Muse

Can I blow your mind right now? Chris is laughing because he knows where I'm going with this. Okay. There's not a single video of Abraham Lincoln. I'm serious. Look it up. Go on YouTube. Okay. Think about that. He's one of the most famous Americans in history. He's the first president. He made slavery illegal. And there's no video. You can look it up. There's no videos of Abraham Lincoln. And every time I say that, someone goes, no, no, no, no. There's got to be. is Abraham Lincoln. None. So then you start to ask yourself, and if you really want to go down this rabbit hole with me here, just bear with me. Who's controlling what we get to see a video of and what there is no video of, right? Because there's no videos of Abraham Lincoln, but I can go on YouTube right now. I can go on YouTube right now and you can do it. And you can watch behind the scenes footage of Paul Giamatti recording his lines for the ant bully, right? But there's no

videos of joan of arc tbtl beware of things that cost a dollar 99 those are the membership dues for this club that i joined the columbia house music club turns out that wasn't really even a club it was just a business for making money although it is how i found my favorite band various artists of the 80s

It's embarrassing and it's gross, but at least it's kind of funny.

Be careful, though.

It's fun to see. Have a good show, dummies. What you do is so important.

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

They've never touched anything in their lives. Let them touch those things for once.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Oh, fabulous.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where we're looking at a pretty nice Wednesday.

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

Sun is shining. The spring is springing. It's a perfect day for us to bring you episode 3936 in a collector's series.

And let the fun begin.

Inching ever closer to our 4,000th episode. Something that should be bringing me joy, that this thing has been around for 4,000 episodes or getting close to it. But I will be honest, it makes me feel slightly nervous. We've got to figure out our plan for the 4,000th episode. The plan for today, including our top stories, is to talk about the writer's strike. Writers Guild of America went out on strike yesterday. All the late-night television shows are now shut down until further notice.

Apparently, I've never been on live television before.

The writers, the WGA members, would like to be more fairly compensated for their work. They don't like just, well, all the things that have happened to the writing profession, but the streaming services in particular, which stream things that people have written, and the people who wrote the things don't get the money for having written the things. So you got my money? Also a story out that James Corden just had his swan song, his victory lap, a big wet kiss for him as he left CBS, except now there's some reporting that the show is losing $20 million a year. So that may have contributed to his exodus from late night. Anyway, we may get into that. And at time permitting, we can talk about Frank Ocean's performance at the first weekend of Coachella. It was literally a major disaster. You might be wondering, why would we talk about that? That was weeks ago. Well, because they recently put out a cease and desist. I believe it's people in charge of Coachella. to a guy who wanted to put some video of Frank Ocean's disastrous performance up on, like, YouTube. Like, this is, like, the Chinese government or something. They're trying to scrub the record, the visual record of whatever it was that went on with Frank Ocean that first weekend of Coachella. So we will talk about that if we get a chance. And we'll definitely talk to this guy. He would never go out on strike because serving as the longest-running co-bro of the show is his life's dream.

First things first, I love my job.

Okay, maybe that's overstating it, but he does like being here, I believe. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

You know, Luke, no taxation without representation. Oh, damn it. No, that's not the rallying cry of a labor strike. God damn it. I'm not good at this. I'll just do what you tell me.

How about, actually, you could say, hell no, I won't do what you tell me. That's more raging against the machine. That's more pro-labor. Yeah, that is true. more pushing back on the man on the bosses I will

say this about the writer strike they've got some of their writers so they've got some decently clever signs so what a lot of the writers have been doing is modifying so it'll be you know a sign that just says like you know the wga is out on strike or whatever then they'll write something like pay us or we'll ruin succession for you that's pretty good i saw somebody had a sign that said and this i'm sure is aimed at the executives uh nice tesla you're welcome

That's pretty good too My friend Betsy was out there today I saw her on Instagram She had a sign that said HBO Max pays HBO minimum Which I thought was pretty good too Yeah, that might be a common one I don't know if she made that up or not

Yeah, I mean as far as strikes go This is going to be the wittiest Yeah, right, yeah

Well, I guess we shouldn't get into it now Because I don't know much I mean we can just talk about it now The funny thing is this feels very far away for me like i'm not somebody who consumes a lot of um kind of pop culture especially the kind of like live television or stuff that's being produced right now so much of the stuff i watch is already on a delay because it's like on hbo or whatever and the things are probably all in the can months before they're released and then i'm usually months behind on those shows like i say i'm season two of barry still which has been out for years now so um it feels very distant to me um and the last time this happened was was it 2008 was that when they did like when the writers started finding creative outlets online and releasing things for free like dr horrible sing-along blog or whatever or am i dating myself was that was that previous to 2008

Was Dr. Horrible's sing-along An outgrowth of the strike?

I am freelancing here Using just my memory and my cunning So that doesn't usually work out for me too well But I thought it was That's, what's his name? What's his name? Joss Whedon, right? I thought that that was something

Right, and Neil Patrick Harris was in it, I believe Yeah, and I thought it was kind of like Maybe Ellie Kemper

Oh, really? Was Kemper part of that? I don't even know if I watch it I just have this vague memory of him kind of leaning into the camera in a fisheye-y kind of way. I might be confusing it with Mystery Science Theater 3K. I don't know.

Was one of them a laundry basket?

Yeah.

Do you know what I'm talking about? The interstitials in MST 3K where the scientists who are the enemies of the robots are talking to them and giving them their assignment.

Do you know I've never watched a full episode of Mystery Science Theater?

I'm just driving it. the fans of that show bananas then because you don't know what i'm talking about to to clean it

up on that on that that universe um i do know that the last time that they were out on strike i think it lasted for something like a hundred days and i was reading something in the hollywood reporter that was looking back it was sort of an oral history of what happened the last time this went on and one of the things that i was there was a couple of things that that were that jumped out at me that i didn't realize at the time one was that david letterman actually had a unique relationship with his writing staff his writing staff worked for his production company worldwide pants and so he was somehow allowed or able to broker a deal with the wga where he could pay his writers directly which i guess he was already doing and so like letterman had writers before everyone else got their writers back and then you had jimmy kimmel was apparently paying his writers out of his own pocket and going broke and so then had to come back and basically cross the picket line and start doing his show I think without writers so he could continue making money he said because he almost spent his entire life savings trying to pay everyone at the show while they were on strike there's all this that I don't understand the economics of all of that

to be honest with you me neither or or the morals or ethics of that either because just because letterman has a different agreement or kimmel is paying out of his pocket art art isn't the whole point of and i'm just speaking this is a question not a challenge to that system but it seems like it's all about solidarity not like oh well we writers over here can get paid i thought the whole point is you stand up together so i i don't know but that that was last time like are you feeling it at all or is this something is this a storyline that people are sort of saying that like because so much of the content we watch is like this streaming stuff now which i know is also sort of the the heart of the conflict um that it isn't affecting the world unless you're watching like the late night tv shows well i think i mean the the most yeah the the most

immediate impact is the all the late night shows are are done for a while because they can't really operate without their writers and also again like i think there is and we must have some listeners that are in the wga so please you know uh enlighten us i think also the sense would be that if like say

seth myers was to just do his show in some way where he didn't need writers or you know i mean because like conan did that um like you know were they just like i think one of the articles i saw the last time they did this conan resorted to spinning his ring on his desk and timing it to see how long he could do it that was what they were to sounds like a real tbtl bit honestly yeah That's great. And like what I don't really understand is if there's bad blood between the hosts who are trying to continue their shows or if they do come back at some point and the writers who would like the show to be dark completely so that they have more leverage. I don't exactly understand who's – like if the writers are resentful – if this goes on for two months and these hosts start coming back and just doing those kind of bizarre, unscripted, unwritten shows, if they would then be sort of selling out their writers. I also, again, this is all from the same Hollywood Reporter article, that there was some tension between Jon Stewart and his writing staff because he had always been very supportive of them and really a good boss. But I think he brought back some version of The Daily Show during the strike. And Jay Leno, people were mad at Jay Leno because he wrote his own monologues, which the first thought I had was like, well, if I'm a host and this is how I make my living and the writers go out on strike, couldn't i write my own monologue if i'm funny enough to be the host of one of these shows i guess leno opened his monologue by saying like an arab a jew and somebody else walk into a bar and i don't know what the arab guy says because i don't have any writers which is such a jay leno joke such how is it both racist and boring like how do you how do you walk that fine line it's called being jay leno i guess yeah yeah i can't say i can't imagine

In a world in which people would be angry at Jay Leno That's just so hard for me to imagine

Poor guy, he's been through it lately Oh, I've got a joke for you really quick

Oh, I didn't know that, is he going through something?

Oh, yeah, he got caught on fire That's not a joke He was at It was not part of filming his Automotive world He literally just loves tinkering with these cars Whether or not you think Jay Leno is funny Or whether or not you think he was great About the Conan O'Brien situation He sort of at this point he just is what he is which is kind of a big goober who loves these cars and he was in an accident where he was burned um i think fairly extensively like trying to do something with one of these cars uh he is recovering but you know you know again whatever you think of the guy obviously nobody wants him to um to to suffer something like that this is my joke that i heard the other day that i love andrew so a guy is crawling through the desert and he's just he's absolutely parched he's blistered he's like crawling he's like water and he comes up to this guy that's got a little like stand in the desert he's like water and the guy's like i don't sell water i do sell neckties though and guy's like i need water he says okay well there's an about 15 miles here up the you know that way there's an inn and they'll be able to give you some water so the guy's like okay so the guy crawls off like two days later he crawls back to the guy who's selling the ties and he still blistered and he obviously didn't get any water and the guy selling ties like what happened that you did you get find the inn and he goes yeah but i needed a tie to get in where'd you hear that joke uh uh super dave osborne told it to uh to jerry seinfeld on like a comedians in cars except he i didn't feel comfortable throwing in the ethnic component of the joke that he did about the the folks involved the person selling the tie and the person crawling like he had it set up let's just say as a sort of um israel palestine type type of I think the joke is pretty solid, leaving that out. I just didn't feel like I needed to throw that in. I don't even know who Super Dave Osborne is. Bob Einstein was his real name. He was on Arrested Development a lot. Oh, really?

Huh.

Wait, you weren't a Super Dave Osborne fan?

No, I mean, you would think that—

The stuntman who would always just get gravely injured when he would do these stunts? That was a big deal in my childhood. We thought Super Dave Osborne was the funniest. It was Bob, I think his name is Bob Einstein He passed away a while ago But he was kind of this funny, pretty out there comedian He may have done Super Dave stuff on David Letterman's show at times

Oh, interesting, I'm looking at this No, this is all new to me, yeah

But do you remember him on Arrested Development? I forget who he played Oh, he's also on Curb Your Enthusiasm a lot He's a big Curb guy

I, um, no Thank you.

because I'm only seeing these very old pictures of him and his face does not look familiar to me. I've been going through some things of... My face blindness, Luke, is getting me into some trouble lately. Uh-oh. Like, with my neighbors next door. I can't even... I don't even know where to begin to explain the awkwardness between me and my neighbors next door. Not bad.

Just the one that had to chase you down the street once saying, it's me, your neighbor. It's a me, a Mario.

Yes, it's the same one. So this is a woman who is a renter who lives next door to me, but she lives in one unit of this house that I think is rented out to several people. And I had even helped her. We had met kind of literally over the fence as neighbors. She was having trouble with her lawnmower when we had first moved in, and I was mowing my lawn. So that's the problem with this is I've had real interactions with her. Like, I went over to her side of the fence, which is, by the way, just kind of an allegory for politics in this country. Like, I was able to go to the other side of the fence. I hope that, you know, like, I kind of like to lead. I like to be a leader and show people the way to get along. And I was, wow, that death rattle in my throat was God's way of telling me that that was a terrible bit. But anyway, so I helped her with her lawnmower. We've had conversations. But then I don't know, like sometime last summer, I'm walking somewhere in the neighborhood with my headphones on and there's like a young woman kind of walking towards me and I'm not paying any attention to her. And then she's kind of like waving me down as we kind of get closer in our approach. And then finally she's waving. And honestly, this is like I'm like, oh, is this a listener? Which is like I don't have that thought often. I'm just like, why is this person looking at me? And she's like, I'm your neighbor. And her name is Kelly. and over the winter I've totally forgotten that over the winter at one point also somebody was making noise late at night I told you about when they had some new people moved into the house as well and there was a dog involved and it was 11 o'clock one night and I was under the weather and somebody was making this whoop whoop whoop whoop sound while they were playing with their dog in the backyard and I like grumpy old manned it and just opened my back door and said could you guys keep it down and i wasn't trying to be cranky i said thank you but i just literally i just literally needed them to keep it down it's like that's it's like a portlandia sketch like do you ever tell the kids to get off your lawn no i mean except for when they're on the lawn and i literally need them to get off but aside from that no so anyway we've never kind of addressed the fact that i've i've hushed somebody and i might it might have been her that i hushed and then we Ran into each other again over the fence For the first time in months over this weekend While Vives and I were working on this project And she says Hello and I couldn't remember if she Was whatever people Had moved in and out of this place and I couldn't remember Which one she was and to look At her like I just I had Her looking totally different and so I said oh you're Nicole right and she's like No like she looked at me like I and again like she's not Man she's the most pleasant person in

the world but i was gonna say she's clearly not harboring any ill will despite all of your attempts to alienate i feel like i yell at her dog and she chases you down the street hey i'm your neighbor kelly then you see her again are you nicole no i'm kelly and then i made it worse

i'm like wait a second but didn't you live in the other unit she's like no like and she's just like you know what i don't know if you get this in your life because you're not me but like sometimes my stupidity befuddles people to a degree that they cock their head in this way like your pet will cock their head like like a dog listening to a victrola yeah just like what are you are you negging me like it's just sort of like what is going and i was like oh okay yeah and then anyway so i that that happened then yesterday on social media i was trying to get to the bottom of some andre agassi commercial from the 90s that i was talking about on the podcast and was it for the canon eos rebel yeah it was um and the theme was change and it stars andre agassi with his long flowing hair and everything but then it in the voiceover says something like are you ready for a change and they shoot over to this other guy who looked i thought sort of like agassi but had totally different hairline and earrings and a kind of an ugly beard like a van dyke or something and so veves and i are discussing this on the show and i'm like veves when i first saw this commercial i thought both of these guys i thought the joke was that both of these guys were agassi but you're gonna laugh me out of the room because there's no way they're the same person look at this guy's hairline like but i i was so obsessed with but why would they have picked this weird random guy to cast like it just didn't make any sense to me and we're zaprudering it on the podcast and it doesn't make sense and then i post it to social media last night a whole bunch of people are like are you literally people were like i can't tell if you're playing dumb or not like both of these guys are Agassi it was a whole thing he wore wigs i'm like i had no idea about any of that shit and i just so those are my now i don't know

if he wore wigs i will take issue with i will take mild issue with that claim only because as a person whose hair is much is more thin than it used to be and who's always tracked these things fairly closely i was obsessed with andre agassi going from having this long flowing hair and these bandanas to having no hair on his head. And the story I wrote in my head was that he was losing it, but he was very artfully fluffing it and using this forehead band thing very effectively. And at some point, he just gave up the ghost. There are claims that he was wearing wigs. That seems like that'd be so hard to play high-level tennis and wear a wig like that.

Well, literally, this isn't a publication I've heard of. It's like some blog called Talk Sport. But the headline is, I prayed my hairpiece wouldn't fall off how tennis legend Andre Agassi, who won the lot, lost the 1990 French Open final because of his wig. And also the thing about this commercial is because this is what doesn't make sense. So people have explained to me now that there is a whole kind of like, I don't know if controversy is the wrong word, but that he was wearing these wigs and that it kind of blew the world's mind. And what did what didn't make sense to me was how is this 15 second commercial I'm watching that has Andre Andre Agassi with this long flowing hair driving around in convertibles, all these hot shots of him hitting the ball and various urban areas around the city. But then they're flashing to this other guy with male pattern baldness. Like how how else would they have done that if it wasn't a wig? You know what I mean? Like how did they go in the future and get that? So it's just like so it was so confusing to me. And the thing is, my instinct at first was Oh, both of these guys are Agassi But then I thought Genevieve was going to laugh me out of the room Because of my face blindness And she was going to tell me, no way are these the same guy So I backtracked and made a fool of myself on social media Apparently missing a huge cultural component of the 90s

So basically, this Kelly thing has got you rattled To where you don't trust your own eyes

I don't, and I don't know how I started rattling on about this But it is something that is driving me bananas these days

It started with talking about face blindness Well listen, here's the good news It sounds like your neighbor, Kelly Can we make a mnemonic device right now To help remember that her name is Do you think you'll have trouble remembering her name is Kelly Or will you potentially have trouble putting the face to the name

Well the plan is to not see her anymore The plan is just to stay inside I see you've got a system The system is to mow the lawn at night when i won't run into my neighbors i don't think i'll make the mistake again because i even after i had that awkward conversation with her and genevieve was there veves and i are both on ladders just to make it even more awkward we're like like bolting in this little piece of plastic roofing while we're having this conversation with our neighbor who comes over to the fence starts looking at me like um like i'm the biggest idiot in the world but that makes it sound harsh like she's not she just looked so confused she couldn't i think she was wondering if I was joking or something. Like, I should definitely know her name now. And I'm like, wait, you're not Nicole? She's like, no, she lived in the front. And I'm like, and you didn't switch apartments? She's like, no. And so anyway, my point is all of this. Later on that night, I remember coming to Genevieve after thinking about it a lot. And I said, you know what? Her name was always Kelly. And it sounded like a ridiculous thing to say. Because he was like, oh, you're telling her that her name was always Kelly? I'm sure she appreciates it. And I'm like, no, like, I just couldn't, I couldn't convince myself. I was so convinced it was Nicole, and I was so confused. And now I just, like, I've done a lot of thinking, and now I remember, yeah, yeah, she was always Kelly. And so I think that I've had, I think I've had a breakthrough. But now it's just like, but now I just feel so, it's so on the forefront of my mind now when I talk to her. And it's just confusing. and she's like now it's like her brother and her cousin who moved in the front of the house and i don't know their names anyway it's just i always feel very awkward when i'm around them like the the her cousin is like a rock and roll guy he's really nice by the way he drives a van and a motorcycle uh so like he's like a real rock and roll guy he's got sideburns and everything but he seems like a really sweet guy but now i just like i don't want to engage with any of them because i'm either like accidentally yelling at their dog or getting their dog in trouble because i'm trying to say hi to it over the fence and it barks its head off and then somebody yells at the dog and I'm like don't yell at the dog I was just saying hello so now the good news is this person

sounds unfazed by the previous incidents so I think you can still have a friendly neighborly relationship with them yeah I just need to do she was uptight she would have already if she was up tight it would have showed itself at this point uh so and then also I just I feel like and do you do you Um, tend to not like to deploy the, what I call, uh, the safety of vagueness, which is, I would say there are, there are many, many people in my life who I see who I don't exactly know where I know them from. I don't quite remember. And I keep it really general. Like, Hey, how you been? And like, I, I try to wait for a dazzling deet, something to kind of give me a little bit of a hint. but i mean i i just do that so much particularly at like live wire things and just bumping into people i i'm not my mind is not the steel trap it once was have do you ever consider just playing it vague or does that make you feel too nervous like you're gonna get called out no i'm happy to

do that that's one of the reasons i'm mad at myself is because i didn't need to engage like she so viz and i are standing on ladders and she even as she's kind of chatting with us she's kind of moving her laundry in and out or something and she passes us a couple of times and she's And the second time that she says hello, she says, you know, I'm sorry. Can you remind me of your name? She's like, I know you're Andrew, but can you remind me of your name? And Viv's like, yeah, yeah, I'm Genevieve. And that, I didn't have to say anything. I didn't have to say shit, man. But instead, and I turn around and I just say, and you're Nicole, right? Like, why? Why did I invite that? I mean, that's another thing that bothers me about that whole conversation. But the thing that I think rattles me more to my core is, I'm sitting here, I'm being 100% honest with you, Luke, after all of this. Names shit aside, I literally can't tell you one thing about what she looks like. I know that she's a woman. She is like a younger woman, like younger than me, which I guess covers a lot of ground these days. I don't know her hair color. I think she's white. that was another thing and maybe this is just me like i honestly because in my head i thought she was an asian american woman and i think that was part of my confusion too and like i don't know where i was getting that from this is something i've had and again i don't know i don't know all the details of her background but when i saw her she didn't look like the person i thought i remembered from last summer before we all holed up in our houses for the rainy season and so like there's just like so much confusion and like i'm sitting here right now if you were to say well can you like you know if if she goes out and commits a crime and the cops come and they say hey we heard your neighbor kelly committed a crime can you tell us what she looked like i'd be like well she's a she's like kind of a whitish area with points like i just don't know like i don't i don't know why she is has a and this is true for a lot of people for me i have a male and female that oh well you've answered it that like there are black and white movies i mean this is a different thing too where i just can't keep the guys apart at all like it

could always be the same one because they're all wearing those yeah the suits and everything suit pulled up to their belly button and a fedora you know potentially but literally if i were at the

bar and she were to come up to me and say hey it's good to see you here i'd be like oh can you remind me how i know you i don't know what she looks like and i keep having interactions with

I'm you sort of answered my question but I was wondering if this is more pronounced when you're talking to women versus men and I could see a world in which you're so intent on not coming off as creepy as as kind of you know making an amount of eye contact that might seem a little bit you know might be misread or something that you tend to like almost intentionally not take in the physical attributes of a woman so as to not seem like you're leering at all.

yeah i mean i definitely could see that well like here's the deal you know that i have issues with eye contact generally speaking i think i mean you've never said that directly but one time you came up to me in a coffee shop and asked if you could use the oatmeal create one of the best moments in history and i said yes i'm not using the oat milk and didn't even look at you and or i think no the thing is i looked right at you and said no i'm not using the oat milk sir and went back to my work having no idea it was you the person i was on the business trip with like I sometimes look without seeing in a way and it might have to do with if I'm concentrating on something, but it all also might have to do with like me not making eye contact with some like certainly when we were like the only two people walking down the street and walking towards each other like I'm sure I glanced in her general direction and just looked away because I don't want people to think that I'm like kind of staring at them, especially if it's a young woman walking alone. And that might be certainly part of it. I don't think that's the only thing. But there is definitely something going on with me and her of me not being able to just recognize her.

Again, I mean, I totally can understand that you're feeling like bummed about the number of kind of awkward interactions. But I do feel hopeful. She sounds like a very pleasant person. Oh, yeah. Who is, I bet you, I bet you all would take, in fact, you know what you could always do? You could. you and Veves could invite the invite the folks over for a little BBQ on a Saturday night and kind of hang out and like I bet you that would that would put everything to rest and that would move everybody firmly into the like happy neighbor category well I keep on

inviting her over for a pajama party and like that that's in the hot tub and somehow that's not making things less awkward and I just don't I just don't I'm out of moves no Nicole

loves hot tub

hey you want to come over a hot tub party nicole would have come over um i uh yeah no i mean we definitely invited her i think genevieve went over there invited her and whoever was living at the house at the time to our summer party i don't think they took us up on it there's a whole other thing too and i don't want to be spilling tea here but um we heard some like i think well it's probably not worth me bringing this up but also i think that she might no like really loud like crying and sobbing oh um for a period of time kind of late last summer and I don't know if it was a breakup or something going on in the family but I think maybe she was going out maybe maybe having very serious conversations on a phone or maybe just by herself just but like sort of sounded like inconsolable crying like that we heard for you know like a while like it felt like we were catching that at times over the course of weeks and I think Genevieve one time very you know was it didn't seem like anybody was in danger it didn't sound like it was a situation where somebody needed immediate help so that that made it again a kind of an awkward thing Genevieve was very tempted I think once or twice to go over and just kind of check and make sure everything was okay I can't remember if she did that or not but that doesn't really play into this much but it's just like my I just I'm just not as much as I am very happy with our neighbor situation I have no complaints this isn't like me when I'm mad at neighbors for parking the wrong way or throwing dog poop in my yard or whatever there's none of that going on they're all great neighbors um i'm just ashamed of myself for like kind of being for making this neighborly interaction

so awkward well i i think you're pretty hard on yourself because even to talk about the eye contact thing like you and i have been on many many long journeys together and i've never had a moment i mean that was kind of funny in chicago because you were just immersed in your work i think part of it is when your mind is on something it's really on that thing you know so like you

were working in that cafe i do remember being like really stressed like trying to write a quiz for the

live show right like it wasn't like you were just like daydreaming staring into the middle distance and then just didn't register it's like you're you know you're i think that when you're focused on something you're pretty focused on it and then other you know your brain is kind of batting other things away because they're not the thing you're focusing on so i think you should try to be nice to my friend Andrew over this. And again, it sounds like the good news is it sounds like your neighbor is still willing to talk to you despite all of the awkward interactions. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, maybe just like two more things on the writer's strike and also how I feel like I may have dodged a major bullet in the James Corden universe. And then also what the hell happened in the Coachella Valley when Frank Ocean took the stage a few weeks ago. That's all coming up here on TBTL.

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

Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are folks who are donating a dazzling amount of dough, and it's vital to the financial survival of this show and we'll become, I don't know if it's even more vital or the same amount of vitality, of vitalness, but we're going independent starting July 3rd and it's a bit of a shot in the dark. We're hoping that we're able to raise enough money to continue paying ourselves to do this as a five-day-a-week job. So I guess we'll all find out together for that TBTL-a-thon the week of July 3rd. In the meantime, we want to thank Diane Marshall, who's over there in good old Beaux Arts Village, Washington. Diane says thanks to Andrew and Luke and everyone who works hard behind the scenes to bring imaginary radio to the tens of listeners five days a week.

Hey, I got top billing there. I'm not trying to gloat or anything, but that's a rare top billing for Andrew. I did. I swapped it around.

Um, uh, by the way, this is a very nice message from Diane because it, it does, it does take more work maybe than a person would imagine to do this show. Because on the one hand, it just sounds like you and I are just like, you know, dialing up on this line and just BSing for an hour a day, which in a sense we are, but also there's the complexity.

getting it on the internet there is a plan each day there's the selecting of the audio there's again a lot of stuff that you do in post-production there's the raising of the money there's just like a lot of stuff that our buddy john sklaroff and all the folks at membership like it is uh it's a it's a bigger effort maybe than you might think to just tune into this so it's i'm it's very

gratifying that diane is cognizant of that although i also understand how um i oh maybe you haven't read this part yet but diane says that she never knows where the show is going to go and it's like i literally don't know what just happened in the last segment like i know we ended with me inarticulately trying to explain to you like awkward issues with my neighbor but i don't

think it was articulate i got there i believe me you were able to really take us there to a moment deep awkwardness no i mean it was vivid no i felt it in my bones i don't want to talk to my neighbors now yeah exactly um diane says uh having a new tbtl on my feed always gives me that cozy feeling my favorite thing about tbtl is that i never know where the conversation is going to take us well neither do we diane i just hop on for the ride that's diane talking not me i'm here for cat talk pettiness sky jinx hyper local sports and fast food hot takes and ill-advised accents you'll You know when I'm doing the ill-advised accent, Diane. And cartoon character voices, they always make me laugh out loud. Shout out to the other Bozarts 10s. I will see you on the pickleball court as soon as it gets warm. Of course, Bozarts Village has a pickleball court. That's like peanut butter and jelly, that place having pickleball going. Luke and Andrew, hit us up if you want to join the fun. We are very low-key about our pickleball. Well, most of us are. All right, Diane. And this is cool that we have multiple listeners out there in Beaux Arts Village over on the east side of Lake Washington. Again, I stayed there when we didn't live in Seattle, but we're visiting. It didn't hurt that I was staying in, like, one of the nicer homes I've ever been in in my life. And, of course, immediately, like, became, like, weirdly obsessed with that place. And because Carrie and I would be taking walks and just kind of enjoying the neighborhood. It's just, like, so unbelievably beautiful. beautiful and the houses are lovely and everyone waves and it's like i was like how do we become the head of the uw school of dentistry and live here that was what the person whose house we were

in did for their job but was it weird though when you were like kind of tagging it with your spray paint can like did you sort of have like some cognitive dissonance here yeah w-u-u-u-u-z yeah

you're just like god this place is so beautiful yep uh diane thanks for the invite uh we'll see

you soon in Beaux-Arts Village. Maestro? On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready.

Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dattle. We've also got to thank Megan Lairkamp of Castro Valley, California. Megan says, I lost my usual TBTL listening time when I no longer had a commute during the pandemic. I finally asked slash forced my 11, Ed, to listen during our weekend errands in the car i'd never told him about tbtl and wow talk to your doctor if tbtl is right for you

um yeah i sort of feel like i wonder how many people in our audience like they're just like i don't even want to explain this to my partner it seems like it would be so hard if you are a

five day uh uh sort of user of tbtl five day a week it seems like it'd be so hard to keep this from your significant other because there's so much of it you know what I mean yeah that's true you got to find like an a secret hour and a half a day where they're not around and then you also have to make sure that you don't bring it up like you're not talking about it like oh these guys on this thing I listen to it just it feels like such a lifestyle which is why so few people embrace it Andrew because it is a full-on lifestyle what do we used to say all we ask is that people Listen to every single word we say And also pay for it It's not a modest request Being part of this show as a listener The idea that you would have this compartmentalized In your life is really fascinating to me

Ed is just kind of like Why did you start calling birthdays Blurs days out of the blue All these weird questions

Ed was worried for Megan that there had been some sort of Maybe an Ischemic event I think is the term when somebody has a stroke. Ed, though, has now been convinced, I guess, to listen when they're running errands. I've been listening since the search for Andrew's McDonald summer tapes. I want to thank him for having the patience to listen to something he initially had no interest in hearing. We're talking about Ed again here. Although he won't claim to be a 10, I think I've got him to at least 10.5. Wow. Ed, thank you for your patience.

and for tolerating us because you know it makes Megan happy Megan says I also like to plug my side hustle my biz partners and I spend summers at stadiums watching baseball and we got tired of burning the back of our legs and peeling them off of hot sweaty seats we invented a reusable cotton seat cover that packs down and fits in the front pocket of a hoodie or small backpack this is amazing protect your bum from the sun this summer find us at TheSunSeat.com That's TheSunSeat.com This is the invention The co-invention of Megan And also hi to my 10 friend Hess Thanks also to John Sklaroff And all behind the scenes I swear John is writing these I swear to God How is he getting so much air time During these messages Thanks to John Sklaroff And all behind the scenes And to you guys for sharing yourselves with us Especially Andrew's interactions with his neighbors Wow, prescient I mean, what are the chances That we would read this message this day And you would say that The fact that it says, P.S. her name is Kelly Yudingas Is just amazing It almost makes me wonder if Megan's been spying on you Yeah, I'm sure it's all fine Megan says, y'all bring a lot of joy to the world Well, you bring a lot of joy to us, Megan By being a dazzling donor And helping us keep doing this So thank you very much, we really appreciate you hello and welcome to top story last couple of quick things on the on the writers guild strike one of the things i heard this morning on npr that i thought was really interesting was so the writers contention is that um basically the industry is starting to really grind them down like they're even though they renegotiated their contract 10 years ago they're making less money now i think adjusting for like you know cost of living and things like that than they were back then and a lot of it has to do with the fact that streaming shows don't have like a 22 episode season a lot of times it's like eight episodes and then also they don't get paid the same uh for things when they're streaming and uh one of the um one of the things i heard this guy on npr say this morning was the way that the streaming services value their content is different than how the tv networks did so if you wrote a hit show for a tv network a traditional network and you were writing on a hit show you were going to get a lot of episodes and the network was going to really value that show because it was a hit show it had a lot of viewers now the way the streaming service works is the streaming service doesn't care as much about viewers they care about subscribers which kind of seems like it's the same thing but it's somehow different enough that like it's not as big a deal to have a hit to have a slightly more popular show within the world of a streaming service because really they're like just monetizing things differently. They're just trying to get people in the door, get people to stick around. It just doesn't reward the writers

in the way that the traditional kind of network TV model did. And you're hearing these stories from TV writers that write on very successful shows who like cannot pay their rent in between, like, you know, so it'll be an eight episode season and then the season's over and then they're like door dashing and stuff to try to make ends meet when they're writing on these sometimes very successful programs. So it seems to me like they have a reasonable case. But I also wonder how it's going to work with the shift of the way that we all consume most of our stuff. Now, most of us don't turn on NBC at 9 o'clock on a Thursday night and watch it anymore. We probably turn on Netflix or one of these other streamers. And if that's how those business models work, I wonder what the future of being a TV writer will look like. And I guess the ultimate downside would be if you don't value writers and you don't pay them and fewer people can make a living in the industry, I guess you just get shittier content.

Yeah, I was also wondering, like, do you think there are more because there's well, it's interesting. So I've started three different thoughts. Like back in the day, if you had a season of Cheers, a season would be like 28 episodes or something. Am I right about that? Like, yeah, you have that. It would be a lot. Yeah. Now you have like shorter episodes that take a long time to produce because of all of the because it's, you know, maybe some of the more elite TV shows are I always say elite. That's not the word I'm looking for, but prestige TV shows. But like you're still only writing a certain amount of hours for that show, even if it takes, generally speaking, longer to make a show like Succession than it was to make a show like Cheers or something along those lines. Weird kind of comparison there. but i'm also wondering like they're cranking out more content on more platforms i mean everything from sure your netflix hulu hbo but also to i mean i don't know what it is but yahoo's probably producing something still right like i just wonder like are is there also like just a lot more people in the industry

Who are trying to make it as writers Because in a certain way there are more opportunities But also It's sort of like the opportunities Are more sporadic and spread thin

It's much more like the gig economy

Yeah that's how people are kind of comparing it And that's not You never want to hear that about The workers in your industry

Right because it seems like It's going the way of so many other things Where It used to be the case that if you were able to like land a job as a writer on a tv show you could do that for exclusively for your living and in fact maybe make a pretty good living and then if you had seniority and you know the show was a hit like it was a whole thing and and and it was it's sort of like what's an example like working for you know ford or gm or something in the 60s like you could put your kids through college you could buy a home and maybe be a one-income family and put your kids through college and then retire and have a comfortable retirement you could do all these things working on the assembly line at Ford because of the union and because of um the way that you know those jobs operated and now I don't get the sense that it's exactly the same way and it seems like that's sort of happening in this industry and it's been very disrupted because of all the because of all the streaming stuff as well and how kind of fractured that is and who's getting paid there was a story from I think it was Damon Lindelof oh by the way if you want to see any famous people if you're in la go to these picket lines oh yeah because it's just pretty much all famous people like i was reading this hollywood reporter piece written today and everyone they interview in the piece is someone who's famous for their television work who's just standing out there in a baseball cap holding a sign they're talking to like the guy from ted lasso not um jason sudeikis but the guy brett um brett goldstein who's kind of the one of the breakout stars of ted lasso he was like out there trying to think i'm trying to skim through this article and see some of the other folks that they uh that they talked to it's like uh basically a bunch of people adam conover from adam ruins everything was out there phil lamar um who was on mad tv and a lot of other shows you'd recognize him if you saw him would i well he was a voice i i believe phil lamar was one of the voices on Futurama, so maybe you'd recognize

his voice. Yeah, actually, that's the irony, is I am actually pretty good at recognizing

voices. Raphael Bob Waksberg, who is the creator of BoJack Horseman, so maybe not a household name, but certainly like a big name in my mind, because of how much I love that show. It's like, these picket lines appear to be, well, a lot of writers that you may not be familiar with, but a lot of folks, I guess Ron Howard was out there, which is, now that's the other thing that's been happening that's interesting. You have people that are in the WGA because they're credited with writing things but they also run production companies so they're cut or you know they run production so they're kind of they're sort of a stride these two worlds um but yeah the the thing that i was saying before the break about how i feel like i dodged this is unrelated to the strike but kind of interesting because as we've already mentioned what's shutting down right now is late night television and i i think i told you this but you know a few weeks ago cbs reached out to me and wanted me to do a profile of james corden and i couldn't do it because i was going to need to be in la on the day that we were announcing that tbtl was going independent oh okay yeah this sort of rings a bell and i just didn't think it would be a great scene for me that's like a big important day in our world and i didn't want it to be something where like i'm in a hotel room on a shaky internet connection with half of my mind thinking about interviewing james corden so i i passed on it and i rarely do that that now puts it on a list of two things i've ever passed on that i can remember one was a profile of tim allen yeah i remember that and now it was a profile of james cordon that was more of a scheduling thing than a philosophical thing although i did say to the producer when they asked me if i wanted to do it i was like yes but we have to talk about this restaurant situation oh yeah and and then i heard from other folks ended up working on the project that that was um uh it was that there was a lot of work on the pr side uh of the late late show to try to keep that part of the conversation to a minimum even though it's literally the only

thing i was interested in right yeah i'm sure yeah that would have been probably like a a no fly zone and from his perspective but if you even though it's kind of a feature piece like yeah how much do you concede like oh we're not allowed to ask about that well then i would want to spike it And I know that you would sort of feel the same way. Like, I'm not just here. I also don't. You and I are not, I don't think, huge fans of James Corden. At least I'm not.

Well, I think I'm more inclined towards some of that tomfoolery than you are. I know Carpool Karaoke is not. I can't say that I watched a lot of it. But I also, it doesn't sort of grate on me maybe in the way that I get the sense it kind of grates on you as an overly kind of ebulent event or something. But this is the part that I was really like kind of

surprised to see this week this reporting um in the new york post and other places so i would have gone down i would have done the story i would have tried to make him and by the way we all work for the same company which would have added to the layers of weirdness it's all cbs right right he's leaving cbs i work for cbs sunday morning it's like what's the you know can i do a can i do a hard-hitting piece on why you got so mad about those eggs like can i really even would i even be allowed to do that but i would have gone down there i would have done the profile i would have tried to make it interesting and and and you know probing in some way i might have lost that argument i don't know what i would have never realized though because again he's been on this sort of victory tour is that now this reporting is that the show was losing 20 million dollars a year that's a lot of money even for a network like cbs believe me when they don't when they think i'm trying to steal a hotel room near disneyland and they got another show that's losing 20 million dollars a year like i think it's kind of funny that this was totally framed as this like oh please don't leave and everyone was like he's just you know walking away from because he's accomplished everything he wanted to in the world of late night and i i don't know enough to say that's not true but i think it's kind of notable that that show was hemorrhaging money that's funny

i wonder what about that show i don't know we were talking about the strike stuff and like i'm just so i'm so ignorant on it honestly i just have more questions than anything to contribute so that's why i'm a little feeling a little bit lame today but like the economics of late night tv is also a topic that i am not an expert on you'll be surprised to hear but like what is it about that particular show that is hemorrhaging that amount of money now i don't know what goes on with with kimmel and all the other ones um kimmel things of that nature um rangoon but like things Of Kimmel's nature Was it going out of the studio Does he do a lot Aside from carpool karaoke Is he just like employing a lot of people He does scooter karaoke He does Learjet karaoke I mean that's what cost him a lot of money But like I just wonder what is it about that show That it both costs more money And apparently you know And maybe also doesn't have the advertisers to support it

Well that's the thing My guess would be time slot matters Because if you're on at 1230 versus 11 30 there's probably a fairly significant drop off of just eyeballs that are looking at a tv at 12 30 at night but if you have a high production value of your show if you're doing a lot of out of the studio stuff and you know i'm sure i mean the thing that i think is kind of interesting is like that that carpool karaoke stuff was legitimately a viral hit i mean millions and millions and millions of views and people really loved it and the idea that so the the operating budget of the show was between 60 and 65 million dollars a year and it was bringing in about 45 million dollars a year uh in revenue so there's a 15 to 20 million dollar shortfall there and i think it's kind of interesting uh from a sort of media economic standpoint because what it would indicate is having a massively viral thing like carpool karaoke which is which was as successful

as you could hope anything like that would be as far as translating onto the internet

right but it's not it did not appear to be enough to balance the books for this show which maybe

is a condemnation of the studios and the people who work there for not knowing how to monetize things in the modern era you know that the idea of having a video get super popular when you post it to twitter and retweet it and like they're you know this to me points to the disconnect between popularity online and actually being able to monetize it online versus the old school of just like producing tv shows and getting advertisers right i watched them do colbert um i don't know

a month ago or something and it was what was interesting to me is how old school it was and i mean that show has a lot of viewers or at least for that time slot i think it has a lot of viewers and it's not there was nothing that was going on in that episode that was actually gonna go viral you know like there was no carpool karaoke aspect of it in that case it seems like and i don't know the i don't know the finances of that show either but i'm i'm it seems like you know there's not any push to you know not have stephen colbert do that job it makes me wonder and even like the show that that i work on sunday morning which really couldn't be less viral in

its nature i mean it's like oh that's it's like i don't think that's true that that's well i think i think it's a throwback it's set yeah but it's segments of things that can because people were just saying and i'm sure you got a bunch of emails like one of the stories you worked on i don't remember which one was just like they pulled it they used a clip of it on um well one of the things you did recently was making it yeah it was on john oliver last week tonight another one was on john oliver i think those are two different things but i actually think that like if you if you land on something sort of interesting and quirky and then it gets swept up into the tick tock i think

things like that do get circulated right i guess so i guess what i meant was cbs sunday morning is still a very successful show because their primary thing is trying to make a tv show yeah yeah and and for the people that like it you know they really like it whereas i feel like there's this constant you know you and i have worked at like low levels i'm talking about like local public radio shows or public radio shows that i've worked on where there's just always this idea of like you gotta go viral yeah like when i started out the bryant park project was like we just gotta go viral and it's like yeah i know but like cordon couldn't have gone more viral than he did with that stuff and they were still losing 20 million dollars a year like i you know i i don't want to sound like uh you know abe simpson or something i clearly don't i don't understand the new media landscape myself but i i just i thought it was interesting that this program that had really achieved that virality that we're looking for in this modern era apparently not you know the budget

was not balanced despite that and i think it's interesting what you were saying about like the economics of the time slot again caveat i don't really know what i'm talking about here but nor do i so we've got that going for us but if there is like a big disconnect between the show that starts at 11 30 at night versus the show that starts at 12 30 at night or what have you It sort of seems like it was always that later show, maybe because of money constraints and also just like the weirdness of that time slot and maybe even the weirdness of people who are watching TV in that time slot. That's where you got sort of the weirder stripped down programming, you know, I mean, Letterman and then Conan. Exactly. Like, well, we can't we don't have a big budget. But what if we put a man in a bear with a masturbating bear with a diaper, you know, like let's get let's get weird. And that's the type of stuff that you and I like, again, not just the weirdness of it, but also the somewhat scaled backness of it, which kind of goes hand in hand. And again, just based on this conversation, which might have a lot of false premises in it, it sort of sounds like he was trying to produce like kind of a big budget thing that had all these kind of viral videos. But like you're maybe that time slot just can't support that kind of thing. You maybe got to start stripped down and weird and then, you know, and that's what you and I like. But that's also why we have, as we often say, a very boutique listenership.

Exactly. No, I think you're probably right. And again, with the caveat that I also don't know the economics of that stuff. But there's got to be a reason why shows like Letterman and Conan were very just like a person and a desk and a guest and, you know, like a lot of weird bits involving the writers. Now, I know that they did a lot of that on Corden, too. In fact, Corden's main writer is a guy named Ian Carmel, who's super funny and a gem and has been on Livewire a bunch of times. So it's like it's not that they weren't doing that. I just my guess would be that the production aspirations of that show and all of the because it's like when when when you go out and shoot a carpool karaoke, like the expense of that is, I think, pretty insane between the, you know, all the traffic traffic revisions. you have to get the permits the actual equipment that you know the time for the crew like there's just a bunch of stuff that goes into something like that and if that's your main thing my guess would be that that's you know david letterman just dropping watermelons off of the top actually that was more ed sullivan theater that was when he was on the big show you're still doing that stuff yeah i saw the other day that rupert g is selling the hello deli and i was like i was like oh man nothing gold can stay i don't know if you remember that rupert g's hello deli which was a around the corner from the ed sullivan theater but like they had a he became a whole character

yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't have remembered the name but yeah i do remember that being a bit also may i just say marty funkhauser yes okay bob einstein i think this is what led to the face blindness conversation but i realized this tab has still just been open and the problem is when you go to his wikipedia page the photo of him is a photo of him uh from 1970 and so i didn't i couldn't make the connection but yes of course and he played like the surrogate uh in arrested development he would be when um what's his name uh george senior george senior was was on house arrest he would just have this guy go around with a camera on his head so he could communicate with the rest of the family yes i totally know who bob einstein is i didn't know

that was his name and i would highly recommend the anything where he and seinfeld are just bsing because it's clear that he just kills Seinfeld. And he is really like Marty Funkhauser in real life. He had this sort of weird directness and kind of being always mildly agitated. That's just so funny to me. So yeah, if you're looking for the comedians in cars getting coffee or whatever with Bob Einstein, would recommend. One other thing before we get to the email.

and females is this this very odd story of the frank ocean performance at the first weekend of coachella now i just heard about this well just so happened that i was in coachella when i was tumbleweed hunting that was the second weekend and because i was down there and i was looking at some of the local news i was seeing these updates that said like frank ocean broke his ankle riding a bike at coachella and therefore is not going to be playing his second weekend show which i thought golly that's a pretty bad fall just off of like riding a bike around a pretty flat like desert landscape you broke your ankle um and then i started hearing these reports about how he had hired all of these hockey players and other people who could sort of ice skate to dance on this huge ice rink that was going to be his backdrop and they brought them all over from LA and then they trained on the ice and then they came over for the show and they were told like hours before the show that he wasn't going to do the ice rink there's all this kind of like weird speculation about what was going on with his show because he he ditched the whole plan and just did this show where you kind of couldn't see him on stage like he was hidden from the audience a bunch of the time and it was just it was a very um unusual sort of situation and also Coachella did not make it part of the live stream that was another thing that I noticed when we were there I was like have like on like Saturday after the shoot I was like having a beer at the like hotel swim bar whatever pool bar and they're showing Coachella on there and I was like I said to the people next to me I was like this is the amount of Coachella that I need in my life like this is great i'm watching you know whoever uh and uh from the comfort of this bar this is this is as close as i need to be to 40 000 people sweating on each other you know watching um you know i don't know billy eilish or something but anyway they didn't play the frank ocean show as part of the live stream and then they announced that he wasn't going to play the second weekend allegedly because of this ankle but then no one's ever talked about the broken ankle again so that's weird and then this guy who had sort of pieced together people had been filming stuff on their phones this this guy um had figured out had like his name is brian kinneys he's a new york city based film editor he also loves frank ocean by the way and he had basically figured out how to piece together all of these publicly available videos of the set so he just like scoured I guess the internet and found all these different like cell phone videos and camera angles and like everything that was out there publicly available and he stitched it

all together it's so that's so awesome I mean that speaks to me so much just like I know the the the hunting down of all this stuff and then stitching it together into some sort of what must be a very weird but somewhat cohesive like you he actually it's like a 75 minute set right and he stitched it all together from random footage that people were posting online that must be a trip to watch i want to watch that so badly will i have an opportunity to you can't because coachella

filed a cease and desist order to hide this footage of frank ocean singing um i thought it was interesting too yeah this guy um uh this this guy brian kinnis uh he sounds like an interesting dude he said so one of the things that was apparently happening during the show was that this is i'm reading by the way from san francisco chronicle dan gentile writing we've used his articles before he's a good writer um for the i don't do they call it the chronicle anymore it comes by way of the website sf gate but i think the paper is still called the chronicle this is what this guy dan gentile said ocean set was brilliant musically but often confusing for those in attendance his stage setup was obscured from fans and he was only visible on the video screens there were long pauses between songs where he huddled with a stage manager it seemed like each song might be the last in a purposeful decision kinnis removed these excruciating moments quote i was definitely aware that i was maybe revising history a bit in the way that i edited it but you know it's an edited film i called it a film from day one in my head it represents a creative interpretation of an event he said citing soviet film director sergey einstein's theory of montage i was about to cite that damn it getting pretty high level here yeah um but uh anyway yeah it's like i had i didn't watch the video because i didn't find out about it till i saw this article in the chronicle but i really want to see the video now and it's like what is going i don't have any further insight now i'm just kind of like asking questions into the void or something but like what happened that was so bad that Cook

Coachella itself is like cease and desist putting this on YouTube.

And did Frank Ocean appear at all? It seems like I don't even know why I'm saying this other than like my timelines were flooded with Met Gala red carpet stuff. He seems like the type of person who would usually be at a Met Gala thing. Do we know like is he in public now? I guess is my question. Is he attending things like that or has he been kind of laying low since all of this?

You know, that's a great question. it it's uh let's see i'm just okay reddit right take it with a grain of salt although it did recently help me get through to united parcel service so i'm a big fan of reddit it appears this is from reddit it appears frank ocean is not on the met gala 2023 guest list okay interesting so people i don't know if that's just the first headline that pops up for me uh that's a good that's a good question also i did watch so this guy dan gentile who's writing for the chronicle and is writing the story of the other guy who made the movie i was looking at his twitter feed and he just like on his phone was filming 30 seconds of a frank ocean song and it was gorgeous like from this performance from this this coachella thing and it made me think if like the worst if the worst issue was that he wasn't super visible and he was huddling with his stage managers but the songs were musically beautiful i did and this guy cut all of the pauses out yeah i was gonna say

this guy was doing them a solid by actually making it seem a little better yeah it was this was not

like a frank ocean gets booed off the stage it was like this guy loves his music and wanted to make this sort of tribute thing and it doesn't it just seems like something that coachella wouldn't

be ceasing and desisting yeah i don't i got nothing to contribute other than um it's it's a very strange situation i could also just see frank ocean is like just seems like a very exacting kind of performer like an artist with a capital a so i'm sure that um that you know and maybe there's a fine line sometimes between genius and insanity like i don't know but like i'm sure that like yeah he was probably probably going through something right i guess so and if it's you know if it's a mental health thing obviously yeah it's weird that i took it there did i just accuse him

of being crazy i didn't i didn't mean it that way yeah but there's feels like there's more to the story than like just the fact that it was tried to be passed off as a broken ankle from riding a bicycle at coachella that was just a weird story and now that's like no one's talking about that which makes me think like that couldn't have really been the thing and what what happened with the ice skaters imagine being one of these like hockey players from la who gets like hired to do this gig you come over to coachella and train and practice and then it's the day of the performance you come back over and like an hour before the show they're like we're not doing that anymore like what a letdown probably um this was the i would say the silver lining to this whole thing though is that this guy kinnis has found himself with what's been described as a surprising wealth of new professional opportunities he's received emails from film directors with scripts as well as from agents quote hollywood has always been the end goal but there was never a way for me to break through those doors the situation is just so silly in a matter of 72 hours working on this little music film in my bedroom that's the thing that helped open those doors for me yeah well i

mean it's kind of funny because i was just gonna make a quick comment um that it's just like who would have thought like this is where odd future was headed you know like what was it 15 20 how long ago was it like the odd future just started as like teenagers right right a little rap collective that frank ocean was a part of and like now now he's like not just a superstar not that stardom couldn't have come from that but such a different style of stardom than you would have i forget that

he was an odd future guy because he's so i mean and it's also interesting to think about how many you know tyler the creator coming from odd future frank ocean um earl sweatshirt i'm trying to think i think i may be forgetting some folks but like certainly between tyler the creator and frank ocean i mean these are two of the biggest acts going in music right now it's pretty it's pretty incredible for some skater kids from la exactly yeah wanting to be like you know fuck the man or

whatever yeah and they were also very raw and they were young too and they were kind of offensive i remember like i like them but they had like their they had issues with homophobia certainly and now you think of like frank ocean as somebody who i mean frank ocean is very out right and was one of like the kind of the first kind of big name rappers to kind of come out of the closet and that he would be a standard at something like the met gala or something you wouldn't expect it from those like you say like kind of those kind of punk kids who were trying to offend us all whenever

that was 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 emails and v-mails do you remember the little poll that i promised to put on to oh yes

I said I have a couple of voicemails here that do involve, you know, that are a little gross if you're eating right now. Somebody said, hey, I appreciate it when you give us a heads up if you're going to play a gross voicemail because maybe I don't want to be eating while I hear it. But I did ask folk, do you want me to play these two voicemails? And overwhelmingly, I can't find the numbers right now, but overwhelmingly, let's see, 43 people said yes. Four people said no. Do you want me to call out the four people who said no? I'm just joking. Yes. No. But anyway, so people do want to hear gross stories via the voicemail line. And I'm going to play this first one for you, Luke, from Listener Carolyn, who wanted to talk about mashed potatoes from KFC. You were talking about this the other day because you love those style mashed potatoes for some reason, right?

Yeah, and not because they're good, like high quality. Yeah, they're quite low quality, but they scratch an itch for me based on having them when I was a kid and a teenager. Well, they scratch an itch for Carolyn as well.

Hi, friendos. This is Carolyn in Encinitas, and I was just listening to TVGL and listening to Luke wax nostalgic about KFC mashed potatoes, and I had to call and tell my mashed potatoes story. I had never had them, but when I was eight weeks pregnant and feeling totally awful and nauseated, I was in Memphis for a conference with my best friend, Kate. And we were driving along, and nothing sounded good, but I thought maybe KFC mashed potatoes would taste good because they might be like TV dinner mashed potatoes, which I loved as a child. And so I convinced her to pull over at a KFC in Memphis, and we got the mashed potatoes. I ate them. They were so delicious, and I was so happy because nothing sounded good. We were on our way to visit Graceland, and so we drive a few more blocks to Graceland and pull in the parking lot. I get in the parking lot, and I instantly vomit KFC back potatoes in the parking lot of Graceland. And then we went inside and toured Graceland, and I think she convinced me to eat catfish later that day, which actually also tasted amazing and stayed down. So that's my KFC mashed potato growth story for the day. And that child is now 16, and he's a very rarely tolerant five, although he does still love the sound machine. All right, have a great day, and keep it up, you guys.

That sound machine has won us more friends. That's basically our lasting legacy. That catfish twist at the end really got me. Like, you would think of, like, mashed potatoes as being, like, the most, like, yeah, it just kind of fills up space in your tummy, you know? Like, it's very inoffensive. It's very gentle. That doesn't stay down. But the catfish whiskers stay down.

Right? I would, I mean, fish of any kind, but particularly catfish, feels like trouble for your tummy when you're growing a baby in there. If you're already having some morning sickness or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, I have kind of a funny relationship with fish anyway. Like, I don't like it that much. Weirdly, the type of fish I eat the most is probably raw fish in the form of, like, sushi or somebody got some, like, raw tuna at dinner last night. Yeah, it was like, what do you call it? I just ordered this with you on one of our last adventures last year when you get, like, ground beef or something, but it's literally raw. Oh, tartare? Tartare, yeah, it was, like, tuna tartare. and so like I like that kind of stuff yet like honestly unless it's like breaded fish I'm usually not really interested in having fish as a meal like the second I know this sounds ridiculous but the second it starts to get quote-unquote fishy I'm out like I would never I love leftovers

of any kind but I would never eat leftover fish when I was doing that event at Oregon State University last week or a couple weeks ago they took us out to like a nice dinner the dean of the school and it was this very nice restaurant but everything the only veggie item they had was mushroom based which i don't like yeah and so then everything else was like lamb and i i have started eating fish again occasionally so they did have like some albacore so i was like i'll get the tuna but it was like it was like i knew what was going to happen i knew this was going to be that kind of tuna that's like they basically just like warm it up to room temperature yeah just cold on the inside yeah it's extremely it's it's more or less raw on the inside and a little bit seared on the outside i know that's like how people like it i don't i like sushi but i don't like that for some reason that version of raw fish is not very appealing to me so i asked the server i was like can i get the albacore but can you have them cook it a little too long and she just looked at me like you're ruining i mean she was nice but i could see in her eyes she was like why are

are you ordering this 35 dollar entree and then having them ruin it right right did it come out did they kind of follow the instructions i kind of they did they could have cooked it even more

for me i could tell you this if they wouldn't have cooked as much as they did i wouldn't have wanted to eat any of it like the part on the outside that was seared was yummy because it was cooked and i could see the sear went down about halfway through so like i mostly ate the

cooked parts but i again i thought you will eat it totally raw if it's prepared as a sushi or a

yes that's the that's that's what doesn't make any sense but there's you know if it's a sushi it's like in a certain kind of you know it's wrapped up in rice there's a there's a wasabi thing it's like i know how that goes there's something about a big a big cut of raw fish that i'm just like cutting with a knife and the middle of it is cold and kind of fibrous that is

not appealing to me i can eat what you're describing it doesn't turn my stomach maybe quite as much but i'm also not i'm also not casting any aspersions over here i'd never do that with people and their food because i'm just such a my my tastes are so weird and inconsistent and but and i and also like what you're saying is context does matter when something is prepared in a certain way like sushi again going back to my fish thing it's like sushi is also a safe meal for me not to overeat first of all because it's a really rich meal usually you know i'm talking about if you're actually getting fish as protein not like veggie sushi or something it um it will fill you up and satisfy you um but i literally can't overeat sushi because of my weirdness with fish that like it's like the one food that i eat right up to probably a proper level

of oh that's so funny because i do the opposite but then if i go too much on sushi i start to

it starts to like kind of get in my head a little bit like you're eating too much raw fish or

something like that oh my gosh i can just crush roll after roll to the point where i'm like well it's just raw fish and rice i mean how bad could it be and then i'm always like how much did i just eat i'm like you can't you can't gain weight on sushi and i'm like what what sumo wrestlers

right yeah and like like i don't know if i eat i don't know yeah like when vives and i go to a sushi place we end up it's always the type of place we want to try everything so we always are like oh my god they're still bringing out more plates and you start to feel kind of embarrassed like you're like the surfers are like you just start you just order this one you're just listing

things, and then they're bringing them out, and then midway through what they're now delivering on your list, you're like, God, we ordered a lot

of stuff. Yeah, and not that I don't want it, but just that I'm like, couldn't you guys have put this all on one plate so everybody in the restaurant doesn't know what oinksters we are? Anyway. Okay, one more story here. This one involves Pepto-Bismol.

I want to preface this by apologizing. I'm really sorry for what I was about to say, but y'all are talking about Pepto-Bismol, and so I just needed to share. I am from a Pepto family, I love Pepto-Bismol Naja, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach Diarrhea, it's the jam, I love it So whenever I'm feeling ill I eat Pepto-Bismol I want that to be on this person's family crest

The entire Pepto-Bismol song Yep

I was in Italy In 2019 for my Now sister-in-law's birthday 30th birthday celebration with the whole family and I don't know like what happened my brother-in-law got sick and then I started not feeling well and so I'm not sure if like we actually had a stomach bug that we were passing around or if it was just something that I ate that night but I started feeling really really ill and um we ended the night by having some like homemade wine from one of the Airbnbs that we were staying at and I just couldn't take it so I took some Pepto-Bismol and I went to bed and I woke up in middle of the night and i barely made it into the bathroom i projectile vomited twice i think all over this airbnb's bathroom and this was the last night that we were staying there so we had to leave in the morning it was it was absolutely terrible um but the worst part was when i woke up the next morning because i obviously wasn't really paying attention um my now husband then boyfriend partner uh cleaned up my vomit which is very sweet but i woke up and my mouth was black um like my teeth were black my tongue was black everything was black and it was so upsetting because I had no idea why but apparently the pepto-bismol like acts with reacts with something in your stomach um to make it be black so if you like eat it and have um really bad acid reflux and you can see like the back of your tongue will turn a little black but anyways uh it was really really really really upsetting and I googled it obviously in the moment because i was like am i am i dying is that what's happening right now but no it was just the

uh so yeah uh power out okay thank you for googling it for us so that i don't have to google it because now i can just trust your googling and i don't want to get those images in my cookies they should

put that on the bottle though like a warning like you know just like the the the the classic joke of Like if you eat beets, they should just remind you.

that in like a day or two, you're going to think something's gone very wrong. But like, because think about it, if you're taking Pepto, it's because your stomach is, you're experiencing some kind of discomfort, which immediately puts you now in a category of people who are probably more likely to have a vomit event. You've already self-selected as being a person whose stomach is not feeling super awesome. So if it changes into the color black in your stomach, and again, we know that one of the main overriding characteristics of Pepto-Bismol is that color. people even say like oh that pepto colored bathroom you know or pink bismuth as as we used to have in the burbank household so if it's not pink if you're just throwing up black yes that would be so upsetting they should really that should be like the first thing they tell

you about pepto yeah oh i understand why the marketers maybe decided not to make it the first thing they told you about pepto but yeah i think i don't know why pepto came up recently but i think I did mention that I have a bad association with it because at one point when I was young, you know, I've, is this even true? Yeah. I mean, I guess I was only ever in the hospital, like the hospital hospital one time in my life as a patient and I was quite young and I was just like racked with these really bad stomach pains that kind of never came back again. I remember the doctor, like I remember I'm a very skittish person in doctor and hospital settings. But I remember knowing I was in a lot of pain because my parents took me to the hospital in the middle of the night. I woke up like writhing in pain. I think my stomach had been bothering me maybe that day or a couple of days leading up to this peak. But I remember them taking blood and them saying, hey, we're just taking a little blood sample from you. And it was the first time that I could recollect somebody taking a blood sample from me. And I looked down at my arm and they're taking blood out of my arm and I didn't have a reaction to it. And I remember like even in the moment thinking like man i must be really sick because this isn't freaking me out but then the doctor was almost like a movie the doctor came back and said um it was just some sort of like basically some fancy word for some intense gas thing going on in my stomach like looking back now i don't know if i was like a high anxiety child and that was part of it but it wasn't like a pattern of behavior with me anyway sure during this time i vomited gas pains

there are gas pains that are so intense that i felt like i was going to pass out uh-huh and i because i was an adult i knew what it was but it was just like how can this hurt so much like how can this be and also that's not a common occurrence for me yeah but it's like and i remember being a kid and having a friend i they shall remain nameless just because i don't want to embarrass But I remember them going to the ER and being told it was gas pains. Yeah, that's good. I think that's what happened to me. So just so you know, you were not like you were not being a hypochondriac with that. That's the kind of thing that can be so painful.

I should ask my parents if they remember that even because I remember it being like kind of a big deal to me. But again, like and I was I was very lucky. I didn't have a lot of health issues. Even to this day, I've been very lucky in that regard. But anyway, it was during that time that I think I took some Pepto-Bismol. Maybe maybe my parents took me to the hospital after I vomited all up or whatever. but like that was you know I was quite young but even to this day when I see Pepto I'm just like not for me like I have really that put you off of it yeah definitely I think it was kind of a standard thing in our house what about pink bismuth pink bismuth I didn't even know about until you told me about it definitely sounds like a place on the risk board like oh dang I always like to start with pink bismuth and then work from there yeah exactly all right well uh I guess

that's gonna probably do it for today's program thank you everyone for hanging out with us uh we are gonna be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you so please do join us for that and don't hide us from your partners please don't like keep us like some dirty secret i don't mind i'll be your dirty little secret i'll make you my dirty little wait how's that song go i have

no i love that song by the way i don't know it's dirty little secret i don't know what is the

genre my dirty it's like sort of like that pop punk that was sweeping the nation in like the probably like sort of late 90s avril lavini years sort of yeah kind of but this was this was a a band that was fronted by a guy but even maybe a little before avril lavine kind of like when when like Lit and Super Drag and all those kind of like pop punky bands but like not so much

All American Rejects The internet told me that, not my brain

Can we go out with that song?

Sure, let's just go out with a tiny bit of that Just talk over it as much as possible

Okay I honestly think this song kind of stands up Oh, this also has this I think this might have this swing swing part Very catchy Let's just hear a little bit of it.

Let me know that I've done wrong When I've known this all along I've gone around a time or two Just to waste my time with you Tell me all that you've thrown away I love this part I know it

Got some harmonies going on And here we go I'll keep you my dirty little secret

This is the first I've ever heard it, but okay. Pretty catchy, though, right? Yeah, it's very catchy, yeah.

I don't see you putting that on when you're mowing the lawn, but also I don't see you being mad at that if someone's doing it at karaoke.

You know what I put on? Maybe it was somebody's music suggestion in the newsletter a couple of weeks ago, but M83. I always say M83. Do you say M83 or M83?

I say M83, but you know, I've never actually, I haven't confirmed that with anyone, I just, you know, that's what I've been saying

And I know, I always think of that as, like, kind of your type of music, especially, like, maybe your kind of airplane music, maybe, or it certainly used to be But, like, I listened to whatever their first album was when it was brand new, it wasn't the Saturdays one, it was the one before that Oh, it wasn't Saturdays Equal Youth? No, there was one before that that I think I listened to. But anyway, like a little bit way back in the day. And for some reason, like somebody mentioned that. And I'm like, you know what? When I mow the lawn, I'm just going to listen to that. It was very unusual lawn mowing music for me. But I just wanted to kind of... Oh, is it Hurry Up, We're Dreaming?

No, that's the newer one, I think.

Yeah, no, I can't. I could look it up, but I've got too many things going on. And I've already ruined too many segments of this show. I could be wrong, but I think there was one before Saturdays are for the boys. I know that's not what it's called.

and it was just like that album with those like two like French kids on the cover like kind of tweens or whatever whatever that one is I thought that one was Saturday's that was that was the one that I got

that's Saturday's I think yeah two people on the front like from a shot from far away I think that's Saturday's anyway it was just an interesting it was an interesting thing to mow the lawn to I don't I don't not recommend it no I in fact

I was listening to them on my jog today oh really so that's still part

of the major rotation for you

it's majorly like so uh let me see um spotify just crashed on me they probably sense we're

playing some music without the rights oh my god they've already pulled this episode we haven't

even posted it yet my god um the uh let's see oh we on the sky wait no we on the sky is a track why is it so hard to just find the albums of somebody on this infernal site no i don't want albums featuring m83 for the love of gosh i want to give out the recommendation on the um on i guess it's is it hurry up we're dreaming is that the one does that start with yes hurry up we're dreaming which came out in 2011 the reason i couldn't believe that was the album i'm thinking of is because that's so long ago so anyway hurry up we're dreaming is an amazing jogging album as far as i'm concerned it just builds you know it's just very ethereal but also propulsive and it's i just i love that album so much it's also a very good looking at the sunset and drinking alcohol record it's really a double threat andrew it's either or triple if you throw in the landing of the airplane like the i mean it's great for helping your body it's great for hurting your body sure yeah right it just covers a whole range of things but then also yes saturday's equal youth was the other one that I was really, really obsessed with originally.

Yeah, you know, looking at the track list here, it must have been, and this is definitely the one I was listening to when I was mowing the lawn, but as I was mowing the lawn, I was like, I don't remember these songs as well as I thought, so I thought that it was an earlier record that I was more, but looking at the discography, I think it was always, I think it was always Saturday's Equal Youth because I just- Dude, We Own the Sky, that song.

Yeah. That song is so good. i'm also still just listening to this time cop 1983 record called journeys i probably listen to it once every other day like it's it's almost like some kind of coping mechanism music for me like i just put it on when i can't think of what to listen to i put it on if i need to get some work done i can put it on for running i put it on airplanes it's almost like a white noise fan sound for me now that because it's so basically every song sounds kind of the same also oh isn't M83 don't M83 has that droning song that like 14 minute droning song that I'm kind of

obsessed with and that's like near the end of the record I think right because I was mowing the lawn to that thinking is this motivating me but I got the lawn mowed I am going to do that today the sun is shining when I'm done here I need to record a hey dummies video and mow the lawn maybe I'll do them both at the same time I have a question for you since that song has already run out and we'll just we'll close up the show here anyway and this is so buried in the show i don't mind having this conversation here yesterday i was doing um some show prep for after these messages and i don't know why but the youtube algorithm eventually suggested to me some video that just it was a black screen with a red like kind of a classic looking um dodgeball in the middle of it like the kind we used to play with in school you know that sort of textured red ball and it was compelling to look at so i clicked on and it says it's one hour of silence occasionally broken up by a dodgeball sound effect and i think the dodgeball sound effect begins at the so that's the sound and now this video is still playing and i just kind of kept this on in the background while i was doing my work yesterday and minutes and minutes and minutes will go by and you'll completely forget that this is something that you set up for yourself and then all of a sudden the dodgeball sound will happen again randomly is there any chance we want to incorporate incorporate that into our show sometime absolutely like we could do this tomorrow just like we'll just be in the middle of something and then all of a sudden just like boring this digital bouncing sound that it's not even a good clean sound right

it's so awful i mean if people haven't got enough of um this yeah i see that to me seems like it would be as much as i do like droning sounds and i love like white noise and stuff i i feel like with that if i were just sitting at my desk working and then 12 minutes went by and then it's just all of a sudden yeah out of the blue it would be jarring to me yeah it was to relaxing

and now that i've clicked on it is jarring it's it's unpleasant and that's why i was kind of like why am i doing this i was like because i was like well i think i clicked on it out of curiosity then sort of forgot about it and then and that's the whole point and then it's surprising but i was like this could be a sort of a funny bit on the show like we'll just have totally forgotten about it and then that awful sound but now i'm seeing this is a trend there are now a million videos being suggested to me one hour of silence broken up by a metal pipe falling to the ground that sounds awful there's a million of these things wow um we can experiment with it why don't we

see how the next tb telethon goes to see if we even have a show and if we do then we can start to get more edgy more john john cage with our productions and if um if the tb telethon doesn't

go super well, but well enough for us to continue doing the show. Maybe we just start figuring out ways to punish the audience with just terrible sounds like this.

But we want to start with the carrot before we break out the sticks. So I want to let everyone know, carrot first, but stick as a last resort. So let's all fund TBTL in the next THON, and then we don't have to break out the dodgeball sound. We'll see how it goes. Alright, thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back here tomorrow. Until then, have a great Wednesday. Go Mariners! And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Okay, okay, guys. This is Mellie. and i finally just remembered what it was the songs that i have that go into another song we were saying i can't remember why you were talking about that but um anyway it goes like

this it's only love and that is all why do i feel the way i do it's only love and that is all Why can't I stop loving you, loving you, morning, morning, morning, morning, honest to do, honest to do, honest to do, love, love, love, love, love, you, send me, anyway, that's, that's the one. fine. It happened. Oh my God. Power out.