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Hey dummies, a while back you guys explained that SCUBA is an acronym. That's for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Did you know that the word TUBA is also an acronym? That stands for terrible underwater breathing apparatus. You're out.

TBTL!

Hello?

Did you say hello? No, I said hello, but that's close enough. What kind of trouble are you two brewing? Oh, we're just shooting this s***. It's not every day you get to get up with a real radio star. Oh, no, podcast star. Radio's dead. I am not going to talk about myself. I'm going to talk about you. And if I talk about you, I think I'm going to talk about me. You know, it's just living truthfully in imaginary circumstances. What is this guy trying to do? Is this supposed to be what Bozo's thinking or saying? What guy? It's Bozo. Bozo did it. Bozo did what? Bozo did the dub. He's doing the dub. Bozo is not a guy.

Have a good show, dummy. It's what you do is so important.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

I'll say, what's up, dog?

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I won't trash talk. I won't be out there blowharding. Coming to you today, once again, from Chicago, Illinois, in the Gold Coast neighborhood, just off of Lakeshore Drive and Lake Michigan.

I'm back. I've returned. I'm back, y'all.

took a red eye out here a plane took off at about 1 a.m from portland landed i don't know 6 30 in the morning or something here in chicago and i it has been so long since i took a red eye a legitimate red eye flight wasn't sure how i was going to handle it but i am feeling pretty okay actually i'm so happy of myself red eye guy might be my new personality the guy that likes to take red-eye flights and says, you know, I could be a, I could spend the whole day in Portland and then I can be on the, you know, the first tee out in DuPage County by 10 a.m. Just got to do the red-eye. Anyway, it's episode 3915 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

As I hear myself talking, I realize I might be loopier than I was thinking. Maybe red-eye guy isn't my new personality. Maybe gets enough sleep and then does a semi-competent broadcast guy is the personality I should look into, especially on a day like today where I'm trying to monitor, as I'm sure, not when this gets onto the Internet because it'll be hours from now, but I'm imagining where the listeners are in their lives on this Tuesday. And as we're recording this, a former U.S. president is sitting in court being arraigned. And it's got lots of news, kind of a big news day. We don't usually talk about the former president of the U.S. because it just is kind of, I don't know, anxiety producing for many of us. But today, I mean, it's it is it is pretty unprecedented. And I'm trying to keep looking back. The TV in this hotel room is behind me, and so I'm trying to see if I can—no, I can't do it. I was going to try to detach my eyes so that I could look at my computer screen with one eye and then look at the MSNBC with the other one, but it's not going to work. Anyway, moving on, I heard a remembrance of a Japanese composer and musician yesterday on NPR that had me, let's just say it was very dusty in my apartment in Portland.

What makes people all over America break down and cry like this?

The amazing legacy of Raichu Sakamoto. I'm going to talk about that a little bit. Mostly just encourage people to go listen to that incredible piece of radio. And then on the total other side of the content coin, I was also watching Cartnarchs yesterday.

Not only does that sound kind of disgusting to me, it sounds unhealthy.

It is really the worst of humanity on so many levels, and yet I find it oddly fascinating. I find this guy oddly fascinating, too. He's the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Each day, well, at least five days a week when we're about to do the program, I ask him one important question right before we start recording. Do you have a story or a question for me? He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. I have a story, actually.

an anecdote that i really want to tell you if we have time for it we've got plenty of time i want to tell this carefully because i found this absolutely interesting and delightful in a certain way and i don't want to ruin it i want everybody to enjoy the journey i took as much as i did so i was taking a walk somewhere the other day and i passed one of those little free libraries that somebody put in their front lawn right out at the sidewalk where you can take a book or leave

a book and i always peep in them i can't the number one place to pick up uh a jd rob or tom clancy

tome that well also and also just like a a lot of the books are kind of random it'll be like somebody went to um costa rica and bought a travel book and then they didn't know what to do with it

so they just like left it voters lonely lonely planet denmark i'm usually looking for something

that's a little bit more campy or pulpy, you know, like what you describe. And that's why, as I was walking the other day, and maybe I was even walking to that Mariners event I went to before opening day. I can't remember. But they had the perfect-looking book for me. I'll take a photo of it, and I'll make it the show pic today. It was called, Luke, Murder on Capitol Hill. And it's just like the perfect, like it fits in your back pocket.

They came to Burgle Carnegie Hall.

Exactly. it's the perfect like paperback book that you can literally put in your back pocket and just like pull out it looks kind of like dog-eared or whatever and it's by somebody named margaret truman i had not heard of that author before um it's probably a nom de plume and exactly that was the other thing that i thought and so i started reading it like in the very very first scene which is almost like a teaser scene somebody accidentally pricks themselves on an ice pick luke and then they leave the ice pick behind and some cleaner says boy he left his ice pick behind Be careful with that You could kill somebody with it I'm like I think we're being set up for an ice pick murder Anyway it's total campy Total pulpy I love the look and feel of this book I'm only a few pages in But I'm like I'm just going to see What if I go on Goodreads You and I were talking about the website Goodreads the other day Where people are so delicate with books And they don't want to say anything negative in their reviews So everybody looks for the positive Which I really like But I'm on Goodreads In fact I don't even know if I got to any reviews I don't think there are Oh, yeah, there are. It's a three point eight one out of five. So that's pretty good. But then I'm just like, so who's this Margaret Truman? Luke. I'm going to do some reading to you right now. Mary Margaret Truman Daniel, widely known throughout her life as Margaret Truman, was an American singer who later became a successful writer. She was the only child of Harry S. Truman. what and his wife bess so i'm like oh my god so murder on capitol hill which by the way let me see i have a picture of the book up here and on the cover it says part of you're saying there's

still time for don jr's literary exactly that's the takeaway from this and i also want you to know

that this is like number two in a in a murder series the other ones are murder in the smithsonian murder at the supreme court and murder at the fbi those are the three others that are listed on the cover of this book which must not be a first edition if it's already listing her other works but anyway so I'm like what the hell the daughter of Harry Truman was a singer turned writer who wrote all of these like intrigue mystery novels around the capital but it gets even funnier

I love that Margaret's just working her way through important buildings in DC murder at the Potomac YMCA

like yeah why wasn't it murder at Quantico instead of FBI right wait Quantico that's FBI right yeah I think okay okay so now I get to like the third paragraph of Margaret Truman's biography this is still reading directly from Goodreads Truman pursued a singing career in the late 1940s after graduating from George Washington University and receiving some operatic vocal training she debuted with the radio broadcast of a vocal recital in 1947 then after a performance in 1950 the washington post music critic paul hume wrote that she was quote extremely attractive on the stage but cannot sing very well she is flat a good deal of the time her father then president murder at the washington post right this is i mean i think that was the

Last anyone ever heard from Paul Hume.

Honestly, this is what the president wrote to Hume. The sitting president at the time wrote to the Washington Post reporter who, you know, gave a bad review of his daughter's performance. I have never met you, but if I do, you'll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below.

years later margaret recalled i thought it was funny it sold tickets

wow all i can say is wow you know what i love about this andrew is this is a day where i guess you could argue that there is presidential history being made yes on this tuesday that's why i thought of it and yet and yet this is so much more delightful and entertaining and less meaningful and less a threat to democracy it's just harry truman you know being overly protective of his daughter's uh singing abilities also but also threatening violence to a member of

the media not cool not which i mean that would that's the other thing too like when people talk about like well we don't have the civility these days right i'm like what the hell are you talking about people used to in tammany hall people were getting into fistfights and beating each other

with canes well sure and i mean you know see uh erin burr and duly pistols at dawn like although i do find first of all that is an amazing story and something i'll be repeating to anyone who will listen for the next six months but i do in a way that sort of brings us i don't i'm not trying to have a whole political conversation today because they're much better people to do that But that is sort of the back and forth of this about norms, because I do think that like the guy, you know, Donald Trump, who's who's being arraigned literally as we speak, he did violate so many norms and in ways that were so destructive to the country and in ways that have really just sort of I mean, he's he's sort of broken the mold on certain things. And I don't know if we'll ever go back. And yet you can also point to a time when this country, we took up arms against each other. There was a civil war. And it's sort of like two things can be true. It's like, yeah, there have been some really dark times in this country. And there have been some times where there was just no civility. And now I've just learned a time when Harry Truman was threatening. By the way, I don't think that beefsteak thing even works. That, I believe, is sort of a steak. It's really from the cartoons. I don't think there was ever any medical data behind that. But like all of the all of that stuff, I know this is not what you're doing. It's like all of that stuff is true. And I also find it tremendously pernicious what Donald Trump has done.

Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, that's what I'm always. And that's why, like, and you and I have sort of debated kind of the ins and not the ins and outs, but sort of like the context of all this before. And I never want to underestimate what Trump did to this country and actually continues to do. Even on this day, I was even thinking like, you know, I think a lot of people are sort of like celebrating the arrest. And I don't know how, I don't know, I don't feel joyous today, you know, because I always look at him as a, I look at him as like the pimple, but the pimple is just the outward facing kind of wound of what lies beneath.

What you're saying is the sebum oil, it deep in the pore is infected. And we're seeing, not that I've spent a lot of time in my life on the internet studying what the mechanics of a pimple are, but yeah.

Essentially, like it's the symptom. It's more the symptom of the visible symptom of what of what roils underneath, which is the problem. And so, yeah, but I'm always just constantly and maybe I sound headstrong about it. Sometimes I don't mean to be, but I'm always just trying to put it into context. And that goes for not even politics, but also for the for the news media, you know, like there as somebody who, you know, me, myself, I'm talking about me. I know where all the nukes are. I'm the boy in the story, you know, a lot of malls, surprisingly, obviously, what you and I do now is pretty far from journalism, but it's still broadcasting. But I came up through the journalists through the journalism system. Right. And I felt strongly about being non, you know, unbiased and taking that role really seriously. And there is this idea of like, well, journalism is constantly getting worse and worse and worse. But then it's like but is it though like what is the golden age is it when like when newspapers were lying to start wars like was it the yellow journalism like it like we always think that it was always better and it's not always and I'm not even trying to make a political point here. It's just kind of like well I don't know man what what are the what were the glory days just culturally speaking.

Well, speaking of books and Margaret Truman, I was hosting the Oregon Book Awards last night, which is sort of the big ceremony for folks that have written all different kinds of books but who reside in the state of Oregon. And it was really fun. And, well, I don't know why Margaret Truman has made me think of this, but I was really struck by one of the winners whose name eludes me at the moment. but they won this woman won for fiction and she said i only took up fiction writing uh after my second child was born which would have been i don't know 10 years previously and i thought it was really inspirational that this this woman had taken up fiction writing

And within 10 years had won the top award in the entire state of Oregon for writing. Again, I believe it was fiction. But more, I think, critically for everyone, I got really, I think, kind of, I got buttonhooked by Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. Now, I don't mean he was at the Book Awards. But what I mean, Andrew, is I was doing my kind of intermittent fasting BS yesterday. And that sometimes gets away from me because if I don't time it right and I'm doing an event like I was with the book awards, I can find myself, as I did, at about 6.45 at night and I haven't really had anything to eat. And I thought there was going to be, like, catering backstage, but then I realized, no, this is a nonprofit. What there was was a bag of peanut butter-filled pretzels that was kind of being passed around. So what I ended up having to do was go out to the main reception area and buy a couple of bags of Tim's Cascade potato chips. And I was horfing those down right before the show. And I'll be darned if I wasn't having some of the most frustrating kind of throat clearing or need to clear my throat glottal situation I've had in quite some time off of eating these potato chips, which we learned is what Billy Corgan does to make his voice better. I think that might be not unlike a beefsteak to the eye. I think that might not be scientifically. I mean, I know we went through this back when the story came out and people saw him on video eating chips. But like, I'll tell you what, it doesn't agree with my vocal cords.

Well, listen, I don't want to be pushing the corner of defending this process, which I've never even tried to before. We did hear from some listeners who said that they had vocal coaches and other people tell them that in their life. But I do think, though, Luke, I actually think that what you're describing maybe does prove the point. You didn't, unless I misunderstand, you didn't have like a dry, raspy voice that you were struggling with. And it sounds like if you had a dry, raspy voice, I had a hungry tummy. Right. And then you ate these. It might create more like, you know, lubrication in the voice. That was my that was my sense of why people do it, because the grease and salt combine to like make your throat create that. where you didn't need that and so therefore it was over creating this phlegmy sort of situation no

i see um yeah you know what i think you're right i hadn't thought of it that way that it's like if i was having trouble maybe the potato chips could solve for it but i wasn't the trouble i was having was i was super duper hungry and there was there was no food backstage and so what kind

of chips so did you have a flavor on the chips or were these like those i am what's the brand

again where they kind of boot tim's cascade well that's the brand that i had okay i've seen those

around are they any good to be honest like okay yeah this is this red stripe they're very beloved

in the northwest they're made in tacoma washington or at least they used to be they're they're kind of um yeah they're like as um you know i don't know what was the cleveland brand when you were growing up i was trying to think of where oots is actually based you know most places have kind of their regional potato chip that people kind of swear by i'd say tim's cascades is that for

the northwest are they but back to my question and maybe you're being careful because they could be a sponsor someday which i really appreciate that but i have not tried tim's before like growing up we were just like a lays family or fritos like we went with the national brands and so i'm trying to think like the snack bags of chips were probably lance and you can still go to cleveland get like they make little peanut butter crackers and you know lance would sort of fill vending machines and i think you could buy stuff at a convenience store that might be the that might be the equivalent i don't know what cleveland's got going on good by the way they are

good they're a little more they're more rustic so it's not like that lays super duper thin like it's gonna uh you know disappear on your tongue kind of thing like a snowflake of of pre-diabetes but um no it's uh it they're they're definitely a little more like they're a little heartier they're like thicker they're probably kettle cooked or something well that's that affects

the flavor right doesn't the kettle doesn't that have a sweeter sort of taste to it uh i you know

what now we're now we're getting out i think these are just regular chips my palate's ability i just mean they seem like something that's a little bit more again it's they're they're they're just not as even though i'm sure they are in a sense mass-produced they don't feel as mass-produced as like a lays chip but to answer your question i just got the regular i got two bags of them two small bags and i got the regular because i have this deep-seated paranoia of eating something before i do a like i guess we'll call it a performance that's going to give me bad breath now in this particular case i was at a um like a podium or lectern at the extreme left of the stage and everyone who was presenting the awards and winning the awards were at the extreme right of the stage. I mean, there must have been 30 feet between me and any other human. So I probably could have had some barbecue or sea salt and vinegar or whatever the other flavors were. But I'm very in my head about it. And it really honestly kind of kind of makes it more challenging for me like before Livewire because they always have food backstage and I never eat any of it and it's mostly because I'm worried about having like garlic breath or something and meanwhile when we were doing the show I think it was like at town hall in Seattle they sent out the the email that was like oh and by the way good news uh the backstage will be catered by and I think the place was literally called like garlic bomb or something and I was like that sounds like a great thing for all of us to eat right before we have to go do this

stressful hard thing on stage you know i think they are kettle cooked and my apologies for slapping down that notion i thought that kettle cook i thought that they might have a kettle cooked style i thought it was totally different but i'm not getting a good definition of what kettle cooked means here but apparently i just assumed it means a big giant cauldron of oil and

they throw it in there i'm trying to figure that out visualize the kettle i just imagine they've got one big black kettle in tacoma somewhere with like a fire under it and then just like the tim's family just is slicing up potatoes and throwing them into that kettle yeah because like

lays makes a bag of kettle cooked like that's what i always saw like you'll have like regular chips and then like these brands might make a kettle cook but i still am not clear on what the difference is you know what though luke i don't i want to be present for the conversations coming up i'm closing all of these tabs as we speak you know every now and then you just have to say i don't no i was wrong about something i'm not going to figure it out right now but that's fine we can

all move on um before we do that quickly though i want to tell you that i found flying overnight i to be less terrible than i was expecting like um it probably didn't hurt that i this is not a good way to get oneself in the mood for sleep didn't hurt probably that i may have had one or two jackie d's which is my new name for jack daniels um uh just some knockout drops i had a couple of whiskeys like on the plane and then just went promptly went right to sleep and then woke up

and we were like landing in chicago yeah and then but then did you take a nap when you got to the

hotel i did um so i got a couple more hours of sleep here so that's also probably helping but Like, I mean, if I could unlock and again, I don't want to be a bad example or act like alcohol is a good way to bring oneself to a sleepy state. But honestly, I do feel like if I could with all the traveling that I do, if I could train my body to sleep on the airplane, it really opens up a lot of potential because, you know, although it is very it's a disorienting experience because last night at PDX, it was a ghost town at like one in the morning when we took off. Everything's closed. There's just like a tiny little group of us huddling together, waiting for our flight. this mom and her daughter who are really a lot and interesting and would not leave me alone as we're waiting for the flight. Like they were standing next to me and they were just like bickering, but in this way, like they were the kind of like they had the relationship where their love language was bickering, but in a way that was, it didn't, it was just, it was ball busty. They had just been playing billiard somewhere in Clackamas County. and i made the mistake of like engaging with them for what i thought would be like two seconds like they asked me something about the flight or chicago and i i opened a door that i didn't mean to open they were like you know are you going to chicago i said yes i think that was how i opened the door and then i proceeded to just like learn every excruciating detail about their style of playing billiards and they just continued to like bicker like the the daughter was like um well i bought the plane tickets and the mom was like well i rented the car and they

were like i was just like and you're still now they're sort they've sort of turned to you so you're not part of this conversation but you're not not part of this conversation now you're kind of a you're three people kind of sitting in proximity so while they're bickering about that stuff you're you're not being addressed but you're not totally out of the conversation

basically except then when they asked me some question and i answered then i was dragged into the conversation it was like they just had so much to get off their chest about there i think here was the mistake that i made the daughter and again i say the daughter you know these the mom might have been in her 80s the daughter might have been in her 60s but she said something like you got to tell this one this is the daughter talking about her mom you got to tell this one that the middle kid in our family is a handful and i think i might

of just to make it not weird said you know i'm from seven kids so i know families can be complicated or something and then it was like off to the races and it just there was nothing i wanted to do more than just put my airpods in and put my um white noise fan music on but i couldn't that would have been the rudest thing ever and then the plane they didn't have the crew so it was like um they didn't have enough of the flight attendants they had the pilots but anyway it was like so we should have been boarding but we weren't and i'm sitting there in the chair and it's like the door is still closing and i'm just like trying to will the crew to show up so they can open the door so i can get on the plane so i can get away from these two women who are i mean not bad people but just like no not two people i would ever choose to voluntarily spend a bunch of time with anyway that's the scene leaving pdx and then i wake up we're landing in chicago and then i emerge from the plane and it's like O'Hare is full of people and the smell of coffee and breakfast is everywhere. All of the terminals are bustling. It was like I hit a wormhole or something. I time traveled from this lake, which I guess is how time works. It was late in Portland and then it was early but bustling in Chicago, but it was kind of an odd experience to be suddenly amongst the living again walking through O'Hare with all of this just like life had just sort of sprung back up in the morning as it often does um but anyway it was my point is it was less terrible than i was expecting so that and then i was remembering our flight to australia and i was like burbs get a get a grip this is like four hours of flying compared to what did we fly 400

hours yeah i think it was just shy of 400 hours i think yeah that was that almost felt like um and that that's by far the furthest i've ever flown before but he too um that almost felt like I think sensory deprivation is the wrong word and I've never gone into a sensory deprivation kind of tank or scenario but like at a certain point I'm not joking like at a certain point time lost meaning like you you you would think boy I get fidgety on a four hour flight and boy that last hour of a four or five hour flight you can really feel like forever how in the world would I handle a 13 hour flight but the truth is when you get to hour nine or something it's you're not even fidgety or at least I wasn't fidgety anymore it was just you were just it was literally

I mean literally one time you and I were like Siddhartha you've just been sitting by the side of the road and your physical body has dematerialized in some way from just this how how how stationary

you are I don't know what Siddhartha is but yeah I mean it just everything lacked meaning and at one point you and i were both dozing off and we woke up and we were looking at this orb in the sky but the sky was still dark and we just to this day we don't know if we were looking at the sun or the moon and to me like that really epitomizes exactly what that experience was like disorienting

yes yeah like you're somewhere over the like far far south pacific and you don't know if that's the sun is coming up if it's going down if it's the moon i was also on a like a heavy dose of natural sleep medicine like i'm afraid to mess with like ambien or lunesta or any of that kind of stuff i feel like it would really because i don't take any of that stuff regularly i didn't want to like i didn't want to try that for the first time on a plane with you like in case it turned me into like a sleepwalker or something right but instead i was taking i think something that sounded like it was from game of thrones like i swear it was called like valerium or something yeah oh that's what it was that's what it was do you remember that time that i was holding a giant egg that kept burning everybody else's hands it was weird but i couldn't tell if it was day or night when you were doing that right um but i was on like i think i went to the you know the vitamin store and said basically can you give me everything that's not created by big pharma that might knock me out so i was especially loopy i think on that and then i just remember us getting off the plane in australia and the first thing i see is a hungry jack i remember that which is like their jack-in-the-box but it's like all of the like the everything is the same in terms of the logo and presentation of a of a jack-in-the-box or sorry of a burger king it's a burger king but instead it's called hungry jacks um that's i and also i was like is this a fever dream anyway um point is uh i'm i'm mr red-eye now so that's the that's the takeaway so you did sleep

You slept solid because I don't think I've ever slept On a plane that would it always even if It's not true it always feels like I'm nodding off and waking up every three minutes Sort of like I don't think I've ever gotten a deep sleep

I came prepared I had an eye Mask I I did a thing that I don't normally do This plane was almost empty by the way Which helped nobody sitting next to me I took my shoes off Andrew which You know I don't I don't Generally advocate for that but I felt like you know It's the middle of the night it seems like You kind of like the normal rules don't apply so i got real cozy i had brought i brought like a a warm knit cap in case i needed to like you know i don't know get cozier i brought a candle i brought a nightgown i brought that kind of hat with the pom-pom on the end of it in case i needed to go around the plane uh you know checking the doors and and making sure that the ghosts of christmas future weren't there did you bring a bath bomb by any chance because they don't like bombs on planes no they confiscated all of my bath bombs at the tsa uh coincidentally none of my audio equipment they did let me keep my audio equipment which i'm talking oh that's nice so that's a win i can't even not i don't want to go back to the trump thing except to say to you andrew that there i'm because i am kind of occasionally sneaking a peek at msnbc they have one photo of trump from the court case you know there wasn't like uh you know tv cameras allowed in the room i think there was some very specific rule about like one photo is allowed to be taken or whatever and he looks so forlorn and it is giving me life like i don't know i mean this is how petty things get and this is also how how toxic the whole thing is because somebody donald trump being a terrible person is turning me into a terrible person but it's like i was really worried that he was going to figure out some way to be like smiling in the picture or he was going to i'm so obsessed with the optics of this whole thing that like getting to see this early photo where he just looks kind of to me this was kind of slumped and bummed and he just kind of looks and it's you know his lawyers are next to him but it's not it's not great he doesn't look to my mind like he's winning the room or powerful it's not the apprentice you know what i mean he

looks diminished to me and that makes me so happy today is truly the day that donald trump became

president call megan amram all right let's take a quick break and then we'll be back with more tbtl

in a moment on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go everybody

hey let's thank some dazzling donors these generous folks are donating a dazzling amount of dough it is what makes it possible for us to do tbtl day in and day out primarily from chicago apparently, for me, because I live here now. We've got to thank Mike Duncan, who's over there in Columbia, South Carolina. Mike says, Hi, friendos. First time Dazzler here. Hey, Mike, thank you so much. Appreciate that. I've been listening for three whole years now, which I believe qualifies me as a brand new listener. Oh, yeah. I'd say year nine is when you are considered a long-time listener, Mike. As such, I'm still pretty hazy on many of the regular tbtl references so i was wondering if you could do a mini tbtl unexplained here i forgot that we

were doing that bit for a minute wait a second do we have some imaging for that don't we and i'm actually i'm not i'm not joking i don't even oh here how about is it this one from ali i think

don't know what you're saying so please start explaining tbtl explain okay what do we got

Let's see Specifically I'm curious about the phrase You bleed for me The first few times I heard it I thought it was a movie quote Then I realized I was confusing it With the Ben Stiller line from Dodgeball Nobody makes me bleed my own blood I didn't know that line Is this something Luke actually said to someone After a fight Or just something y'all witnessed together Sorry if this is a touchy subject Power out Well Mike It is a thing that i i didn't just say i believe i yelled it at a guy in a full like boston red socks regalia i think that was the team um in a parking lot outside of the mandarin gate after we had just had fisticuffs and um it's pretty mortifying what had happened was we were we were like leaving the this place where we used to always do karaoke and a guy the Mariners had played the Boston Red Sox and the Red Sox had won and I had like and I was obviously pretty inebriated but I think I was trying to say, I was signing my bill at the bar and about to walk out and this guy and his girlfriend were there at the bar and I said something to him about like good game tonight or boy you guys got us or something. I was trying to say something about like the Red Sox won but he who was also pretty drunk took it that I was trying to start something with him or maybe I don't know like hit on his girlfriend I don't know what he thought was going on but we sort of got into a like sort of argument in the bar and then I walked out of the bar out to the front and I'm standing around talking to our friends who were there which was a whole crew of people and I look over and all of a sudden this dude is just like charging out of the bar into the parking lot at me and we got into it and I landed a couple on him and he was bleeding uh and uh and then I yelled uh you bleed for me I believe that was also the time I yelled that's why I'm leaving in an Audi even though I forgot that my then girlfriend Vanessa had driven us in her Jetta so after I screamed that's why I'm leaving in an Audi I had to go get in the passenger seat of my girlfriend's Jetta it's sort of like hey grandma can you come pick me up from the rap battle yeah I love that stuff like it's the most I mean it makes my insides churn to think about how mortifying my behavior was on every possible level other than kicking this guy's ass that part I don't regret I do regret everything else related with this particular situation you didn't say who do you think you are i am i mean if i had known

that if i had known that phrase i am i would have i mean honestly that's that's like shakespeare compared to what i was saying in that parking lot i mean it was it was just who do you think you are i am that's right i messed that up a little bit god beautiful it was just it was so it was so so terrible so so terrible i i it was weird too because i might be confusing i it's very sad that i could be slightly combining different events in the parking lot outside of the gate but i think what also happened somehow was he must have had buddies there because i i had him you know i had him sort of sort of vanquished if you will and then i think his two friends jumped on me and then i just remember being on the ground in the parking lot and somebody's on top of me trying to wail away on me and then i just remember like toon and vanessa going after the guy who's on top of me and i look over and i just see camaro kev and jd pulling out of the parking lot in jd's car they're not fighters and i was just like except all they do is go to kickboxing yeah but that's a sport it's not i was like i could use some kickboxing experts over here as opposed to my five one girlfriend it is funny that's wait does john kickbox as well yeah that's their well i may i don't know anymore but they but at the time they were both like you know whatever really into it but i was just like i just have this very weird memory just being like on the ground and also the thing about that kind of an event and i'm not here to promote that sort of behavior i mean it's really super dangerous and juvenile and really bad and i I feel extremely embarrassed about it and also extremely fortunate that nobody got hurt badly during this period of my life when I used to engage in that kind of stuff more. But it's also weird because it doesn't feel – none of that stuff feels the way you think it's going to feel. Like certainly the alcohol is a factor. The adrenaline is a factor. but it's like i just remember feeling being in this weird state of calm as i'm on the ground of i'm on in the park on the ground in the parking lot with a guy wailing on me and i'm just going like wow they're really leaving like i wasn't even like it didn't feel desperate it didn't feel i didn't feel any pain it was just kind of like almost like an out-of-body experience being like i can really really use some kickboxers right now okay like it's a very strange experience to go through like a fight of any kind and again i would not recommend it it's a really bad idea and i'm glad that that that time in my life is is has passed it's been

a long long long time for me since anything like that has happened and i hope never again in my life oh i did yell at a cyclist the other day while becca and i were jogging i but didn't we didn't have a fight i just yelled at him we were jogging along the willamette in a very very touristy area it's like you know the and all the cherry blossoms were in bloom so it's mostly it's just families taking pictures it's really cute and i will mention that there's a kind of a you know what would you call this sort of an embarcadero like there's a you know there's a sidewalk along the river and that's where lots of people are milling about you'll get joggers some people slowly riding their bike but if you want to ride your bike fast there is a whole street called nato that's right there and it has dedicated bike lanes it's portland like they're very awesome bike lanes and we're jogging along and there's a really cute family and they have like a three-year-old and this guy is cycling at like 30 miles an hour down this thing and they're one of the little kids from the family is just kind of wandering around and the guy just starts yelling hey hey the the cyclist hey hey hey he's not just like hitting the brakes or saying on your left or whatever he's like screaming at this three-year-old and the family so he can continue his like way too fast cycling in this context and uh something about that just lit me up inside and he goes zooming past us he almost hits the kid the dad grabs the kid at the last second and and the guy just literally never slowed down a little bit and as he as he gets i don't know another 20 feet from us or 50 feet i just yell fuck you and the entire family turned around and looked at me i was like no no no not you a study in because it was a family that did not appear to speak english as their first language Maybe I was I was overhearing some of their conversation, but I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not you. You guys are great by me. It's that dude. And do you think he heard? I don't know. He didn't turn around. So that was probably good. And that was probably the first time Becca ever saw me his first time. She saw the big dog. You know, I I would I would like to think that if the guy turned around and came back, i would have just said probably aggressively but i would have just said like hey you know there's a place you can ride your bike fast it's right over there what's with yelling at a three year old you know i'm hoping that i would have just kind of verbally accosted him and not tried to take it to you know physical town i don't think i would i mean if i just i haven't had that happen i haven't done that in a long time a long enough time and i've been mad at people that makes me

think i may have gotten it out of my system this is a totally um this is a story from a different perspective this is not um like i i got yelled at by a cyclist one time when i was just crossing through the bike lane right in my old neighborhood it was a protected bike lane and it was somebody zooming by i was just like i'm crossing the street here like sorry i didn't see you but you were screaming downhill anyway um that irritated me because he like screamed at me and scared the living shit out of me um but all of that is to say that i saw something the other day that was just it seemed like just like somebody you know not somebody who's like intensely into the cycling scene just somebody riding their bicycle down this protected bike lane in my old neighborhood and like i when i'm driving a car now i am so goddamn careful taking a right turn like as drivers you know before bike lanes and stuff you didn't have to be quite as careful i've been fully trained at this point yeah like before you take a right you have to cross over a bike lane and so you have to really like i don't care if i'm holding up traffic i will stop and just like look and make sure that there's the time for anybody to pass out of my blind spot because what i absolutely hate seeing is what i saw the other day a car passing a cyclist you know the cyclist being on their right and then just taking a right into a driveway right in front of said cyclist like i almost watched this bike just crash into the side of this car now the cyclist probably knows and you know unfortunately cyclists know that a lot of uh people driving cars are either assholes or they just don't they just don't notice they're not paying enough attention but like i was screaming in my car this was just on sunday actually in my old neighborhood i was like on 65th luke um just like screaming like look out look out look out look out like that song but i mean the cyclist i think break the leader of the pack i was so like and again And I'm not going to do anything about it, but I wanted to get out and ring some bells of the people driving that car.

Well, that's how – and that's, of course, where the dynamic starts. And probably this person that was riding their bike in Portland is coming – you never know where you're meeting someone in their journey. And I thought his behavior was really inappropriate, but he's probably also foaming off his anger over being disrespected by cars a bunch of times. And unfortunately he's directing it at this Three year old family That are just trying to look at the cherry blossoms I saw something, this isn't cyclist related But it's I guess on the subject Of how Kind of precarious life Is and also how precarious The extremely thin line between A totally normal night and something that Could traumatize you forever We were leaving the theater From doing Wait wait on Thursday night back the previous time I was here in Chicago. And it was me and the other folks who had been on the panel and some people who had been in the theater, some like, you know, I guess some of the audience. And we were chatting and taking some selfies with them and stuff. And we're walking along, I think it's Michigan. It's a very busy street in Chicago. And there's a cross street. And I don't know what the cross street was called. But basically what happened was I heard a car kind of beep and I looked over at it and it was a kind of one of the sort of more beat up type. a car but they there was a young woman we're by columbia college there's a lot of college students there's a young woman with her headphones in and she was standing basically like a foot in the street and i think probably just lost in her thoughts or something and i saw this car this this jalopy miss her by less than four inches like if she would have taken one half of a step additionally into that intersection i think she would have been hit and would have been gravely injured because the car was going 30 miles an hour and she the crazy part was i was upset by how close it was she seemed unfazed um and the car just kept along on its way but i just thought that could have been such a different thing by just uh i mean under five inches and that night is and again not to center myself in the story but it's like that woman potentially loses her life or is incredibly injured and we all watched it and the person driving the car is dealing with that and it's just like it just didn't happen just it was like it just you know they missed her by four inches and then it was just like we kept going on with the night but it was just like those kind of things are happening all the time like what you saw with the cyclists in the car just the the line between normal life and something that makes it so life will never be the same is very it's a very thin membrane and that's about somebody else but I think about that

a lot um when something almost happens to me like I I kind of have like sliding door moments where I'm just kind of like my god classic Ben Affleck film that's right you always think he's in that although I can't remember who the that's Gwyneth Paltrow I think right I believe so but I don't know who I don't know who the fella is but um yeah there's a lot of times where I'm just kind of like man if i had it's often car related actually now that i think about it but like you know if i had if i had you know just been a second late with my breaking or whatever like this nice day we're having would have totally changed and would have extended well into the future with potentially legal or health or i think about that a lot like basically and you know me like i don't like i just like things to be steady eddie i don't like drama like i like my life if i I can if I know I can come home at the end of the day and play some darts like I don't I'm always thankful when nothing dramatic happens.

So that's the answer to your question, Mike. That's why I said you bleed for me, because I am a person who's doing really well emotionally. Maestro.

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

I feel like we're really dominating the kind of south of the Mason-Dixon today because our next dazzling donor is James McCracken from Louisville, Kentucky.

Nice, James. Long-time dazzling donor now, I think. This name is always popping up around this time.

Yeah, James has been doing this for a while, and he says, this year I decided to use this space to make requests. These aren't demands, Andrew. These are requests. It's very different. A return to catrolling Interesting Interesting I mean that was a fun time for the show And we've given it We've really paused that for a few years For people that are maybe new to the show There was a period of time where Although I said we paused it I don't think you really catrolled me Very much right I just tried to catroll you How about Franken and Andrew

We basically found this piece of tape sometime during like the this is back in like 2012 or something uh game of thrones is huge and we're all wearing onions on our belts as was the style at the time and somebody came across this video of a cat edited to make it sound like it's singing the game of thrones can i can i play it Oh, you've got it. Okay. It would have been interesting if I had not played this because the whole joke was...

A reverse cat rolling.

It started on the show where you started, like, you played that for me a couple of times. It was funny. It was obnoxious, whatever. But then we would be in the middle of the show and you'd be like, oh, talking about a top story and saying, Actually, we have some tape of the people at the scene. I'm going to play that now. And then you would hit the Game of Cats song, and I'd get mad. I'd say, ah, you, and I'd shake my fist in the air. And then listeners started finding ways to catroll me in real life. Like someone got a CD into your car. Into my car via my girlfriend. I was catrolled on an airplane. There was something on an airplane.

Weren't you served with catroll papers on an airplane?

I most certainly was. So, yeah, so that is that's what cat rolling is for people who've only been listening for, you know, six years or so.

Updated bingo cards is another request from James. I think that's a good idea because we.

We've got some new spoofs I think that would be fun We should think about that for the fawn Or whatever Hell pizza party

A new hell pizza party We did that once That was when I was Was I even technically working On TB Teller or was I just hanging out with you

You might have just been helping out Yeah that was at my old house In Mount Baker Didn't we have Radke over And like the mummy and all that

Radke the mummy Sean was there and then some folks from Cairo were there videotaping it in fact I believe it was on YouTube or something and the idea was it was based on that wasn't there a pizza in Australia or was it just a sauce in Australia that people were like you buy a whole pizza and you just contaminate one piece with it blindly and then you spin it around and then you all eat the pizza and you see who got the super hot slice.

although i feel like we didn't get it ended up being the case that someone like got the and i think that the the hot sauce we used was the man from dixie's barbecue yep indeed which was a fun element but it seemed like it devolved eventually into just kind of like you know like a a contest of who could just eat something really hot because it was like we put what we thought was enough on whatever the piece was i think the mummy was the official dowser but it was kind of like it wasn't actually as crazy as we expected so then it just devolved and also of course i was like doing shots of jamo so it just it devolved into just like how much of this can one person withstand on a piece of pizza but the like the mystery aspect of it the the the roulette aspect had been removed it was just kind of like how much of this can sean eat or something yeah i because i remember it ended

up being a little anticlimactic I think you maybe got the first one you or it also you you wanted it to be entertaining so I think you may be I'm not accusing you of of lying but you might have been accusing me of being entertaining never never you like to stand up and say you are not entertained which is a little twist on that classic but uh yeah I think that like maybe you got the first one then like but then after a while it got really confusing because like the mummy was like peeling the cheese up and trying to put the put the sauce underneath it but then you could start to people were like well it looks like that piece was messed with and then i think i got like maybe like a little bit of it i couldn't tell it didn't seem that hot to me but maybe i just got some splash from the other pizza slice i'm not sure it just ended up being a little bit confusing

and weird as an excuse to have pizza and jameson i'm into it as a concept yep so uh we'll consider to that and then last but not least james's request is more andrew snack reviews he says i've got eyes open for bbq fritos i've got eyes open for bbq fritos does that mean you opened his eyes to the

majesty that is barbecued fritos i guess so because they went away for a long time and i didn't know it was i thought i was the only person in the i'm not even joking it wasn't like a thing it didn't seem like to be a thing on the internet like you know people campaigning to bring back this flavor of barbecue because you know fritos have uh what is the chili cheese is kind of close to that and whatever and so um i thought i was the only person in america who missed the classic barbecue fritos but apparently they brought them back i was not the only one they brought them back about six months ago they remain on the shelves when i see them i buy them and so i'm assuming that now um maybe when mike sees i'm sorry when james sees uh the the fritos he's going to buy some and try I'm very flattered by this. I don't usually think of me being associated with snack reviews or that I'm necessarily good at it or that people like hearing me eat on the show. But if people do, I'll just start eating breakfast during the show.

And James signs his dazzling donor message with Bonvoy. Nice. Signed, James. James, we will look into all of those things. I'm not even kidding. I could seriously see us getting down with a hell pizza. And we do need to update the bingo cards. So thank you for those requests. We're taking them under serious advisement. And we couldn't be here without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right. We don't have a ton of time here, but I just wanted to tell folks, and maybe our listeners heard this already, but there was a Japanese composer named Raichi Sakamoto, who I didn't realize was just hugely influential on folks like Quincy Jones and all these. flying lotus and lots of uh the sort of really respected american composers and musicians would all tell you that this guy was just incredibly influential he did the music for the revenant they had to remember he passed away um at age 71 and he had composed his final album was called 12 and he released it he he was um battling cancer and he released it uh basically when he

He was, I think, moving towards the end of his life, and he was aware that it was the end of his life. And so they put this piece together on NPR because he wasn't physically well enough to talk about the record, and they just basically interviewed all these people who were influenced by him. And it is such a gorgeous piece of audio, Andrew, because they mix in all of his music. I know it was, I believe, produced by Elizabeth Blair and a number of other people at NPR, But it had me in my feelings yesterday sitting in my apartment. And you and I, well, I don't want to blame you for this. I complain about how NPR doesn't do as many sound-rich pieces anymore. It's a lot of just like two ways about some very serious topic. This was, to me, a throwback to a different era of that network, and I was into it. So I would recommend people go check that out. Now, what I really want to talk about with you is the question of cart narcs. Andrew, are you familiar at all with this whole genre of entertainment?

Yesterday on the show, you mentioned it, that it's one that you're following now as a TikTok account. I have seen some cart shaming here and there in social media, but I didn't think it was that big of a deal or that big of a trend maybe is the word I'm looking for. And I will say a couple of years ago, I think one thing was sort of circulating, which was people, there was like some philosophy of the grocery cart, right? Which is like, it is like the ultimate test of your, I don't know if humanity is the right word, but basically it takes you nothing to return a cart. But if you choose not to, what does that say about how you view your fellow man? People were kind of sizzling down humanity to whether or not you put your cart away in the parking lot.

yeah i i mean i have very mixed i'm have mixed feelings about this whole thing and i'm curious to get your thoughts because you're somebody who really follows the rules and i know it can be very frustrating for you when other people don't follow the rules also i think you're gonna mildly hate this guy his name is sebastian davis he's sort of started this thing now there are like cart narc agents these are just people that are part of his crew in different parts of the u.s have decided to make it their thing to wear like a body mounted GoPro and get these like magnets made that say lazy bones inside and then walk up to people who have left a shopping cart, you know, randomly somewhere in the parking lot and not returning it to its rightful home. And then he goes up or these people generally, I'm mostly familiar with his work. He has a YouTube channel. I've just seen it kind of, you know, edited and then put up on TikTok. it's kind of wild because people get so mad at him and he it's amazing he has not been assaulted he appears to be sort of a fast runner like he has this really crazy system where he i'm gonna play you a little this is just this tape isn't super helpful but this was him on the dr phil show which the fact that we're even by the way that's where this audio came from this morning andrew do you have a story or a question for me it's because i've been spending the morning watching dr phil this is the founder of cart narcs sebastian davis in a dr phil segment about what he does

are an independent organization that tries to get people to just take their cart back to the cart return that's not where the cars go that's the mulch when i do see that some lazy bones has left their cart out i turn on the wand of justice and activate the mouth siren the wand of justice is

like one of those things that the people on the ground crew at the airport use you know like that lighted little torch thing he's got one of those and when he sees someone leaving their card out he waves it at them and makes that really annoying sound that's not where the cards go it's the middle

of the spot we've had hundreds of encounters i've had many threats on my life being a card besides a guy pulling a gun on me i've had multiple people say they're gonna run me over Well, sir, that's not nice. Sir, that's against the law. There's definitely an adrenaline rush. Go f*** yourself, cart narc. How about that? This is my uniform. I have an equipment vest, which is actually a bulletproof vest. I put my body camera right here. Captures everything that happens so nobody can lie about it afterwards. It's curbing, sir.

You know that's against the law to videotape somebody.

I have this wand here which lights up. It shows that I'm highly visible. I threw drink on you, little girl, okay? And as a feminist, I take offense with that. After I ask them nicely to return their cart, if they still don't do it, I slap on a bumper magnet of shame. Where does it say that I have to do anything but what I did? It's politeness. That's great. Keep picking them up. Think about somebody besides yourself. Our videos get millions and millions of views. This is because I think it's a common pet peeve. Is your disability lazy-bones-itis?

And who the f*** are you? Well, lazy-bones-itis, how about... people say you're bullying and harassing people that's simply not true what i'm doing is i'm not letting them throw a temper tantrum and dissuading me from my mission i'm a highly trained special

agent with the carton arcs what we do is we narc people out and leave their carts out like this

like big old lazy bones to those who say i'm just shaming the public yes i am we are a social that's a good drop and that's how we learn what to do okay i'll pull it i've got it here there is an epidemic of lazy bones in america and the carton arcs are here to slide it back

okay so um basically uh the the clips that i see on tiktok are when somebody just goes ballistic on this guy and again he's got a kind of a weird system or a surprising system where like he'll keep sticky he has like 20 of these magnets and he'll put one on and then the person will like the person will be trying to pull away the person's always trying to drive away and then he throws this magnet on their car and then they stop and they get out and they're so mad the magnets on their car and they get the magnet and they like throw it like a frisbee across the parking lot and then he puts another one on the car and they start to drive away and then they stop it's very interesting to me how mad people are about the magnets like it feels really disrespectful to them for some reason but are you you're surprised or you're interesting

because i feel like we've talked about this on the show before like i i think that you i even mentioned one time that i came to my car and somebody else had flipped up my side view mirror like they were parking in a tight spot next to me so they flipped up my mirror for me which is like you know it's supposed to do that i don't remember the details of the story but i remember just being like you mess with my car i remember you having a visceral reaction to that like you do not touch my car like if you came to your car and somebody had like adjusted the antenna or a mirror or something you would feel sort of violated i feel like i think i would but i guess

i have a hard time empathizing with the people who don't return their shopping cart and then are like belligerent about it so i guess i see them as i mean again this guy seems super annoying to me but i also think it's really annoying when people don't return their carts and like there are moments where and a lot of times it's like a real maga type guy you know a maga guy who's trying to be all tough and i'm all kick your butt and then the maga guy will like on the third application of the lazy bones magnet he'll like start running after the guy sebastian and then like just absolutely eat shit in the parking lot of like a tuesday morning or a harbor freight or harbor tools and it's just something about like a guy in a giant truck who doesn't return his shopping cart who then wants to like fight this guy and then just absolutely goes ass over tea kettle i don't feel like any of this is a good view into humanity on any level but i find it endlessly entertaining i guess my question to you my question to you is sort of like is there any value that you can see in the public the public shaming of people that are like really kind of violating the the social norm of like you're supposed to put your cart back i mean

listen you're talking to me mr mr get upset about petty grievances like this especially when it just comes down to people either obliviously walking through the world and not realizing that they share it with other people or obstinately walking through the world realizing that they share with other people and not giving a shit because because they're selfish like those two things and it probably has a lot to do with how i was brought up like those things trigger me big time um but even for me like this approach to it does nothing for me i mean maybe if i was watching and i saw some guy that represented everything i hate about certain sections of america biting it in a harbor freight parking lot like i could see myself grinning at that but listening to this tape like i'm not a confrontational person every now actually you were talking about your fight before this hasn't happened in a while but for for a while there I feel like I was like scrolling areas of Reddit where I was seeing a lot of confrontations because there's some cool stuff like called instant karma where you see somebody like kind of be a dick to a goose and then the goose gets him back at the end or whatever and it's great it's instant karma but often those are just like somebody slaps somebody in the back of the head and then all of a sudden it's just a brawl it's like two people fighting and that like uncinematic sound of flesh hitting flesh or whatever like that stuff

None of it is like the movies I can personally testify to that

So that kind of confrontation And also like What's the end game here Because you're not really You're just What's the word I'm looking for You're not making any change here You're not changing these people's minds The next time they're in the parking lot I don't think they're going to return their cart to the corral I think they're going to even just feel more Strident in not doing so I feel like no

I guess I wonder about that because I wonder if there are – that would be – there's no way to study this, but it would be interesting to see what the behaviors are the next time one of those people who got into it with the carton arc dude, what they do the next time they're there. because, I mean, even, again, I...

Every time I return the cart, it's a three-second battle in my mind. Like, how far away is the corral? Is there, you know, like, am I in a rush? Is it raining outside? And, again, it's a big one for me about, like, just living in a society. I'd also be mortified if somebody, like, a 10 saw me, like, just dumping my cart, you know? So I always take it back. But I do have, like, a two-second thing of, like, this is mildly annoying. This is not what I want to be doing right now. i'm just wondering if any of these people after that whole like if they just had never really thought about it and and yeah they wanted to kill the cart dark guy but like if the next time they have the cart and they're like i can take two seconds and return it or i cannot i mean you're probably right sadly that they probably are even more dug in on not returning the car but i guess i feel like that's one of those rude things that people do because they don't think about it not because they got up that morning and were like i want to make society a tiny bit worse they just kind of selfish and they just don't think about it it's now been put very much on their radar and i wonder if there are any behavioral changes from just the awareness that it's a rude thing maybe

it's hard to say i feel like now they're going to go home and talk about how they were victims of some asshole in a parking lot sure yes that's true i don't you know okay so here's what i'm going to say um and you are going to hate this so much it's going to sound like i'm making this up to try to like polish my own apple or something. And I promise you, I'm not.

I literally know I hate it when you polish your own apple.

I have found myself recently, not like all the time, but from time to time, if it works out and it's not like an awkward moment, but I happen to be returning my cart or if I'm unloading my groceries and I see somebody else unloading their groceries into their car and they're kind of nearby me, I might slow my pace a little bit to time it and then just, like, offer to take their cart back for them. And I've done that, I don't know, like, maybe five, ten times over the past year or something. And it's never a big deal. I don't stand around for them to tell me what a good boy I am and that I earned a merit badge. But I just think, like, for a split second, they're just like, they look up, they're like, oh, yeah, thank you. And I just think, like, that's kind of nice, right? Absolutely. It sounds like the type of thing that I'd make up to make it sound like I'm some sort of, I mean, so Pollyanna-ish. But it gives me a good feeling. and yeah you know we do things to give ourselves good feelings but it's not like i'm standing around saying like hey my name's andrew walsh i'm a podcaster here's my card please remember this moment it's just like it's not self-aggrandizing consider that we were looking to build audience because nobody knows who i am so that's my one argument for not being self-aggrandizing i guess me talking about it on the radio here itself no no i i think that's really nice that doesn't

annoy me at all and i am a big fan of those little moments of grace between strangers where it's like it's not hardly any extra work for you not hardly it's it's it's not much more work for you it probably brightened that person's day for just a quick second of like hey somebody was nice to me for no no reason like i think that's awesome i'm actually gonna i will consider doing that myself um because i think it's such a nice gesture yeah well that's good i'm glad yeah again it felt

silly bringing it up it's not the type of thing that i tell my friends that i do because i'll

I'll tell you what I got to stop doing, though, though, I've got I've slid into this thing where I if I'm dealing with like, you know, I'm getting helped by by a guy at like the store or the bar or whatever. I'll say, hey, thanks, brother. I got to stop doing that because I said it to a black guy the other day. And that was not I did not intend for it to be a statement about race. But I spent the rest of the day just like, why? Yeah. Why do you?

what was the reaction what do you think you saw in the eyes was somebody holding a door for you or something

no no no he was super I forget exactly where it was but it wasn't his reaction did not appear to be I mean as much as I can read someone's reaction it did not appear to be one of being offended by it I'm hoping it was taken in the spirit it was intended which was just like I'm a human you're a human because I've really slid into this like saying I appreciate you to people a lot instead of I appreciate it I now say I appreciate you yeah because i i think it's kind of nice yeah i think that's i think that's been trending and i just think it's nice to land it on the person a little bit more just like someone holds the door for like if someone were if you were to grab someone's cart and they were to say hey appreciate you like i feel like that's a little bit more directed at you then hey i appreciate it but i appreciate you has slid into i don't call anyone sister for the record but it's like i don't know particularly if i got a couple drinks in me it's like i'm in this mode where i'm trying to just like basically be as friendly to everyone that i'm interacting with and like i appreciate you and hey thanks brother but it's like i gotta be really i think i gotta retire brother because it's a little it's a little fraught depending on who i'm address there's got to be something that's a little more has a little less

history behind it that I can use to express that I appreciate someone's, you know, whatever, just who they are in the world and that they're doing something nice for me.

Yeah, I agree. I do the same thing with man. And I've been actually kind of in the back of my head sort of because I say man all the time I have, or at least in my life. But, you know, like you don't know what somebody's background is now. You don't know if they identify as a man. And like I'm trying to like kind of back off of that. Again, my intentions are always good. I kind of doubt I've ever called somebody man and they were offended. But I'm just I think friend. Oh, I love friend. Oh, but like friend without the O is terrible. It's well, thanks, friend friend. Oh, I don't think I've ever actually deployed that in public. It seems corny. I don't know. But I need something other than like, man.

Yeah, Becca's on me about that one, because I say it all the time. And, you know, living in Portland, there are tons of interactions with folks that it's not totally clear what they're how they identify. and you know and literally we were like in a whole foods and i said thanks man to a person who was um appeared to be very fluid you know from just the outward appearance and becca was like you might want to like not say thanks man to people who you don't know how to identify so now i do it every time just to kind of embarrass her things are going well things things are going great great

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

Alright emails or emails

Do you remember earlier on in the show I said sometimes you just need to say I was wrong And just move on with something That's sort of the case here with this short voicemail I want to play for you. We were talking about tennis balls hanging from garage ceilings from a long string. And I was saying, and I told you that you said you saw them growing up but didn't quite understand what the deal was. And I said, well, I know my uncle had that situation. And it was so you knew exactly how far in to pull your car to leave enough room for the door to close behind it, but maybe leave some space in front of the car for people to walk by if you're in a tight garage. and you had made sort of a almost an offhand comment and you said it's just interesting because in my in my head those those tennis balls were hanging more from the middle of a garage not like near the front of a garage where a bumper might be and I was like yeah I don't know maybe it just has to do with people's taste well I heard from a bunch of people that I got one small thing about this wrong it's not to tell you where to put your

It's just garage talk, and you guys were talking about the tennis balls hanging from the garage ceiling and what that's supposed to do for knowing how far to pull in before parking. And my folks are definitely down with this move. And the reason why they're kind of more in the middle of the garage is it's when they hit your windshield. So you drive in, and when that tennis ball hits your windshield, that's where you stop. And I have to say, it is remarkably effective. I do not partake in this practice myself, but I have to tip my hat to it.

Power out. It's a fun way. I mean, when you're a kid, you just see a bright green tennis ball hanging from a ceiling. It seems fun. It seems like tetherball. It seems like maybe t-ball a little bit. It's fun.

You know what sad is? I don't know if sad is the right word. Happy? There would have been a time when I would have. It's not happy. it's somewhere north of sad but south of happy basically like my first thought was yeah but like how hard is it to know where you are in your garage that you park in every day like we need a thing and then i thought actually that would be pretty helpful for me now like in other words there would have been a time in my life where i probably had fairly keen depth perception and my spatial kind of locating was was just fine and i probably didn't need that and now if i was parking in a garage i'd be like that'd be kind of helpful because i could see myself just going right into that back wall because of not being you just nothing's as sharp for me now as it was 20 years

ago and it might not even have to do with well hey am i going to crash into the wall but it can just give you a sense because my parents have a really tight garage and they have two cars in there and so everything has to be like in order to not crash into the wall but to leave enough space to walk in front of the car so that they can get from the door of the house into their car like so they don't have a tennis ball but i could just see like i think people you and i i think luke have you ever in your adult life had a garage that you park your car in every day like i don't think i've had that i've parked in parking lots street parking driveway occasionally the house

in Port Townsend had a garage.

but we didn't use it to park and i think the boat was in there yeah yeah like i'm it's funny i am i wouldn't say i'm anti-garage like i to see the value particularly if you're in the midwest or place where it gets really cold i can see the functionality but like i've talked about this on the show many times but like when i'm watching one of those like hgtv shows and the like number one priority for the family is to have like a huge three-car garage to the like i would say detriment of the rest of the house or there's like a cool house and i'm like oh that would be such a cool house but like yeah but it doesn't have a two-car garage i'm so far outside of garage culture again it probably has to do with where i've lived it's just in fact i mean the the house that i've been remodeling with my dad the what was the garage is going to be tbtl central you know So that had a garage, and I was like, yeah, we can do something better. Again, I guess it's kind of the luxury of living in the Northwest. I don't get that being the priority. But, again, I think a lot of it has to do with climate.

Does Jay Leno have a garage?

Do you know? I haven't been following him a lot since he left his night show. I wonder if Jay has a garage. I'll look into that. I think he has maybe like a tennis ball or two because it's probably a tight fit. It's probably pretty small. If he has one, it's probably really tiny.

Yeah, very small, exactly, and he's got to put his bikes in there, too, so, you know.

Sure, he's at the kayak that he doesn't ever use, but he's got it in there, you know, as a Christmas gift. Anyway, I'll look into it.

Oh, you know, there was something, and I don't know what it was, but there was something in that voicemail. I guess, you know what, that's what it was. The intersection of cars and balls. Luke, first of all, don't make a dirty joke. Secondly, when we do tomorrow's show, how about a little Ford promo here? I'm going to tell you about this ridiculous video game that I've totally accidentally started playing and got obsessed with two nights ago. And now I don't know who I am anymore.

Excellent. I love this. What a great forward promotion for tomorrow's program. Here we are at the end of today's program, though. So we should probably wrap things up and say thank you, everyone, for listening. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. In the meantime, take care of yourselves Have a great Tuesday And please remember, no mountain too tall

And good luck to all

be careful though it's spicy power out