Muse

How many hot dogs do you eat in a day, Tim?

I'd rather not answer that. Thank you, though.

Did you eat hot dogs today?

Not exactly. Why are you bringing this up?

Well, you have mustard on your shirt, and frankly, your verbs reek of hot dogs. I had a hot dog bowl earlier today. Yes, I did. And what is a hot dog bowl?

It's like a burrito bowl. But it's chopped up hot dogs in a big old bread bowl.

So, like, a much larger, less healthy hot dog? Can I go? I'm starving.

TBTL! Sometimes you just gotta, you know, grit your teeth and look life right in the face, and you say, stop it, you know? Please stop, please. Why are you doing this to me? I haven't even done anything to you. Please stop.

I wish I could help you here, but I just don't want to.

How did these buff dudes escape my radar? I thought I knew about every single buff, dude. This is what happens when an inside joke gets into the water supply. All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Let the great experiment begin!

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. And I'm going to get all anecdotal on you. Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon. where I am extremely pleased to be back home broadcasting from the home office after a whirlwind week, which ended in two days of me crawling around in various beaver ponds in the Connecticut, Massachusetts area.

I will send you the finest lubrication agent made by the sweat of 17 hardworking Canadian beavers.

Back here in Portland, just in time for another atmospheric river of... Didn't know you like to get wet, though. Like, just torrential rain happening right now. And also, we're starting to see certain flowering trees and bushes start to drop their flowers. And it's kind of beautiful, but I saw a fascinating thing happening here as I was getting ready for the show, which was a woman was driving down the street that my apartment's positioned on in a Prius. And clearly her Prius had been parked underneath a, I think it's called a camellia bush. They're those kind of big green bushes and they have a bunch of red or kind of reddish pink flowers on them. Almost look like roses. They're so beautiful. We had one of them, though, growing in front of our house and our rental house on 77th Street in Seattle when I was a kid. They're beautiful, but when they drop their petals, their little flowers, it's like they drop it all at once. This woman's car was so covered in flowers that she had to stop at the light and clear the flowers, like the way you would clear ice off of your windshield. I mean, it looked like an art piece or something. So anyway, that's what's happening so far on this wet, rainy Monday as we arrive at episode 3919 in a collector's series. You know how we were talking about that Oleato, the Starbucks coffees that have a shot of olive oil in them?

This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world.

Well, there is some conversation on the internet from both baristas and even just customers that say there may be an embarrassing medical condition hastened by consuming one of these new olive oil coffees. So we will talk about that. Also, big news out of Hollywood. So who needs a movie? They've got a certified hit on their hands. There was a movie that just absolutely crushed it at the box office this weekend about a couple of plucky Italian plumbers.

I'd like to maybe meet some guys and Italian guys.

We'll talk about what's going on with the Mario Brothers movie coming up. And we'll talk about this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's also described in some circles as...

This handsome young stranger.

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

Good morning, Luke. I rarely say this, if ever, but I would like to try to actually get to both top stories today. I can't explain it. I have just a little bit to say about each. You know, you might think that, oh, if I really want to get to the top stories, I must have, like, a rant to go on. I have no rants, but I found them both interesting in a low-key way, and I may have takes, just mild takes, not hot takes, not especially cold takes, just mild little takes that I'd like to share with you. So let's make that a good one.

goal today okay let's you said make it a goal to have mild takes or make it a goal to get to both of the top stories

to get to both of the top stories okay

I'm putting it down hold on you can't hear this but this is me detaching I have a little I also by the way I have to keep one eye on the cat who's trying to climb atop the broadcast center but I've got my Expo dry eraser which I have a velcroed okay to this thing I'm moving the mic so you can hear it I'm going to take it off the velcro you hear that yeah i heard that i'm going to write it on the calendar get to both pop stories i'm going to put it back on the velcro i don't think that makes

noise but could you pull it off again though and then put it back on just so i can hear the noise again okay hold on here we go taking it off and putting it back on okay you know okay here's one thing this is just this isn't and my friend i think we're gonna have a pretty good show you know i'm listening to that i don't think that's velcro brand hook and loop technology

there well this is a public radio show right i just i feel you don't have throwing the word

velcro around kind of carelessly when what we're what we heard there was some it was certainly

you know what and there's any show that should respect yeah the sanctity of hook and loop hook and loop technology versus which is not to be confused with hook and luke technology no uh which is a whole other thing that i don't really want to get into on this torture thing yeah it's funny that i'm i'm joking that we don't have uh we don't have uh your name brand velcro money on this show because uh yesterday uh i went over to becca's brother's house uh here in portland for a little easter get together and the whole family was there her whole family and uh we were they were telling the story of somebody who was kind of a local like a very successful business person and philanthropist and that he used to always judge some kind of a cake eating contest in um this was some kind of like i don't know oregon tradition portland tradition but that he would sit there with these cakes in front of him and also just a giant bottle of pepto bismol and um hold on one second we just need to get the cat off of the literal cord that keeps you and i talking to each other andrew that's an important cord it's one of the most important cords that we have as part of this process um anyway he would just sit there with a thing of pepto-bismol and then i realized that i know what pepto-bismol what the real what the active ingredients are and it's something called bismuth right that's what the actual thing in pepto-bismol is that is supposed to be calming for your stomach you know a baby and the reason i know that is because we didn't have pepto-bismol money when i was growing up we had something called pink bismuth that was i mean effectively pepto-bismol it was fine but we just had although we're also a big

kaopectate family oh wait hold on that's isn't that the stuff that makes you throw up no no

that's uh kaopectate is something to calm your stomach if it's not feeling great um i think epicac is the thing that makes you throw up yes right we did we were not an epicac family we were not a family that needed to throw up and couldn't there was never the situation the burbanks found themselves in but i just realized and i have to say you know um becca's family is just they're just some of the warmest smartest most fun people but they just have they're all people who make good decisions in life and they come from a long line of people who make great decisions in life like one of the things that was being shown was a family like a sort of a uh in the album it was like when the great grandfather ran for supreme court justice of oregon this is the kind of people we're talking about and then you got uncle luke who's three glasses of white wine in talking about all we had was pink bismuth when i was growing up on 77th street i wonder if they still sell this

pink i almost i mean it's sort of punk right like i had a boss for a while who we worked for you know a public you know a well-established public radio concern but not one that had you know a super deep budget and my boss when he was new he kind of came in and i noticed that he had like a really crappy computer he had like one of the worst computers in the building and he had one of the few offices in the programming department i was like man we got to get you a better computer he's like no no this is punk rock like he really liked the idea of like being the boss but having sort of the the worst of everything is there any argument to be made there with your uh pink that

i'm kind of the punk rock member of that family now or at least you know well no just the pink

the fact that you had like the off the pink bismuth or the pink vermouth as i like to call

like maybe that was cooler than having i mean there's a this is a fair question like there were so many things i was also explaining that my mom now buys almost all of their toiletry

i think either at dollar general or at the 99 cent store and there's a i mean really in both of the bathrooms in their house but i think it was most notable maybe in the basement bathroom this was a couple of thanksgivings ago it i noticed that many of the beauty products shampoo and things like that appear to be oriented towards non-white ethnicities and my mom just doesn't she just doesn't read the world she doesn't go well maybe this is not a product that's created for my hair type maybe this is a product that's created for someone with a different kind of style of hair or different type of hair and it's just a bunch of stuff I've never quite seen before it sounds sort of like something that you've heard of but kind of not and it's just the most odd array of toiletries and other things you might find in the bathroom So who knows if they're even still using pink bismuth over there. They've got something completely different now.

I might move on to pink bismuth. I'm looking at it here. It looks, yeah, you know what? This is punk rock. This is the punk rock version of stomach relief. Also, it should be known. It should be known. It's important that this is known. Make a proclamation. I don't really use pink bismuth or hepto-bismol, actually. I think, and I'm actually kind of bringing up some old memories now, maybe if I had some Pepto-Bismol for the brain, I wouldn't be bringing these up, but I feel like one time I upchucked a whole, I was sick, and I drank some Pepto-Bismol as a kid, because that was supposed to make me feel better, and it didn't, and instead I saw a lot of pink coming back out of my body, and I'm guessing that might have been kind of foundational in my feelings about Pepto-Bismol.

i was just about to say something that i realized i like do you ever do this like where in a matter of like 1.5 second your brain previews an entire statement and then the logical next statement and then you go yeah let's not do that yes sometimes i just probably not enough statement right so i i know that exact feeling of just being sick as a kid and then like probably making a strong association between how uncomfortable you were and what the color of that experience was as the Pepto as the Bismuth was was making a return voyage back up your you know whatever and I was thinking about well there was two times that I was I guess they can't be the most sick I ever was because I'm talking about two different times where there's two times as a kid I just remember being just so so unwell one of them was and here's what I almost said I said what I almost said was i should get like an ultrasound to see if i still have an appendix because i kind of had a theory that i may have actually ruptured an appendix and just didn't get medical attention for it and but then i thought don't you die from that yeah i think i was gonna say that i doubt i ruptured my appendix and just pushed through i think it would i would have died so i i didn't want to over i didn't want to overstate it but i just remember riding my bike home from my friend ben folks house and just about halfway home just feeling like a pain in my side like not a side ache like from over exercise but just like a pain that was crippling and like getting just like kind of getting off my bike and walking and then slumping over more as i'm kind of like now just hobbling this bike home and just getting into like getting downstairs and just crying you know and being like in so much pain and then my parents just kind of like laying me in bed and just being like for like days like having the most it wasn't abdominal it wasn't something for bismuth it was not a job for business that's why i think this was and i never had anything like that again i never had anything like it before like it wasn't i had too many caramel apples it was like something is wrong with my internal organs this wasn't a shoots and ladders situation it was not but wait

remind me on i just did you ever play the board game there's like one of the longest slides and chutes and ladders is um a little girl at the bottom of a slide like you were really working your way up to the top of the board but then you hit the wrong tile you slide all the way down and there's usually an action or some sort of sin that is associated with the slide and that long slide on the version we had was some i think some little girl who ate too much candy and now had a

tummy ache i can really picture that yeah um i've said this before on the show chutes and ladders was the very first time I remember the part of my brain that loves gambling being stimulated. Because, you know, you can really swing for the fences. Like, if it's not going well, like someone else is making better progress, you still have that chance on, I think it's maybe the second row up, to hit the big ladder, i.e. to get triple sevens. And I just remember being a kid, like, I would hit the, like, if you got unlucky and hit the big slide, I wasn't that bummed because I was like, yeah, but what if I hit that big ladder? Like there was this real kind of like swinging for the fences.

dopamine release that was happening while playing Chutes and Ladders. And there's

no, I don't know if you'd remember this off the top of your head, so I don't want to be a conversation killer, but that game, there wasn't a lot of decision making, right? You weren't like, okay, well, I can go big here, or I can play more carefully. You just roll the dice and the dice decide everything, right? But your feeling was you didn't have agency, so you weren't maybe necessarily making quote-unquote big bets in the game as a kid, But you just didn't feel demoralized if you ate too many candy apples and ended up at the bottom of the slide because you still thought, like, there's a lot of game to play.

Yeah, I'm trying to find, sorry, I'm trying to find the original board because all I can see are these new updated ones.

Oh, I don't even want it. It's probably got Alvin and the Chipmunks on there or some shit.

It's Chipwrecked. It's co-branding with Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, Chipwrecked.

Honestly, I wasn't even trying to do that. But, like, Minions would have been an outdated reference there. And I'm going Elvin and the Chipmunks

But I promise you there is a Minions Shoots and Ladder board Okay I found the board Andrew And I'm going to tell you what the guy What the person is Who probably takes the longest slide As far as I can tell Would be a person who It's a kid who's reaching in a cookie jar Okay it's cookies And then he's at the bottom And it's not even I don't think it's that he ate too many cookies It's that he fell off the ladder He was using to get into the cookie jar And he's seeing stars and he's surrounded by a shattered cookie jar

Do you see anywhere on there And I'm frantically looking to get a visual up on here too I need eyes on this Enhance, enhance Is there a girl kind of like in a skirt or something Kind of holding her rumbling belly At the bottom of any of these slides Because I really feel like I remember that And we would have had a pretty early version of this game too

There's a girl who's crying on 19 She's sitting but I don't see what she did wrong Oh she was carrying too many dishes probably working as a child laborer on the bowery in new york in the 1910s yeah as a scullery maid so she's she's not happy she she goes from from tile 62 all the way down to 19 because she carried too many dishes i'm wondering if that's who you're thinking of i'm scrolling through here um it's a guy who tries to there's a kid who tries to get a cat to play with him oh i remember that gets scratched up, but he only falls three sections. And then, oh, let's see here. No, you know, it's mostly, well, of course, you'll be happy to know that it's not an ungendered, I wouldn't say it's not gendered,

this board. Yeah, the girl carrying dishes.

It's like every boy is in trouble for being too plucky. He hit a ball through a window. Aw, shucks. And then every girl is doing some sort of domestic task and either doing it well and being rewarded or doing it poorly and being punished

yeah i see okay so one girl's writing on the wall but then she's got to scrub it off that's kind of her punishment deal boy i don't know what i i luke i feel like i could have drawn the kid at the bottom of the slide who'd eaten too much who'd eaten too many sweets but i guess uh it was just a false memory which means and i don't know if you want to do this or not but i feel like maybe we should go back to the beginning of tbtl when i started hosting with you and just check the record on everything do we have fact checkers who could go back and make sure that everything i've said on the show is historically accurate i'm assuming that's some project that's ongoing in the stens

page i mean it's not it's not being collected in one place formally but the information is out there i would think in specific posts where someone goes what the hell were they talking about when they said this you know what would be funny is if we did a tbtl version of chutes and ladders oh that that would be fun like what you know what i mean i don't even know what that means it's just like things that we do like you know it's like uh pronounce someone's name correctly big ladder um told the same story and got the same fact wrong big old shoot left a truck

had a repair shop for i consider that one tbd well that's yeah that's a scaffolding clementine i just drive by clementine i think what happened here only because the listeners really care about this is i think i was a dog with a bone i think i was probably conflating the girl who fell with the dishes who's sitting at the bottom of the ladder that's what i was the boy who they're very near each other and the boy who um i guess cracked open the cookie jar and is sitting right

the bottom yeah i guess i'm the moral of the story there is it's not bad to eat the cookies

it's bad to shatter the cookie jar you got to get away with it is it's the cover-up not the crime is what i learned from chutes and ladders i always get the the boy who's ice skating and then he

slides down because it's a no skating i get him confused with the man who sold the world

because of the way he looks i don't even know why you said that or is it of what kind of joke are

you making i don't know i don't know like the problem was i didn't do that thing andrew where I practice in my head what it's going to say. sound like when i say it and then i don't say it but what was the seed of the idea the boy who did the thing is a construction and the man who sold the world is a similar construction but from a wildly different context okay i see the idea that the character from a david bowie song would somehow exist in this unbelievably sort of kid-like environment the the the juxtaposition of those two ideas was hoping some humor uh existed i see well i confused the kid who hit

the ball through the window with the man who wasn't there so that also wasn't a good joke but i just wanted to i'm getting now that we've explained the construction i'm giving you cover there exactly cover or trying to steal my comedy oh jesus christ i had to help you once in my

goddamn life i had to explain comedy to my mom this weekend on the hawk squad text chain because so every easter morning you know my my parents are still um you know active and practicing christians i'm happy to say that they in my opinion have moved i think to a much a more inclusive and open view of the world than the one that i grew up in if that makes any sense there was a lot of talk about everybody who was doing it wrong and was going to go to hell for various reasons it was a pretty sheltered environment they they're not i don't see that as their worldview anymore um and and but they still have a strong faith they believe that jesus is real and that heaven is real but they've also kind of like they've tempered it because none of their kids literally zero for seven with having kids who are practicing christians so they're like looking for very low-key ways to slide in little christian things without feeling like they're you know being heavy-handed so um you know my dad will like sneak a prayer in sometimes like before we you know we're sitting around as a family we're about to eat and when i grew up we prayed before every single meal but he'll kind of he'll kind of sneak in a little quick prayer he'll say thank you lord for the food or something and we all you know we play along it's fine and then the other thing is on easter one of my parents will always text he has risen exclamation point that's the tradition on hawk squad he has risen so for some reason on sunday morning i got up and i decided to text he has risen but then just include this picture of my nephew jack just looking like the most chill boss of all time like he's in this like kind of suit he's sitting outside on a rattan chair he's wearing these sunglasses that my sister got from her store when she used to have a clothing store he's just he just looks like the funniest character to me in this picture i absolutely love it and i texted he has risen and then i just included the picture of jack just because i thought it was a funny and weird and like when you hear he has risen you're not expecting to see a picture of my nephew jack then my mom follows up later after there are many other photos and things posted in the thing um he has risen indeed it's for my mom he has risen indeed luke but why the pic of jack chilling and i said well mom because it was supposed to be a funny subversion of your expectation after seeing the phrase he is risen you wouldn't expect to see jack comedy mom comedy and then my mom this is why my mom is so great she then laughs at my response and says i know i got it right off but i wanted to continue it my hilarious eldest son cry laughing emoji so there you go she was providing me cover on my job you were providing me cover on the other

joke yes yeah i um that i yeah i don't explain comedy to your mom andrew no i haven't i don't

know what to say there that i will say that yeah child parent relationship that response is i you

know i i'm stumbling here because i don't want to say anything i love your mom she's the best i don't

fully buy her i wonder about that too i don't think you're i don't think i don't think you're That's what I'm trying to be. Critical. Yeah, I think I agree with you. I don't think that that was, I don't think she was exactly getting the joke the first time. And then when I explained, as I did in such a patient way, and I think that's what's so great about me as a son, when I explained in such a patient way how comedy works, then I think she sort of tried to kind of save it by saying, oh, yeah, yeah, I was in on that.

I would also say that I'm not surprised that she was confused. I might be somewhat surprised as well. So I'm going to play both. i was gonna try to do an imitation never mind forget all that forget all that um who am i what was that gonna be what was that gonna be that was me i know it sounds like cookie monster

no um what happened lewis armstrong or cookie monster those are the two leading candidates

for things you were about to impersonate okay this is terrible so i listened to the levitard show way too much and so much like people listening to this show too much the little inside jokes and and just asides that are just said a million times get stuck in your head as if it's something that you say with your friends right and then i was pausing because i couldn't remember even who they're imitating i couldn't think of the person's name it's sean connery he was an actor from a heyday in the 60s and 70s you might have heard of him but really had a long storied career luke you should look look him up sean connery is the name yeah anyway they do some imitation of him constantly.

i don't know if it's one person on the staff or they all do it but they'll always say you're playing both sides and i can't really do the imitation but i hear it in my head they play a drop or they just they just say it and but it's better than mine though um my sean connery is once you leaned into it yeah i thought actually it was pretty good well that's anyway that's what you heard but then i wanted to explain myself and i couldn't think of the name sean connery And so, like, I was just spinning and you just heard panic upon panic upon panic as I slip into a character that isn't canon to this show. I don't like cross pollinating like that. I don't like the sound that came out of my mouth. That was more like Cookie Monster than anything else. And I didn't like the fact that I couldn't remember the most famous actor in the world's name.

Well, I would not say Sean Connery is the most famous actor in the world. So I mean, and also hasn't been relevant, was not, you know, recently making films. So I give you, in fact, when do you think the, well, when you think the last Sean Connery movie of note was The Rock, maybe, starring William Nicholas Cage?

Wow, you must have done something after that, but of note, I guess, is your caveat there. I went to-

I'm just trying to provide you cover over not remembering Sean Connery's name.

I appreciate that. You know what I find, you know what I did this Friday, Luke, because I had wrapped up my work nice and early. We had an interesting schedule last week, and I found myself with a free Friday afternoon. Now, this is something that I used to celebrate quite a bit. I feel like a few years ago or something, I was in this habit of, like, kind of knocking off early on a Friday and doing what? Taking the bus to Big Mario's Pizza, having a couple of beers, having a couple of slices, like, on a Friday afternoon before the – because that's a bar that could conceivably get kind of crowded on a Friday night.

And let's be honest, crowded with young, cool people.

Yeah. Well, and I always like to buy there.

Because you and I need to be gone before that kind of stuff happens.

I mean, the funny thing is, is I love the community there. I don't think, believe it or not, I don't think I have the same hang-up about being around young people as you do. Like, I go in there, I was actually thinking, I was very conscious of it when I was in there. Like, I'm in there now and I realize, oh, I'm one of the, I'm probably the oldest person at this bar. The bartender himself was, like, a real, like, kind of, like, lanky, wallet-chain-y, like, sagging clothes. Almost like a, like a kind of a modern, oh, I don't even, I can't even think of it. Sean Connery? He's kind of a modern Sean Connery, just like kind of like like what you would call. I don't want to use a word that is disparaging, but almost kind of kind of burnout looking kind of, you know, rock and roll guy or whatever. But like super sweet. This like has this like grin on his face the whole time. And I was just sort of thinking like every time I come in here, like I feel like a lot of these people know each other. It must be I might be that time of day or the type of bar where a lot of bartenders go during off hours. It sort of seems like there's a community. but they're always so goddamn sweet to me the old man who's coming in there just to like watch whatever's on their vcr and eat a few slices of pizza um and which i did this last friday i was a little disappointed though i always look forward to like whatever movie they have on the vcr i will enjoy it the last time i was in there which was like a year ago they were watching the flintstones sequel oh Viva Rock Vegas maybe it was the original it was one with Halle Berry which I'd forgotten that she was in there um so and I'd never seen that before I watched almost that whole movie on captions and it was great this time they had on one of the Pirates movies though the Pirates of the Caribbean and I don't know which one it was I've never seen those at all and it's not really to my taste but I guess I got there right at the beginning of the movie because I was like maybe this will end and they'll put on something cool but instead I sat there for like probably two hours and watch this whole movie i didn't care that much about and then right as i was leaving they put on con air and i was like that's what could have been on as i walked through here now that's not sean connery that's i get it confused with the rock still nick nick cage is on there and buscemi on the rock yes but not no con air sorry con air con air buscemi is definitely who's the other one that you said nick cage for sure nick cage is he's like the big and Malkovich? I think Malkovich is The Rock. I'm pretty sure Malkovich is The Rock. I don't think he I could be totally wrong about that. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Anyway that's a great movie to watch in Big Marios and I feel like I kind of got cheated a little bit. Wow. Danny

Trejo. Con Air features Nick Cage, John Cusack Oh yeah. John

Malkovich. Okay. Sorry. My apologies.

Steve Buscemi, Monica Potter Danny Trejo ving rames and wait for it dave chapelle oh yeah right yeah that's right i forgot about that yeah i saw that in a theater andrew um you know what let's tell you this i want to take a break because i'm committed today andrew to getting to the top stories and i do want to talk about this mario brothers thing yeah me too um because it's part of an ongoing situation i mentioned last week involving me

And the movies that are being produced and released

Thank you.

In these United States of America Maybe I should just give up on the idea of Any movies in the theater being for me I mean that honestly Maybe I need to think of it more as a streaming situation Because there's great content being made It does not seem like there is the financial model For great content getting delivered to movie houses Where I can go eat popcorn and watch them

We'll see I'm going to bring a little silver lining to this conversation. Also, I was confusing Ed Harris with John Malkovich. I feel like they play maybe sort of similar roles in those two films.

Maybe, but Malkovich is like Cyrus the Virus in Con Air. And Ed Harris is always like the guy in Apollo 13 who's like mission control. He's got the flat top. He's serious. And Malkovich is always the guy who's a little bit, you're not sure what's going on with him. he's Teddy KGB in Rounders see here's the thing I thought they were both

criminal masterminds I thought they're both the evil leaders in these movies I could be wrong I feel like in The Rock and I could be wrong but I feel like Ed Harris is a former military person who has gone you're right so far

he plays Brigadier General something or other I can't see the rest of it

he's the one who's a terrorist basically he's turned from US military to terrorist and I sort of feel like Malkovich might play a ringleader of some sort in the Con Air movie as well.

That would totally make sense. I'm sorry that I, you know what, I'm sorry that I assumed Ed Harris was the good guy in The Rock. That was my mistake. And I think what we've learned here, Andrew, is there's a right way to rock and a wrong way to Harris. And I just did that. All right. Let's go out with a bang to this break. And then we'll be back with more TVTL in just a moment.

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

Let's thank some dazzling donors These folks are donating a dazzling amount of dough It's making this program possible And we are so appreciative We're talking about Jojo Moran Douglas Who's in Tokyo, Japan Jojo's pronouncer, it's pronounced like yo-yo Also, parentedly, when did Schubert dip come out? Jojo says, I have no music or other things to promote this time? Well, thankfully, because we're not allowed to play music on demand, Andrew and JoJo, even though that seems to be a real emerging trend this year. Many of the dazzling donor messages, I know you're not allowed to play music, but would you just play this song?

Although JoJo is saying promote music might make me think

that JoJo is promoting his own music. Got it. Maybe it's something, a project near and dear to his heart. Oh, here's something near and dear to JoJo's heart. Us, Andrew. I want to express my appreciation for Luke and Andrew for just being there, for the good times, the less good times, and the other times. It means and helps a lot to have TBTL as a constant, and I'd love it if you could play the Slabjacking drop or any others that you feel go unused. Okay, so that sounds like JoJo thinks Slabjacking goes underused or, you know, unused. So here's for you, JoJo.

Slabjacking.

Slabjacking. I like the way it's a miracle. We've also got this one. This one's kind of underused.

Slabjacking.

oh who is that who that person sounded handsome yeah absolutely um and with that person has a certainly has a command of the career of sean connery slab jackie are there any other drops andrew that you feel go underused is there a drop that you maybe from your early days as just a listener to the program or even as we've been working together we definitely kind of go through phases there are the they're the drops that get really popular and kind of fade away they're the Ones that just have a practical purpose, like Let the Fun Begin, that just get played every day as kind of a sonic marker on the show.

Well, there is – actually, I can even play this from my end. This is a – it's kind of a short one, but it's always been one of my favorites.

Any duplicating going around here when you're not listening?

Oh, yes, this one.

Yes, I love this.

Huh?

Yeah, maybe.

Do you duplicate alone?

I don't think that's kind of a personal question.

You're laughing, Miss Tylee. Are you taking my duplication investigation seriously? Are you disrespecting my duplication investigation?

No, no, I'm not disrespecting. I'm just saying that there's no real way I can check, you know, because I leave at a certain time.

Dupin's going on around here. That's about half of it, but I'll stop it there.

Is that Joan Cusack, and I always think it's Holly Hunter?

No, it's neither, but it's Sean Connery's sister-in-law. Now, let me look it up, because when you hear her name, you're going to—we've had this conversation before. Yes, I know we have. Joan Cusack is in it, but that is not her. It is somebody who famously had a hyphenated – Robin Wright is that voice.

Oh, Robin Wright, was Robin Wright Penn.

And I believe it was Robin Wright Penn.

Princess Buttercup from The Princess Bride. I think that's the voice that you hear there. Okay, and that's, part of why that would throw me is because that character sounds so different than Princess Buttercup in The Princess Bride, who is extremely sort of regal and, you know, whatever. I'm trying to look, I'm just scrolling through my little system here to see if I can see, if I can find a drop that we used to use all the time that we don't use as much anymore.

Yeah, I was trying to buy you some time there. I could go back to the toys.

I've got them in front of me. I mean, listen, I've got a ton. This was a really, this is a truly weird one that we, this is maybe one of the more silly TBTL drops it was.

No, thank you, Rich Gazarian.

That was no, thank you, Rich Gazarian, because we had a guy named Rich Gazarian who would, this was across, I think, multiple jobs that I had in radio where you would get these, somehow this guy, Rich Gazarian, who was like a PR person to the non-stars. And he would just send these press releases out, probably initially by fax. When I worked at KVI, you'd get a fax coming off from Rich Kazarian, and then by email. And they were just always a topic that was not really of interest to us. And we talked about it. And Jen had been getting messages from Rich Kazarian for so long that we made it a whole segment, and that was like an audio drop for that. Let's see here. um let's uh we used to play a lot of kevin calabro on the show just because i love him so much you know he was the he's now the tv voice of the portland trailblazers but he used to be the seattle sonics play-by-play guy i was expecting to get on the magic carpet and ride is that also him that's also him um let's i tried to make this a thing and it didn't really work but it was there was a story it must have been this american life where they were listing off a bunch of nicknames for something and it included this the miami meat tent these are these are different names for like a male a male um what would you call that right or a speedo speedo rather kind of a speedo like the the dingaling sling the miami meat tent i forget some of the other ones um let's see here just scrolling god we have a lot of drops on this show andrew i'm kind of interested in the ones that started that are like not just from Arrested Development I mean we love those drops we play them a lot but there are things where something was said within the show this is a good one this is a classic that we haven't played in a long time this is um drunk people are so meta that was a wild wild night in the early days of TBTL we were really obsessed with this column in The Stranger called Drunk of the Week which I have to be honest and you know we've gone through phases of celebrating alcohol consumption on this show. We probably celebrated it much too much in the early days, then sort of not a lot. I think we're back to somewhere kind of in the middle now, talking about it. But Drunk of the Week was, I thought, kind of a genius column. They would just go out and with permission, take a photo of somebody who was just having a time somewhere in Seattle and then kind of do a little mini interview with them. I don't know. I like stuff like that. I like just like a snapshot of... I mean, I love the 10 of the Week in the newsletter for that reason. I like just kind of getting to know some little dazzling deets even mundane deets about someone's life what kind of candy bar do they like the most you know so the person who wrote that column was kelly o and we were we were reading the column so much that we thought oh we'll have kelly o in and she'll have great stories about um just things that she's seen in out in the world in seattle at night taking pictures of people who are quite celebrate a celebratory and the issue was

she was quite celebratory on that actually i think probably what it was was probably feeling nervous and maybe looking to kind of tamp that down with a couple of drinks herself and then it was a the timing let's just say the timing didn't work out so great and we just ended up having a quite intoxicated person on the show talking about other intoxicated people but mostly just staring

into the middle distance slightly confused yeah it's funny you'd expect calio to come on and be like kind of the um the researcher who goes that's right that's what we thought was going to be yeah and keeps keeps keeps it real straight herself right so that she can document this but no she was somebody who probably liked to get drunk too and take photos right you know it was a great call to me i mean the stranger i think here in seattle while it's clear that i kind of you know the the kind of decimation of the newspaper industry has not been kind to it so i don't know if it'll ever have a real heyday again as painful as it is to to say that but i feel like the stranger sort of it's a little bit like saturday night live where everybody's favorite era was when they were a certain age or at least based on their relationship with it because i remember when i found out i was moving to seattle i was so excited there was a podcast i listened to that actually it wasn't yeah i mean i it was i was listening to tbtl via pod Thank you. But you guys were still a radio show there. I was listening to it like daily. I loved it. And I was reading The Stranger. I remember I would I was still in New Hampshire, but like for the month leading up to it, I would like check in on the slog, The Stranger's slog every day and see what was going on to like sort of like soft land my way into Seattle. and because of that and like you know that was the lindy west and of course dan savage was writing more and i mean there's a million names all jen graves doing the art stuff and the drunk of the

prize winner eli sanders and it's just a definitive article about tbtl i think about that in fact i

just um a moment ago it's kind of a rainy spring day here in seattle and i had my window open a little bit not because it's too warm in my office i just like to air things out a little bit and i I got a kind of a big inhale of the wet kind of Seattle early cold spring. And it really took me back to 2009, this era that I'm talking about when I was sort of new here. Because keep in mind, while it's cold and rainy now, it would be kind of snowy where I had lived before this, you know. And so to me, like, I don't know, I'm feeling very nostalgic today. And thinking back to those early days of The Stranger, it's just like every single person on that masthead was like a hero to me, like 12, 15 years.

absolutely it was appointment reading in seattle if you were you know going to the u-dub when i was and again this is could be very much viewed through the lens of what you said which is i have a specific relationship with that newspaper there was a period of time where i would read it cover to cover it was it was on paper it was free you'd go out and you'd get a stranger i my memory is it came out on like wednesday or thursday probably wednesday so you could you know read the night life listings or something i would get that physical copy and i would just i would savor it because whether it was savage love whether it was lindy's amazing writing whether it was even the like the personals in the back which just had like in those days some pretty you know it was my first it was my first awareness of kind of like the all the various ways that you know people's encounters can happen because they had you know they had uh the personals would be you know a guy looking for a girl girl looking for a guy man looking for man a woman looking for a woman and then just something that was question mark question mark exclamation point exclamation point which was the catch-all for everything else and i just remember just it was so eye-opening to me you know as somebody who grew up very sheltered and christian and then to like kind of put that life behind me to be a young adult in seattle to have this thing called the stranger that was just like had the funniest writers and the most trenchant writers and they were just talking about my life because i was out on capitol hill all the time it just was a really special moment to me the lack of a i mean do they print it on paper anymore in seattle i don't think so no i mean i i want to

be careful but i they definitely they definitely stopped paper production a while back i don't think they brought it back they might do special issues or something but that's the thing for me

that makes me feel like i don't know you know for addy who's 29 i don't know if she cares about looking at something on physical paper or not because in her mind it might be like well why wouldn't i just look at it on my phone or on my laptop i get the same information it's i don't have to deal with a bunch of newsprint afterwards like i could see that that's just very generational but to me the difference between reading something online and reading something the physical copy

that's a real it's a real big difference for me in my experience yeah me too i mean you and i this harkens back to conversations we were having a long time ago about how you know sometimes we have to tamp down our instinct to be judgy about somebody but i i always use the example of like you could see maybe a youngish couple or whatever it doesn't even matter how old they are but just like maybe somebody sitting at breakfast together but the two people are both just like looking at their phones and that might give you like a feeling of like oh that's a bummer but then if they're both just like holding the new york times and splitting it like a physical life goal you're just like oh my god that's so awesome yeah exactly life goal but it's like they both could be reading the new york times on their phones but it just hits different to our old eyes yeah and that's

why i want to be cognizant of that but you know because again maybe the people younger than me are completely unaffected or or not they're not bummed out about the the way that media has changed to being a much more digital thing but i just remember that was a very special time for a young luke burbs uh when the stranger was was what i think of as being kind of at its um sort of high point anyway jojo says uh oh and uh now that things are opening up fellow tens please let me know if you're ever in tokyo oh nice because that's where jojo is so if you're gonna be in tokyo uh and you uh you're feeling social uh hit jojo up i don't know how that happens i assume the stens page yeah or slack or something can let that happen i think jojo has taken other

tens on pilgrimages to baseball games in Tokyo before I've ever seen photos of that. Yeah, so it can happen.

Dream big. Yes, and dream fast. That's what they say in Silicon Valley. Dream big and dream fast. Maestro? Fail fast.

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

Let's also thank dazzling donor, Lynn Pham. Lynn is in Beaverton, Oregon. And Lynn says, no special message. Just whatever Luke and Andrew want to say. You know what I did there, Andrew? I transposed our names. The actual text from our friend, Lynn Pham, unbelievably generous, long-suffering and long-standing supporter of this program. The person behind Marsupial Gurgle, a website that had all manner of audio drops on it. And still does, still exists. You can check that out. What Lynn actually wrote was No special message Just whatever Andrew and Luke want to say But I said whatever Luke and Andrew want to say

Yeah well

Do you think that was like Freudian on my part Was that psychological Was I worried that Lynn was prioritizing you over me And so I just without even realizing it Made my name the first one

I think you're just like You tend to put yourself in the center of everything Yes That is actually very true Not unlike Bingo the cat who just needs to be in the, if we're in a room, he needs to just be in the middle of the room so that you're tripping over him at all times. You're a little bit like that. I also think that this is going to sound like it's a dig, but I think you were flustered because you made a small fumble on saying special message, and I think that you were trying to, you were thinking about that while trying to move on and maybe got lost in the text.

I was, but the question is, why in the midst of my fumble? By the way, special message is a difficult... Yeah, it is, special message. It's just there's too much there's too much similarity in the two words. But yeah, but why while I was stumbling off of that, why did I then why was my way of of of sort of centering myself and stabilizing myself? Why was it to just put my name before you're there? That's still a bizarre, still a bizarre move by me. Do you think that Lynn has set a trap that you fell right into?

Yes. Yeah, I think that's exactly what happened. So well played, fam. Yeah, Pham says, you guys just talk about whatever you want. I'll just be over here. But he knew exactly. He was setting us up. He played both sides.

Subtly orchestrating this whole situation. That's how much TBTL Lin has listened to and loaded into a computer somewhere, that he can now control us like some kind of demented puppet master, Andrew. All right, thanks, Lin. Appreciate you. And thanks also, JoJo in Tokyo. We absolutely could not do this without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. We talked about this new kind of, I don't know what you'd call it, line of coffee products that you can, I don't know if you can get these in the U.S. yet, but Howard Schultz, the one-time CEO of Starbucks, was friends with this olive oil magnate from Italy. and uh the story goes that howard schultz started doing this kind of i guess italian tradition of like basically taking a shot of olive oil every day and and he became very enamored with that and so then he thought well is there a way to integrate this into our coffee and so they've got these coffee drinks called oleato that have olive oil in them a spoonful of olive oil in every cup the problem and i'm i'm not going i'm not i'm not here telling you that everyone who's had these drinks has immediately shat themselves but there does seem to be some some chatter on reddit and some other places from people who are saying um this is something that after i consumed it it made me have to go to the bathroom immediately and it turns out there might be a little bit of actual medical evidence for that and that's because um caffeine is a stimulant and olive oil is a relaxer so they talked to a dietician and nutritionist named aaron polanski wade and says sometimes uh mineral oils like olive oils can be used to treat constipation because it softens the stool. And so she says if you combine a high-fat meal or a beverage along with coffee, that combination can cause cramping. It can cause increased mobility in the colon and therefore have that laxative effect. So if you have the olive oil and the caffeine working together, you have a real nasty situation potentially.

this is one of those stories where i saw the headline on your show sheet that you sent me this morning luke and i thought to myself oh of course it gives you the shits like how did we not like it was one of those things that was like oh i think that i always just assume like every because we talked about this on this podcast i talked about this on another podcast as a guest on and so like i had done a lot of like reading of the origins of this idea of putting some you know olive oil and starbucks coffee and i think the whole time I was like oh yeah this is going to get you going Oh you had that thought That's what I mean I don't think I thought it explicitly Luke But it was just kind of like First of all it's called Olito right And it's like there was other stuff called Olestra

Olestra

I literally circled this

I literally Andrew until I was looking at this CNN article Written by Ramisha Maroof And I just was happy to look Because I printed out you know me and my printing And I was looking at the headline And I noticed it's called oleato I was like that's almost the same as Olestra Which was the known Maybe it's just people don't remember those kind of things Or care about those kind of things But I had not even realized That that's basically like the other thing That made everyone shit their pants with the potato chips In the 90s

And it just sounds like something that Like somebody in your family Would give you To get things going If you needed some help getting things going like of course well you know what grandma gave us was just like yeah exactly a cup of coffee you pour some olive oil in there the beans and the oil they work together i mean like it's just it's just so weird that i read this and i was like oh yeah i just guess i just had this whole assumption that i didn't explicitly say but no doy this stuff is i think the word you're looking

for is no shit yeah well i mean in this case yeah some shit yeah but yeah like i mean just But we will have to see how pronounced this situation is when this is widely and broadly available in the U.S. Part of what interested us in the story, or at least me in the first place, was trying to figure out if this was something that was totally corporate from Starbucks and they just wanted to spin this narrative about Howard Schultz getting personally obsessed with it. Or if it was truly the case where the person who had the most voting power, i.e. the CEO, just got a wild hair and everyone else had to pretend like, what a great idea, because if that's the case, that's a really that's a really bad way to run a company like because it's I mean, it's millions and millions of dollars to roll something like this out. There's, I mean, there's just so many, even though I tend to hate focus groups and, you know, things where you sort of like deploy something with too much strategery instead of just, you know, kind of following your gut, even though I generally don't like things that are like overly focused group, I think probably with something like Starbucks, it's a good idea to make sure that whatever you're going to roll out, there's a potential customer base for it. there's like you know the supply chain works like there's a million things you got to figure out before you put something on the menu all across the world uh and so i guess in their defense they

they didn't put this on the menu all across the world right they've tried this out at a few shops here and there a couple in seattle and west coast and a couple here and there right so like yeah just just to be clear i think it is i think they are kind of just dipping their toes in the olive

oil as it were but they didn't i mean i guess yes but i guess um you know like that initial article that we were the poppy harlow piece from cnn that we were referring to a lot initially it's they were definitely playing it like this is their next big thing and it's going to go worldwide now probably quietly they're testing how it does in these select locations like and you mentioned uh they're in seattle la uh chicago and new york are some of the places where you can get this i'm sure if it if it fails terribly in those places we'll never hear about it again but um yeah i just of course this is going to make you go number two like it's people know to have a cup of coffee if they're trying to get that rolling and then how about we put an oil

slick on top of it sure do you think that's going to solidify things right right i just couldn't

stop crapping so i drank i drank about 32 grams of pure liquid protein and that really that just fixed everything that just seized it all up right exactly well first what i did was i took a bunch

of beans and i ran hot water through it because that seemed like a good way to solidify things

then i put some ball bearings in a blender and i drank that and then four or five banana peels and it just really gummed everything up so now i'm fine anyway uh the other big story from this weekend is the massive success of the mario brothers movie like this would be some of the quotes uh this is a piece in the new york times by brooke barnes um some of the they're calling it jaw dropping uh they made 146.4 million dollars in ticket sales uh in the u.s and canada Um Let's see. And also that was on top of the 204 million dollars it already made from its debut. Also, it's doing really well internationally, one hundred and seventy three million dollars overseas. It's like it is some kind of they thought this movie was going to be popular and it's it's shattering every expectation and is now being thought of as something that may almost single handedly save the movie industry in America.

you see that's what that was my takeaway on this like you and i were discussing on the show i think just last week um how you were excited to go to the movies you hadn't been in a while and then you were kind of disappointed in the lack of options the fact that everything was just like so far outside of anything that you and i would usually enjoy at the theater um and i'm with you i've had that experience quite a bit you know post pandemic but there have been some good exciting movies that i've seen either post or like you know post pandemic or at least post things opening up a little bit and you know like i think the menu was a good one um now that was a movie that i think was mostly mostly leaning on digital in-home release but i know that it did have its you know a few weeks in in the in the theaters and i happened to see that with genevieve who went in not knowing anything about it and really enjoying it and like if a mar this mario movie does not sound like anything that i'm interested in but like if it's getting people if it's getting families in the theater and it's going to let like you know studios maybe take some more risks get some more cash again i'm talking about them like they're paupers i mean this one you know we're talking about just like huge huge just billion dollar companies but either way they have to have some reason to release things in theaters and i've been really worried that i simply will not have the option to go to the theater as an old man like if i live

long enough that's a serious concern for me fallback job when this whole thing well exactly

i want to be puttering around a lot riding amc with one of those little brooms and the little uh what do you call the thing that you sweep the broom into when you're like in the lobby but the kind that's connected you mean it's kind of connected and it flips down like a little robot But, yeah, I mean, that's my plan is to wear the little uniform, black slacks, white shirt, maybe a bow tie. I'm hunched over. I'm going around. I'm sweeping up the lobby. Maybe every now and then they let me make the popcorn. They always give me a bag of popcorn at the end of the shift because they know old man Andrew loves it.

Like, that is my plan. Has his popcorn and his Miller Lite by himself in his studio apartment with a single light bulb on those pull chains.

They give me the unpopped kernels. Not the ones that are still in the bag But the ones that tried to pop but didn't They sent me those home in a bag And I can either suck on them Or I can give them another go round In my own air fryer at home But anyway

One day someone says Didn't you used to work on TBTL And you go TBTL That's a name I haven't heard in a long time By the way this is in two years That's what people don't understand

this is literally you're 49 yeah exactly just two years from now yeah um sorry i already brought up lebitard once which should have been my thing there was some in the looks like tournament this year there was some coach and i can't remember who it was and it would really help if i could

remember the name but it's funny anyway let's play this if you say the name or you say what they look like i wonder if i'll be able to name them based okay i don't think i'll be able to

fact check it but um the idea is let's see uh so-and-so looks like the type of guy who you'd run into at an old dusty western bar and when you say aren't you so-and-so he takes a long drag off of his cigarette and says i used to be boy that actually doesn't help me at all no that's why it

was a terrible thing to bring up but um let's see here's the thing though on the subject of Movies that play in the theater Because of all of the turmoil In the movie industry And because of the fact that the pandemic happened And we are so much more accustomed to Streaming things at home And we all have these TVs that are borderline movie theaters In and of themselves, etc It seems like The only way to Have even a chance of making money On a theatrical release Is to go with existing intellectual property which is why every movie is Dungeons and Dragons or Fast and the Furious 9 or the Emoji movie or Mario Brothers. There's no money with there's no money in trying to create a new interesting thing that you hope will just get great word of mouth. And so the last two weeks is the weather has been so terrible here in Portland. It's been like a rainy weekend. And I was like, oh, it might be fun to go to a movie. And I live just down the street From like a Regal

I think like I could walk to it in under five minutes, which should be ideal. I should be able to and find something that I want to watch. Like it doesn't have to be whatever that new Wes Anderson movie is. Have you seen the trailer for that?

Yeah.

Like that almost looks like a parody of a Wes Anderson film.

As they have lately. Yes.

I mean, I actually liked the French dispatch, but I was also mildly tuned up. I think I had recently gotten in the market for a truck that I ended up buying. Like literally walking from the bar To watch the French Dispatch That was when I saw the truck And put a call in to see if they wanted You know, if they were selling it Anyway, but I think being a little tuned up Helped me with the French Dispatch Which I will have to be for this What's it called? Atomic Atomic Town or something

I don't remember the name of it You're very close on that

It's kind of set in some I think it's set in some fictional Like, you know, New Mexico town And it's like Asteroid City Asteroid City It definitely has the word asteroid in it, as I as I famously said on this program, like I the trailer for that movie hadn't me feeling kind of complicated feelings because I am so I love the Wes Anderson aesthetic. I love the people that are in his movies. I'm right. You know, it's it's it's right up my alley. But this one just kind of felt like I kind of wouldn't mind it if there was maybe a little bit more of an evolution in the style of filmmaking.

Yeah, he's kind of lost me for a while. Not that I dislike it, but it's like even people love Moonrise Kingdom. And I think that was the first one where I was kind of like, hmm, like I I love this aesthetic. Like, I really, really do. Like, I'm a big fan of playing right to the things that I like. But I just was sort of like, I'm I don't know. They started to lack a certain amount of heart and soul and real emotion like you get at the end of Royal Tenenbaums. Like this man made a movie that was all delicate and with all these precious little shots that also is impossible for me not to cry at the end of ones.

And now it just sort of seems like my collection of everyone is standing to the every scene in a Wes Anderson movie now is a person where most of the shot is negative space. The person is pushed to the far right or left of the shot, and they're talking in a kind of a droll way that is not very naturalistic, but it's played for humor.

yeah and again i love those shots like i you know like that is that i i love it i have no notes on how it looks i just wish there was a little bit more there there with some of the

films but yeah but uh so until asteroid city comes out i don't know what else is on the horizon for me as far as films and so two weekends in a row i've been like hey it'll be fun to see a movie and two i mean that's why we ended up seeing the postman always rings twice because there was honestly nothing else playing that looked even the tiniest bit interesting to me and i just i don't see that trend really changing because again i just don't think even like everything everywhere all at once i don't actually know how much money that made at the box office i bet you that because of all the academy award buzz and because of how much people loved it that that actually did pretty well but that's like a one in a thousand shot for a movie like that is my sense like if had it not been um so well received and again gotten won so many oscars and everything i just think those kinds of movies that are not just retreading something it's there's such a limited potential for making money on that it's not doing it anymore well i mean okay what's your

silver lining well no my well by silver lining i already said which is that they are making they already they are making some like first of all the types of movies that i like have always been a little bit few and far between it's definitely the worst for that now the movies that i am interested in and and like i would even say that there's different tiers there's like the the just totally like kind of lowbrow or middlebrow like popcorn movie where there's not a lot of artistic um takeaways for lack of a better word um in it but you just go because whatever it's marvel and explosions like i'm fine with that stuff but it's not you know it doesn't it doesn't get me out to the theater necessarily but i'll go to the theater for that stuff then you have the kind of middle stuff which is like maybe not like small boutique art films but like kind of interesting i'm trying to think what is the the the nicholas cage one with pedro pascal that i saw um you know the unbearable weight of talent i'm confusing it with the book but uh there's something about the whatever that that the very meta story with the unbearable weight of massive talent I was actually kind of close um that had Pedro Pascal in it as well and like that was a movie that I saw I think post pandemic that I remember Vives and I being very charmed by the menu I would throw in there I mean before the pandemic I guess was Emma but we're going back a ways but like I still have very fond moments in the theater and I want to continue to have those dream. right now i think we're in a pretty bad place with the schedule and i think you're right there are some real economic factors that are leaning on existing ip that isn't really like creating movies for us but there are some and it and if this dumbass movie about the marios about these mario fellows um ends up like kind of keeping theaters open so that i can still at least go and see though because i just have no desire even the films that i just listed that i really enjoyed I would have never watched any of those at home. I like only watch movies if I go to the theater. And so my silver lining is, OK, there's some there's still mostly shit out there right now. But if that mostly shit is keeping the doors open, that's my silver lining because I want to be able to go to the theater in the coming decades.

Right. So you're kind of going with the rising tide will eventually lift the ship that is a movie you want to see, which, you know, I hope you're right about that. I'm just worried that what this rising tide means is just many more Super Mario Brothers movies. And by the way, I don't have any young kids like I understand. I'm sure people listening to this right now went to that movie maybe with their kids or maybe they're just big Nintendo heads and they had a great time. So I'm not trying to yuck any yums or say that that's such a bad film. it's just not something that i'm gonna go see but it's also i don't have young kids if it's a rainy saturday in portland and i've got a couple of eight-year-olds and we're just like what are we gonna do and the mario brothers movie is playing down the street we're probably going to that

um i have a question for you about this because i i think i read this article to the end but it might have been i'm looking here was this a cnn i think i sent you a cnn article but i'm reading a new york time okay oh you're like yeah he's we'll give him a cnn article send me a bbc article

That was at your reading level.

But it was one of those where I was reading it on my phone, and it was kind of unclear when the – I kept thinking the article was over, but it was just a block of ads. So my point is I think I read this to the end, and there was no mention of – in what I read, what – because these are global box office numbers that this article is reporting and celebrating. But it didn't break it down, the one I read, about, like, how much of this was foreign versus domestic. I've got that here. Do you? Because that, I think, is really key.

Yeah, I said this at the beginning kind of clunkily, but let's see. I'll just read this directly. So, well, first of all, it represented 17% of all worldwide ticket sales, I think. Oh, right. No, sorry. That's animation. Scotch that. This is what they said. Super Mario Brothers, a movie, turned out families on a jaw-dropping scale, generating an estimated $146.4 million in ticket sales at theaters in the U.S. and Canada for a total of $204.6 million since arriving on Wednesday. The Super Mario Bros. movie also made an additional $173 million overseas. So U.S. and Canada, so far it's made $200 million, and it's made $175 million overseas since it's been released on Wednesday.

And overseas is a big place. I'm just kind of curious where this was really popping off.

Yeah, well, yeah, I don't know. they don't they don't have it you know i don't know how it didn't in uh you know guam but uh but it does seem like probably the popularity of um the popularity of like nintendo as a thing that people play in different parts of the world is helping this you know the other movie well two other things very quickly and then we should get to emails and emails um one thing is you know there's this new barbie movie coming out that i'm very inclined towards because of the people associated with it it's directed by Greta Gerwig who I am just such a fan of Greta Gerwig of course directed Lady Bird and is an actor as well and in some really great movies um so anything Greta Gerwig does I'm like I'll watch that it's also co-written by Noah Baumbach like I did the squid and the whale and stuff like that so I'm like this is going to be a movie it's taking on this topic Barbie that I don't have any huge interest in but it's the people tackling it are people whose work i really enjoy and respect so i was like this is going to be something interesting and subversive but then it's like i watched the trailer and it's like brought to you by mattel and i'm like how subversive can you really get making a movie about a toy where the people granting you the

intellectual property are the people who make the toy yeah but i mean obviously obviously mattel was gonna sign off on this if the if it's the barbie movie right it would have to be called something

else if it was a parody right but what i mean is how do you i mean here's what i think probably Somebody wants to say when making a Barbie movie And maybe this is in this movie They want to say this is really messed up The you know all of the Famous things we know about Barbie like you know The proportions were not realistic for A human person to be The all of the sort of like Domesticity around it and the obsession with The looks and the outfits there's just so much about Barbie that's so obviously troubling So you're going to make a movie about it You would think you'd want to make a movie That would really point that out and kind of Be like can you believe this was a thing we pushed on young girls in this country.

But you can't make that movie And call it Barbie Because the company That still sells the doll Has to sign off on it Which I'm just really curious To see how edgy Can they get with this stuff

You said you saw that In the trailer I haven't watched the trailer What was the vibe Of the trailer

It's totally impossible To follow It's like It's you know Ryan Gosling is Ken And Margot Robbie Is Barbie And there's sort of like A beach party going on But there's like this kind of argument going on between various Kens. So you've got Simon Liu, I think is his name. He's like a Ken. And there's no discernible plot. It's just people saying things that are being played sort of for humor. There's a point where it's like Ryan Gosling as Ken wants to go somewhere with Barbie. I think she's in her car, whatever, Barbie dream car, Barbie something car. And he gets in the back and he says, I'm going with you. And she says something like, did you bring your rollerblades? And he said, I don't go anywhere without them that's like that's literally the end of the trailer like that was the big laugh line and it's like again i will probably see this movie because everyone associated with it are people whose work i like but i'm i'm i'm really wondering tonally how they did it because what they should really be doing is kind of pointing out what bullshit barbie is but they can't because this is they can only do it with the uh with the approval of mattel you know speaking

of Noah Baumbach, I don't know how to say his name. Baumbach? Is that it? He this is a perfect example of like movies being made that I would be very into, but the fact that they're not in the theater means I don't see them. Because I don't know, it was a Don DeLillo book that it was like one of those things. White Noise, yes, exactly. Which I have not read White Noise. I read Underworld or something. And I know the whole story there is like turning a book like this into a movie is almost impossible to do and i had read a couple of really interesting pieces about like the movies uh where people try to take great books and turn them into great movies and kind of how difficult and rare that is and and people actually making the argument that sometimes mediocre books make the best movies

wow that's a that isn't that's more than a mild take andrew i'd call that a strong take oh there

was so much good i think i was reading a washington post piece that like interviewed a whole bunch of interesting filmmakers like oh gosh who adapted Fear and Loathing like that's a book that seemed impossible to turn into a movie. Terry Gilliam? Terry Gilliam but Terry Gilliam was able to like somehow capture the vibe of a book that seems like it would be impossible to do a direct translation of and somehow like he was able to pull that off and I think White Noise got relatively good reviews. I want to watch that movie. Adam Driver was in it, right? Yeah and I want to watch that movie but like I know I'm never going to sit down at home to watch it Like, if that had stayed in theaters a little bit longer, I definitely would have seen it. Like, that's my kind of movie.

Well, and let's be honest. With baseball season here, we're not watching shit. Well, that's the other thing, too. Well, no, we are watching shit. It's called The Mariners' Relievers and The Mariners' Defense. Did you watch that game yesterday?

I listened, and I was kind of busy during the day, so I was, like, kind of listening on the radio as I was doing my running around. But I did hear them. Like, they just kept on giving the Guardians a chance to— I've never seen a team or listened to a team want to lose so badly. They were down to one out, just one out, and they're out of there.

Two outs, bottom of the ninth, there's a fly ball hit to the warning track. You're a professional outfielder, Teoscar Hernandez. You have to be able to catch a ball. It didn't hit the wall. It wasn't like you needed a superhuman Spider-Man catch. You just needed to be able to catch a fly ball on the warning track. Now, granted, it was hit sharply, and he just took a terrible angle on it so that he ended up like trying to like willie maze it over his shoulder in this way that was impossible where you got to beat the ball back to the warning track and then come in on this is like basic defense in baseball and that two out play was what allowed them to tie it and ultimately win it it's just whoo this is why i have no time for mario brothers movies i am too busy being

furious at this baseball team could it be quinn snyder could quinn snyder be the guy i have there

was one wow looks that's a Seattle guy for you oh really yeah he went to he played it he played

for Ed Peppel at Mercer Island High School I'm gonna play I'm gonna play 16 seconds of a different podcast for you it was recently the looks like time and I grabbed a piece of audio so that I

can send it to Genevieve because I'm trying to get we're finally gonna get some good content on

it all I know is someone else's content this is from the Levitard show this is their looks like game where they come up with um well I guess the audience actually submits these various so-and-so in the sports world looks like and then their hilarious comparisons some of them are hilariously long some are hilariously short i don't remember this one i wanted to send it to genevieve a couple of months ago and so i isolated this and i texted it to her and all i know is it's quinn snyder and if i recall there's also some distracting crosstalk at the beginning

quinn snyder look like. the guy sitting at the end of a dusty small town bar who when you ask him are you quinn snyder takes a long drag of a cigarette looks wistfully into the distance before replying i used to be

okay there you go so it was quinn snyder that was the one that i isolated that was right that's

see that one's tough for me because have you googled quinn snyder i'm looking now he's an arrestingly handsome person which i don't know why that matters but the quinn snyder won because i watched quinn snyder play when mercer island was in the state basketball championship and they used to put that on tv i remember just thinking this guy quinn snyder is just superhuman and then he goes on to play basketball i don't know if he ever got to the nba but then he became a coach and he was a very successful coach and i think he might coach like the salt lake city jazz at this

point or was their coach looks like the atlanta hawks i'm looking okay it was jazz as of last

year it looks like he's always been on my radar because of his seattle connection but also because he always had a flair like i remember when he was like a player and a coach he had kind of like longish hair he looks he looked for a little while like he could have maybe been in pearl jam but then you know as he became a coach he was very dapper always in like a nice suit i've always had a lot of thoughts about quinn snyder i don't know if i can quite fit him into that looks like um i'm trying to think of a basketball greg popovich to me would be a better answer to that question and looks like that guy at the end of the bar smoking a cigarette. You're like, are you Greg Popovich? And he's like, I used to be. Because something about Greg Popovich looks a little more weathered, a little more, you know. Anyway, but I'm glad we were able to scratch that itch because that would have been the kind of thing that if we could never figure out who they were referencing, that would be frustrating.

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.

All right. Any emails or V-mails that are sparking your interest?

Yes, we got this voicemail from Maggie. You and I were talking about really sour candy the other day because Genevieve brought some really sour gum home that Genevieve thought was candy and ended up swallowing herself. You and I tried it on the air. We determined that it was indeed gum, and yes, it was very sour lemon-flavored Japanese gum.

I still have a piece of that kicking around in my travel bag, and I attempted to chew it, But then I'm remembering what it tasted like. And then the temptation passes.

Yeah, because then your mom happened to call during the show and she said, I don't I don't think it's right to call sour things candy because candy should be sweet. Interesting take. It's the type of thing you think about. Anyway, Maggie had a story related to that. This is I mean, I don't want to give a trigger warning, but this does get into some bodily functions here. But it's all above the neck.

Hey, Andrew and Luke. It's Maggie from Swarthmore, outside of Philadelphia, where you should come for the Thon, by the way, to Philly. But anyway, I'm calling because I'm listening to Sour Candy Talk, and I have to tell you this story. My kid, who's now 17, when he was 8 or 9, he had this thing on one day where all of a sudden his cheek all swelled up and his mouth hurt. And, you know, he had something going on in his mouth, and I didn't know if it was dental or medical or whatever, but we called the doctor, and he went in to the doctor, and it turned out he had a plugged salivary gland, and the treatment that my doctor told my child that would be the cure for this ailment was Lemonhead's candy. and my kid got to leave the pediatrician's office and go to the cbs or wherever we went to the candy aisle and buy a big giant box of lemon heads and suck on the lemon heads to build up the saliva in his mouth and pop the blockage in his salivary duct and it worked it was totally like the exact right thing to do for this kid's ailment and he's never let me forget that every time he's sick he's like I wonder if there'll be a candy prescription for this one anyway thanks guys bye

if I was the doctor I would have literally written out a prescription slip that says Lemonheads candy just I mean because how many times do you get to do that

and then you have to present it at the when you're buying the candy you present it to the cashier and they're like you don't need this it's like it's the doctor's no yeah I know You can just buy Lemonheads. Well, I just want it to be official.

Exactly. Right. And of course, the doctor has to be wearing like a clown nose when he writes the script.

Do you know that when that story was being told, my mouth started salivating? I believe it.

I'm trying to figure out maybe mine, too, a little bit without even thinking about it.

Which ironically is also the principle of the Pavlovian response. It's literally a response about salivating, right?

Yeah, exactly. Maybe the doctor didn't even have to prescribe the, if you will, the.

candy just by saying lemon heads over and over and over again. They just rang a bell and Maggie's kid just started salivating and looking around for a steak. Exactly. Odd kid, but you know, fun to have around. Alright, now I want to say something. You sent me an updated photo of Quinn Snyder and now I see the joke. I think he's aged into it.

You can see him in a dusty bar.

Definitely. I'm thinking of Quinn Snyder when he was at Duke or when he was at one of these other places. He lived, I don't need to belabor this but he lived this like what for me growing up as a kid in seattle who liked to play basketball he had the most charmed existence you ever could first of all he's from mercer island which is a very you know tony part of seattle he's playing for like the state championship team the islanders he goes to duke he and you know where he plays he ends up you know this coach He coaches I think at Missouri in college He's rising through the ranks It seemed like everything he's ever done Has gone well for him And again was a little older than me But close enough to my age That I was very obsessed with him I didn't realize that he has definitely turned into a character In a Coen Brothers movie

Yeah he almost has like You could almost see McConaughey playing him If he kind of like Dirtied him up a little bit

Well alright Is that is that going to be the end of the line on this Monday?

That'll do it. That'll do.

Parting is such sweet sorrow. But the good news is we are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourself. Stay dry if you're in the Pacific Northwest. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Well, I invested my savings in a little bottle of EpiCac. It's the stuff that makes you barf. Yeah, it makes you barf, dude, because nothing makes me barf. It's weird. I've got a stomach of steel. Adam, scientists developed that. It would make you vomit. Because scientists made this. Yeah. Who believes in scientists, dude? Let me give this little test-a-roo. Hmm. That's weird. definitely don't feel like barfing right now no wait no i'm barfing i'm barfing right now i'm not barfing okay wait i'm barfing i'm barfing those scientists better check their hypotenuses dude oh god power out