Muse

Five, six, seven, eight. Trident gum is the chewiest gum. Give it to your friends and chew it with your teeth. Your teeth are bones that live outside. They hang from your lips like bats. Oh, outside bones, outside bones. Never forget your teeth, outside bones. They're bones that you wash. And when you're a kid, they fall from your head. And to make things less weird, we say they got stolen by a demon. That's your parents. No! Trident!

In lieu of my usual audition piece, that was a jingle for gum I just made up. TBTL!

Hi there, my name is Nick. I'm looking to talk to Andrew Walsh. I'm from the New York Times Book Department. We're going to have to pass on your memoir entitled Cat with a Hot Dog Story. Thank you. Luke, it's carbs. Where you been, buddy? We miss you. We're all going to be hanging out tonight in a Stouffer's French Bread Pizza. Hope to see you there. Bye.

The man or beast that I run from ain't been born, and his mama's already dead. I know those words, but that makes no sense.

Hey, do you think you could be my funniness mentor? I could definitely be your funniness mentor.

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

Two bros, bro-ing it up

My name is Luke Burbank, I am your host

I'm as real as the streets

Coming to you once again from Southern California On the border of Westchester and Playa del Rey Where as we were preparing for the show I had queued up this audio to describe the weather

Man, it is nasty out there

Because we were having an atmospheric river, just dumping water here in Southern California. Then, like 10 minutes ago, the rain stopped and it got sunny out. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. But then one minute ago, the clouds came back and now it's raining again.

Man, it is nasty out there.

So, we're going to be all over the map here on this episode 3,905 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I really thought that I had, for once, made a correct life choice, which was part of why I like this hotel and this part of L.A. is because, as I mentioned yesterday on the show, I have my little jogging route here. And I look forward to it. It takes me pretty near the beach, takes me through some kind of cool beachy neighborhoods. And this morning, it was raining so much, I went down to the gym in the hotel. They only have two treadmills. A guy was using one of them, And the other was like permanently set on like some kind of incline, like it was going uphill and I did not want to be, did not want to be running uphill for the whole process. So I was sitting there trying to turn it down to 0% incline, which it was claiming to be on. And, uh, and then finally I just started running on it and I did like two minutes and I was like, no, this is not okay. And so anyway, when I noticed that the sun had come out, I thought I had really made a wise choice but now that it's raining again who knows I do know that there is a surprisingly popular tree in Tualatin, Oregon that is shaped like a male appendage

I think it's disgusting

and the people in the neighborhood seem to love it at least most people, someone did try to kill it by pouring salt at the base of it but according at least to this piece in the Oregonian uh it uh it's actually surprisingly popular for folks for being a six foot tall phallus um so we'll talk about that also speaking of private parts something happened to me at about 5 30 a.m here in the hotel that was like something out of a bad like 1980s teen comedy i wish i hadn't done that something i really did have one of those moments where I thought, I don't know what my next move is. I try not to have too many of those moments in my life anymore, but I had one this morning at 5.30. We'll talk about that. And then we'll try to get to this Sky Jinx news about how much peanut butter you can bring on the aeroplane. And of course, because the story involves the TSA and journalism, I'm not totally stoked about one of the lines in the article talking about the peanut butter top. I'd like to point out to anybody watching, this is really bunk journalism. Some of it has to do with my own hang-ups. Anyway, this is a guy who doesn't have any hang-ups at all. He is just here to chew bubblegum and entertain you. the tens of listeners and he's all out of bubblegum he's maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he is andrew walsh oh hey y'all said my name and he's joining me right now good morning

my friend good morning luke like you say i got no hang-ups i always say forever is composed of

nows uh-huh that's what i always say i made that up i love i i i find so much wisdom in the things that you say on this program do you find me to be a call i can't even say it yeah do you find me to

be do you find me to be a calming presence those are words that never even entered my brain before let alone came out of my mouth why they sounded fairly unnatural coming out of your mouth it was like a bowling ball dropping out of my mouth

Do you find me to be a 7'2 Nigerian basketball player? What's the most opposite thing of me that could possibly exist? Do I find you to be a calming presence? No, obviously not. That's a really great question. No, you don't. Well, I want to actually take a moment and I want to think about this. I do find you to be a calming presence when I have needed you to be a calming presence, Andrew. This is a true thing I'm saying to you, my friend and colleague. Like there, you know, there have been every once in a while a few bumps in the road here for me in life and for the show and for this and that and the other. And I have noticed that when the chips are down, you actually are a very calming presence. Now, the rest of the time, absolutely not. Just a goddamn wreck. But I don't want you to be a calming presence the rest of the time because then we wouldn't have a show. If you were like my former therapist, Lisa Weinberg, who was maybe, well, I don't know, the therapist, Tara, that I had in Bellingham, also a very calming presence. Like, if you were just super soothing and calming, I just don't think we would have the dynamism that tens of people turn to five days a week to listen to with interest. Like, I honestly think you and I both being sort of slightly agitated at all times, it generates more content than than if we were just like fine with everything.

I know I've brought I mean, yes, I mean, definitely from a show perspective, even though it's not my best traits, me getting really hung up about petty grievances is embarrassing, as that is to say, is a big part of the show, which is then sometimes when it piles up. But then sometimes I feel bad, like people are just calling in just with their petty grievances, which is like really I feel bad because I feel like I shouldn't be creating that atmosphere. But honestly, it's my radio dream come true. Just having a voicemail line filled with people saying what their damage is. As you know, that's been a that's been a dream of mine to have people calling in to a talk show, just talking about what what problems they have with their friends and neighbors.

Having said that, it's also just a it's a it's a naturally renewing resource. It really is In our life When people ask me Like well what do you talk about All the time I'm like You know There's always something That's got me a little bit A little agitated I mean and that's That's That's We could either I don't know We could either go Find someone who's been Wrongly imprisoned And do a show Exonerating them But that sounds like A lot of work I'd rather complain About the guy next to me In the gym Who wouldn't let me Use the treadmill That was lie flat

Well it's funny I was thinking the other day about a conversation we had on the show because you started a conversation by saying, hey, I recorded somebody in the gym and that's all I knew. And I even told you, just think carefully about what you're going to do here. There are a lot of social norms and rules about any kind of recording people when they're vulnerable in the gym. And I didn't know what you were getting at. All I knew is you recorded somebody in the gym. And any concern I had about privacy went right out the door. Like days later, I was like, oh, my God, wait, what was that thing again? Oh, yeah, there was some asshole on his phone, on speakerphone, having a long, loud meeting, yelling over the volume of the workout equipment as if he was the only person in the room, which is one of my biggest pet peeves in the world when people do that. And like the second you told me what it was, I was like, oh, yeah, oh, God, yeah, no, no, play that shit, play that shit, let's publicly shame. you know it's not about it wasn't about somebody in a moment of like um you know a vulnerable moment where they're trying to get their exercise on and they look embarrassed or something not that you would do that i just didn't know what you were talking about right no you're right there

are many signs at the gym about like not video certainly you get anywhere near the locker room there's a lot of signs for you know good reason any kind of any kind of recording of someone's behavior although i will tell you this there is also because i see it on like gym talk aka the tiktok feed that tends to be a lot of people at the gym and also when i go to the 24-hour fitness in port

And sometimes to play my little basketball games There is a whole culture Of filming yourself at the gym now It's almost the reason that many people Go to the gym So it's a complicated thing because It is both a place where you really should not be Videotaping Certainly videotaping anybody who is not aware They're being videotaped And yet everyone is videotaping themselves all the time So they can then put it on gym talk So there's kind of a lot going on

Yeah I see that sometimes At the gym here in Northgate But it happened, as you would guess, a lot more in L.A. Now it's so funny to think that I was in L.A. long before TikTok even existed. I mean, it's amazing to think it's almost been a decade. I mean, not to anybody but me. It's the passage of time. People are one of those things. It's kind of like dream talk a little bit, right? Like, can you believe Sammy is 11 years old? Yeah, I can believe it. Isn't this a Seinfeld bit, in fact? He's like, yeah, I can believe it. It's your kid, Sammy. Time moves in one direction. But when it's your own life, it just seems like the most. It's not one. I'm pretty sure I accidentally slipped into a Seinfeld bit that's probably been living in some dark corner or some corner of my brain for a long time. Not necessarily dark. But, yeah, anyway, when I was in L.A., TikTok didn't even exist. This is 2014, 2015. But obviously selfie culture certainly did. And, yeah, people would be, you know, taking their gym videos and gym selfies and all those things. and it was a you know again it was one of those things where we were just talking about you and I being cranky and in some ways judgmental and like I really had to shut off my because it doesn't hurt me in any way like I wasn't getting caught in their videos trust me these people did not want me in their videos it didn't affect me in any way it can affect people like if people are taking too much time on a piece of equipment that you want to use because they're like posing and flexing but that never happened to me it like gave me a bad feeling seeing people make these videos in the gym but then i had to remind myself this doesn't affect you this is their life and it's fine they can take all the selfies they want but i did have to fight the going into the judgment

zone on that stuff the on the subject of gym culture in la i'll tell you you really i mean that is one of the ways that los angeles distinguishes itself from any other place i have been like literally in the world people are really trying to be a certain look down here right like when i lived in la and people would be like oh la it's so fake and phony i'd be like well you just like maybe you visited the wrong part of la maybe you visited the especially fakie part or something because you know i lived in echo park and my neighbors were normal and i walked places so but when i come back here on a visit if you just get off the airplane at lax and just look around and you just go can someone please give me some kind of invisibility cloak because i cannot hang with just the like everyone here just seems like they're 23 and just walked out of some kind of instagram ad for some product and that on the subject of the gyms there's like gotta be at least five or six gyms in this part of west la i'm in that i've been going past on my little jogs and they're all full of people and i feel like you know in other cities what happens is i feel like a lot of people sign up for the gym you know at the beginning of the year i'm one of them and they go a bit and then what you see in a lot of cities are a lot of gyms that are maybe being sort of not they're not at full capacity most of the time i am struck by how many people in la are on some kind of treadmill or elliptical or whatnot at all times and then also in this hotel that i'm staying in it is just again I was having some dinner last night and I'm just looking around and I'm just it I feel very I feel very much like uh like I don't fit in with whatever this beautiful multicultural just I don't know somehow more perfect than me culture if or a bunch of folks which Andrew brings me to the horrendous events of early this morning so I'm going to try to explain uh the exact setup in my hotel room because it's a it's a little bit complicated but i'll try to i'll try to describe it clearly so the hotel room that i have here is actually pretty big it's actually two rooms and there is a door that goes from the hallway the shared hallway for all the rooms into a smaller hallway okay and you scan your key card on that outermost door and then you step in and then you have two more doors one goes to the room where i'm sleeping and you can scan your card and go in there and the other goes to this living room where i am currently where i'm broadcasting from are you kind of picturing that i think so so that you need key cards you need a key card to get through the whole thing you can also prop those inner doors open if you want or do whatever so this morning at like 5 30 or so i look over i'm just like still kind of sitting in

bed but i'm like kind of starting to get going on the day i'm

send some emails whatever and i look over and i realize there's a lot of light coming in through the interior door into the bedroom and i realize what has happened because it's happened before i didn't shut the outermost door properly um because uh it's kind of wonky and if you don't really make sure you shut it it can open itself and you wouldn't notice to the public this is the door out to the hallway where people are walking by exactly and so i stand up and i go oh okay I walk over, I open the inner door, and I step out, and I shut the outermost door and lock it, and the inner door closes behind me, and I am in, shit, only my underwear. No, no shirt, no, no shoes, no socks, no hope, and I realize that I am, I'm not locked in the hallway the outer hallway I am but I am locked I cannot get into my room I am locked in a small chamber between the outermost door I mean I can open that door if I wanted to I could open the outermost door and just start walking down the hall of this hotel basically almost naked but what I cannot do is open either of the doors to get back into the hotel room that I'm staying I am trapped in a tiny basically i'm trapped in a tiny hallway and this is the only time that i can think that this has happened andrew that i can say thank god i am addicted to my telephone because for some reason i still don't understand why i was carrying my cell phone i think maybe i was sort of half using it as a flashlight i don't know i mean i'm so messed up with my phone i think i just carried around like a security item if i'm walking to like close a door i carry it with me i shudder to think what would have happened if i did not

have the phone with me can i interrupt here for a second because i have some questions about this because this design is bananas first of all it feels like i guess it's an extra layer of security that need your key card to get from this little hallway back into like your one of your living spaces but essentially you've rented this place or whatever you've what do you do to a hotel room you've reserved this place you're staying there um it seems like this would happen a lot unless there's some place where it says like don't forget put your key card here like you're relaxed you're not carrying your key card this is this little mini hallway that you're trapped in is part of your private living space i feel like people would get trapped in here all the time was there i believe they do was there a phone um like if you didn't have your cell phone there wasn't like a courtesy

phone or whatever no which would be a really good idea they do have these little door stops and what happens when you and i i you know intentionally selected this room i really like this room and i always get it when i'm down here if it's available because again i like the idea of having uh a little bit of space to spread out i like having my little audio setup in another room that is not right where i'm sleeping i don't know i'm weird about that stuff but if you neglect to use the door stops to keep the interior doors open you're right it's a real there's a high probability of something like this happening so it's 5 30 in the morning and i'm like a there's zero chance i'm going downstairs like this zero chance i'm not like again i'm not in shorts okay I am in tighty whities, and that is it. And so I have to, first of all, go on the internet and get the phone number for the hotel. Like, because I don't know the number, and it's not easy to find, and I'm scrolling through the website, and it's just showing me the menu for the restaurant. And I'm also trying to psych myself up about how I'm even going to bring this up with the person at the front desk, right? Like, how do you convey you're not a complete creep? How do you convey this is this is not a prank like how do I act really serious do I act like oh my gosh you're not going to believe what happened like how do you what's the opening line when someone at the front desk is going to answer the phone at 530 a.m. and hear from you hi I'm essentially naked and locked out of my room I have I have theories about how they might handle this but I don't want to ruin the story.

So I'm going to write it down here on a piece of paper, and I will open the piece of paper when you are done.

I need you to seal that paper in an envelope and give it to Genevieve or Bingo.

I got a representative here from Price Waterhouse Cooper. Waterhouse Cooper. Yes, and they never mess anything up, so this should go well. Historically.

So I call, and it rings and rings and rings, and I'm like, please tell me that the front desk is staffed. Like, you know, sort of 24 hours. I mean, you would think it would. it's a big hotel it's a nice hotel like i didn't really think that there like there was no one there but i also thought they could be on lunch break or something like and finally after many rings it gets picked up and i think paraphrasing here i said i have an extremely weird situation which after i said that i thought oh she definitely thinks there's a dead person in the room like i 5 30 a.m hi i have an extremely weird situation that sounds like um we're ringing

the silent alarm it could have been worse you could have said i have an extremely weird situation I'm going to need all the ice you can muster I need so much ice up here Right now, stacked How much lie do you keep Just

How much lie does housekeeping generally keep around

I was going to say you are kind of Walter White-ing it In your tighty-whities So that would fit in well, yes

God, I would kill to have Walter White's bod Anyway So I go And I'll just mention too As with practically everybody that works at this hotel it is a young woman it's a young woman in her probably like mid-20s right and i'm like hi i have a very weird situation i'm in room you know whatever and i said and she goes uh-huh and i go i um realized that i had left the outer door open and i stepped out to close it and the inner doors closed behind me and now i can't get back in and i was trying to hold off on telling her that i was basically naked but then i realized well if i'm not basically naked then why don't i just come down to the front desk why am i calling her over this whole thing right so then i had to say and you know i was i was sleeping and so i don't have i don't have appropriate attire on is how i put it and she goes well um i said i need someone to please bring a key card up and i'm just gonna reach around the door and get it from them i'm also trying to indicate to her that no one's gonna have to see nudity if they come up here right like she goes well i'm not allowed to leave the front desk and i'm the only person here and i'm like well i'm you're gonna need to make an

exception how is there only i mean i understand that we need to have make concessions and be but like they have a one employee at the like what if a television it's really early in the

morning i'm like right now it is 5 5 30 a.m you know if it's right now if i went downstairs there's like eight people yeah i did kind of that's got to be there's an overnight person presumably i

feel like there must be at least one person who's there in case they're like like a mechanic or not

a mechanic but somebody there was a valet so what she said was i was like she was like your mate you might be in there for a while and i was just like that's not an acceptable answer i didn't say that to her but i'm thinking like me being in here for a long time is not gonna be okay um but i was like there's got to be some way to do it she goes i can't leave the desk she goes well we do have a valet and if if he's not picking up cars which i'm guessing it's also a fairly busy moment for him because this is about the time when people are probably this airport or this hotel is really close to the airport it's probably a good significant number of people who are going to the airport to uh you know catch their flight so she's like it might be a while and i was like okay well i go uh do you have this number in the caller id she goes yeah i go can you please call me when you know that the valet or someone is gonna be able to bring me something a key card and she goes yeah so anyway i'm sitting in there for like luckily it wasn't it was probably 15 or 20 minutes and I'm just like reading the New York Times Nate Cohn's take on what the political fallout of Trump being indicted might be etc and it's not the worst situation in the world but I also it is kind of a little you know liminal the space because I just don't know what's gonna happen I'm tempted to call her again but I don't want to I'm thinking like if I call her again do I annoy her so that she then is actually like trying less hard to get me some help or am I Becoming a kind of a problem that she needs to Solve so she's going to go back out and ask the valet Hey can you really go help this guy But I'm waiting I'm waiting I'm waiting and then Finally I get a call on my phone From the hotel and she's like okay the valet Is on the way up and I'm like oh my god thank you so Much and then she laughs Andrew

About how much time About how much time passed just she can

Hear the relief in my voice and She can hear like she's finally In a position where she can laugh about the situation Because it's being remedied I think

no no but how much time were you in this antechamber 20 minutes okay which let me just

tell you feels longer when you're in the condition that i was in like it's also bright light you can't there's no light switch it's a funky design what this hotel used to be i think it was dormitories for loyola maramount university it was something else and then they made it into a hotel and it's a hotel that I really love but it does have quirks like this whole setup

So, like, you can't even turn the light off. I think the light might be in the hallway or, I mean, the outer hallway that I wasn't going anywhere near. So about 20 minutes go by and then I can see there's a there's a like a peephole. There's a like little thing you can look out and see into the hallway. And I'm looking out there to try to see when the valet is coming up and valet is marching up. And now I'm trying to get my my tone of voice together for this guy who I'm going to like. he's gonna just approach this door and then just like a hand like freaking thing from the adams family just gonna come around the door and get the key card so i'm trying to think of how i can be kind of funny but also not weird with him and you know like i don't know what he is expecting to find when he comes up here right like what what was he told the situation was um somebody is naked and afraid yeah certainly key card so he comes up and i am like i open the door just the tiniest bit and i reach around i'm like oh my god thank you so much dude oh and i'm like kind of laughing and i'm like over apologizing and he just like hands me the key card and then just like turns around and walks away does not say a word which i don't know if it's just that he was annoyed that he had to do it or if there was a slight language barrier although this person also works as the valet so there would presumably be needing to speak enough english to help out with folks that are getting their cars back like but it was like it did i didn't get the sense that this was the best part of this person's day which is reasonable i guess i thought maybe they would think it was kind of funny like has this i mean again this is the kind of thing that happens in a movie where the person steps out of their room the thing shuts behind them and then they have to Use the cloche from the room Service trolley as the thing To cover their junk Although there was no room service In this hotel I was going through My options like Could I Pull a curtain down from there was No curtains could I try to like there was no The housekeeping wasn't out yet like because I could Have maybe grabbed a towel or a sheet like There was nothing Between me and the Front desk of that restaurant that could be used To cover my shame

mm-hmm okay bunch of things so is that what you predicted the solution was what i thought so i think i had a different sense of this hotel i think i'm starting to get a better better feel for this now um i thought it was more of a luxury hotel and this sounds more like like one of those um kind of like you telling me that it was like kind of old dormitories and they were kind of refashioned like this is a hotel with like kind of a lot of character um but not necessarily always the newest technologies although i'm sure it's pretty i'm sure it's pretty i'm sure it's pretty hip to technology but basically i thought for sure they were going to say oh okay well just download the app and you have you can unlock the door using because a lot of hotels now i think have like key cards that can also be like you know on your phone yeah it's not one of those even

though it is in the bonvoy family andrew but oh it is that would have been a lifesaver yeah it's But it's kind of hard to explain, but it's not enough in that family. Like if I stay at the Westin in Seattle, they're trying to send me a digital key like three days before my stay. Yeah, I know that. This is somehow not quite there with that. But you're right. That would have been an amazing solution.

Because especially I just want to go back again to just reiterate what shitty design this is. I mean, you can't be the first person that this happened to. Do they have a bunch of suites like this or is this like kind of one suite that you always ask for?

i think they have a they definitely have a few of them i don't know how many exactly

i feel like this um this must happen again they should they should have a little sign don't forget your key card they should have one of those things where you know um sometimes they have little i'm trying to think we had one of these one of those hotels we stayed in in australia even like you kind of you have to leave the key card in a little slot that hangs off the wall sort of in order to so that things work in order that oh that's right it keeps the lights on and everything That would be a good way of doing it, like forcing the issue so that there's a key card out there or having digital key cards or something along those lines or at least maybe some some signage that isn't going to be too intrusive or gross from a personal standpoint, though. I mean, in all seriousness, in all seriousness, this explains tonight pants, whatever I thought of that look like. And I'm not saying that I'm not I'm not saying that like you are doing it wrong. I mean, ninety nine percent of Americans are comfortable in their skin and in their underwear when they're alone and they can wander around a hotel room. But, like, you would just never, and this is exactly why, like, this is the scenario that I'm worried about, that, like, I'm.

I'm just kicking it in my underwear. This man, who has two thumbs and never kicks it in his underwear? This guy.

God, I wish we still had someone pulling audio from this program. That's a pretty good drop.

And then I get obsessive, right? And I don't even wear sweatpants or whatever. Like I, the, the long held story on the show is that my version of tight pants are some sort of old pants that at one point could have been worn outside as outerwear, but are just like oversized or old or soft or whatever, a pair of chinos that I've been wearing for a long time.

But that perfectly describes me, oversized, old, and soft.

Well, that's what the lady at the front desk said. But that's what the valet said. So anyway, this is exactly it. Like, do you remember, I'm sure I've said this to you before. I haven't shaved my face in a long time because I have this beard, but when I used to shave daily, I would shave in a way, and I would shave in the shower, by the way. An English teacher in high school suggested that if you shave, shave in the shower. I guess it wastes water, but it's a nice experience. I would always shave in the shower, but I would always shave in a way that I would shave something first, and I would always do it symmetrically so that if a fire alarm or something went off and I had to run out into the street, It wouldn't be like, why is half your face shaved and half your face? It's like, no, I shaved underneath here, and now I just have long sideburns and a mustache. You know what I mean?

You were keeping it all normal looking in case you had to run out.

Wow, that is a lot of planning. Now, it was somewhat subconscious or somewhat knowing, I guess. I can't explain it. I don't think that every time I took a shower. Oh, by the way, Luke, I have a question for you. Do you find me to be a calming presence? Oh, Mr. Careful Shave? Yes, I'm greeting my way through the shower, hoping that a fire alarm doesn't go off. Mr. Worst Case Shave Nario?

What?

Like, if a fire alarm happens, I got to make sure that these mutton chops look okay.

Mr. Housewide. I'm Mr. Roomwide. I never leave the room. I go into every part of the room. Mr. Roomwide. Anyway, I mean, that was somewhat, like, knowing and somewhat, like, just OCD-ish and whatever. but I would do that I would shave in a way like just in the back of my head almost like a game like okay we'll shave under here first and this then this like because you don't want to be a half-shaven man when you have to stand out in the street and they're hosing the apartment building down which is such a dark thought but yeah so I'm paranoid exactly and like you telling the story just like kind of reiterates and reinforces my desire to never be caught even without shoes on

well it's funny because i i usually wear like maybe shorts and a t-shirt or something but there's a i have a whole temperature situation between the temperature how the temperature in the room feels when i'm falling asleep and how the temperature in the room feels once i've been asleep for a while i'm sure there's like um a medically explainable reason for this like i think we do our bodies maybe generate heat while we're sleeping or something so i had i had been clothed more clothed than i was and then i woke up and i was hot i didn't feel like going over and dealing with the thermostat in a hotel room in the middle of the night so i was just you know yeah i i i was i was less clothed than i normally would be but you're right i did i want you to know Andrew that maybe not as I was standing in that little chamber um but pretty short like once I got back in the room or once I thought oh we're probably gonna talk about this on tbtl I thought this is exactly why the tonight pants system was instituted all those years ago for an for a moment

just like this yeah you know what they should have I mentioned before they should have a place where you keep the key card they should have signage what they really should have is a pair of chinos behind glass and you you break the of tonight pants break glass in case of emergency i don't

know what was more embarrassing though the fact that i didn't have i think the fact i didn't have a shirt on was more embarrassing than no pants i think if i just had like a t-shirt on i could i could survive that indignity i think it's i think it's the madness that is my upper torso So that was actually more troubling for me for that to be on display. And also, again, not that it should matter, but let me just mention that everyone else in this hotel looks like they just walked out of some fashion week. It's the most – I mean, you're right. It's not a – I don't think I'd call it a luxury hotel, but I would call it a very stylish hotel. and somehow that you know if i'm at the lake if i'm at a hyatt in uh you know abilene or something i feel like well it happens and it ain't nothing that they haven't seen before i don't know i would have one One, I wouldn't feel great about it. But this is especially a bad place for me to be in this predicament.

It's an interesting question. I would – so here, the situation is exactly the same. You don't know if somebody is going to peep you or not as they're giving you the card. You're just embarrassed or whatever. So you're just feeling anxious about this. But you're not just in your underwear. You are either in jeans, no socks or shoes, no shirt, or a T-shirt, tighty-whities, nothing below that. It's so much more socially acceptable to be shirtless, like even if we're not proud of our bodies. And, you know, the usual caveats here. I know that people should not be ashamed of their bodies. I happen to be ashamed of my body. I don't know how to say that in a way that doesn't make other people feel bad. Like if you have a body of any shape and you're proud of it, you don't feel shame. Good. you are a healthy person that's how it should be i'm me and i carry around a lot of shame i carry around a lot of stuff do you find me to be a calming presence um so louder for the people in the back so having said that like it is what it is and while it's so much more socially acceptable of course to be without a shirt on i mean you would go swimming without a shirt on you do all kinds of things and even being in a hotel room with jeans and no shirt like very i mean if i was matthew mcconaughey i wouldn't think twice about it i'd probably i'd be like how can i take off take off more you know but um no i would definitely i would definitely want to be if i was in that situation i would take the pants over the shirt i would too but i would be more embarrassed

but i think that the the thing is that the because of how our culture works the not having pants on would be more more troubling and maybe legally liable um for like the person at the front desk so even though i would be more ashamed of my because i have okay legs that's the thing these gams these getaway sticks you know i've gotten some compliments on them before particularly for being at the ripe old age of 46 so i would be much more embarrassed about my upper body but it would be more troubling from on a kind of you know whatever you want to call it level to not have pants on so i would take a higher level of embarrassment and a lower level of sexualization for the person who was trying to help me and i really was thinking like before i had the notion to call downstairs i was just also just like what happens because you know it's early i didn't actually think there was going to be so many people active in the hotel but i just thought i gotta go get in the elevator i gotta take the elevator down to the ground the lobby level i gotta walk through the lobby i gotta approach the person at the front desk what is that moment of approach like for for her or for them for whoever was going to be that was the part that i was also really just like this is it's going to be like the sixth sense or something does that movie start off

with someone's like naked and wet i've literally i've literally only seen the end of that movie which is an irony of life i'm not even joking i went to a drive-in theater i think it was the first time i went to a drive-in theater in college i want to say and we were there to see something else but we parked we saw we saw the end of the sixth sense before our movie started which is

funny i would have gone i think i made this exact mistake by the way i think i made this exact mistake last time it came up i think i constantly confused 12 monkeys oh and the sixth sense in that i think at the beginning of 12 monkeys bruce willis's character is like naked and wet and confused and shivering yeah shivering because he's been like time traveled somewhere um or something and um i don't think that's how the sixth sense opens yeah once again i've i've

i've embarrassed myself and the program uh i embarrassed myself because i couldn't say the name of that movie without i the sixth sense i find that very hard to say i'm yeah that is actually yeah and i was i was a lispy kid growing up um okay so first of all i want to say something and then when i have a moment of reflection and then i want to take a break and then i want to do dazzling donors i want to do top stories i love this i love you i love you being the alpha go for it okay so um for real putting myself in that situation not that you asked um given all the information that you had and if i you know was was in the state of dress that you're in although it's hard to imagine me being in that state of dress uh and i don't recommend it um i uh i would have gone hours i would have gone hours and hours and hours i would have texted you and said you know luckily i have a decent amount of capital with you i'm not like often blowing off work you know i don't take a lot of sick days or whatever yeah so if i just told you i'm in an emergency situation here i'll explain it later but i can't do the show you got to figure this out or we're doing the show this afternoon like i would just say like like i i i would have to emotionally and mentally resign myself to the fact that i may be in this little antechamber for hours and hours but it would it would have to be like i'd have to start hallucinating from

hunger before i would before you would start wandering the hotel yes in in in that date and i'm not kidding like i would i believe oh i believe you for a long long time um by the

way they just find your skeleton he died as he lived yeah very very ashamed yeah but he looks

good as a skeleton oddly actually honestly have you lost weight like wow good bone structure um here's the here's i guess kind of the moment of reflection um in all seriousness and i i almost I hope the answer is going to be no, because, listen, you were a normal person doing normal things in a normal hotel room. You know what I mean? Like, people should be comfortable chilling in the state that you were chilling in, in the privacy of your own chamber. Like, that is fine. All of the joking I'm making is about how I go through life is obviously pointing out that I'm weird about this stuff. Having said all of that, do you think that this experience is going to change your behavior in any way or at least change the way you think in any way?

yes because andrew it's almost happened to me before not in this hotel but like in you know i ordered um some food for the room and but now it's like it's all it's mostly finished but there's some leftovers and it smells you know kind of like food and i want to put it out in the hallway i can specifically remember a few and i'm maybe you know it's late at night and whatever i'm like i look out and make sure there's no one around and i just put this stuff in the hallway i will do a move and again i'm not always like just in my underwear but i'm probably it has happened where i'm stepping out into the hall but i'm leaving one foot back so that the door hits it and i'm putting out my like again typically some kind of food related left maybe i door dash something to the hotel and i just don't want the box of whatever you know pizza box in there and i've had the thought a couple times if i misgaged how far back my heel needs to be to stop the door like in other words this is a worse version of this has almost happened to me a few times and i remember having thoughts in those moment like oh hey you should be really careful with this because you're about to be in some kind of episode of bosom buddies or something you're like you know what i mean like you're just i'm just going on faith that my back foot is sufficiently in the doorway still that the door will hit it and not close like i i have been somewhat cavalier with this stuff in my life and i think i'm going to be less i don't think i'm going to dress differently in the hotel room but i think i'm going to really think twice before i get anywhere near a locking door in this scenario because this was a this was a pretty extreme version of this and i just i can't see it not affecting my behavior going forward just of being extra triple careful about what i'm doing because it was again i can't overstate this when the door shut behind me and before i realized i was just clutching my cell phone i mean there was a moment there was probably two seconds where i was like i have no options here like other than to walk downstairs like those i mean i pushed on both doors i let out some kind of weird like oh and i just really thought like i have no i and then i looked in my left hand i was like oh well there's the phone well thank god you're addicted to that thank god you're watching a 93 year old guy on tiktok a choreographer which is literally what i was watching who passed away this weekend and they were it was a video of him uh talking inspirationally about how he lived his life or something i was like thank god for this addiction because there's no good reason this phone needs to be in my left hand right now but anyway there was a moment of time where i didn't realize i had the phone and i just thought i'm in a lot of trouble so that is uh that is my answer to your question is yes it is probably going to affect my uh my behavior going forward which is probably not a

bad thing you know i'm just remembering and that was a perfect place to end it so why don't i continue it and then we can end on an awkward note later um i am remembering now as you're describing this at a very young age i saw on television my mom would watch soap operas like kind of you know i grew up in the 80s it was your very classic kind of situation my mom would watch um days of our lives i believe and the hospital one general hospital and i'm pretty sure and i like it was on enough that i think i had some opinions about them i think i liked general hospital more than like as the world turns i don't know what was going on in general hospital but it appealed to kids more i think that's what they put in their in their marketing materials But I think there was an episode where somebody was caught outside or in public somewhere naked. In fact, I wonder if this stuck with me because maybe it was even a little bit titillating in a certain way. But I feel like maybe it was a situation where somebody was skinny dipping or doing something outside.

that was, like, a little bit nude, a little bit naughty, no big deal, but then somebody stole their clothes as a prank. And I'm just now remembering, and I'm pretty sure it was a fella, although I'm not 100% sure of that, and they were, like, kind of sneaking around and, you know, doing clever editing as this person is, like, probably trying to, like, sneak past, I don't know, like a Japanese curtain, and then somebody with a surfboard walks by. I don't know what exactly is going on. And I wonder if that put the fear of God in me. Honestly, I'm being quite serious about that. I wonder if I planted some sort of paranoia seeds in my head.

Well, do you have that stress dream that is the classic of being unclothed in public? No. Interesting. Yeah, it is, sort of, because I talk about this. Because I do have that one, and I think I'm a little bit less shy about this stuff than you are but i do have in fact that was almost a thing that went through my head this morning was like i didn't think it was a dream but i was like this is real life this is happening because my version of that stress dream is it's always that i find myself going through kind of my sort of normal day or normal life or you know outside life and then it's only when i'm already out there and have been doing things that i realize i'm i'm i'm naked and that's the real stress is like i've now got to get back so i've got to find somewhere i can hide away and get some clothes or whatever but it's that moment of realization that like oh my god i'm at like college but i'm naked you know which is a very common dream for people it's interesting you don't have that dream

i wonder if it's because it's on my mind and again i'm trying to make it sound like i walk through life constantly thinking boy i'm glad i'm not naked here but i wonder if it's because the rest of us do about me um that was a mean joke people at home depot were like god that guy's not naked um but um i uh i wonder if like what did you say you quoted a rick and morty um saying that i didn't know the other day about like when you're dreaming it's your brain oh big fat brain looking

for big fat problems or something chewing on some big fat problems or something you know the only

problem here is a big fat brain that misses eating all them big fat problems oh that's why you know

i didn't know it was a drop like maybe it's like maybe when we're we're sleeping it our brains work out things that are even more subconscious sort of and maybe like this is one that like my body is like he knows this lesson like he doesn't he did we don't need to reinforce this

one like sleeping all the things that we need to worry about this is this is a man who's constructed his life in such a way that this is not going to happen so let's get on to some other stuff yeah

I graduated with honors on that topic.

Magna cum laude. All right. We should take a quick break here. Then we're going to thank some Dazzling Donors. I have no idea where we are in space and time for doing the top stories, but we'll try to get to a couple of them real fast here. On TBTL. Stay with us.

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 folks are making TVTL possible with their very generous monthly donation. It is legitimately, despite what you may have heard from the Carvana Company, it is legitimately the only way we're able to keep doing this five days a week. This is how the soup gets made. It's thanks to folks like, hey, it's Lee Lambert, pronounced Worcester. in Shoreline, Washington, our friend Lee. Lee says, I am the primary 10 in the house now. Oh, that's interesting. So we've lost some Lamberts in terms of our listenership. Some lost Lambert listeners. Because we had, I believe, Lee's wonderful wife was at least very aware of the show. One of the kids told us to talk about Poop Less, I believe.

Yeah, and less Game of Thrones references, too, if I recall. We had a good feedback session at the picnic.

Well, we've narrowed it down to our, we know who our real fans are.

It's Lee

Lee says TBTL mostly happens to Adrian and the kids When they are in the car with me for long drives I began listening to TBTL in the AM radio days On my way home from grad school Luke I would like to apologize For not turning left from Aurora On to 105th to join one of the early TBTL events At the rickshaw I believe I would have been the only person to show up That night if I had You're close Lee My memory I think the first night that we did the show we had a celebration party but I think that was at a place called Bandits on Lower Queen Anne and no one showed up and then at the end of the week we had a party at Sunset Lanes and two people showed up so you could say that's a 200 percent increase uh over the course of the week but it was slim pickings in those early days did you ever do anything at the rickshaw i mean as a tbtl i know you've been to the rickshaw it's possible we've done a meetup or two there i mean we've had a lot of things and a lot of times at those things i've been you know kind of enjoying myself a little bit but um i mean certainly the rickshaw is a central central part of the lore of tbtl regardless of how many events we've had there um uh lee says uh i am lucky to serve as the executive director of the cascade bicycle club the nation's largest bike club i know that whenever cycling particularly cycling in the kind of urban landscape comes up on this show we often get a very informed you know email from lee clarification facts figures i mean this is lee's this is lee's whole raison d'etre is the the world of of cycling i'd like fellow tens to consider swapping one car trip for a bike trip once a week for a month it will be good for the environment and your mental and physical health it will also make you a safer driver that's an interesting

that's very part of it that's very not thought of it's um you know i'll interject here quickly if you don't mind lee speaking of like just being a very important person in this community but also just being one of the most helpful people in the world uh was reaching out to me when i moved in this neighborhood and i had been kind of right writing those rent-a-bikes around and he said you know let's you know if you ever want to you know really invest in a bicycle let me be your guide and you know kind of he sent me some long emails with a lot of great information about the type of bikes you know like e-bikes that would fit me best and stuff and uh for now i've had to put pause on that project because um those things are very pricey and i'm going to maybe return to it later all all of that um is to say on those occasions when i was renting bikes last summer and kind of tootling around town like you really really feel how close cars and stuff are to you like i mean when i'm driving in the car i'm very cognizant of that anyway but man you really can get a sense of the vulnerability that cyclists have when you take a moment to ride a bicycle

in traffic yeah i agree with lee's sentiment that it would be a good thing for everybody to um you know if their their bodies allow for it to get out there and do some cycling just so that the next time if you're driving you're kind of in that headspace a little bit uh if you are a 10 that bikes and wants to explore luke and andrew's hometown come up and ride the seattle to portland bike ride july 15th and 16th you can register at cascade.org but if you see them in the wild you know the rules thank you lee um i i i don't know i mean i i aspire to do that stp ride at some point i'm not a particularly cycle-y person i think my uh my my bike is still in like a storage locker in bellingham my trek that i bought because it was like old kind of looks like an old like a bike you'd ride in france with a baguette lashed to the back of it in you know the 1960s or something i bought it purely for its looks which means it weighs about 3 000 pounds and

doesn't i'm now remembering this yeah you called it your cruiser or something did you get this in

port townsend i did i i bought it drunk in port town what tipsy carrie and i had been out for some kind of brunch situation i'd had maybe like two drinks and not i mean enough i was with it enough that i could pilot a bicycle went into the local bike shop there i don't think we even lived in port townsend at the time and then i was riding this bike and it was so i loved the look of it and it was it was a great ride out of the shop and it wasn't actually that expensive so i bought it um but anyway point is uh lee makes a good point we should all uh if we can uh give a little more thought to cycling and try to do mother nature a little bit of a favor thank you lee i think the

The real point is, if you own a bike shop, make sure you open it next to a bar or two, because it's really going to help business. I mean, it certainly worked for me.

I mean, although you're going to want to give out helmets for those test drives. Yes, you are. You have people stumbling in, as I was. Maestro?

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

Hey, we've also got to thank Dazzling Donor Danielle Robbins in SeaTac, Washington. Danielle says, hi friendos I've been listening to just Oh, just shortly after Andrew became a co-bro And I haven't looked back since Look at that, Andrew Do we have a term for people that have only known the show In this particular configuration?

Fuzzy end of the lollipop No, come on now

We have to call them longest running co-tends Longest running, you know I mean, many, many, many, many more shows Have existed with it being you and I Than ever in the other days uh

Daniel says, y'all make my workday so much better. Keep those way past the river shows a-coming. Ha ha. I wouldn't be a millennial without taking a second to promote my YouTube channel. If you love crafts and nerdy pop culture, you might like my channel. You can find me at YouTube.com slash Parajetta. Parajetta. So Perry Jetta, P-A-R-E-J-E-D-A, and then Danielle writes, it's a long story. So one more time, YouTube.com slash Perry Jetta. How do you say it, Andrew? I like how you said it better.

Perry Jetta?

Yeah, I think that's how you'd say it. Perry Jetta. And the TikToki under the same name. Okay, so I'm guessing if you put Perry Jetta into any social media, you may find Danielle there.

Yeah, I want to mention, I follow Danielle on, and maybe I shouldn't mention this, if she's not promoting it here, maybe she's de-emphasizing that, but on Instagram as well. So, like, I get to see a lot of her projects and everything that she does via Instagram under that same handle, and she is amazing. Luke, you might remember we met Danielle during the TBTL holiday party on Zoom this past December, and she made an amazing gingerbread house that had levels upon levels upon levels. Yes. I mean, we are talking talent that I can't even wrap my head around here. I would seriously encourage people to check this out.

I'm on this Instagram page, and I'm very impressed. Yes. So there you go. So, YouTube.com slash PerryJetta and other places using the same handle. Now, to finish up with Danielle's message, I always do love it when you guys mention YouTuber-related content. If you need a YouTube correspondent to explain the Mr. Beasts and the Try Guys of the world, I'm your gal. Actually, that's a really good idea.

That's not a bad idea. Actually, we could really use a correspondent on that stuff.

yeah because it's just it's an age thing or at least it's something with my age that because obviously i look at youtube plenty it's a very very popular platform but i don't it's weird i don't go to youtube for original content i go to youtube to watch an snl sketch that i remember seeing from five years ago right like i go to youtube to watch things that i'm already aware of and be reminded of them which is a different way of consuming that sort of content than going there for my original even though if you talk to anyone certainly any of my nieces nephews anybody under the age of 20 and even people older than that that youtube is a content place for them to go and their favorite people are mr beast or the try guys or you know whoever out there on youtube like they it's a place where people are following all kinds of of you know influencers And storylines and characters But it's still kind of a mysterious world to me

I'm sorry to take it here But I can't stop myself from mentioning this I listen to the Dan Lebitard show quite a bit I told you that they release five different versions of their podcast a day Like different chunks and whatever And I'm just very much in the habit of listening to that While I play darts, while I do dishes, while I putter around And it's really the soundtrack to my life these days i know that they're constantly making references to them being kind of live on youtube and there are things that they talk about that are visual but like as a listener you just go along with it like you don't necessarily need to see it things are just sort of implied you get a sense of the space around them yesterday luke i was doing my fantasy baseball draft don't ask it'll probably then don't tell but anyway and i was sitting here and i'm like all tense in my office it's quiet i'm just like there i'm just like i don't know i get very are you in the same league that you and i started out in yes and i bailed on exactly so this is my third draft um and anyway i still kind of don't know what i'm doing and i'm futzing my way through it and like it was at eight o'clock and i spent the first like few hours before that like kind of prepping for the draft the best i could i'm just kind of dumb about this stuff anyway um i'm sitting in my office and i'm just like realize i'm like 40 minutes into the draft and it's complete complete silence except for the bings and bongs that the draft thing alerts me to and i'm like i need some audio and i'm like oh i'll just put on lebitard i can just do that they're on youtube right so i turn to my other computer and this is where i'm going with all of this it is a completely different show like it is so produced for YouTube it is more of a YouTube product than I ever knew they're putting b-roll in when they're talking about certain stories there's like various places in the studio you know Luke that people get sent to the penalty box and that's a whole thing that's got a camera on it like it is such a I we're

realize that i always thought that it was a podcast that you could watch on youtube no i've been listening to a youtube show all this time it is astounding that's not shocking for me to hear

because that show was a tv show and it was i thought a really a good you know version of those kinds of shows which have become sort of there's a trope around these sports talk shows that then they turned into tv shows there's always like 8 000 tchotchkes you know yes still the same studio so they're still in the same place

I heard that they're going to move but yeah they just bought the studio from ESPN oh wow

well Danielle your first assignment that's your first YouTube assignment sounds like he's on the journey for himself but yes Danielle that's a good idea we may lean on you next time we have a YouTube question Danielle says anyway thanks for being the number one podcast I keep trying to get my friends to listen to y'all are the best and danielle adds i do drive a yaris and yes it is as great as it sounds

yaris yaris yaris i added that last part do not get rid of that yaris i think they stopped

making yarises right yari i don't know i mean again youtube and yarises two things i just don't know that much about i love thanks danielle i love a yaris Hello and welcome to Top Story. Becca sent me this article from The Oregonian about a tree in Tualatin, Oregon. Hold on, let me reach back and grab my little printout on this. That I was kind of surprised the way that this article unfolded. This was Michael Alberti writing in The Oregonian. This Oregon shrub is NSFW, stops traffic in Portland's suburb. And it's basically the story of this woman named Lynn Stanek, who is a has lived in Tualatin, which is a suburb of Portland for a good while, 24 years. And she had this tree, which was it's called an Arbor Arbor Vita. I always have a hard time saying Arbor Vita, I think. One of my least favorite trees, by the way, of all time. I feel like they are just they're they're the worst and because they're they're ubiquitous. And the reason they're ubiquitous is because they're affordable and they grow fast. And many, many people buy them and many construction projects buy them to just, like, create, like, a barrier tree. We have a whole bunch of them between us and the neighbors. They're just not – I used to have at the house in Bellingham had a bunch of them. And they're just – I don't know why they feel like the equivalent of something – they feel like not like an interesting, beautiful tree to me. They feel like a kind of slightly alive visual barrier that I see planted around. that's just personal taste um but i guess you know she'd had this tree living in her yard for a good while and she had been you know trimming it uh you know however frequently she did kind of taking care of it and she had always had the thought what if i just because they're they're they're kind of they grow tall and you know what was the what would the term be cylindrical like she had been trimming this tree for a long time and i was always thinking what if i just only trimmed it the the lower portion of it and then left a kind of let's just call it mushroom like area on top so that it very much looked like a circumcised male penis and i guess a few years ago she said she told the oregonian i was um i was uh 90 of the way there as i was trimming and i thought why not today um so she before she finished this which she now calls this the chub shrub she pulled her neighbors to see how they would feel about having a penis tree pop up in their cul-de-sac her immediate neighbors thought it was a fine idea her other neighbors seemed to think she was kidding but nobody basically said don't do it and so she just went ahead and did it and

shaved this tree or trimmed this tree into the shape of a of a circumcised phallus and what's wild to me andrew is that according to this article anyway everybody in the neighborhood like loves it people decorate it with lights around christmas time one woman said that her sister who was terminally ill like her favorite thing was driving by this tree and like laughing at whatever was going on with it they now decorate it not just for major holidays but for like kind of those made-up holidays like on world vasectomy day um they put a giant pair of scissors and a bag of frozen peas on it um uh also on international piña colada day she puts a sign up that says penis colada day

Again, the shocking thing because we played a story years ago on this show about somebody who made a big phallus out of snow and the local community was horrified. And in fact, the police came and said, you have to take that down. It's offensive. I guess Tualatin, Oregon is a much more hashtag chill place because with the exception of a few people who've called into the city, this thing is a huge hit, so to speak. Everybody loves it.

I have that snow tape. Do you want to hear the snow tape? Sure.

If you want to hear a much less chill place.

We're now on a controversial sculpture that had some neighbors upset.

It's just really rude for other kids to have to see what they have been doing.

Breyer-Gill says what he and other kids in the neighborhood along North 7th Street in Lafayette saw Wednesday morning was upsetting. Two snow sculptures in the shape of male genitals were on display at their neighbor's house. The sculpture's creators declined to comment, but still had plenty to show us.

I think it's disgusting. People shouldn't do that. Like, it's very irresponsible.

Gina Robinson says her neighbors began building the sculptures Tuesday night, but she didn't notice what they actually were until Wednesday morning. She's more upset with how Lafayette police responded.

They showed up, laughed, and drove off. Yeah, that's what makes it good at the end. I guess also times have changed, Luke. I mean, it could be a reflection of the community, but also think about how old that tape is now. We live in coarser times, my friend.

Well, yeah, because the way that tape ends, if I remember right, is that the police come back out and then basically the like supervisor apologizes for the kind of cavalier nature of the first cop. Yeah, I think you can play the end. They end up apologizing. That's all I have.

I just had that isolated. That's just where it ends for me. Maybe.

Yeah, I think it ended up violating the city ordinance for profanity or something, because I listened to that tape this morning. I was trying to pull part of it. In fact, that was the promo tape that I played this morning. It was this lady. saying um i think it's disgusting um but you're right i mean i guess times have changed also i my sense is that she started this project or she went full chub shrub during the pandemic and maybe there's also just this thing where it's like you know we're all just trying to survive and getting upset about kind of a joke a phallic joke is just gonna move down the list of of things that people care about when there are such uh more pressing threats to our way of life maybe i mean it is though i mean i can't say that i've spent a ton of time in tualatin but i am surprised i think it's a fairly you know it's a fairly tony community and i i'm a little and i'm also thinking about if i had a little kid and we were driving past it day after day a big giant phallus like not to be a prude but would I want what is that something that I would feel great about my like you know five-year-old daughter seeing every single day I don't know I mean it is just it's a human body so in a way I think we should just get over it it's just the bot you know it's just something that I almost showed to the employees of this hotel Andrew this morning when I got locked out of my room but like I don't know I it's weird I go back and forth it seems kind of funny to me but if again i just all i can say is i'm surprised that everyone seems as chill about this as they do i kind of thought this story was going to be about how there was a community backlash and it doesn't really seem to be the case well you know i joked about it we live we

live in coarser times and that really was a joke but i mean i mean listen we talked a lot about my i mean circuitously we've talked about how repressed i am throughout this show you know like my fear of my fear of showing ankle or what have you. And I got to say, like, a big part of that was me growing up in a very sort of repressive household. Like it just it was like I grew up in a very kind of conservative house in the 1980s. And I also have not had kids. I also think that, like, if you have kids and you raise them in a more modern environment, like, you know, that the conversations about this stuff is different. Like my parents never really like there was not a comfortable conversation about bodies or sex or anything like that in my household i mean i literally remember my mom one time telling me that babies are brought by i believe an angel like i don't think we had the stork thing but i think she said literally you pray and then god gives you a baby like that was also what i was told for the record i'm trying to hope i'm not stealing your story i'm pretty sure that's what my mom told me like so all of that is to say i think you know when when you know i'm getting older now but let's even say 10 years ago when a lot of my friends were having little kids like those little kids were much more comfortable talking about their bodies and their penises and their vaginas and one don't clip this um but like in all seriousness like part of the reason things are so like

that verboten and naughty is because of the way you develop a relationship with them early on you know what i mean and so like yeah i think nowadays and i'm not saying there's there's no simple answer for every family and every family is going to raise their kids differently and kids personalities are going to be different and everything but like generally speaking i don't think despite my joke that we live in a coarser time i think we live in a time when and by the way i also don't think this is funny like i'm not scandalized by it i think that sometimes people think that i am more scandalized by things on the show sometimes i just don't find them funny you know in this like i don't find this funny i don't find this charming it's not my humor it's not my humor if it was across the street from me like i don't think i would care but i wouldn't be like oh that's funny actually the decorating it and dressing it up i think i'd be pretty annoyed by that but not because like ew you know like it would just be like i think i would just roll my eyes at it but like generally speaking I think society is more okay with This just being like oh this is a woman who did something Silly and all of her neighbors are on Board so who gives a shit I think it

Also helps as a woman Could you know it's just like a guy yeah I mean that Would put a weird energy behind it or a

Couple of yeah a couple of 14 year old kids Who did it to their parents thing and their parents

Well a couple 14 year old kids it's like you guys are Just being miscreants An adult man is like Excuse me sir can you Stop her can you stop sexualizing the neighborhood and then a woman a kind of quirky lady it's like hey let's you know let's let's have some fun with this um the you know the other thing that like i'm with you i don't really find i don't find like phallic humor to be super funny to me um it just it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel overly offensive or edgy it's just kind of like yeah we get it the other thing that i really don't find particularly funny is flipping people off in photos like which is a big thing and like one time i was at rossie's and i was uh they wanted to take a picture and they all that's like the thing that's the place in chicago that i really love and it's kind of it's sort of it's the kind of place where it's like you know it's just the kind of place where if you take a picture of the bartender they're gonna flip you off that's their energy there and i love the place although flipping people off in photos is not my energy and i remember um my friend ramon and Desiree were like come take a picture behind the bar and I was like and also I think I was there with Becca and I was trying to kind of like I was I was happy that I was sort of the mayor of that bar for a minute you know what I mean like we roll in and they're really happy to see me and they want to take a picture and stuff and then we get back behind the bar and then they're all flipping off the camera and then I flip off the camera because that's what we're doing and then I was like I regret that to this day I don't even know where that photo exists hopefully nowhere But I was like, if I never flip off a camera in a photo, I'm OK with that.

You should have given the peace symbol that if I felt like I need to do something with my hands because everybody else is, that's what I instinctively do. I have a friend who is a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer. She got the Pulitzer at a pretty young age. She shot for the Concord monitor and she was a really, really good friend of mine in my early 20s. and I was also like I was an amateur photographer at the time so I also just like idolized her and her photographs but we're also just like kind of close friends anyway and one time a bunch of us took a trip to I think North Carolina for a whatever for a weekend or something let's say it was a group of like six to eight of us friends or something we all flew from the Boston New hampshire area down there and there is a moment where we were running through the airport in preston my friend the photographer you know always had a camera hanging off of her and she snapped i think with a somewhat wide angle lens a photo of us all running through the airport like we had we had missed our flight or something like that it's kind of a whole whole deal but there was this one moment where she took a photo of us running and i saw the camera come out and this isn't usually this is not usually what I would do but I saw the camera and I flipped it off and it absolutely ruined one of the coolest photos of me and my friends I remember seeing it later I think about it all the time I am not in touch with Preston anymore I haven't talked to her in years and like I think about that photo I think that was such an awesome weekend it was such a time capsule of my friendship with all these people in the group you know luke what i'm talking about that era of those early 20s the group you were kicking it with like a little like strange we're going to spend a weekend together in a big house down at the shore um and it was just such a special memory and i think about that photo and there's one doofus in there i think middle of the frame as we're all running and i'm flipping the camera off and i it's like the stupidest thing it's one of the stupidest things i've ever done well maybe not ever but is it it pisses me off so much that if

you saw the

photo to this if you saw the photo today it would actually maybe you could re consider it because i can actually like i know i just said i don't like flipping people off in photos i'm thinking of that more like what i was doing at rossi's where it's like just you're just posing for a picture and you're just trying to do something edgy but is there any chance that it's actually kind of funny because you're the only one doing it you're it's an action it's a candid action shot i mean when's

well also it becomes less candid well it would have been back during that era um so it's been you know 15 years or more um but um but the thing is that that's kind of the thing it seems like a candid shot but it stops being candid when somebody's looking at the camera and flipping it off like it totally ruined everything i will say though with um to what you were saying before like that that rossi's vibe like that's almost that's so many of the photos i see on instagram now it's just like the casual flip off it's just like it's for for the past couple of years like that's just a very much a generational thing again where people are just like oh photo flip

off the camera but yeah it's not for me it's like i just wonder what the what is the message that i am supposed to be what am i supposed to take away from somebody flipping off the camera is it that they're saying don't take my picture are they saying f you are they saying f it like i'm a very i'm a really literal person you know and like it i always wonder i mean again i'm not offended by it i'm just like what are we what what is the message that the person who's having the photo taken who's flipping off the camera what are they looking to let the world know i'm just curious because then i will then once i know what that signifies i can't imagine it just signifies f you anymore because no no why would you just have that be your default setting f you i'm f like you know that's kind of you wouldn't just say that to somebody you know on the street randomly probably so it's like it must mean something else and i didn't get the memo on what the new

meaning of it is uh i used to know what it is and now they changed what it was um i want to know this is an aside and i mentioned this to you off the air but we have a listener and a friend who will remain nameless here whose instagram account was hacked in the past couple of months and that person has their instagram back again uh and i'm very happy for them and i'm being careful because this is you know quasi private i don't want to embarrass them if they don't want people to know But like it was like one day and this is somebody who I follow, who I admire their photography a lot, too. And it was just like all this Bitcoin stuff like, hey, I got rich off of Bitcoin. You can to follow this link or whatever. And it was like clearly this person had been hacked. And there were just all these Instagram stories and posts and everything had been taken over. And I don't know how it happened. I'm kind of in touch with this person, but I don't know the details about how it happened. And I just know that after months of somehow fighting the system, they were able to reclaim their feet again. The thing that I find super interesting is about three weeks into this ordeal or maybe two weeks into this ordeal, I noticed the same exact spam hitting your friend Ramon's Instagram account. Ramon also runs an Instagram account from Rossi's, who is he's like a meme machine, right? he's got all the memes um and so i it's a great follow on instagram i'm not even going to bother giving out the the handle because now it's just been taken over uh by by hackers again but the thing is i recognize the handle that you're supposed to like kind of click on to get into the bitcoin or whatever it's just like the most disgusting kind of well not it's just it's just bitcoin spam um but it's the same it looks like it's the same exact operation as this other person this listener and i've been i'm so curious about it i've been googling around this bitcoin handle thinking like this must be a scourge right um i know that these people live in different cities um so i have no idea like how did both of these people get hacked by the same operation and also when i google that operation how come i can't how come how come i can't figure out like why is nobody else like posting about this or researching this or have this account listed as you know anything happens to anybody online there's going to be some sort of digital trail of that right or somebody complaining about it but anyway if you could yeah i don't know to text ramona at some

point find out what's going on with that okay i will or you know i'm going to be in chicago twice in the next two weeks oh yeah so it's a decent chance i could uh you know ask irl i'm going to i know we need to get to emails and emails but just so that i don't have to keep promoting this thing i'm just going to mention this story quickly it's uh speaking of online basically this guy um named patrick neve was passing through an airport and the tsa stopped him because he had um jiff natural creamy peanut butter with him and he had over three ounces of it he had he has kind of like a new jar and they confiscated it because they described peanut butter as a liquid and so he posted this online is sort of like, what do you you think and then there was you know as you might imagine a lot of people weighing in on what they what they thought if if peanut butter is a liquid or a solid or a gas or whatever it is the tsa is standing firm they're saying if you can spread it or pour it it's a liquid and so they say peanut butter falls into that category by the way i don't necessarily disagree with them on that if we believe the tsa that there is a real danger of like if i were to bring let's say i filled a water bottle up with some kind of liquid that could become an explosive if i combined it with something else and then you know andrew you had a water bottle with the other part of it or i had two water bottles i don't know how real of a danger that is but let's just take them at their word that that's an actual danger it seems like something like peanut butter could also be used in that fashion or you know something that looked like peanut butter that was explosive in some way i don't know enough about you know chemistry for this but the real reason this article jumped out at me because the opening line of the piece I feel like already sides with the TSA that made me so annoyed. This was in the Washington Post. They wrote, It's the Transportation Security Administration's job to stop dangerous items from getting on planes. On any given day, they're finding guns in raw chickens or swords hidden in canes. And then it's both of those lines, the guns in raw chickens or swords hidden in canes are hyperlinks to the TSA posting about how they found a gun in a chicken oh that's so funny i was wondering what you took

issue with because i read this article and i saw those links but i did not click on them i assume

they went to other washington post stories i think they go you know what maybe i should go back let me double check i'm up let me put it this way if they go to a washington post story the way the washington post found out about it was because the tsa publicized it because what they love to do every year is spread out the like 10 things that they confiscated that's like a mace that you swing and this and one sword and they want to create this sense that they every day are just capturing all manner of extremely dangerous stuff trying to go on airplanes and like 99.999% of the time It's like, you know, some World War II reenactor had a dummy grenade or like some weird sword guy who just likes swords. It's like it's I have very rarely seen any evidence that someone was trying to bring something dangerous on an airplane to do harm to the people on the airplane. And for the Washington Post to just say, like, make it sound like literally every day the TSA is finding a loaded gun inside a chicken is just I find that to be such bad journalism.

this doesn't negate what you're saying because you're right the source is going to be the tsa anyway but the two links just to be just to be clear here do link to other washington post stories one one compiled and i use the word compiled knowingly uh by the same reporter and another by another reporter at the the washington post and one of them is drugs hidden in candy gun and a chicken tsa's weirdest finds of 2022 and the other one is the 10 strangest confiscations tsa has posted on instagram ranked so both of these though the source material is still going to be from the tsa so it doesn't like i say negate what your issue right it's still the tsa creating this

impression through their social media and other ways they reach out you know to try to get stories basically generated that it's like every single day there's just like a i mean like at lax which i can see from here there's just like a hundred people already today have tried to sneak a gun or bomb onto a plane at lax and the reason that makes me annoyed is because you know like i think that i think that the incidence of that stuff is actually very very low and we should probably at some point uh reconsider the various things that we do around us as i call it security theater but i was just a little bit i i thought it was kind of i felt like if i was the editor at the post i would have sort of said well first of all on any given day they're finding guns and raw chicken and swords hidden in canes i guess that's technically possible on any given day meaning on a random day it could happen but what what it sounds like what it reads like to me is every day this happens that's kind of the impression i get reading it and i don't think it happens every day so i was i just wanted to flag that and tell everyone you can't bring your peanut butter on the plane if it's over three ounces but also don't fly in fear that every day someone's trying to sneak a weapon onto the plane inside of a raw chicken i'll also mention that after reading this article i was brushing my teeth and i noticed that i have been bringing Three ounces of toothpaste, Andrew Onto so many flights

Oh, is that what a regular Tube of toothpaste is? That's just like a regular, yeah

Like I just, I didn't, I don't know I couldn't find or I didn't have the patience To locate like a travel size, actually I like This particular kind of

aqua fresh toothpaste and um i've just been carrying around a full you know size it's like five ounces or something and no one has stopped me and that is also in this article um a certain frustration from some people which is like it doesn't feel like it's always um the the rules are always enforced uniformly about this like three ounces of liquid thing i guess there's a story about chrissy tegan was trying to bring gravy onto a plane this is probably like post thanksgiving they stopped her because it was too much gravy but then she combined it with mashed

potatoes and then they let her do it which then somebody said technically that wouldn't be okay either because mashed potatoes would still be considered like a yeah i mean if you're not gonna

let peanut butter on you probably can't let mashed potatoes on and then obviously they're like presumably they're like oh this is chrissy tegan what are the chances that this is chrissy tegan's moment to try to bring down a jetliner you know like i'm sure that she got i think rightfully so They were less suspicious of her based on The fact that she's a known quantity who has Demonstrated no interest in terrorism or Whatever like I don't know it's just like a The whole thing is just kind of weird and I've We've talked about this so many times On the show but the other thing that kind of Gets under my skin is when you find Yourself with a TSA person who's pretty Kurt about their local rules And their rules are somehow slightly Different than the rules at the airport You just flew in from you know whether it's Like you only show your Ticket on your phone or you only give them the ID or you only do this like And when they're really uptight about that stuff I wish I could say you have no idea how Varied this experience is for us The flyers yeah I mean

There's no defending the I have Less I have slightly not Slightly I have less issues with the TSA than you do But when the people Who were there I told you last one of the Last times I went through security like this guy was Like super rude to me like super super rude and like i'm sure it's not the most fun job to stand there at a podium and just look at hundreds and hundreds of people's ids and like whatever and maybe deal with some unruly people or dumb people or whatever but like you don't have to treat me like he treated me like i was a prisoner going through a through a line at the mess hall or something like he just stared at me he's like you can go now i was like geez louise like tell me like you didn't you didn't scan my thing and anyway it's just one of those things and so sometimes when you sort of feel like there's some petty person in this position of like a little bit of power and then and that they're feeling it and they're really feeling the uniform it infuriates me it doesn't completely bother me some of the other things they have in place I hate the back scanners talk about flipping things off I always want to I don't do this anymore but like when they make you stand in a machine and hold your hands over your head I guess you don't deal with this that much anymore because you're you're

pre-check right you're uh no it's not it's it's it's it's still very possible to you know get shuttled or whatever shunted into that the back scatter thing yeah i hate that oh like well i mean to bring it back to where this whole show started i don't want to get inside your head but you know it is basically a naked picture of you somebody somewhere is seeing more or less your you know

your body outline good at least there that's it weirdly that does not bother me that makes me like your funeral man you're making me do this you have to look at this like i like honestly for some reason that doesn't bother me because it's theoretical maybe if i saw the image in front of me which that would be some sort of a very strange policy but like if they had a monitor where you can see it i might feel different what if they just broadcast them up yeah right like

for everybody to see orange theory right oh i'm surprised that you're up to speed on that i only Recently learned that that's what happens At orange theory I just thought it was like I don't know you're Supposed to eat a lot of oranges I didn't really know what the deal was

I think you I think you mentioned it on a show so I Hope you're right about how orange theory works is I think That's what I was basing that on but yeah There there was one thing in here that I mean again Not to get into whether or not it makes sense or Whether or not people are still trying to bring Down planes like there is something kind of comforting Knowing that there are some checks in place which is Generally how I feel about it but I will say that I've never i i don't think since 2002 maybe have i ever actually separated out my liquids like i'm not bringing big liquids on but i'm just like they're not going to stop me i don't put them in a clear plastic bag i don't take them out like i have you know deodorant if i have a little thing of cologne if i have like vape juice or whatever i have no idea how much liquid is in those things i don't care they're just spread out amongst my bags and i've never gotten dinged on that well the other

funny thing about this article was that the guy who had the peanut butter that all started with they write in the article that he figured that when he was being pulled over or pulled aside it was because of his podcasting equipment and i was like okay i feel very yes yes that's right yeah yeah that's what gets me but again and i'm just now

You know, I'm making the show unnecessarily long today, but it's like it's also gotten it's also gotten sunny again, which makes me think maybe I should carpe this diem to try to get out there and get my outdoor jog on. But anyway, you know, I have all this gear that I'm talking to you by way of right now, and it's just like, I don't know, 20 percent of the time it gets stopped and 80 percent of the time it doesn't. And I'm like, it should either be always stopped or never stopped. Like, I don't really love the idea. And maybe those maybe that ratio is off. Maybe it's 40% of the time they pull it aside and they want to take it out. And because like the mic stand is kind of odd. It's metal. So it looks a little ominous when you see it on the x-ray. But like, it just it seems like there should be a system in place where this is either always pulled out or never pulled out because it's it's either dangerous or it's not, you know, and that's where it kind of the whole thing feels sometimes a little bit less than totally scientific to me.

Yeah, all those randomization is sometimes an actual policy that's in place. Like when you go to Canada, they you like push a button or something. If it turns red, you're they're going to search you. And if it turns green, they'll let you through. Have you ever had that before? And it's like one in 10 or something is right. I remember crossing the border. I'm talking about this must have been a ferry situation. Like I'm trying to think is it's obviously not when you're driving across the border. And I'm not talking about flying in. And I think there was a time or two where we took a ferry up north, I think, out here on the West Coast and to get up into Canada. And so they they check your bags. But we all had to go through. There's a group of four of us and we all pushed a button. If it was green, you could pass through. And if it was red, they would stop you and search you as a sort of a way of randomly checking people. And knowing that there's going to be a random check would, I guess, assume, you know, maybe keep people from bringing contraband across.

I remember that except there is also a random check with the TSA, which sometimes also I get selected for. So they do have that. Yeah, this is just more like sometimes the person looks at the X-ray and sees the microphone stand and thinks that's a weapon. And then that's when they search it. And then sometimes a different person looks at it and thinks that looks totally safe. That's where it's like, you know, it's there's a lot of guys. There's I guess what it comes down to is there's a fair amount of human judgment involved in the whole thing. So anyway, the good news is I rarely carry peanut butter through the airport. So I think that this probably will be a low impact on my life.

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

Do you have an email or V-mail that's burning a hole in your pocket?

Yeah, I know that we've gone a little bit long, although that is what our dazzling donor today asked for. Danielle got a long show, so that's good.

You're welcome.

But I will play a short voicemail here that we got.

No, the only reason I asked you that is because I actually, there was a sort of an email that I saw that I, at some point, want to bring up this week.

Sure, bring it up now. But here, I'll give you 30 seconds. Here's just a quick little story from Sam that I think you'll enjoy regarding Airbnbs. We had been talking about what is expected of people when they're staying at an Airbnb, when you're leaving, do you have to change the sheets, or all of that stuff, and people's frustrations with Airbnbs. airbnbs we've been hearing some stories of just like kind of weird interactions between the renters and the rentees here's one from sam in florida what's up guys sam in florida just wanted

to call in uh i stayed at an airbnb one time in ashville north carolina and as we were checking in we were talking to the owner and he was like oh yeah you guys plan on like cooking or eating out and we're like oh we'll probably go to the store soon and buy some stuff and then he just handed me a hundred dollar bill and said uh you want to pick me up some corona while you're there anyways airbnbs are weird take it easy that's it airbnbs are weird i'm trying to think of how

i would feel about that like i think i don't think you'd love it

unless you got to keep the change

yeah i think i get i guess i wouldn't love it because i would be like i mean it's just back to what i always say on this topic which is like we're paying money we're not if we're pals then don't charge us anything or we're customers in which case you know maybe don't give us an errand yeah if he was like i guess i thought maybe the story was going to be like here's 100 bucks to get you started or here's 100 bucks can you grab me some kronas and the rest of it you know use for

your groceries yeah welcome to town yeah that would be really cool yeah uh the email that i

thought was kind of interesting was from listener kent and the reason i thought about bringing this up today is because i was already on my one of my many go-to harangues about the tsa and security theater and kent's email was relevant to another one of my common harangues which is this

framing device we talked about it because it's also i guess i didn't know this until you told me andrew it's based or at least there is a famous commercial remember when i was talking about those tomato planters that like no you know nobody thought you'd be able to grow the best tomatoes in the neighborhood with this thing and and i thought it was a weird way to like this idea that a lot of stuff on tiktok is like everyone doubted i could do this but i did it um and then you point out that that's actually kind of an old-fashioned sales pitch right well not the

tiktok stuff but this particular thing that we spent probably a half hour to writing this advertisement for some tomato growing thing as it appeared in readers digest actually i think readers digest actually was sort of a a spoof of a classic advertising thing yeah but um that but i know what you mean about the the other thing just in our culture where we're kind of like they said i could never do it and now i did it's like who's they and why did they say that i don't

believe you well that's kent's exact point he goes hello luke this is from australia's abc it's confusing to me that we have an abc and australia has an abc but it is what it is um the government owned media outlet that was once the standard that journalists tried to match similar to the bbc in the uk now its headlines are written by tiktok enthusiasts turns out there was one stranger online and that mostly no one cared that this woman was restoring a car cheers kent and then he links to an article from abc that just the headline is strangers online told madeline she couldn't rebuild this vintage vehicle now she's proving them wrong and basically there's like no one was telling this person that they couldn't rebuild a vintage vehicle like they took an interest in it they're doing it that's awesome but the framing device of like she's just clapping back at the haters by rebuilding an old ford or something it's just i don't want to this is not the timeline i want to live in where every time we do something it's that we're we're proving the haters wrong like sometimes we just want to rebuild a vintage vehicle and that can be enough

right like i mean can can anybody provide the receipts like does anybody like have like here was one because i mean people are jerks online but i just can't imagine being in a like were they in a um some sort of car talky type of forum and somebody's like well you can't i mean maybe one person was like well you you know they don't make parts for that anymore i'm trying to think like i'm trying to give every benefit of the doubt that somebody would just be like well you can't do it

but she showed the haters that doesn't make sense and i i don't like i don't know enough about the story to know if the way that this rebuilding project was framed like it was on tiktok and this person was saying they didn't think i could rebuild this car which i'm kind of i have a suspicion that might have been then you know somebody at abc sees it and is like the story is a triumph over the haters of rebuilding a car but then there seems to be pretty limited evidence of anyone hating on the idea of um this person rebuilding the car so i guess my point at the end of today's show andrew is i'm right about something else no yet another thing right good

Good, good, good. Do we get the impression that does Kent live in Australia, by the way?

That part I don't know. He doesn't sign. There was no indication. Didn't say Kent from Adelaide or something.

Because I have a friend named Kent who is a listener of the show, but I know I'm going to stop listening during the pandemic because he lost his commute. And I'm just wondering if my friend Kent is back in the fold. And if so, I got to stop talking so much shit about Kent on the show.

The haters said that Luke Burbank wouldn't be right about so many things on TBTL, but he proved them wrong. The haters said Kent would never come back to listening to TBTL. Exactly. All right. That is going to do it for today's episode of TBTL. But we will be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Stay dry if you're in one of these places still getting hit by all kinds of rain. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Hi, this is Lisa with a really stupid dream catcher story that you don't want to hear about, but I'm going to tell you anyway. Last night I had a dream, and I was going shopping in a shopping mall with my son and some of his friends. That's not important, but what is important is somewhere Luke and Andrew, you guys were doing a live show, and so we went to go see that, and the kids started talking about something, and they were kind of half-listening to VVTL, and then all of a sudden my dad showed up, Yeah. And he was talking about how something had happened and someone had stolen a book and he needed to get the book back. And Luke stopped the show and said, oh, we want to hear what this guy has to say because this story sounds better than what we're talking about. And that's it. And it sounds really stupid. However, my dad died on Thanksgiving. That was literally the first dream I'd had of him since he passed away. And I just thought that that was fitting, that him showing up randomly in a dream with TVTL, it was kind of a little happy moment. All right, too long, didn't read, dad, TVTL, happy dream, power out. Power out.