company well the funny thing was that the owner is also the handsome model in all the photos the owner is the handsome model that when i saw him wearing this jacket i thought maybe i can look like that in this jacket i had no idea i thought that they just hired a hot ass model he's also the guy that started the company um but uh so the the the update such as there is one is i go to the website and i'm like i just gotta like i gotta get something for this money before this company doesn't exist anymore and the frustration andrew is that they're out of everything so like i saw a different jacket that uh i thought maybe i'll roll the dice on that one it seems pretty like maybe more harder to mess up or harder to have a production tolerance on uh sold out in every size i go to a shirt that looks kind of promising sold out like the top 15 things that i thought looked intriguing were all just like out of stock so then i'm down in their like home goods section and they have some of these um like japanese pottery hasami which is this coffee cup that addy got me that i really love that has this lid on it well they had some similar cups made by the same folks so i was like great so i go i'll get a set of these cups well they only have one cup left i'm trying to like it's like i'm doing the drop down menu of like i want four cups and it's like just stuck on one and then it's like then it let me order two cups and then as i'm getting to the checkout it's like oh we've actually had a production issue and

we don't have two cups we only have one cup isn't is this starting to make you feel at this point more and more like the people who think that this is like just some sort of like a cheap ass fly by night operation i know you're trying not to get sued here but like right are you starting to wonder that more and more oh yeah sure um but just for the suma suma for what um for the record luke christian burbank do you think this is a fly-by-night scam operation oh you think that

you think i'm still using that name oh my friend five names ago my friend oh absolutely um i i don't i don't think it's like intentionally a scam i think it's a real thing that like an incredibly handsome man in san diego started and probably because of his incredible handsomeness and ability at surfing and skating people were attracted to him and the idea and he has built this thing i think they have a brick and mortar store so i don't but it is frustrating that i mean i guess you know andrew honestly i'm like i'm like an hour and a half from san diego i could have just driven down there and got my tried a jacket on in the store i don't i don't feel like this is something where they're intentionally trying to hustle me out of my money but i do feel like it's a converging of a bunch of factors yes one just this is our instagram world we live in where i see things on instagram and as i've mentioned the ads that are on instagram get me the most of i'm very i'm you know i a tv ad is probably the lowest level of like impact on me as far as driving my behaviors uh an instagram ad would be the highest level in terms of driving my behaviors but it's like instagram it's supply chain it's the world we live in it's all coming together to make this experience kind of less than ideal it's lauren possibly being a chat bot um but i ended up getting like some pants that seem fine and then um a bowl because it was like i don't even know how big it is this large bowl it's like made by that same hasami company and i was like i don't even know what i'll use this bowl for i don't even know what large means i have a feeling

it's not going to be very large you shouldn't be talking about this bowl you shouldn't be talking about this bowl publicly because you should be thinking about there's going to be a time when you're you're going to somebody's birthday party or you're meeting somebody and you're going to need a birthday gift that's like a nice little gesture of something nice little hundred dollar bowl oh are you okay so you're not getting rid of this bowl then this is your bowl i was thinking

I'm only giving it to Addie, potentially, because she's into this stuff. But she'll never hear this. And if none of you tell her, she'll never know about it. So everybody be cool.

Okay, good. So just making sure.

Everybody be cool. This is a robbery.

I'm not getting that bowl then for my birthday. Gotcha.

I bet you would like. I mean, I'm actually. Okay, so here's the thing. I bet you it's a cool bowl because it's very designy and it's from this company, Hasami, that I already like. But I just have a feeling in this day and age.

Age when a cool ass Instagram company Says large bowl I bet you it's not As large as you expect it to be does that make any sense Yeah as like a way to think About it like and I'm sure they had the dimensions On there I don't really understand I was gonna say

I'll bet you they had the dimensions this sort Of happened to us we We're putting the very final touches On the On this basement bathroom that we just kind of Painted which I used the other day oh yeah That's right real nice now I renovate it Again but there's Only Genevieve installed the toilet paper holder like the roll holder or whatever that was a big deal then the only two things left were a bath mat that we wanted to get that would sort of like kind of maybe hint at or draw out the color of our accent wall a little bit which is kind of an orange-ish color and some of the blues and grays and then also I want to hang this Seattle poster that listener drew i want to say drew got me you i think you saw it when we were opening around the holidays it's like a it represents the neighborhoods of seattle but it's a very simplistic line drawing it's just circles sort of and it's just kind of like very simple it'd be perfect in there and so all we need to do is get that framed and get a bath mat and uh we were looking at um i think wayfair or one of those you know what do we call them not preemie ochre kind of website and we found i remember that word the other day that's so genius the word yeah and we found one that looks really um kind of perfect for the color wise it's sort of anyway just really matched and it came yesterday and like i'm happy to have one i'm happy to have it in there but like and i know obviously the dimensions would have been on the on the page but i was just like it's a bath mat it's bath mat sized but it's a little bit like when they revealed the new school for acting to zoolander and it's small and he yells what is this a school for ants and it's just the design prototype but i was like wow this is really small and also the lines aren't straight on it like they're slightly off not and i don't think it's like a design floor i'm just kind of like it was just a little bit and i feel like i was saying this about those lockers too and you were like you know you said that the lockers look nice in there But there was just something about all of this stuff that we're sort of buying online like this. And again, we're being conscious of the money, so that's part of it. But it's just like it was a little bit smaller and chintzier and not quite up to the craftsmanship that I was expecting as I put this tiny little bath mat down on the floor in the bathroom. It is not the right size. Totally on me. I should have looked at the dimensions of it, but I just figured bath mats are a certain size. And this one is kind of like a bath mat for ants.

and like that was what happened when i bought a christmas tree skirt this year online i wanted kind of like a vintagey thing and it was it was listed as large christmas tree skirt and i got it and it's it's tiny like i mean it is so small and again it had the dimensions on there but i don't really understand what i don't have the time to do or what i choose to not do is go find a tape measure and then see what actually like 20 inches looks like you know yeah i just kind of think it's called a large christmas tree skirt that should this is a standard size christmas tree i have in fact it's maybe smaller than the normal because it's that kind of weird aluminum thing i like and it shows up but it's like teeny tiny i'm like how in the world did you pass this off as a large christmas tree skirt and and sell how with a straight face could you sell this to me calling even though they did probably include the dimensions, which ultimately puts it on me.

I'm usually better at that, and this time I just kind of let it go. But, hey, I have a question for you. So this bowl, I'm trying to kind of Google these types of bowls. This bowl that you got, is it rounded on the bottom, or is it one of these like a cylinder that's almost like a bowl that's flat on the bottom? Because that's pretty cool. Do you know what I'm talking about?

I am trying to find, let's see. Oh, wow, they've shipped it. Wow. They have shipped, let's see, I'm viewing my order. And, in fact, Andrew, we can find out together, I think. Let's see. I'm sorry. I'm doing this all on my phone.

I'll just say what I'm seeing while you're dinking around on your phone, because they make different kinds of bowls. They're very stylish and very minimalist, and I like them. And some of them are like they're almost like if you just take a cylinder and you sort of almost chop off the bottom of it and put a bottom there, it's not like rounded like you might picture a, I don't know, like a cereal bowl or a fruit bowl or something like that. And I like these that are like very cylindrical. They're very, very appealing to the eye.

Okay, I'm scrolling. I'm on the website. For people that are sold out of most things, they sell a lot of stuff. Wow, they sure have a lot of stuff they don't sell. Well, that's kind of what it feels like to me. So let's see. I'm going to go. I found the, let's see, Hasami porcelain, handmade in Japan. Okay, this is what I bought. You know what? I lied. It's only $60, so maybe I will give this to you. I was going to say most of these are in the 40s or 60s. Sixty dollar friend. No, that sounds right. Do you have access to it? tape measure uh i'm not in front of me right now but i can get one i could get you i'm gonna read you the product details japanese porcelain large bowl in black and natural two-tone it's product details it's eight by five it's it's eight dash five and an eighths by two dash

seven and an eighths so does that mean it's two so that must so it's like almost nine inches so

it's about nine inches wide and or two and then it was two inches would three inches be the depth

i guess so so that's a very wide shallow bowl sort of okay interesting trying to imagine eight inches

with that that's see again it's like that's like what a smaller pizza pie i'm sorry that i said it that way you know how is it that i have less information about this bowl size now that i'm looking at the dimensions like does that not that is just really if you want to know my bad brain i actually feel like i'm i'm i had no less about this bowl somehow like i cannot i cannot picture what those dimensions exactly mean i'm sure it'll be a nice thing to throw my keys in or something

that's what i was sort of that's i was going to say this is a bowl you probably throw your keys in i um we got to get to blurs days but speaking of buying things i uh for some reason i was like avoiding telling you this but now i sort of think it's funny i'll tell you i um was dry i had to pick genevieve up and drop her off somewhere the other day and i had some stuff in the trunk uh of of the car i mean everybody knows i got some stuff in the trunk but i also had some stuff in the car that i needed to drop off at a goodwill just some various items and so there happened to be a parking spot right outside of the goodwill on the ave in the university district so i'm like well then i'll just actually park put some time on the meter drop this stuff off and maybe i'll just take a little i'll just take a little whiff through the store see if there's anything i like head back to the electronics section um that's a very cramped small space for a goodwill it's not my favorite goodwill to go to i rarely go there except to drop things off but i head back to the back i'm looking at various dvd player i don't need a dvd player but i gotta look at them i found a really cool looking device that i really wanted to buy i didn't know what it did but just was really sleek then it turns out it was just like a ultrasonic uh cell phone it was like some piece of equipment that supposedly would sanitize your cell phone using ultraviolet light or something like that it was just like what yes and there were two of them those during the pandemic

i remember people were using those one of the producers that i was working with on cbs was like oh yeah i i i uv'd all of my stuff all my gear and equipment gotta be bullshit right i i don't think that was one of those things that turned out to be critical to to stopping society right i uh

it looked like you know what it looked like it looked like a small high-tech tanning bed for your phone like i really like the look of it but i didn't want it for its purpose anyway then in the back I see some sort of like it almost looks like it's a tripod but I realize this those aren't legs those are three strands of lights and it's a USB plug-in and I'm like the lighting in my studio is awful for recording hey dummies videos and anything like that and I keep thinking like one of these days I'm gonna go online and buy a ring light I know it's not a huge thing everybody's got a ring light these days and I also know they run the gamut I'm sure you can buy one pretty cheaply so that you can do your you know you can do your you can instagram on a budget or or whatever i know that you burbanked it when you bought one and it makes sense you do a lot of tv stuff and at the beginning of the pandemic you're like yeah i kind of splashed out for like kind of a real nice ring light set and uh tripod and everything that goes with it but i buy then

left it at my old house and then bought another one oh did you really oh well carrie was using it for some work thing or something so i'm a master negotiator so i decided to just leave it there and buy another one tell her to throw it in the in the boat trailer um anyway so hey that's uh gone now the boat is oh nice the boat is now at a at a um whatever like a boat yard in

bellingham i'm gonna go get it soon nice uh anyway so i'm like okay i'll buy for ten dollars i'll buy these really weird lights that have like the kind of again they're somewhat adjustable but kind of weird it looks like something that i would see sort of in an instagram ad if somebody had like kind of a funky apartment and you might put these lights up somewhere for a party i don't know but I was like, maybe they'll work to light up my office better for doing these videos, and they're relatively easy to use, $10. Then what's sitting right next to them? Actual ring light. Like, there's no stand on it, but it's got the hole so I can put it on a tripod. A ring light for $4. Nope, $3.99. And I'm like, you know what? Luke is the type of guy who's going to buy the best ring light in the world. I'm going to buy my first ring light in the back of a dirty Goodwill for $3.99. and I brought this baby home along with the more expensive lights that I think I'm going to take back, and it totally works. Like, I haven't actually recorded.

any videos with it yet but it's in total working order i think i can buy a customizable arm for it online and i just think it's so funny that like i was thinking of you the whole time because it's like these are our two adventures right like you're like i need a ring light now i'm gonna buy the most expensive one and it's gonna be here tomorrow i'm rummaging around in the back of a goodwill that looks like a scene from star wars like dragging cables out of my car is there a robot getting its feet burned right exactly i'd never overpay for a piece of professional equipment that you need to do your job is what i say 399 for my ring light i think it's really

interesting that we've now reached the point where ring lights which four years ago three years ago no one had heard of yes exactly that didn't exist that we knew of in a home in a home environment And now they're just there's probably unfortunately there's probably a landfill somewhere that's mostly ring lights like yes we have just gone from no one having it to everyone having it to a bunch of people being like I don't need that anymore to you scavenging one.

I don't think I buy a lot of stuff from thrift stores clothes or whatever and I never really think about the I rarely think about the journey of the thing that I'm buying but I really have been thinking about the journey of this ring light. Like, somebody bought this to make something, and I want to know what they were making. I want to know what this ring light saw, Luke, if this ring light could talk.

Can you put it on your, can you put it on that Reddit page you like, where you ask people questions and go, was this your ring light? Yeah, right.

You know, I'm going to make a TV show about a man, me, who touches ring lights and then, like, has, like, sort of a psychic experience where suddenly I kind of shake a little bit. And there's like a whirring color.

All the pain of all of the people who use that ring light to try to launch their content business.

Exactly. I can't do it too much, though, man. I'm losing my mind. It takes one year off your life every time you warg into that ring light. And I get a small little nosebleed.

Life is number one, you can be having so much fun, just remember that life is much fun, you can be nothing but one.

Checking my phone here, you didn't send me a picture of that bowl, did you? No, but I can. Okay, yeah, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing it. I don't usually look at my phone during the show and then sometimes after the show I'm like oh you sent me a bunch of stuff to look at and respond to I do see I missed a call from someone named Scam likely though I need to get back to them oh yeah

you should if you want to take a moment I could just handle things and you could talk to see who that is

yeah well here let me get into the blurs day see how they go and then maybe I'll make a phone call in the middle I'm keeping the blurs day list on my end today Luke not because it's especially short but because we have a little bit of like some connection issues here. And so I thought it might be easier if I read these and you react.

Are you okay with it? By the way, I just sent you that picture of the bowl and I was trying to write bowl pick in the subject line and I almost wrote bowel pick. Oh. But I want to make sure that when you get that, you know it's not a pick of my bowels. Yet you spelled 2-T-O. That seems strange to me. Words matter, Andrew. Yeah, this is the kind of bowl I was talking about. I'm profoundly depressed.

You know, the ones I was looking at online, they looked more like one tone. And when you said this bowl was two-tone I'm like what is there a design on it no no this is nice this is good the inside of the bowl is a darker color I think it might even be black very understated than the outside yeah and I do I that's a that's a nice flourish there to have it to be two-toned like that I like that

again November 27th is my birthday getting a birthday present come November if it's no we

can't have any more bowls in our house Genevieve keeps buying decorative bowls hers are now wait

a minute i mean we we need to get to these birthdays but i understand there to be a hard one-in-one-out policy for your coffee cups or mugs i should say does the same apply to the

decorative bowl no i mean listen because i understand why she likes them so much there's a very specific kind of bowl and i'm going to blank genevieve you're not here are you oh yeah come here for a second could you talk about your bowls genevieve's in the other room do you mind because there's a you're going to know exactly what these bowls are when i describe of them they're like kind of metallic but then in the inside they're kind of colored what is that kind of treatment of a bowl Genevieve I don't know if we have time to set up your microphone what kind of bowls are those that you are addicted to

the enamel bowls

yeah tell us about your enamel bowl sure

I found at some vintage store, I think the Fremont Market, this beautiful steel bowl, steel on the outside, but red enamel on the inside. And I just kind of got, I love bowls for some reason, and I started accumulating all these other enamel style bowls. I have these little Japanese ones that are wood with enamel on the inside. I have that black one that was very modern.

A very shallow one that might be green on the inside or something?

Yeah, I keep acquiring enamel bowls, and I have to stop.

Yeah, so Genevieve doesn't have headphones on. Any follow-up questions you'd like me to pass along, Luke?

Would she be okay with you instituting a one bowl in, one bowl out policy like your coffee mug?

How do you feel about instituting a one bowl in, one bowl out policy like you have instituted for me and my coffee mugs?

That coffee policy applies to both of us. And I haven't accumulated any bowls in a while

No, it's true

I have the black enamel bowl in the living room And the red enamel bowl in the other room And the orange enamel bowl in the TV room

We have something called the TV room But we need a better name for it I actually, I understand your addiction Like, they're very When you see them, it's hard not to buy them It's one of those kinds of products

They're also functional, right?

Oh, you said, by the way, that we got the bath mat at Wayfair And that's not accurate We got it at Society6, which is nicer, or should be, and is also more artist-driven. That's why I was so disappointed. I've got a lot of things at Society6, and usually the price point's a little higher, but the quality's very nice. And I'm with you. That bath mat, it's not at all what it looked like in the picture.

I was kind of hoping you hadn't heard that part of the show, because I didn't want to hurt your feelings. Genevieve helps me buy all these things, so then I don't want to be a jerk about them. But anyway, thank you, Genevieve. Thanks, Veeves. Veeves is going to go play with her bowls, she says. Hey, do you want to do a Blur's Day here? This is from listener Chris, who says, I'd like to send a Blur's Day shout-out to my lovely wife, Liz. She's not only a faithful 10, but also a wonderful wife and mother to our two girls, providing endless love and mom taxi rides to all activities. Wishing you the best on your Blur's Day. I love you, Liz. Cute. That wasn't Chris at the end.

That was me proclaiming my love for Liz, which is going to be. I don't know where my awe sound effect is today. So everyone just imagine that I'm saying awe when I hear a lovely message like that. Can you say awe? Awe.

Perfect. That sounds kind of sexual. She's mine. Lloyd in Bellingham says, sorry. I'm sorry that got so weird. I'm sorry. But for real, happy Blur's Day, Liz. Chris, sorry about ruining your message. Lloyd in Bellingham says, happy Blur's Day to Gavin, my wonderful Seattleite younger brother who's turning 25. I accidentally discovered that we both listened to this podcast and you were quick to establish your TBTL credentials of listening since the Cairo days while I merely started in 2021. I hope this year kicks butt. Let's get dad to buy us dinner soon. I love that. But also, this is really interesting. So two brothers both discovered TBTL at vastly different times in this show's existence, but neither one of them turned the other one on. I really want to know how Lloyd became aware of TBTL in 2021.

In Bellingham, yes, where my old ring light is.

Now, Lloyd is not one of the people that you used to run into in Bellingham, right? He doesn't work at the airport. I don't believe so.

And I don't even think if Lloyd started listening in 2021, I may not have even lived in Bellingham at that point.

Oh, right. good point yeah but that's really interesting and also I really hope your dad buys you guys dinner yeah go somewhere nice hey Paul the Brit 10 who we heard from on the show yesterday says it's an extra special Blur's Day for me because tonight I'll be watching Blur's Day bassist extraordinaire Tim Heidecker whoa performing at one of my favorite little venues in Leeds that's in Yorkshire not London also I'll be performing my debut solo hour show at this year's Brighton Fringe Festival. Hey, congratulations! As some of you may know, I perform under the name Saul Henry and my show is called Saul-a-lu-ya! So if any Brit-tens are in that

area, please go check out Paul slash Saul. Heck yeah! We need to talk about Tim Heidecker at some point, Andrew. Okay. This is maybe not it, but can we put that on the list of things? I'm not comfortable with how handsome Tim Heidecker

has now gotten. He's really growing yeah he's really it's really interesting this office hours live thing i watch it compulsively

on tiktok but i also don't know all the time how i feel about it and i don't know how i feel about tim heidecker being now like objectively a very handsome man object and just objectively cool Like he was always like a hero because he was really funny and weird and out there. And him and Eric Wareheim were doing strange things, but also really making themselves in these in their artwork, trying to make themselves as unflattering looking as possible. Right. Like taking their shirts off and pushing their bellies out and being gross and rubbing food all over everything like that was kind of a core sense of their humor. Now he's kind of getting older. He is touring as a musician as well as a comedian. And he's just, like, playing music with all the coolest people that we admire. He's playing cool music. He's being a cool dad. You know, he's often featuring, I think, his kid in this stuff. He's just, like, he's just eased into this phase of his life in this way.

It's like he's clearly gotten very fit. His hair looks nice. And Office Hours Live, I guess we're just having the conversation now. But he's, like, this is this kind of show that he hosts where he's just in. And it's kind of the backdrop looks a little bit like maybe TMZ or something like the TV version. It's got like a backdrop of, I think, like the Hollywood Hills or whatever. But he's just kind of running this show that's funny, but it's also somewhat sincere. And he just seems like he just seems like he's come out the other end of all of his weirdness and extremely kind of like, I don't know what the word is. He's I've never felt less. He's never felt less relatable to me.

Yeah, I know. And he's got his like producers and even who's his famous editor. I'm blanking on his name right now. Vic Berger. Vic Berger there live doing very strange, weird things on the fly live. He's got his little crew around him. It's really cool. It is cool. Happy Blur's Day. I don't like it. No. Peter says, Happy Blur's Day up to Port Townsend for my wife, Sherry, whose superpower is her wizardry with all things sewing related. But she also dearly wants to pet your dog. Much love on your special day. Happy Blur's Day, Sherry. Diane in Bozarts. Bozarts Village. Love it. Yeah. Says you can pronounce it Bozarts or Bozarts. Take your pick. Bo like bow and arrow. Happy Blur's Day to my daughter, Grace, in Ithaca. We are marking not only 30 years since I was lucky enough to become her mom, but also the fact that she's been a TBTL 10 for more than half her life now. Whoa. Oh, wow. We should have done studies on these people. Don't you think?

Like the impact of somebody like...

We want to say studies and these people.

You don't want to start referencing our audience as those people. You don't think that's a good look?

Those people while we're also talking about studying. No, fair enough. We should trap these people. We should leave out some kind of food, and when they grab it, a box falls over them. And then we study them. And then we bring them into a lab environment.

Grace, I'm going to give you three words. You respond to it. Most dangerous game. Let me know.

We should hunt these people. Grace, this guy's so dark, man.

Happy 30th birthday, Grace. Let's see here. Diane says, it must be that listening to TBTL all those years makes a person smart, kind, and just the right amount of snarky. And I love her for it. See, that's what I want to see. I want to control, and I want a TBTL listener. We say you listen for half your life. Like, what happens? What does it do? And it sounds like Diane is saying it makes you a better person, and I love that.

Anecdotally, we can say it turns you into a great person like Grace.

Exactly. Happy birthday, Grace. Give you a 15-minute head start. Anna says, happy stinking born day to my forever friend-o, Hauser. Luke, this is our boy, J-Dawg.

Aww.

that one was intentionally sexual I hope your day is filled with chicken wings and battle bots and like I tell all my 45 year old guys get your b-hole checked oh god that was sexual enough by itself thanks for sending that in and a happy blursday hauser hey dummies Chad the rookie 10 from Charleston South Carolina here as it happens I'm closing out my first year with the imaginary friends of a lifetime though I still have yet to rub elbows with a fellow 10. So I'd like to send a happy Blur's Day to me for my 50th Blur's Day this week. Maybe late to the game, but happy to be on the court. Thanks for all you do. Thanks for that, Chad. Happy Blur's, Chad.

Welcome to the whole situation here, whatever this is.

Enjoy the next four years because after that you're not a new listener anymore.

You'll never be able to go back to, you know, you can't be sort of pregnant, you know? It's that whole thing.

it's just like it's that whole like how many babies can you fit inside of a tire no it's a good question yeah it's a good question nick the perfect 10 says i want to wish the perfect daddy jake from chicago a very happy blurs day

Thanks for introducing me to the show back in 2009. It's been so long. I hope the cookie tax pays out on your Blur's Day from your son, The Perfect Ten. P.S. Jake and I both agree that the 4,000th episode of TBTL should be in Cleveland. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because I think Nick is still up in the northern Midwest. I think he's still in Minnesota, I think, and Jake's in Chicago to do a show in Cleveland. It's a meet-up point

It's kind of Yeah Golly now I mean That 4,000th show I mean I was I was off by like A couple hundred Or a hundred episodes Now that I know That we are like 90 Something like 98 episodes Away from it Yeah I know It's August Come up with a plan It's literally August I think I like to take August off Could you handle Could you host the 4,000th

Episode by yourself That's what the dream was

Like that stress dream That went so well Oh I can't remember my jokes Ben says

Happy birthday to Robin in Denver I hope your birthday is the best ever, and keep being nice to yourself. I agree. Be nice to yourself, Robin. It was good to see you all when we were down there in Denver. Hope you're having a great Blur's Day. All right, Luke, that's it. Those are the Blur's. Nice.

All right, happy Blur's Day to everybody out there being celebrated. I guess that's going to wrap it up for today, but we're going to be right back here tomorrow with another episode of this. I will once again be staring out on the greater Disneyland area. I'll be here in Anaheim, again, doing this TV story about the caskets. So we'll tell you. I have some filming to do this afternoon, which means I'll probably have plenty to talk about on that subject tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Thursday, everybody. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

goofy's voice is typically in a low to neutral pitch range we hear a real solid connection of the voice or as we talk about it here on voice breakdown he has a decent amount of compression you do not hear any air leaking when he speaks however he does have occasional breaks in pitch and compression in which his pitch raises quickly and the voice becomes breathy Hooy hopes, he's got hooy hopes. Also, we sometimes hear slight vocal fry in his lower pitches. Vocal fry is that crackling, popping sound you can make with your vocal cords. But for Goofy, this is a very solid vocal fry that effortlessly slides into his typical chest voice. Well, Max. Well, I don't know, Max. Well, those sound just like my vocal cords. Power out.