Muse

how you doing there dude not too good man one of those days yeah well a wiser fellow than myself once said sometimes you eat the bar and what's your bud sometimes the bar while he eats you hmm that's some kind of eastern thing far from it tbtl

have you ever bought a panini at a at a restaurant what's a panini panini is a sandwich i don't know why did you call it panini well panini is italian i think what's italian that's a country in europe it looks like a boot kind of shaved out like a cowboy boot if i were you i wouldn't focus on what he's saying but more the fact that he's saying something hello town

jubilation committee yeah i got something that's gonna make you a lot less jubilant i just might

have tacos tonight this party is gonna be off of the hook 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 I can't believe you're still on the air. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Hi, everyone. Welcome to my farm. Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is going to be another very warm day.

I feel warm and I'm levitating.

The other day on the radio, they said we have reached peak dryness, which, you know, if you're talking about your underarms, it's a positive. If you're talking about a veritable tinderbox, maybe not as great here on June 7th in the year of our Lord 2023. Also, sending some good thoughts and well wishes to our friends and listeners in Canada who might be dealing with wildfires. And also folks in the parts of America that are getting that smoke, that haze. It's a bit of a turnabout, because usually here in the Pacific Northwest, we're the sort of tip of that spear of getting that smoke coming down from Canada. But anyway, I hope everybody is doing all right on this Wednesday. We've arrived at episode 3,961 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. We are going to talk about the Guinness Book of World Records. Now, this is something that's come up on the show many times because I, like many people my age, I was obsessed with this as a kid. But there's actually a great piece in The Guardian that Andrew sent me, which gets into what the real sort of, I guess you would say, metrics are for setting a record. And the scale of the operation, also the origins of the operation, which I am very embarrassed to admit had never occurred to me until I read this article. So we'll talk about that. Now that's interesting. Talk about that also. My mom, Susan Kelly Burbank, was whizzing some smokers in the Hawk Squad text chain this morning.

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

I got to give it to my mom. She definitely has got herself some kind of sense of humor.

No, no, no, no.

We'll talk about that. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest running co-bro of the show. may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships, their grace, their splendor, and those intricate rigings, but there's something else you might not know about him.

He started recording in the early 80s. He's known for his love songs and his political songs.

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

Good morning, Luke. Something just popped in my head. I've had a question that's been bothering me for quite some time now. The internet has been no help, but it just occurred to me, and I don't know why I'm thinking of this now. You might be the absolute perfect person to ask. Are you ready for a question? I am, I'm, I'm like on pins and needles. Okay, I'm happy to give you some time if you need to sort of settle in and get ready for this. No, I'm ready, man. I'm ready. Fire away. This is one of those things where, I'll bet you a lot of people who listen to TBTL have similar experiences. As you know, I've been listening to a lot of the Dan Lebitard show with Stu Gott's podcast, and there is an expression they use on that show all the time. And I had never heard it before, but they say it all the time. And then I think I used it in conversation at one point, and I wasn't sure if anybody knew what I was talking about when I said it. And it is this. While they are ranking things on the show, often they'll come up with, like, five, you know, top five golfers with names that evoke ham or something ridiculous like that. Or top five golfers with names that evoke breakfast or something like that. they will often

start with O-L-I's for breakfast cocaine do you know what O-L-I is when they say okay well we got the top five golfers who sound like breakfast but first I got three O-L-I's do you know what that is I don't know what that is I don't think I've ever heard that term before I think it must be their language then because I've looked it up online they throw it around like we're all supposed to know it's outside looking in it's runners up I see on the bubble on the bubble now have you heard of outside looking in before? Does that... No. No, okay. I think it's just levitard language then.

Can I play the On the Bubble theme? We used to have a segment on this show called On the Bubble with Mike Peska. With Peska, yeah. Where he would rank things. We should do that again, actually. That'd be great, yeah. I don't know what this is going to sound like. I don't know if it's going to hold up. Honestly, I don't know if it'll play. Like, literally, physically, if the file will play. But this is something called the On the Bubble theme.

The type of girl you want to chew all of my bubble gum.

It used to be a really different show

I must have just really been into this song

And probably we named the whole segment Just because I liked this song Who is it? I think she just said

By the way, I don't know

And this is not a theme song This is just a rap song that I like You know, like on the bubble theme It should transition into something There should be more than one thing happening This is just a song I wanted to play a lot I mean, that is a good song

It is great I've never heard this before I mean, I used to hear that segment I mean, this is radio days, right? I mean, that's why I like There was something nice about the radio days It wasn't overthought I mean, I don't know if anybody would accuse us of overthinking. Maybe I should slow my roll a little bit there. But, like, there was something about, like, I'm sure you guys were, like, the first time you did the segment, you're like, okay, you know what Peska says he can do 815. Okay, get him on. Okay, grab that song. I believe it's by a performer named Rashida. I thought I heard her say her name in there, yeah. So, anyway, it's just like you probably grabbed it, and then because you did it once, it stuck, and then that's how things become canon, and you move on.

I mean, I guess that's kind of in a way I'm going to say that was sort of delightful because I legitimately didn't expect those sounds to happen when you just hit play right now. When I hit play right now, that was you heard genuine surprise in my voice. But I'm also like I sort of was hoping that there would be some weird audio drop or some clip of Mike or like there was a like a slightly higher level of production to that than just if Sean was saying something in a British voice, you know, just some fun throwback. Like, it's just a song that I was clearly obsessed with in, like, 2009.

Right. I like it, though. I hadn't heard it. I've learned something today. And we should start, let's normalize OLI. Yeah.

I mean, can we, though?

Because that's their— Yeah, then it sort of seems like their thing, huh? Yeah.

What's the—so outside looking into somebody or something that's on the bubble, that's like, you didn't make the cut, literally, but you're close. So you're not in the top five of whatever this category is. Yeah. But you're close.

You're in 6, 7, 8, maybe you're looking in. And then when Mike Schur is on, he'll come up with some ridiculous list of 90s baseball players with ridiculous names or something.

And he'll be like, oh, this is my— Although, honestly, Andrew, if the listeners think that we obsess over, I think you should leave too much. Can you imagine if I started— Yeah, you can. If I re-engage with the Levitard universe?

I've already brought too much of it into this world.

Just like what this show would become. it would just collapse under the weight of our reverence for other programming i know

but the joker though i was going to say when like especially mike sure will do this but other people will as well like they'll say these are the top five but first i got 17 olis like the olis will be longer i want to say we are one degree of separation away from that show we have a listener who i'm sorry listener i'm blanking on your name in the moment um but who will text me sometimes He is basically family members with somebody who is on the crew now, Jeremy, who is somebody who is kind of doing more producing and on air chatting these days with some staffing changes.

Do they still call it the shipping container?

They don't because they just moved. They did until about a month ago, but they just moved studios and they felt like now that they're kind of splashed out more and it's more TV ready, they're looking for a better name than the shipping container because it just doesn't fit anymore.

If I sound extra peppy and my steppy today, Andrew, it's because I'm on day three of doing this cold shower thing. Oh, yeah. And I think it's really kind of working. Like, basically, I'm taking a regular shower and then for the last, I don't know, minute or two, I'll just turn it down to as cold as it'll go and I'll stand there. and even right now as we're talking

And I took a shower probably 45 minutes ago or something. I still feel this kind of slight euphoria and almost like goosebumps, but in a good way. Like it's hard to explain, but my body physically feels like very sort of vibratory in a way that it probably wouldn't normally. And I just wanted to say for folks out there, if your heart is healthy enough, that is one thing I noticed online is they're like, make sure you can do this. Make sure you're not going to keel over from the shock to your system. But I don't know. I'm telling you, three days into it, this is actually something that's been kind of working for me.

Maybe it was because you were talking about it on this show, but now stuff like that has been popping up in my Instagram reels. Have you heard of Andre-ing? Do you know what Andre-ing is? Is that another thing from the Levitard universe? It's very similar, but instead of cold water, you have a bucket of hot water and a bucket of cold water. and then Andre the Giant stands behind you and he grabs the back of your neck and he shoves your head in one and then he shoves your head in another. A young priest and an old priest. Exactly. And then for some reason... You take a very, very large pill.

He becomes the Dread Pirate Roberts. Chocolate coating makes it go down nice.

So anyway, that's something that I...

It's my Carol Kane impression, if anyone was wondering.

So that's something that I've been looking into as well. I'll let you know how that goes. As we storm the castle.

That was a really good spoof. I have to say that, much like the bubble gum theme, much like on the bubble theme, that did not go where I was expecting it to go. I have to say, I like that very much. I mean, really, I don't want to steal your joke, but you're right. I mean, he was the original cold plunge.

Sure, yeah.

He was the original sauna cold plunge guy.

Yeah, definitely. All right, what's going on with – I got to admit, I saw, I think, a screen cap of the conversation that you're talking about. I'm a little confused.

I'm trying to drive more people towards my Instagram page. If you'd like to get most of my material before it makes its way on TBTL, please, Luke Burbank on Instagram. But, yeah, so, you know, we've got this family text chain, Hawk Squad, which is our kind of main family communication network, if you will. And my mom just popped on this morning a little before 8 a.m. My mom is a substitute in the school district where my folks live, but she's a substitute security guard, which is kind of amazing because I love my mom dearly and deeply. But if something goes down, I just don't know if she's going to be up to the task. Like, I just don't know how much security she's really providing at these places. But, you know, somebody's got to wear that jacket and walk the halls of the local schools. and my mom is one of those people so she's tied into whatever the school district network is of people who work there but then who sometimes need subs can i ask a serious question about this

so like the role because it does raise an interesting question right like you have a

security guard of someone by the way she's armed to the teeth that was my question she actually has a like what's it called a band uh bandolier she's got she looks she's got like an entire row bullets that she wears and an AR.

I mean, it's really weird. She wears a poncho and sort of a floppy cowboy hat. It's really interesting. No, but my serious question was, the role of somebody like that, who, let's put it this way, your mom is not somebody who would, like, cut an intimidating figure, right? Like, she's not gonna provide, like, but I guess

Except at my last wedding where she vaguely looked

like a samurai. That's because she

was wearing a silk, almost kimono-type outfit and she had her hair up in a white, like, in a top knot. But generally speaking, I don't think she's a very physically intimidating character.

But the main role, I guess, is she's carrying a walkie-talkie or a radio of some sort, right? Like if she sees something, at least there is somebody there who is plugged in who can immediately reach emergency resources, whatever they might look like given the situation. Is that basically what her role is?

That's my sense of the thing. I think she's sort of there to make sure, like, if kids are hanging out in the hall and they're not supposed to be doing that or whatever, she's kind of, I think she's kind of a traffic cop. She's, you know, again, she probably has a walkie. Again, I've never seen the jacket she wears, but I assume it's way too big. Like, it belongs to, you know, like, it hangs on a hook somewhere, and it's for, like, a guy named Gerald, who's not in today. Then my mom's wearing the jacket, but it's, like, not really the right jacket for her. It's three Susies standing on each other's shoulders. Exactly. So, you know, actually, Andrew, one of the things is we can find out more about this when we do TBTL-a-thon. Oh, that's right. Because we're going to be doing it from my parents' basement, and we could actually interview my mom about what her security duties are. Ask a security guard, and we can play that bubble song. Yes, exactly. Another excuse to play that song. So anyway, my mom is on some kind of notification for when somebody isn't going to be able to come into work or is seeking somebody to cover their shift. And she just texts to the whole family this woman needs a sub today should i take the position and then she includes a emoji of kind of like a would you say that's the sound that that emojis face makes it's the kind of emoji where it's the emoji is kind of going like i don't know but it's it's the mouth

is like almost pencil drawn up and down almost squiggly yeah almost like a character in peanuts

oh that's a really really great uh comparison that'll help people understand what we're talking about here anyway and the note from the school district what somebody put in to the notes asking if they could get someone to fill in for them notes quote i am not feeling well today i have had diarrhea around five or six times since last night so that's like sort of a public like if

you're not a public but if you're if you're an employee if you're somebody on this list You can go in and sort of see, like, who's available, who's not, who's calling in sick, and this is just like kind of a bulletin board where people are calling in sick, basically.

But you know what? I didn't even realize, unless there's something I'm not understanding about this, presumably the person who's posting this – this can't be anonymous because if it were anonymous, they wouldn't know – like, my mom wouldn't know what school to go to and who she's covering for. Right.

I mean, it looked like I thought on your photo you blacked out or she blacked out the name.

The actual school and the address because I just – I don't know. I just didn't want it to – on the off chance that somebody could figure out either where my mom is subbing or where this person with tummy troubles is at, I just didn't want to get too much information. But presumably if you go – if one goes on this network, this system to sort of say, hey, I need someone to cover for me, you've got to have your name on there somewhere because we have to know who is not coming in today and who we are filling in for. So if that's really the case, this is a level of radical honesty from this person that I sort of salute I don't have the confidence for it, even though I have told many stories on this show about crapping my own pants But that's purely for entertainment value This is like somebody just sharing with their colleagues, man, I was having trouble last night

Well, that's what, okay, so first of all, I kind of don't get your mom's reaction But we'll get into that in a second What I think of first is the person who wrote this you and i are kind of privileged in a way that like whether we had this job or another job at kind of our level we would be able to just tell our boss like hey i can't come in i'm not feeling well like you don't need more details to that right but there's there have been other stages of my work life where either me or people i work with are probably looking to fuck around for a day you know and find out and find out right and so they might say hey i can't you know maybe the bosses expect a little like okay well what's wrong with you rick like what you know what are we talking about here you've been missing a lot of work and so maybe this person still has that sort of like that instinct to like really let people know no i am really sick you need specifics of me being sick so that you know that i'm not lying like why would you ever give that much description why wouldn't you say i'm not in today i'm taking a sick day that's a really good question

And I do think you use the word privilege, which I was kind of going, is that overstating it? But I actually don't think it is because what I have noticed is the higher up the food chain one gets, the less specific one has to be about not feeling well. And that is privilege. Like, you know, as you find yourself in various jobs and at higher levels of whatever management, you can just say, hey, I'm not feeling well today. I'll be in tomorrow or I'll be working from home. And no one asks any questions. But I remember being earlier in my career and working in things outside of radio and you do have to sort of prove that you're really actually sick and not faking it or that it's not something that you could just kind of like tough it out. So it's like, yeah, it's a real privilege to get to just say, hey, I'm not feeling well today and I'll see you all tomorrow.

Right. And so maybe that's what's going on here, whether the person has to justify it in this way or is maybe just sort of like socialized to do it in this way based on their prior work experience, whatever it is. So, okay, that's an interesting thing for someone to post to the board. That alone is remarkable, I think. I don't quite get your mom's reaction as if, oh, stay away from this shift. Maybe I'll get the poops. Is that what the face means?

No. I mean, again, why don't you ask her during the TV telephone? Well, why did you bring this up, maybe? No, because I just think it's funny that my mother also thinks someone having diarrhea is funny. My mother, who's 70-something years old or whatever. Like, in the Hawk Squad, first message on the Hawk Squad this morning is my mom. My mom, by the way, did not end up filling in for this person. She just thought it was so funny that they were, like, explaining their diarrheas. Yeah. She needed the whole family to know. I guess it's just, like, if anyone wonders where I get my personality from.

This is a real straight line here to Susie.

Okay. Yeah, no, I agree. See, I wasn't sure if you were sort of ribbing your mom a little bit, but no, really, like, if I saw a message like that, I would send it to one of my text chain groups. Right?

It's just, it's a level of honesty that we don't see every day in this world. And then, of course, my mom then follows up. And this is classic my mom as well. You know, I thought she got a pretty good one off with this. First of all, I don't know how she knows how to screen cap That's news to me Life finds a way So she was like She probably googled How do I take a picture on my phone of something So she screen capped this And it was kind of amusing And then she followed up with It could have gone on since Easter's As the monk says On Nacho Libra Which is I think she means Nacho Libre

And that is a thing that we say in our family

Why don't you know I've had diarrhea since Easter's?

Oh, okay. I didn't know the line. That's a thing. I thought we were getting a little bit into get out of my face, banana breath. What'd you just do? Eat a banana territory? Where maybe she kind of got a laugh on the first one and then was wanting to die that territory. Yeah.

I mean, that's precisely what's going on. You know, is that basically...

Back away, banana breath. What the hell did you just eat a banana?

it's like exactly that vibe which is because i responded to my mom i said mom you should take the gig you know or something and now she's starting to get there's a dialogue going on because then my sister uh my sister who's a principal a school principal so she deals with this kind of stuff all the time says oh my gosh i've never seen someone write so much detail in their sub request notes and then one of my nieces chimes in with the fact that they can't keep track of the exact number of times that had diarrhea. It's just a tad bit more info than what they needed to leave.

Okay, first of all, I forgot.

That's Maddie for the win, by the way.

I forgot that your nieces are on this chain, and my God, yes, that is perfect.

That's the most keen observation, but again.

The five or six really stood out to me as well.

Back off banana breath is re-entering. The chat is logging back on, because then mom, all caps, hello, double exclamation point, And then, Mom, TMI laughing emoji, have a fab Wednesday, fam, kissy face emoji. And then back in the chat, FYI, not taking the job, just thought it was too hilarious to go unappreciated, winky emoji.

Okay, that's fair enough. And also, I like, okay, I'm definitely reading too much into this, but let's just assume this is what we're seeing with your mom here. I like the engaging of the chain. So let's see. How many people are on this chain? About, like, 15? Maybe not quite that many. It's a cluster of – I can probably figure it out, actually. My biggest text chain is probably my Wordle chain plus loop. I can tell you exactly how many it is. I have a Wordle chain. 11 members, Andrew, 11 members. I have a Wordle chain that is activated every day as we all share our Wordle stuff. But then we have one called I don't know what everybody names on their phone, but I have Wordle plus Luke, which is that whole gang plus you. So that if like you happen to be in town, you're like, hey, let's all get dinner or something. That's where that will pop up. So anyway, I think Wordle chain plus Luke is probably nine people or something. And so on the occasion that I'm going to blow that chain up with something or even our sports changes, I kind of drop something in there. There's a sort of a responsibility there, right? Like everybody was just going about their day. the chain has been inactive for a while now boom i'm laying something in there now everybody's going to react to that to a certain degree which means people's phones are going to be buzzing maybe in the middle of the day morning whatever um but then as the person who kind of started this flurry of activity i feel like your mom is now coming in and saying we all had a good laugh here i'm glad you enjoyed this now y'all have a good day and sort of just like putting the putting the conversation just quietly back into bed and so that like they're just people don't have to know whether or not they still have to respond i really like that i i i don't know if my mom is sort of

consciously doing that but i know exactly what you're talking about it's like okay the social if there's any social obligation to these communications it's now everyone is free of that social obligation everyone can go back to their life like you said we've kind of put a period on the end of this we're we're all gonna maybe i should do that more with our baseball stuff i mean i'm calling it our baseball chain because that's the primary sport right now but i feel like that whole that chain has gone largely dormant maybe because the mariners are terrible so we're all kind of mourning in our own way but like i feel like i i'm either not on that i'm either i'm either not responding or i'm putting like 35 half drunken comments on there to very minimal interaction.

Do you think that our friend's sports chain is going to perk back up when it's football time?

You know, I don't worry about that chain. I think it just perks back up.

Do you have ones you do worry about?

Do I actually? Let me think about that. No, you know, but that desire I just described of wanting to make sure that I'm not being like over the top on a chain or hitting it up too much. Or I feel like the sports chain, like it's just there's no expectation. Like, somebody could be watching the game, especially during baseball season, like, however many people are on that chain, spread out across the country, sort of, or at least in different states, you know, we're not all going to be watching the Mariners game. And so maybe you throw something out there, something frustrating happens, and then one or two other people who are watching the game will respond. Other people might be listening while driving and can't respond. Other people just might be outside touching grass, you know, as they say.

They're grabbing themselves. Somebody might be getting entrayed.

somebody might be having diarrhea five or maybe six times um this post from the stew bot so anyway i just sort of feel like there i don't feel like anybody is ever insulted like for example if i were to throw out there like this is getting ridiculous and if there's just crickets after that like it's fine i think everybody just has a very low expectation so if you're there and you're kind of like sharing your betting information or you're like kind of dominating the chain for a while i think we can all just be comfortable knowing like okay we're taking this information in but our our non-response is not in any way like a response in and of itself

because i'm okay with a non-response i just sometimes i think again and this is one of the many wonderful things about alcohol is that it never leaves you the next day feeling any sort of negative feelings but like sometimes i'll think oh boy okay it was like a random you know thursday night and like everyone else is living their life and i was like way too hyper focused on if a eugenio suarez was going to like get plus one and a half home runs and then he did and then i'm like posting my winning bet to the like sometimes i feel like if it's all me for a night that's like just it's just kind of boring everyone slash uh you know forcing people to look at their phone because there's a notification they're just like okay calm down so if you're saying that's not the feeling you get that actually makes me feel better it's not that i need people to respond to me it's that I worry sometimes that I'm just droning on and it's actually just kind of annoying

I don't want to talk about baseball at all today and I'm not going to but I will just say I was really worried going to the series that this was going to be a get right series for the Padres but after our win last night I think it's going to be a get right series for the Mariners anyway what's

coming up next in the show well Andrew we are going to talk about the Guinness Book of World Records there's actually a really great article from the Guardian that you sent me that is I I believe it is a long read. I mean, is it literally filed under long reads? I mean, I think so. I think the BBC calls it a BBC long read. It's 14 pages, Andrew. Is that a record? Is that a record for articles about the Guinness Book of World Records?

I found this article to be very interesting, but I also want to warn you, Luke, because I'm the one who sent it to you. I don't know how much of the heavy lifting you want me to do on this. I read this over a lunch of soup about a week ago, and you know how my brain works. So I only have the broad strokes. Well, I read it on an airplane, so you know I was having wine.

I'm worried about how much I love wine.

I'm scared how much I love wine.

And popcorn. Okay, one quick thought on that. One quick question. On Patty Harrison's performances on I Think You Should Leave, and then we're going to a break. Because I was watching season two again last night. I was watching the tables sketch again. and we had been talking on the show the other day about how specific the language is how specifically written the language is according to this new york times piece that we read but patty harrison has such a unique she has such a kind of her own weird way of talking santa must have come early for this you know to bring this to us or whatever like do you think that patty harrison is allowed to go off script or do you think they try to write in her voice or do you think that they she's not credited as a writer but it's it's it's so sort of what is the word I'm looking for sui generis her way of speaking that I don't understand how they would write that uh for her like I feel like maybe she's the only one allowed to improv well I I don't

think so because I noticed something I can't give you the I I can't cite my example here because I can't remember off the top of my head but there were there was at least one but I think maybe a couple of moments of dialogue by characters in this season that to me sounded like patty harrison's voice and she's not doing it and i'm like oh like that person's kind of doing the patty role here wow okay if i come i'll re-watch the season i think i only watched it once don't threaten me with a good time

Yeah, but I'll happily spend tonight not doing my LiveWire research and re-watching it. I'll do my best. I wanted to mention, though, that I stumbled during the show the other day on some random. You can find it if you just Google Patty Harrison reviews exotic animals. Yeah, you talked about it. Yeah, but I mean, I stumbled on it during the show and I didn't know what it was. And so I didn't know if I could play it or not. And I watched one of them and it is so good. It's not on her YouTube page. It's on somebody else's YouTube page, and that's why I'm just saying just Google it. But it is as good as you would hope it to be. It is wonderful. I'm just going to play a little bit of Squirrel Monkey here.

Little monkey with painted nails.

This is Patty Reviews Exotic Animals Squirrel Monkey, and she's standing here with a squirrel monkey and an animal wrangler of some sort.

What are you doing? Are you staring at your genitals? Hello, and welcome to Patty Reviews. I'm here with nature, Nick, and Tarzan. Tarzan is a...

He's a squirrel monkey.

So, squirrel first, and then monkey, or monkey and then squirrel?

Mostly monkey, but they're the same size as squirrel.

Were one of his parents a squirrel and the other a monkey?

No, both monkeys.

Nick, I can't grasp this. Squirrel or monkey?

Monkey. 100% monkey.

Con, it is a monkey. Do squirrel monkeys have the ability to vape?

Uh, that I don't think they can do.

Con! Grandma, right before she passed, she grabbed my hand and she said, Patty, if it has thumbs, it can vape. And then she went, and we couldn't afford to give her a service. So we rolled her off the overpass into the parking lot of the checkers. And she came back to life, and she rolled through the drive-thru, and she got a Big Buford, and then she ate the Big Buford, and we were all cheering her on, but then her bed kept rolling, And she went back onto the overpass and she was struck by two Yarrises. And then she passed. Thank you for listening to me, Tarzan.

So anyway, that gives you a little taste of it. That's really good. I'm surprised that we haven't, that hasn't become intro tape or it hasn't been, how that Patty Harrison missed our radar. I know, I know. There are many of these. I need to go through them. She says something in the table sketch that I just caught last night upon 19th viewing, which is she's describing the table and she goes, I know it's not this, but it's like they threw him in a mud puddle. I don't know why her saying I know it's not this, but it looks like they threw him in a mud puddle. It's just comic perfection.

Our friend Hauser has an infatuation with Patty Harrison that, if not rivals, surpasses ours. And she came to town recently with two other comedians whose names I'm blanking on, but it was called the Live Nude Girls Tour. I think you probably caught wind of this. I think we might have even mentioned it on the show. I mean, have a Google alert for Live Nude Girls. and uh and anyway um hauser ends up on stage because he's hauser he ends up on stage with

him yeah meg stolter uh sarah sherman who's i believe sarah squirm is another name sarah plays under and uh and uh patty harrison boy that must have been that is some high weirdness

i don't know the other two i don't think or maybe i've seen them and didn't realize who they were

Meg Stalter is a – well, one, she co-hosted that Junk Food Wars show with Hari Kondabalu. They were the sort of co-hosts, although unfortunately the editors didn't really let either of them be their funniest selves in my opinion. She's also – she plays – I forget what the show is, but it was a show we were talking about where she plays the secretary who is, I think, the daughter of the owner of the company. and she's very, very annoying to the main character. That's not helping a lot. Anyway, Meg Stalter is a very –

That's something that you think I should have known? That was a mainstream show or something?

Yeah, I think it's something we might have talked about on the show. But anyway, Meg Stalter is very funny but also just does a lot of characters that are pretty specific and eccentric. And then Sarah Sherman does a lot of performing where she would sort of come out on stage in almost like a slim good body outfit, like a leotard but it's all just human guts. and she just like has a lot of like hyper kind of fake blood dental work comedy like it's it's pretty edgy it's not even really for me but then you throw patty harrison in the mix that must have been for a certain kind of person i don't even know if i'm that kind of person it must have been

a really fun night yeah it was hacks the show you're trying to think of that's the only thing

i'm seeing that i would have heard exactly the show i'm trying to i just looked it up did you

watch hacks no no i i haven't although i heard it's good we'd recommend yeah i think genevieve

saw it pretty good okay uh let us take

Take that break, and then when we come back, we'll talk Guinness Records in a moment here on TBTL. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. So this piece in The Guardian, written by Imogen West Knights, talks about the history of the Guinness World Record book. And first things first, I'm the dumbest, as I believe Iggy Azalea said. No, I did not put it together, Andrew, that this started as something related to the Guinness Beer Company.

Yeah, me too. I was actually happy to hear in the intro that you were surprised by that and the writer of this piece was surprised by that.

I was just like, I mean, I've just, I don't know who, I think it was Alec Guinness, a.k.a. Obi-Wan Kenobi. I don't know what Guinness I thought it was, but I didn't think it was the beer people. But in fact, it is the beer people.

Wasn't the writer, do you mind me just saying, because I thought it was a pretty good set piece to get the article running here The writer is kind of like, I was taking a tour of the Guinness Beer Factory And there was just like a room with a couple of books in it And I went in and there was some old Guinness Books of World Records And I was like, oh, Guinness, oh And then they made the connection that apparently the original model was These were just kind of fun things that they would hand out to bars as like sort of promotional stuff along with the beer, right?

Yeah, it began, the book began with an argument in 1951. I'm just reading from this Guardian piece now. The managing director of Guinness, Sir Hugh Beaver, was on a hunting trip in Wexford. Is that the most British, are those the most British words I've ever said in any order?

I know, I can taste the boiled meat from here.

What is this weekend? And his party couldn't agree which game bird was fastest this dispute seems to have stuck with beaver thinking back to the incident three years later it occurred to him that these kinds of arguments must happen all the time and there would surely be an appetite for argument settling answers in the form of a compendious book that cataloged world records as well as the extremes of the natural world this volume could be distributed to pubs that sold guinness it could also be sold in shops and provide another revenue stream for the brewery. So this, I mean, honestly, every page of this article contains some kind of dazzling deet. But this guy, Hugh Beaver, then reaches out to these identical twins. They're named Ross and Norris McWhorter. They ran a fact and figure provision service for the newspapers of Fleet Street. So they were like fact guys. And so they're hired to basically go out and try to figure out the most of things, the tallest, the widest, the longest, the whatever. And they put it all together in the first ever Guinness Book of Records. The book was apparently wildly popular right away. Right when it came out, everybody loved it and it was like a bestseller and it was like a huge hit. Now, these McWhorter brothers are kind of fascinating. um uh they ran it for the next two decades in 1975 however ross was shot dead by the irish republican army for publicly offering a 50 000 pound reward for information leading to the conviction of terrorist bombers in britain so clearly one of these guys was very very like staunchly you know anti-irish pro-british whatever and both of them are like really conservative right yeah they're both probably had not great politics but the other brother then continues running this thing until 1985 and advising them till 1996 so like you got these twin brothers can you imagine how i mean again politics aside can you imagine how traumatizing it is to like do this project with your twin there's a photo of these guys by the way they're very dapper actually like your twin brother who you create this thing with basically and then they're killed and then you just keep doing it for another like 20 30 years like as the Solo surviving twin, that's like a weird Aspect to the whole thing

He's got that splat one

Yeah, sad to see him go But I'm looking to get my hands on that So The actual amount of Real care That goes into, from the folks At Guinness, at the Guinness Book of World Records That is, which is No longer part of the beer empire First of all, there's like a lot of people that actually Worked there, like I really assumed at this point It was one guy in a basement, probably somewhere in ohio didn't you kind of think like because it feels to me like the guinness world record thing is just it's maybe this is just me showing my age but it doesn't feel like it's what it was

i was a kid like when i when we were kids it was that like newsprint book there were very few pictures and you would pour over it and then i feel like as the years have gone on it's gotten bigger more photographs it's like the cover is made out of glitter like and the records seem dumber to me like longest fingernails that's a legit guinness record in my mind um you know uh most eggs cracked while wearing a top hat doesn't feel like a interesting record to me um and so i have this overall thought that the guinness book has been kind of declining but it turns out there's actually still some rules around things they have a bunch of people that work there that go out and like observe these records um being broken and they take it very seriously um imogen says there are i posit uh four types of guinness world records type one records broken without being record-breaking attempts um like the most words hit uh in uh the most words in a hit single which would be i guess 1560 that's by eminem in the song rap god i don't think anyone's going to be shocked to hear that or the most venomous viper which is the um saw scaled viper type two sporting achievements the fastest boxing knockout four seconds the longest tennis match 11 hours and five minutes and so on type three are the ones that stick in our memories from childhood records that seem to exist purely in order to be records the largest toast mosaic the fastest time to roll an orange one mile with your nose how fast do you think the fastest time to roll an orange a mile

with your nose is andrew i read this and so i'm this is more can i remember things and i can't i

think it was something like 25 minutes 24 you're pretty close 22 minutes and 41 seconds which i'm going to tell you is fast yeah it is like that's you know if you're that's like just think about how hard it is to actually roll something with your nose um that's pretty good and then of course uh the most iconic of all the longest fingernails which i think there's a new when i was growing up the longest fingernails was i believe it was a guy in india and the irony was he was a photographer i just remember pictures in the og when now there's a new woman i think she might be american And the photo in this Guardian piece of this woman's fingernails are, like, amazing. It's like she has five, like, Gandalf staffs on it. I know.

I saw the photo, and I couldn't tell what it was until I read the caption. I remember just sort of staring at it for a while and being like, huh. And then I finally went back and read the caption. I'm like, oh, those are nails.

Now, the fourth category of Guinness World Record is basically marketing stunts. And this is, I think, where I've started to lose a little bit of faith in the whole operation because it is a very tried-and-true way to market your product in 2020. Bush's Beans set the record for the largest layered dip to, quote, celebrate the Super Bowl. Two years later, a place called Moon Tower Pizza Bar in Burleson, Texas, created the world's largest commercially available pizza at 1.98 square meters. I don't understand the metric system, but I'm guessing that was big. For some observers, the existence of this last category is a sad reflection on how far the company has fallen. They've lost the intellectual integrity that the twins had, Norris's son, Alasdair McWhirter, told me. For them, and I think this is Alasdair referring to his father and uncle, for them it was a knowledge-based quest, and they had tremendous enthusiasm for that, whereas now everything is done to make money. Since 1997, when Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan, another conglomerate, and they formed Diageo, Guinness World Records has had to operate as a self-supporting business rather than a novelty arm of a beer company. So now they have something called GWR Consultancy, which was introduced in 2009, and it offers adjudication services to customers for a fee. It accounts for half of the company's revenue. So basically what happens is if you are a brand and you are trying to get some attention, you can hire the folks from Guinness to point out some records that you might be able to set that might get you some attention. And they'll help point you in the right direction and then presumably come out and verify it. You've got to pay the travel. And then there's a fee for all of that, and that's how they're making most of their money now or a significant portion of their money. It's basically it's helping the bush beans of the world make a giant, you know, bean dip.

Well, it's like, yeah, it's like, OK, I'm I'm, you know, a marketer for let's just say checkers. Right. And I have something that I want to shine a light on the biggest big Buford. Let's just say I don't know where these examples are coming from.

You know, it's funny, by the way, that I literally did a story about that national day calendar thing, which is in a lot of cases a giant, giant promotional thing. And guess who we interviewed The people from Rally's Checkers Oh really Oh

International Friday, Andrew.

Oh, fries day, Friday. Anyway, I was going to say, like, basically, this is the Guinness Book of World Records way of making money. Like, you know, the world has sort of moved on. The Internet has changed everything, as we know. So how are they going to make money? Well, can I just buy my way into the Guinness Book of World Records if I'm, you know, the marketing manager of a fast food chain? No, you can't just buy your way into the Guinness Book of World Records. But we do have consultants and for a, I assume, somewhat hefty fee, although they did not reveal that in the piece. They will sit down with you and they will figure out a way to get you into the book. We're just we're just selling advice and we wish you the best to get into the book, which, of course, you will.

And I'd be very curious to see the number of people, companies that hire Guinness for their consultancy and then follow the steps and then don't get in.

And then don't get in. Right. I mean, clearly, I mean, there is an enthusiasm for the people who work here to get as many people into the book as possible, which I think is interesting. It's not a stated goal, but this writer says that they showed up to interview, you know, one of the main characters in this piece who is kind of representing the Guinness Book of World Records. And the very first thing that he asks, is this writer, by the way, is this a woman who wrote this? For some reason, I want to say he and she. Yeah. So she goes to his office and he right away says, well, before you start interviewing me, let's figure out a record that you could maybe break right here in my office. We'll find something we'll find sort of a low hanging fruit. And I think that he challenges her to, like, be blindfolded and stand on one leg for as long as possible. And the original one was a few minutes long, but she couldn't do it.

Do I have that right? Yeah, the record at the time was something in the neighborhood of like 31 or 32 minutes. and and the writer for the guardian tries it and she does like 10 seconds her first try and then her next try is like 15 seconds and then her next one is like 29 minutes like she almost breaks the record and becomes kind of low-key fascinated with this and by the end of the piece she checks back in and someone else has already broken the record and made it like an hour and a half these are called soft records in the parlance of guinness these are like these are basically records that a lot of people could break um and in fact she goes on to profile a number of people whose entire sort of like you know raison d'etre is just setting as many of these records as they can and holding lots and lots of these records and they're usually pretty good at identifying a lot of different sort of soft records um and like a handful of people have like you know 30 or 40 or 50 records each and they're just sort of power users of the guinness sort of system um i am andrew i think maybe going to be part of something after this whole thing about how stunty can you be there's going to be i think the longest continuous drag show ever or at least they're they're they're aiming to get guinness to a verify this as the longest drag show ever here in portland and i'm

like one of the emcees for it oh i thought you were going to say you're doing a piece on cbs for

no no i'm literally just going to be like one of i mean this tells you they're kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel because this is going to be like a multi-day event but basically if you're somebody in portland and you have any ability to talk into a microphone i think they're reaching out and so uh i'm i think i'm going to be one of these emcees who is part of what is hopefully going to be in the guinness world record book andrew as the longest drag show in history wow

that's that gets you pretty close to this thing that you kind of revered as a kid i don't want to take us too far away from this article but i am interested in your own personal journey with this a little bit more because you mentioned that back in the day it was like kind of this like low budget almost like kind of black and white not many photos like uh almost a real almanac kind of vibe to it right that's a really that's a very good comparison and then you said that at some point it became kind of too flashy and too many pictures and the thing is I can't even picture the the new version of it because all I remember is the black and white one or you know I mean it was a paperback book but you know with like pretty humble print as a kid and then I don't know I stopped thinking about it and then the internet came along and I assume that has some janky website not unlike Reader's Digest that has has the brand Guinness Book of World Records but doesn't necessarily reflect what's in it this is just an assumption that I had been making When is the last time you actually set eyes On a modern Guinness book of world records Like where did you start to feel like Hey this isn't the book of my youth Was it like in the 90s or the 2000s

Probably you know when Addy was a kid So Addy was born in 94 So it probably would be like mid-late 90s Because I was probably Because there is a developmental stage Which doesn't really get mentioned in this article But I've always been interested in Which is like I think there is a point In the lives of most kids Where you just kind of want to know what the bounds of life are, what the bounds, like how tall...

can you be and how big can a pumpkin get and whatever you know and how long can fingernails be and you become really fascinated i think with just trying to understand the limitations of the world we live in and so you know at some point i'm sure adi was entering that phase and i probably went to the store to buy like an old like you said almanac style thing that's got like newsprint that like comes off on your fingers if you know you're not careful and all they have now they're hardback and they're wider and they're they're they feel like they're fewer pages like it used to be an imposing tome and now it's like it seemed flatter and wider and more hardback and more flashy like some kind of color or like some kind of a you know sort of thing on the on the book itself physically on the outside of the book so that like almost like if it gets caught in the light it'll start to like shimmer or reflect a little like come over here and buy me which is so the opposite of the version that we had as a kid right i think i'm looking these up now i think i see what you're talking and they'll be like and then you know just lots and lots of photos and it's they're action shots you know they're like somebody's balancing an egg on their nose while they're like spinning a you know other thing on their foot or whatever and like that's totally fine and in fact i don't know why i have some personal investment in this book being boring like it was when i was a kid you know because uh because that's that's whatever is fun for the people want to read the book is i'm totally for that it's just it seemed to get very flashy and very it was like there was almost a barrier to entry when i was a kid because it was so they did it was being written for drunk brits in the uk more or less and somehow it got over to the u.s and you have like people like me and you reading it whereas now it's not the kind of thing that you're going to walk into a pub and just see and then open up and start debating with the people in the pub it's now it's sort of more for like young people to read and to again and i hope that they do read i hope they have a fun time with it's just very different than what i grew up with i was i was heartened to see that they still have some standards they have the advertising wing which is you know whatever but basically there were still some rules around setting a new record

which i found kind of reassuring yeah and in fact they they are very strict about them and like and making sure that their process is well documented i was just going to say there are as you were talking about that shift in kind of approach to publishing there are two versions of that I think in my own life one that I feel way more acutely and that is Reader's Digest like growing up the cover I think I just raised this on the show the other day the cover of Reader's Digest was as unsexy as it could get it was literally a table of contents like do not judge this book by its cover you can judge this book by its contents because the cover is a table of contents and nothing more like no images no pictures of people skydiving with a shoot that isn't deploying properly and it says drama in real life like the least flashy thing you could imagine now i get these readers digest i get a gift subscription from my dad he set it up a long time ago i think he knows i still get it um but and i i do enjoy getting it but the magazine is just like so much less dense there's so many more pictures the cover is always some like you know not even that well done but there's like pictures on the cover and like how to make friends and there's a big picture of a friendship bracelet and i'm just like come on what is with this shit mad magazine i think did something kind of similar although i'm not as intimately familiar with it where they i think went to color at one point or started no no you know what mad magazine started Started inserting ads It was I think part of the Like Mad Magazine just couldn't survive On the business model that it had In the pre-internet age so they inserted ads And I think that really bummed a lot of people out But I wasn't buying it at that time

Yeah yeah that's I mean This is what's happening Andrew is you and I are just going through The exact progression that everyone goes through As they get older which is It used to be a certain way and that's what we were used to And that's what we thought was the good way and now it's different and it makes me furious.

Yeah, right, exactly. And of course, we will always insist it was better back in my day when it was black and white and hard to read.

And the world's tallest woman was wearing a T-shirt that said, how'd you get so short?

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 email or vmail yeah i'm gonna play a voicemail for you here luke i do not want your reaction to this to be the equivalent of your mom's emoji a uh face with a up and down uh mouth but uh after ignoring a whole bunch of emails and text messages and voicemails of people making this point i feel like it needs to be made on behalf of the listeners regarding your adventures in sunglasses purchase and attempt to return them at the

airport gift shop a couple of weeks ago this is the argument that seems to be being made universally

by the listening audience hey guys um i'm just calling i'm listening to the thursday episode where luke's talking about the sunglasses and i actually had to just pause and call maybe you guys come to this eventually um 99 of people aren't taking one win plane tickets my guest is this is regarding the sunglasses my guess is they made that policy because people would buy things to wear or take on and use on vacation and then return them when they came back through the airport for their return flight that's my guess um a lot of people are are taking round

trip flights a lot of people are saying sunglasses is kind of the perfect example of this if you're if you're in a place that you don't need sunglasses much and you kind of realize you forgot them or something and you're going to say san diego for three days you do exactly what you did which is you take them you try them on you wear them you're like yeah i'm going to return these you just take really good care of them and you return them on your way back through on your way back home

the only thing i would say to that is i mean first of all that is probably why they have the policy but this is where this is where it gets more complicated first of all the store is rarely open and also people would have to be landing during the business hours of the store and that's a tough one like because like i guess what i'm trying to say is the idea of actually buying something with the intention of bringing it back to that same store is so much harder to pull off than people realize your flight has to be landing back during the hours that the store is open while you're still on the other side of security so you can take this stuff back also this store sells all kinds of random shit most of it is like not sunglasses they had one tiny little sunglass thing in the background or in the back corner of the store it's mostly like pendleton blankets and oregon tchotchkes that i think you would buy to um like you're flying home let's say and you didn't get someone a souvenir it's like one of those kinds of stores so i don't disagree that's probably why they have the policy but i just don't think they should sell sunglasses then because i just don't like the idea that a store does not allow you to return things and that they don't tell you that until they're handing you the receipt they need to make regardless of why they have the policy they need to like put more signage up that tells you that you can't bring this stuff back because i would not have purchased those sunglasses if i had known that there was a no return policy because i wasn't planning on buying them and bringing them back but but if you buy something like sunglasses and they don't work out for you like these ones legitimately kind of hurt my head i just think you should be able to bring them back or you should make it way clear to us the buyers that you can't return things and then i just would have skipped it i would have just said

i'll figure it out in san diego everybody uh does agree on that if you have a no return policy which again a lot of people are like i think some people are like i think the policy is bad i think the policy definitely needs to be stated some people are like the policy is good but it definitely needs to be stated in advance um so everybody agrees on that but um and also i don't know why the the store hours are from 7 a.m to 7 p.m so that's a pretty wide window i don't know if it's some sort of covid thing that is closed when you're there a lot.

But all I can tell you is there's two things that I was trying to do. One time I was trying to buy some whiskey at this Westward whiskey store in the airport. And it was because they only sold this certain kind of whiskey at that location, oddly enough, in the airport. And it was not for me. It was for it was for someone in Becca's family. It was a gift. And they were like. So one person was like, hey, if you're ever going to be in the airport, please go to that place and get this specific kind of bottle because this is going to be a special gift I fly out of that airport like three times a week I could never seem to be there when this thing was open one way or the other it was weird and then also when I got back from San Diego that store was very closed and I had to like almost miss my flight the following Saturday to get to it so all I can say is it's amazing how many of the flights are happening before 7 a.m. and getting back after 7 p.m., it's just not quite as clean and easy as it might seem on paper. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, but anyway, I do think that's a very reasonable way to say, as you said, why they have that policy, and that does make sense, and I'm sure people do try to do that.

Yeah, more signs, though. Timberline, or whatever it's called. Yeah, definitely. You did say, we know we're a little pressed for time, and you were like, good, you won't have enough time to respond to this.

I said that off air in the break. You're like, I don't have much time. I'm like, good. You can't fight back on this one too much.

Yeah, okay. All right. That's going to do it for today's episode Thank you everyone for hanging out with us We are going to be right back here tomorrow With more imaginary radio So please join us for that if you can And even if you can't Cancel whatever your plans are What are you doing that is so important Exactly It's tuning into TBTL That's your only job tomorrow And also emailing the people at the Timberline store At the PDX telling them they need to have Have more signings. Those are your two jobs tomorrow, please. Okay. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I'm not used to being rich.

I can't stop having wine. I can buy the most delicious wine now. I'm scared about how much I need wine. I can't even watch a movie anymore without a big pour of wine and popcorn. Power out.