Muse

I'm really sorry. I am. I'm sorry. Yeah, sounds to me like you're sorry you f***ed up, but not, you know, not for what's underneath it. I apologized. That's what's important. It doesn't matter if you apologize if it's not sincere. Apologies don't have to be sincere. It's just the act of the apology itself. It's only, all that matters is if you're acting sincere. That is literally the only thing an apology has to be, is sincere. Oh, God, Will, I completely disagree. Otherwise, it's just words. I'm acting sincere. Of course I don't believe it. TBTL. Last time I checked, audio was the second most important part of the audio-video experience. So it's the least important part, right? I just wish we'd talk about my hobbies, too. What hobbies do you even have?

Not really a hobby, but I'm pretty good at alienating significant others. And I'm going to take tea and take a sip of it and spit it into each and every one of your mouths. Oh, it'll burn me, but it'll burn you twice. Burn me once with tea? Shame on me. Burn you twice in your own mouth? Shame on everybody involved.

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

This is an amazing story. I can't believe this is real. It's real.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I won't trash talk. I won't be out there blowharding. Coming to you once again from La La Land. Oh, La La. More specifically, the Playa del Rey neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. My last day here before heading up to Seattle to begin preparation, not begin preparation. I mean, we've been preparing for a while, but to really just kind of get some physical eyes on the situation at the Neptune Theater in Seattle, where, of course, on Saturday night, we will be bringing you TBTL's 4000th episode. We have lots to do. In the meantime, we have to rent a cargo van and drive to my parents' house, get all of this tbtl crap that's been in their yard bring it to the theater i'm doing all of that by the way while operating with a tremendously painful sunburn because i spent yesterday standing literally next to the hollywood sign on mount lee in a t-shirt with no sunscreen on i wish i hadn't done that it didn't go well for me uh i can explain more on how exactly that ended up being the case coming up here on episode 3997 in a collector's series let the fun begin by the way some of you may be real like uh numbers heads real math whizzes and you're saying well hold on It's Thursday, and you're on 3,997. That would make tomorrow, Friday, carry the one. Wait, how are we going to be at 4,000 on Saturday night? Well, my friends, we're recording an extra show. We are going to actually sneak in an extra episode of the program. Because we're nothing if not sticklers for the, what would you call it, internal logic of this program and the numbering system. So don't worry, when we take the stage on Saturday night and we record episode 4000, it will really be episode 4000. But anyway, today I want to talk a little bit about Sinead O'Connor. Your voice is like a combination of Fergie and Jesus. Who passed away at the age of 56. I spent this morning watching a lot of Sinead O'Connor performances, reading about her, and really taking a moment to consider her quite exceptional life and career. and what it's like to be somebody who is very much misunderstood and very much on the right side of history, although it cost her dearly in certain ways. We'll get into that. Also, time permitting, we'll get to the real important news in the world. They're making Beetlejuice 2. So who needs a movie? It's directed by Tim Burton, and it has all of the original people in it. Like, Michael Keaton is in it. Everybody else from that original cast,

although I think Jenna Ortega will be playing Winona Ryder's daughter. But something has been going wrong on the set, which is somebody keeps stealing their props. So we will endeavor to talk about that today. And we will definitely make time for the Blur's Days, because it's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day. We'll do all that with the help of this young man, longest running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he has a lot on his plate he is in charge of a lot of tech

A lot of technical stuff, a lot of content stuff related to the 4000th episode. And I think the way to describe his current level of anxiety would be... It's overflowing. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

You know, your intro reminded me, I guess I'm not going to see that DC movie with the old Batman in it. With the Michael Keaton Batman in it, Luke. Uh-huh. Because I only see movies like that if I can see them in the theater. I've said this before on the show. I'm not going to watch any kind of an action movie at home. I don't have the patience for it.

You don't have the popcorn for it, really.

I don't have the popcorn for it. Popcorn's different at home. It sure is. My thing is. It hit differently. Jeez, I went to Target the other day, Luke, bought a ton of underwear and a box of popcorn. Is there anything better than buying? I mean, the box. Targets, Targets, Targets, Targets.

I just thought I'd play that many times in a row.

And when I was a kid, my dad would take us to a store. I don't know if it was Sears or what it was, but we would get boxes of popcorn, you know, the tall, narrow ones, right? And we would wander around the store eating popcorn. I had totally forgotten about that until I walked into my local Target recently. No, recently. I don't know. Maybe it was last summer or something. And I realized, oh, you can buy boxes of popcorn here at Target. They're $1 self-checkout. you can wander around the store and just eat popcorn and i do you know i got some weird hangups about eating in public but like there's something that i just find so much joy in wandering around target just smashing a box of popcorn that cost me one dollar well i i have to say in my childhood

there were so many places and they were always weird places unexpected places where a big part of the appeal was the free popcorn you know less schwab tires still does it i feel like a lot of places that i got dragged along with my dad where it'd be some kind of a hardware store a true value type of situation or just somewhere where maybe there wasn't a lot of fun things for kids but there would be free popcorn and maybe this is the issue is we've as a you know as americans and as american business owners we've gone away from the free popcorn model and maybe this is why brick mortar commerce is dying not enough free pop in fact even at targis targis they're charging you a dollar for the pot it's not free popcorn no it's not free because it's in their little cafe

i haven't been any place that serves free popcorn yeah in a minute i'll be honest with you though i don't think the popcorn i ate as a kid was free i could maybe try to get to the bottom of this i i mean i could be wrong about that i wish i could i can picture the box it's very kind of vintagey in my in my brain but still the shape that they are today um but yeah i don't know if it was free or not and i don't know if it was a hardware store or what i think that would be a tremendous

loss leader for a store because i mean i mean it's it's one popcorn michael how much could it be like popcorn is so so cheap or i should say corn is so cheap and let's just say you're considering one of two hardware stores that are in your neighborhood or something or you're going to go to the Lowe's or the Home Depot, or you can go to a true value or a whatever. And one of them has free popcorn and you're getting the same thing. You're looking for a little, let's say you're looking for a master lock or something. Wouldn't you just, don't you think there would be enough people who would just be like, eh, I could do either one. How about the one where I can have free popcorn? I bet you that would pay for itself over time. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I remember I

was, first of all, I should mention when I went to the target, I had just had such a big lunch that I think I even had leftovers with me. So I wasn't even hungry. But once I realized, oh, I need to go to Target because I needed a doohickey for my sink and a whole bunch of underwear, Luke. And I was like, well, Target would probably provide me both of those things. And so I think I was like, oh, I go to Target. And then I immediately thought, oh, they might have popcorn. So I think that kind of proves your point, at least with me a little bit. Like I'm a very popcorn forward person when it comes to decision making for real. I can be as full as a tick, Luke, and if popcorn is available, I will still eat it. Like, one of the things Genevieve has heard me bemoan the most probably in my life is I just threw up some popcorn. My body just physically rejected that last fistful of popcorn. They always say, you know, often the popcorn does reject the host. Host v. popcorn disease. on the on the lazy saturdays that we can sometimes enjoy we'll go out we'll have a big breakfast or brunch or lunch or something along those lines and then we'll be like oh hey should we go see a movie we go see a movie oh yeah time's out perfectly let's just go see a movie right now but that i'm already full and so i'm like i'm like kind of why

into the theater, yet I'm still stopping to get the biggest popcorn they sell there. I will always get popcorn.

Right, and in fact, I wanna stay very far away from sounding like I'm food shaming you or body shaming you or anything shaming you because I am able to eat tremendous quantities of food, like shocking quantities of food. I woke up the other day, Andrew, and I don't know, it was like I woke up to go to the bathroom at like three in the morning and I had bought I'm really into McDonald's chocolate chip cookies right now like I've been on this weird hang where like I will door dash McDonald's chocolate chip cookies sometimes I woke up to use the restroom and realized I still had some McDonald's chocolate food and ate a chocolate chip cookie at like four in the morning and then went back to sleep so I just want to like set the baseline of what my food habits are that being said i've always been a little surprised when you talk about how you're able to kill an entire thing of like a large thing of popcorn only because for me the just the it always seems like a great idea i always get the biggest one because i you know that's how i tend to to roll but i can't get past you know the i don't know i can eat like a third of one of those biggie things of popcorn and then i just hit a wall and you can get all the way through one and i find i just find that actually interesting no you do hit a wall and then you

pause at the wall for a while and you set that baby under your seat and then hard hat lunch bail lunch fail so again no matter how full i am i um or how hungry i am i i walk into the theater i've got the biggest soda and i've got the um the biggest popcorn available i look like a poster warning uh about the the dangers of diabetes in americans um and i i plop down in a seat and then i start eating the popcorn immediately like during the the trailers or if they're playing the 24 or whatever or the 20 i should say you know the little maria menudo thing um oh they still doing well they yeah and i'm conflating things here i don't mean to open that door again she actually hosts something called it's not the 20 the 20 was something that i think amc did way back in the day but there are still those like pre preview previews right immediately i start plowing through the popcorn like like i'm a man who's just discovered popcorn who has crawled out of the desert and discovered popcorn although popcorn in the desert that might be the one place i wouldn't want it um and i start eating and then usually by the time the opening credits are rolling i'm already starting to feel like i'm full of popcorn whoa okay i can go a little bit further

and then i go a little bit further question yep yep do you what's your butter and salt situation

on do you get extra butter i don't say extra but when they ask do you want butter on this i say of course i do um and then yeah i'm a big i'm a big salt guy again this is not um this i'm hope i hope my doctor isn't listening also remind me i need to get a doctor i'm not joking um but a step one get health care step two get a doctor my um my hope at the theater concession area is that they have little packets of salt because i what i will do is i'll open a packet of salt and i'll sprinkle the top and then i'll put a packet or two in my breast pocket for later in the movie in case i i'm i often don't use those backup salts but i have a fear that i'm going to go in and reach a part of the popcorn bucket that is not as salty at the bottom usually you cross through the mohorovic

boundary and then you get into an area where there's no salt has penetrated and you get real

trouble so um that's my hope if it's just a shaker of salt that uh i have to use and then leave behind jimmy buffett i know i just have to uh one of his lesser songs popcorn that really is a line by the way i know i'm looking for my lost shaker of salt i think that's the only time i've

ever heard it described that way in that song and then what you just said looking a shaker of salt

yeah i guess i didn't say a salt shaker did i i guess that did sort of stand out but anyway you just sort of you shake it on there then you shake the popcorn a little bit you're gonna you're gonna lose some popcorn kernels you know you're gonna have some casualties as you shake the popcorn trying to get the the salt to penetrate but that's okay it's worth it for the grander fight it's a war of attrition um and that's it and so i go in but honestly by the time you refuse to back down this is what we trained for is what i often yell to genevieve as i'm as i'm slogging my way into the theater but honestly by the time the movie starts i'm often kind of full of popcorn So maybe by the first scene or second, I'm ready for my first break. And then I can move that popcorn. Of course, Genevieve is doing a number on this as well. I mean, we're sharing the popcorn.

Oh, OK. Well, see, that's a big difference. Oh, yeah.

I probably should have kept this short.

That's that. Well, no, no, no. No, I'm just saying that's a big difference. You're right. I thought I was imagining you mono eat popcorn. Just like you get there.

people working on it it's still i'm gonna be honest with you it's still a lot of popcorn it's

still a lot of popcorn i think i mean i don't know i'm not measuring it out although i am the type of person who maybe would if genevieve's eating all the fully loaded nachos my my guess is even though we're both just eating out of the same popcorn bin and you know it's hard to measure i still believe that i am eating at a pace and a fervor that that outpaces her so i'm guessing that it's probably two-thirds, one-third breakdown maybe. I'm eating two-thirds of that thing. I could see that. But there will be a point, and I'm the holder. I have to be the holder of the popcorn, but I'm a very generous popcorn holder. I'm serious. I will make sure that I kind of prop it up and make sure that it's at a comfortable place for Genevieve because I think it's a privilege to be able to hold the popcorn, so I want to make it comfortable for her. It is often the case that at least once during the movie she will reach in to grab some popcorn, and as she tries to remove her hand from the bucket, I will move the bucket with her hand just to annoy her so that she can't take her hand out of the bucket. That's always a laugh riot.

But aside from that, I'm a very good particularly dramatic moment in the film to pull focus back to yourself.

Do you see, though, like I'm being I'm being obviously somewhat extra about all of this here. And but do you see how much I love going to the movies with Genevieve? Like, I really do. It's like one of my favorite things. And I know everything is like ridiculously priced, but I don't care. It's a pleasure. I love this for you guys.

I'm being very serious.

I love the art house experience. I love going to see a documentary in an art house theater on a Saturday. That's great. I love seeing old movies that they bring back to old theaters, like classics. I love that. But I also don't sleep on going to see a mediocre, what I call a popcorn movie, just so I can go and have popcorn and goof around, especially for an afternoon. Weirdly, we are usually afternoon or early evening moviegoers.

Speaking of movies, did you see the story in the Seattle Times today that Cinerama may reopen? The Seattle International Film Festival is close to getting a big grant of like almost a million bucks specifically for reopening Cinerama.

I saw a headline about Cinerama, but I didn't open it. You know, I guess I lost the thread on that because I thought there was a big celebratory headline a while back saying that it was going to reopen. But I guess it was just being acquired by SIF. But now the news is that SIF has it. They have kind of possession of it, but they can't reopen it.

I think it is reopening, and now it's getting – the headline is Cinerama Reopening Could Get a $2 Million Boost from Seattle King County Council. So I guess you're right. It's already reopening, but it's going to reopen even better with this extra money. I also didn't realize that my old pal Tom Mara is now the executive director of CIF, the one-time head of KEXP, or, as we called him, Tom Too Tall Mara on the KUOW KEXP static softball team. In fact, that guy, Tom Mara, I don't mean to hijack your popular story. No, I don't. I think I'm done. But very quick, I mean, I'll try to tell the quickest of origin stories for me. I pick up this spider. I don't know it's radioactive. It bites me. But where'd the spider come from? I turn into a podcaster. No, this guy, Tom Mara, who's quoted in this piece, who's now the head of SIF. low those many years ago when i was a freshman at the university of washington and i saw an ad in the paper the student paper the daily that said work study position at kcmu radio which i loved it was my favorite radio station uh it was in the communications building at the university of washington i walked there i went up i went to the door of the radio station and tried to enter which even in those days it was locked they were like maybe the public shouldn't come in and a very tall gentleman opened the door later I learned his name was Tom Mara and I said hey um I'm here for this job I'm like holding the newspaper and he goes oh you know I think that position has been filled but let me walk you over to the actual office because they had a real office that I'd gone right past and I think that they may actually need some help like this at KUOW and he very nicely walked me over to where i was going went in talked to somebody like he didn't just like pawn me off yeah walked me over to the kuow kcmu office um went in talked to somebody found out what was available at kuow had got the applications for me and brought them to me and i filled it out and like what a nice thing to do for some you know pimply 19 year old who's just wandering the halls of the communication building anyway that person was tom mara who's now the head of sif nice and

he's super short and that's why he called him too tall tom it was one of those ironic like a real

big guy you call tiny yeah exactly that's kind of why we do that but anyway andrew let me tell you something if i were a kernel of corn uh yesterday i would have fully popped as i was standing next to the hollywood sign because it was so so warm and we were climbing now i was i want to mention And my. sister hannah uh texted me yesterday and was like did you repel i'm just catching up on tbtl and i want to just clarify i did not actually repel like like a in a tom cruise movie where he's jumping off the side of a building or something do you know he eats his own popcorn i did not show title did you know that tom cruise eats his own oh did you end up using my joke on wait wait don't tell me no but i i just liked knowing that i had it in my back pocket i had permission from you if it came up but it did not um but uh i was a little misinformed so what happened what the deal was is we were filming up above the hollywood sign so that it was in the background and then we later went down to the sign but the way you get down to the sign is this incredibly sketchy very steep i wouldn't even call it a trail it's basically like a almost a a hillside that's almost a cliff and you do have to use they have a climbing rope that you use to let yourself down this hill to get to where and by the way our camera guy did fall also the broadcast associate who was helping us out i.e the the the the sort of like not intern but like entry-level cbs staffer who was carrying a gopro also fell we had people falling it was not it was not not sketchy but it wasn't like i was in climbing gear and i was like it was like i was i was a little nervous and i was letting myself down using this rope but it wasn't i don't want to overstate the level of danger that being said it wasn't not dangerous as we were filming by the sign i was a little surprised they let us do this like there's this thing called the hollywood sign trust and they are this is a volunteer organization and they are the folks responsible for like maintaining the sign and raising money for it and protecting it and all this stuff and we're there with like a camera guy roger a sound guy don this other broadcast associate a couple of other ancillary pr people from some organization and we're all like and then the guy i'm interviewing and we're all standing on like a very couple of very small little like tufts of grass and if you were to step off of the tuft of grass you would you would fall pretty hard like again i don't want of overstated it's not like it's 200 feet straight down but it'd be like more like a thousand feet at a pretty steep clip like you would not want to fall you would be rolling and tumbling right down into some four million dollar houses swimming pool at the base of mount lee like it was i was kind of surprised that there wasn't a little bit more of like a safety speech or something because our camera guy kept going all right everybody behind me so everyone have to get behind him so that me

and the guy I was interviewing could walk, and he could film it. But behind him was the cliff. So I see this poor broadcast associate kid who's just like, I could tell that he's like, I don't want to fall down that cliff, but also I'm trying to do a good job here. So he used to be like crouching on like the most precarious little thing. And it was a really interesting thing to get to be right up close and personal with the sign, but it was a little sketchy. The bigger problem, Andrew, was my plan when I went was to wear a ball cap, which I don't usually do in these shoots. But I thought, you know, this is the weather is really hot out here. Also, by the way, no one brought water, which was a bad plan. Well, some people brought water, but the producer didn't bring any water, which is often kind of the kind of the job of the producers. Like, let's make sure we're all hydrating. Let's grab a flat of Dasani or something. So there was kind of like no water up there. But I was like, I got my ball cap. I'll wear that. That'll keep the sun off of me. I'll be fine. That was my whole plan going in. And I go to put it on and the producer, my friend Jay, goes, oh, that says the Paris Review on it. And I was like, is it OK if the viewers know that I at least pretend to read the Paris Review? Like, can't that be a flex? There's all kinds of magazines and publications I pretend to read. Exactly. I mean, I really thought, so I had two hats here. I had a Chicago Blackhawks hat, which the actual logo of the Chicago Blackhawks is something that I feel like is pretty touchy. It's a sort of Native American icon, and I just don't really know about, it's not something I'm going to wear on my head, even if it's, you know, been deemed okay or something. But I did get this hat at the Hudson News. It's like a couple of feathers. So it's not like the full Monty of questionable appropriation But it's a side of questionable appropriation So I was like, I don't want to wear that on television But I was like, what do you think the overlap of Sunday morning viewers And Paris Review readers Or at least people who pretend to read the Paris Review What do you think that overlap is? And I would assume it's pretty big It could have even been a tie-in Partnerships, synergy, look to the future Vertical integration right rock blocks wait so then thank you So there was a PR person named Shelby who was with the PR firm that represents the city of Los Angeles, and she had on a Dodgers hat, L.A., and the producer goes, could you actually wear that hat instead? And I was like, and then look like a Dodger fan? Hell to the nod. Thank you. McLemore, take a note. I'm not anti-Dodgers per se, but I'm not going to wear a Dodgers hat on national television and be like – And also, I was like, you know, if we're allowed to promote the Dodgers, why aren't we allowed to promote the legacy of George Plimpton?

I guess the Dodgers argument is just that it's related to what you're doing, obviously.

Which also would have made me feel like the most basic B. Again, it'd be like we're shooting in Times Square and I'm wearing a Yankees hat. It's just like, can I not? Like, I don't want, A, I don't want anyone to think that I'm fronting and pretending to be a Dodgers fan. And B, I don't want anyone to think I'm the kind of person that when I go to Los Angeles, I break out a Dodgers hat so as to fit in with the local culture. Like, so what did I do, Andrew? Sons hat. And that was a bad decision because I got fully broasted out there. Like, I mean, really? So anyway, when you see me tomorrow. Oh, I have another important question, by the way, about tomorrow. But when you see me tomorrow and you wonder who is this sunburned lobster that looks vaguely like my friend Luke, it's me. It's just me after being on Mount Lee with no hat on because I'm not allowed to rep the Paris Review. Also, I wouldn't have minded if people thought I'm a Paris Review reader. Like, low-key, I mean, I subscribe. I have one with me. I might read one chapter on the plane flying up there tonight. It could happen. my big question for tomorrow is can i do laundry at your house oh yeah real question yeah we have

a relatively new washer and dryer i don't want to test that bad boy out yeah yeah and i want to i want to see your uh i want to see your skivvy so it works out well for everybody oh good yes everybody wins and when i say that i mean you can use our washer and dryer but you must do so in

your skivvies what would how would you feel if our if if my skivvies and your brand new target skivvies were to get mixed up in the wash and suddenly i i get back to the hotel and i've got your i got your underwear and then you just find my underwear um from uh you know from the laundry

session you know we won't be mingling our laundry as you know i'd be pretty fastidious about that but let me let's just i i was going to make a point of not talking about my underwear on this show but i i want to tell you about something i've been doing these past two days um and it's felt good it's felt like a balm as you like you you kind of joked at the beginning of the show and And then I kind of ignored it. But, yeah, I'm kind of like kind of kind of high stress right now, kind of juggling a lot of things and also just kind of carrying around anxiety.

Can I just mention, can I mention, Andrew, your anxiety is well founded. You're not I don't want you to think that I think you're freaking out about nothing. There are a million things that still need to be solved for Saturday night. And you're tasked with solving about nine hundred and ninety nine thousand of them. So it's reasonable.

I know everything is going to work out, but right now it just feels like everything is spinning and spinning a bit wobbly, and I know that everything is going to be fine at the end of the day. I know that you and I will eventually say, and good luck to all, unless something goes really terrible. Could we start the show with that? Unless something goes really terrible, we'll have a bunch of lovely people in the audience supporting us and applauding us as we walk off that stage and say, hey, look at that. What were you worried about, right? But, I mean, the thing is there is stuff to worry about in order to get to that moment. So, anyway, that's where we are right now. I'm not trying to fixate on that, but I just feel a little bit frazzled, right? But Monday, I was trying to get a bunch of stuff done. Now, I'm going to give you a little bit of backstory here. This is a real Bob Walsh special. Just keep going back in time as you try to tell a story. But let's talk about my underwear for a while. So I know you're all wondering, what kind of underwear do I wear? I wear just very traditional religious garbs. No, I wear just very traditional boxer shorts. like not the kind like honestly like so traditional that I don't even like them if they have the different colored band on top that says Hanes or something I want my underwear to be like some sort of a print either like a you know whether it's not argyle but like either plaid or some sort of very simple repeated pattern and I want them to look just like kind of like classic boxer shorts right do they bunch up yes they do that's usually people's first question I don't go for boxer briefs i don't go for briefs and maybe all of that is part of my paranoia about if if ever i get caught in some situation where somebody sees me in the in my underwear or in the

underwears as i like to say i will you want to be wearing basically shorts i want to be i want to

look like a like a cartoon fat man from the 1950s at least i don't want to look like uh like an overweight walter white in the desert like i just you know like i just so anyway so that's my and i have like a bunch of these pairs of these boxer shorts and there's like Hanes or something. And like at some point, like I just realized I've been wearing these forever and they're not, they're not like falling apart. They're not like super nasty, but I was just like, I honestly, the other day I was like, I can't remember. I mean, pre-pandemic maybe. I'm like, that's not good. That's not how an adult lives his life. You need to circulate some new stuff into here. And Luke, actually this goes back about, I don't know, four months or so. I'm like, Andrew, everybody just buys things online. Like, you don't have to make a trip to Target, even though that's also not hard to do. Just, like, take literally two minutes right now. Open up Amazon.com, undies, want some. Boom, they're here tomorrow, right? So I basically do that, and then they're not here tomorrow, and then they're not here tomorrow. Then I go back and I check my order, and I think I placed this order in, like, March or something. I said, well, beginning here by June 26th or something way in the future. I'm like, have you ever had that happen to you with Amazon where you don't pay a lot of attention to what you're buying? You just assume everything is going to be there in a couple of days. But for some random reason, like this was not some rare thing. It was a pack of Hanes, I think. And it wasn't going to be there for three months.

Yeah, I've gotten close to that. Maybe I've canceled the order or maybe I've stopped just before I hit, you know, the final kind of like button on it. But you've got to be really careful these days with that because you're right. It'll just be – oftentimes it's one of the earlier things that pops up. I don't ever get anything that's sponsored. That's my first thing. whenever it's I don't know why because there's just because they're sponsoring it just because they're paying to have it be at the top of the search results doesn't mean it's a bad product but I get a bad feeling off of that I'm like what are you hiding so then I usually go down to the first thing that's not sponsored and then I click on that but if yeah you got to make sure to check when the ship date is because sometimes it'll just be way the hell out in the future yeah so I got

caught in then I didn't catch it in time so then I'm like oh this is a bummer like once I finally made that move of like okay just do this it's been on your mind just like buy this underwear online and then i'm like oh my god all right i'll just sit tight and then i sit tight and then i keep forgetting about it then i'll go to amazon it's like it keeps shifting around and then like one day it's like i got a notification like your underwear is in cleelum i'm like my underwear should never be in cleelum so i'm just like i don't know i'm just like can i just cancel this so i just cancel it and i don't even know if i assume i got my money back i don't even know It just felt good to cancel it.

Did you check what the, like, because I'm worried that you didn't get your money back on your underwear. Because if it made it to Cle Elum, I mean, that might be too late.

It was something like that. I don't, I still had the ability to cancel order. And I think that if I had to fight, and again, like, how much is it, Michael? It's a banana, $10? Boy, I deconstructed that. It's a banana hammock.

How much could it be?

I, like, somehow Yoda'd that quote. I just like rearranged all the words, all the words were there. They're in a different order. But anyway, so my point is, then I cancel, then I'm like, I'll just go to Target, original plan. And then I forget again. And then on Monday, I'm getting a bunch of stuff done. But I'm also and this is a side note, but this is related. And this is what I'm getting at here. I'm also like trying to charge my phone before I leave. And all of my chargers around here, I've got about, I'm gonna say about four mainly used phone chargers in my life. and they're relatively good quality chargers that are like six feet long. I usually buy the longest one possible because I don't know if I plug it in in bed, I want some length on that thing as I'm reading to go to sleep or whatever. Point is, these charging cables break down over time. I don't know if as an Apple user, you've experienced this, but like when I plug in my phone with a brand new USB-C cord, it'll say fast charging. But then over time, it'll just say charging. And then after a year or so, it'll say, slow charging, check the connection. You're at 50% battery, and this will be filled in nine hours. You're like, what the shit? And so do you ever have that? Do you ever realize that those cables go bad?

Well, you know me and my feelings on cables. They never go bad, Andrew.

Yeah, they never go bad.

But I don't think my phone – that's actually a handy-dandy feature. My phone does – or at least I don't know how to set it up so it's telling me how the charging is going. I either get a little, like, lightning bolt thing or I don't.

I see. Okay, well, it's been pretty frustrating lately, and the one that's in the car keeps disconnecting while I'm, you know, my phone is plugged in for navigation purposes, and it'll keep disconnecting. I'm like, I don't think it's my phone. I think it's these cables. You have to replace them from time to time. In fact, I even went online. I'm like, it doesn't make sense. Why would these cables go bad? And it's like, well, they're made of a whole bunch of little fiber wires inside, and so the more you roll them up, wrap them up, they break, and they just get bad over time. So I'm like, you know what I'm going to do? i'm gonna i had just gone to target and i found uh two packs of underwear i brought them home that's where how tupac got his name by the way um i made sure they fit they did i went online i bought two more packs online and while i was online i'm like i'm gonna buy four charging cables like this. These have been annoyances like these little annoyances in my life have been eating away at the fringes of my sanity, Luke. I realize this story is so goddamn long and boring. But then everything showed up yesterday. I had my Target underwear. I had my Amazon underwear. I had four new cables. I've been going around the house throwing away underwear and throwing away cables and implementing the new stuff. Actually, what I did was I took my old underwear i made a stack of it on the back of the toilet and every day i i give each pair of underwear one last ride and then i throw it away at the end of the day uh i kind of kind of a viking funeral i do genevieve throws shoots burning arrows at it yeah right at your ass yeah somebody's your ass shoots a burning arrow at the underwear there is a there's a longhorn involved but we don't have to send you to valhalla but uh i give them one last ride and i throw them away and And tomorrow is my last pair of underwear, which means on Saturday for the 4000th episode, I will be wearing one of my brand new pairs of boxer shorts. I'll be bringing it, breaking those out. But I just OK, that story was terrible. I'm embarrassed how long I've been rambling. But I just thought that you would sort of appreciate the thing of like I live with these things that are that are annoyances and so easily solved. And then once I decide, God damn it, just solve this thing, I just went hog wild and, you know, spent an entire $40 and just like and just like solving these issues. And it's just like I said, been a balm in an otherwise hectic week.

I believe it or not, even though we tend to do a lot of things differently, that's something that I can really relate to because buying new underwear is just so low on my list of priorities, even if I'm running out. And because of all the travel I do and how disorganized I am, I think I probably lose more articles of clothing and also chargers than the average person. Again, some of it's probably undiagnosed ADHD, and some of it's just that I'm constantly packing everything up, going somewhere, unpacking it all, repacking it, going somewhere else. It's a lot of opportunities for me to lose things. so I will I will like through this attrition I will end up with not enough underwear and also not enough uh chargers for like my little apple watch and my phone and stuff and so I did the same thing with the charger situation recently which was I just went on amazon and I was like I need to like just I'm gonna buy like three usbc little charging you know whatever you call that the thing that plugs into the outlet and then you plug the cable in I was like I'm just gonna get enough of these so that i can have as many as i need because because also it's like i would have like a good one that worked and then i have like a shitty one that i like found somewhere that i've been using but it doesn't really work very well and it's you know what i mean it's like anything like socks underwear chargers there's always like the good one and then there's like the less good one that you're like well i'll just deal with this but i was like let me just get set up with this Now, the problem is I still have all – I have not fully converted to USB-C world off of USB world. So what I have right now are like – and I've also somehow already lost like one to two of the USB-C chargers that I bought.

You mean so for you it's a charger. On one end, it's whatever the Apple proprietary thing is, and on the other end, it's USB-C.

Yes, but also some that are USB, and I have cables. I basically have this very confusing mix of different kinds of cables. Some of the cables have a USB on them. Some of them have a USB-C. They're all tangled in a rat's nest in a drawer. I know I'm giving you anxiety just talking about it this way. And I'm constantly like, I can, I'll have, because I also have, I also have chargers, Andrew, that are USB, that's two USB slots on the charger, right? On the thing that plugs in the outlet. but i'm always like finding that one but then all like the apple watch charger is usbc somehow i'm always grabbing the wrong thing out of the rat's nest and i'm not able to find like so even though i tried to solve that problem i really haven't and also my current favorite underwear i believe i purchased at walmart which is really a lot to to consider as a human that my the most effective underwear that i have right now i purchased in a in a moment of need at a walmart somewhere in america because it was the only store and now those are my good underwear like when those ones come up in the rotation i'm like okay you got this i bought this penguin underwear i was really in a penguin phase for a while because i like their shirts and i thought well i like their shirts i like their underwear terrible decision ill fitting the little i mean probably doesn't help that i'm gaining weight rapidly but like the little elastic band is always doubled over like doesn't stay the way that i want it to but i'm am i still are those penguin underwear boxer briefs still in the rotation andrew very much so does it ruin my day when they come up absolutely like

You know, okay, a couple of things. That's one thing that I really like about my underwear situation right now is there's not going to be any rotation because I'm cleaning house and replacing everything. It's a rebuilding year for me. Honestly, I love it. Talk to Jerry DiPoto. I'm just going to totally refresh this entire thing. That way I don't have to say, well, this pair isn't so bad, but every now and then it's going to come up in the rotation. I'm like, no, I'm just going to clean house. I'm going to rebuild, and that's what I've done. But this also reminds me of something, and this is real talk, Luke. I'm going to be quite serious about something here, about you and me and something that you said to me one time that kind of irritated me and lives in my head, and I think about it a lot, and there's no way in the world that you remember this. And the fact that I do remember it speaks more about me. I'm bringing this up not because I'm still irritated that you said this, but the fact that I never was able to let this go was kind of embarrassing. But this is a true story. I'm going to tell it the best I can. You and I were talking on this show one time and I had mentioned to you a life hack that I had just heard our pal Mike Peska talk about on his podcast, The Gist. You can find it wherever they sell podcasts. And this is years ago. I mean, Luke, this is so long ago. I don't even know where I was living, but I know we were doing the show in separate places. And I said, oh, it's cool. Like Mike's life hack is like when he's traveling, he packs his he packs like whatever the oldest underwear he has in his rotation is. And that way, when he's on the road, when he's done with it, if it's getting close to throw, you know, if it's getting close to the time to throw away that underwear, he just wears that and then throws it away on the trip. And then he doesn't have to worry about bringing that dirty laundry home. Does that make sense? He was like, yeah, he wears the underwear that said that near the end of its life. And then he doesn't have to pack it up and bring it home. He just tosses it when he's traveling. and I said that to you and I said like oh yeah I do that now or something and in my memory and I don't have a direct quote and I don't have the tape and so if this doesn't sound like something that you believe you said I will I will defer to you on that but I in my head you said something somewhat condescending to me about not wearing old underwear you said something like kind of like well I said oh it's a great life hack like when you're traveling you know wear your old underwear and then throw it away on the trip. And you're like, yeah, I don't really wear old underwear. And it bothered me because I was like, yeah, but your underwear doesn't last forever. Eventually somebody has to throw away the underwear at some point. Like even if you only wear underwear three times and throw them away, the basic premise remains the same. Just wear it on the third day. Like you sort of like dismissed it as like me and Pesca wearing this nasty ass underwear on trips or something. And it was, Luke, it was something that you said that was probably a half a second long or a second a half. And for some reason, I internalize it.

And so often when I'm thinking about my underwear, I'm thinking like, how does Luke not throw away underwear? Good, it's working. You have no recollection of that, right?

Well, the funny thing about that, I don't remember saying that. It's also weird because I definitely do wear old underwear just because I'm too lazy to go through the steps of replacing it. So either at that time I was living differently or I was wanting you to believe I'm living differently. Right, yeah. But the funny thing about this whole, this particular example from our friend Mike Peska is I have literally dropped Mike Peska off at an airport where he has, I believe it was probably PDX. Maybe because he came out for the gist. Somewhere, I forget the airport, but I have dropped Mike Peska off at the airport. And he has handed me a book and said, do you want this book? And I've said, no, I'm good. And he's been like, I always bring a book that I'm almost done with and then like a paperback. And then when I'm done, I don't have to fly it back with me. So not only is he apparently abandoning his underwear all over these United States, but also books. He's just leaving a trail of his belongings. A trail of his no longer needed belongings. So that's what comes to my mind when you give that specific example, just because of me having an actual moment with Mike where he was like, I'm flying back home. I don't need this book. You can have it. So I guess that was news to me he was doing with the underwear. I can promise you, Andrew, if it's any consolation, I'd be wearing old-ass drawls. So you don't have to feel like I am on any kind of high horse looking down on you about your nasty-ass drawls situation.

Well, I mean, honestly, I'm being quite serious that maybe I was just in a mood. And you said something innocuous, and it just hit me in a way that in the moment felt like I was being condescended to. But I'm being quite serious when I say I don't have any like proof that you actually were or that I didn't misinterpret you. But it was something that lived in my head. And then, you know, how things live in your head. Then they live in your head. And you're like, why is this living in my head? But then that lives in your head. You know, maybe now I will have replaced that with this conversation.

though and this can live in my head because this is a more pleasant memory

hello and welcome to top story top story today the passing of Sinead O'Connor which was pretty shocking because she was only 56 years old and I will say that I probably in my life didn't spend a huge amount of time considering, you know, Sinead O'Connor and her career, outside of the fact that I was really obsessed with her version of Nothing Compares to You when I was a kid. I remember, I looked up when that song came out, I believe it was 1990. Of course, it's a cover of a Prince song. But I remember vividly being, I would have been 14 years old then in 1990, which is actually older than I would have thought. I remember standing in my parents' bedroom and stare they had a full-length mirror kind of like in their closet like if you open the closet door there was a full-length mirror and i remember standing in their bedroom again it's weird that i'm in my parents bedroom like clearly nobody was home which is also a rare occurrence when there's seven kids in a house yeah no kidding but i also was homeschooled at weird times so i might have been kicked out of school at this point like i for some reason i just have this very clear memory of being in their bedroom and playing or listening to I didn't own it but it must have just been on the radio listening to the Sinead O'Connor's version of nothing compares to you and lip-syncing it as I'm staring in this mirror and having like some kind of intensely dramatic moment for myself like I don't know what exactly was going on internally for me where what my life journey was but i just remember just thinking this is the most emotionally powerful song that's ever existed by the way i also thought that about you know like the wham rap so but i i actually stand by the wham rap wham bam i am the man trouble or time you can't tell me that i'm not do you

enjoy what you do if not then stop don't stay there and rot um that's the uh that's the

wham rap but anyway point is i actually think i actually stand by the the idea that the her her version of nothing compares to you is remains an incredibly powerful song i was watching a bunch of different performances by shanae o'connor this morning um at different points in her career and uh including her doing that song and just having my mind blown at just how like incredible her version of it was but the thing that really and i'm not saying anything Particularly novel here Because I think most people who've given any thought To Sinead O'Connor have arrived at the same conclusion But I think it's really interesting That all of the things That were controversial about her And I'm putting that sort of in quotes All of the stuff that she did that had her sort of Ejected from like mainstream pop Star status Pretty much everything that I was able to find Today in reading articles about her She was totally right about Like she didn't want to be on snl because she didn't like the misogyny of andrew dice clay who was going to be hosting the initial episode that she was going to be on it was going to be andrew dice clay as the star what a time in this country by the way that we were like yeah what a great bit andrew dice clay and she said i don't want to be the musical guest on the show that this guy is hosting completely reasonable by the way and i think i will say this though like it's hard to be funny

these days and like he's a genius he's a genius comedian and so if he has to ruffle some feathers and kind of you know stand up to power in his own way like that that's just what comedy is about luke in three two one go i'm waiting for you to then say but actually i'm not serious i think people know oh i i just think i just think that well obviously now we know where i'm coming from But like, I just think it's like, whatever, that's just the perfect example of just kind of people being like, you can't tell comedians not to say stuff. They got to like, you know, they got to ruffle feathers. And then you end up with people like him, just like the worst humor in the world and also super sexist.

Exactly. I mean, just absolutely terrible, puerile misogyny. Again, not even funny. There are things that are inappropriate and we don't need to say them to each other because it just makes the world a worse place. But on some level, there might be some humor in there. And we just go like, eh, is it worth the trade-off? This stuff, Dice Clay stuff, not even funny.

Just stupid as stupid as shit.

Yes, exactly. So her saying, I don't want to be on an episode of this show when he is the host because I don't like his comedy. It's just like, good for you. Like, what the fuck was SNL?

making him the host of an episode right oh and by the way saturday upon reflection saturday night live a lot of suneet o'connor's was of course her career or at least what we think about with her was wrapped up in snl by the way terrible grades for saturday night live throughout this whole thing because what happened was of course she finally did come on as the musical guest she sang a cover of the bob marley song war which was i've read today based on a speech that highly Selassie um the leader of Ethiopia at a certain point what gave I think to the United Nations or something she changed the lyrics some of the lyrics to be about sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and at the end of the song she of course famously ripped up a picture of the Pope very interesting story about that photograph so Sinead O'Connor um uh said that her mother had abused her in various ways and her mother died when she was 18 and she went into her mom's bedroom she said and there was one photo in the entire bedroom, and it was that picture of the Pope. Oh, wow. She took it down, and she saved it, and she was waiting for the right moment to do something with it, and that was the picture she was tearing up on Saturday Night Live, the only photograph in her deceased mother's bedroom. And her point, of course, was that there was sexual abuse going on within the Catholic Church that was not being dealt with, and she was so right about that, and yet it was seen as anti-Catholic, anti-the Pope. I don't know if it was the next week or subsequent weeks, Joe Pesci is now hosting Saturday Night Live, and his monologue is that he would have given her such a smack if he's the host and the crowd laughs and applauds. We're just talking about beating women on SNL, and it's a laugh line. it's like go fuck yourself everyone associated with saturday night live anyone who who didn't quit that show in that moment is morally bankrupt in my mind like the you know one thing i'm just

remembering now too is this is around the time this is on a lot of like um kind of great like snl best of tapes that i would watch as a kid and didn't understand the context around at all but there was like one of those a parody debate shows or something I you'll know this oh yeah

McLaughlin group it was a McLaughlin group but it was like hosted by Frank Sinatra was the joke

exactly and they would often have somebody playing Sinead O'Connor and Jan Hooks was it Jan Hooks well there you go you can finish the story but I mean that was even like what did they do they just dumped on her more and more and more and I know that listen there is room for satire I'm not saying that you can't send up celebrities or whatever but she was the butt of the joke

uh very much so i believe there's a point where like so the mclaughlin group was actually this pbs show hosted by a guy named something mclaughlin and he would go around like mort kondracki was on it was one of the panelists i forget who there was just a number of regular panelists again in a way a very erudite sketch for snl that this is what we're sending up is a pbs political talk show but the joke was it's hosted by frank sinatra and it's got a bunch of celebrities on it, but it operates the way the McLaughlin group does. But then one of them was Sinead O'Connor, and Frank Sinatra is being very dismissive of her. In real life, by the way, Frank Sinatra, you'll be surprised to know famously nuanced person Frank Sinatra was not in favor of Sinead O'Connor making a, I guess you would say, political statement or cultural. How about this, making an anti-sexual abuse statement about the Catholic Church. Even Madonna, by the way, did a sketch on SNL where she rips up a picture of Joey Badafuoco. Which is, I have to be honest, 5% funny just because Joey Badafuoco is a buffoon. But like still, it was just, it was like one of the things too that Sinead O'Connor said that I thought was really interesting was essentially, she said my career, because you know, Nothing Compares to You was like the number one song in the entire world. like and Sinead O'Connor by her own description considered herself to be um sort of a maybe not punk but like uh she did not consider herself to be a pop artist she never intended to have the number one song in the world she considered herself to be a very political artist and to be somebody who was you know maybe existing uh outside the mainstream and she said that having the number one song in the world really put her career off track but tearing up that picture of

the Pope put it back on track that was the one thing that evolved the you know not that I dug deep on a whole bunch of things but I read a couple of pieces yesterday and it's just such a tragic loss and I'm with you as well Luke I'm not somebody who like celebrated her entire catalog I'm a novice when it comes to that stuff but like what a life what a tormented life and what a life of standing up for the right goddamn stuff and that and that quote about like no no that didn't take my career off path.

Being famous was what took, you know, having a number one hit took me off the path that I wanted to be on. Tearing up the Pope put me back where I needed to be for to be successful the way I measure success. Only she said it better than I did. That's really powerful.

Well, she also turned down a chance to go to the Grammys, which was a big story at the time. And she said, I don't want to be part of a world that measures artistic ability by material success. and then she was on entertainment tonight she said she called it insulting that the best records are considered to be the ones that sell the most and i mean you know that's a that's a sentiment that i'm sure a number of artsy people feel but she really put her money where her mouth was you know like she really she was really really committed to her view of the world which was that she did not care about being because let me tell you if she would have i think there are probably a fair number of people who have pretty lofty artistic ambitions and then they get a taste of being famous and of of the sort of adulation like there was a point with nothing compares to use fame where Sinead O'Connor could have just like pivoted and could have just started putting out you know more music like that and could have become a sort of media darling and could have just like leaned right into being famous I mean she was an incredible performer she had an incredible voice but she was one of those rare people it seems who just was sticking to what she believed in regardless of what the sort of reputational damage was regardless of being kind of the the poster child for a quote-unquote like crazy person now she also did have mental health issues which in the sort of later part of her life you know she was sort of in and out of some mental health institutions I mean she described it as trauma from her childhood and then borderline personality disorder she seemed to be by most people's accounts um you know had really kind of sort of in a much more healthy place towards the end of her life she was talking about going back out on tour um one other thing she said that i pulled from this so she wrote a book and then amanda hess wrote a really nice profile of her in the new york times which i would recommend but one of the things shenade o'connor said i think she says it in the book but it was quoted in amanda hess's piece is i'm not a pop star i'm just a troubled soul who needs to scream into mics now and then which you know I think is a is a probably pretty apt description of of Sinead O'Connor but again I just keep going back to this I wonder what it must have felt like to to sort of be one of the maybe not one of the only voices but to be one of the only voices with the platform that you have like she's a person who I mean there's lots of people at this time who are saying look the catholic church has a sexual abuse problem that it's not dealing with lots of people probably had that thought she was one of the few people who was also on saturday night live live television by the way and able to do this thing to send this big powerful statement and then to have it just like make you public enemy number one to a bunch of mouth breathers who have no fucking idea what's going on in the world and to know like somewhere in your heart like i'm on

the right side of this like I am like again I'm just restating myself but like of the things I was reading about where she took a stand pretty much all of them and I don't know about everything in the last 20 years of her life like where she was at with certain things but if we're talking about these these moments in the 90s everything she took a stand on she was right about and everyone was calling her crazy like I don't know like if you're not already crazy wouldn't that

make you crazy yeah i mean that's something that i i say this all the time but that was for me and and remains to this day but especially acutely during the trump years that's how we all felt right like that's sort of like gaslighting sort of like being like yeah i mean it's that's a little bit different but just being like but no like i it's all right there it's all right there like i'm right how am i the one who's just like getting dumped on here and you know and and i was using that as a bigger example kind of culturally I think a whole bunch of people just felt that way but also like you can just imagine being a sort of social martyr in that way yeah I uh found myself

watching a good portion of this live concert that Sinead O'Connor did in 1990 called the year of the horse and it's pretty remarkable like it's just you know this is sort of uh you know this is maybe Sinead O'Connor at her I don't I don't want to say her most creative but it's just kind of she is full of life and fire and it's a very very cool it's like an hour long I think I watched like 30 minutes but I didn't recognize any of the songs by the way because again I don't I don't know a ton about the career of Sinead O'Connor or her sort of music catalog outside of nothing compares to you but I guess the thing that I'm feeling today is kind of a little well I'm feeling Thank you.

sad that Sinead O'Connor's life is over I'm also feeling kind of a little chagrined that I never took the time to actually like find out more about her music and I was watching this uh this live concert that she did called the year of the horse it's from 1990 and it's really incredible and I didn't recognize any of the songs I watched like half of it this morning it's like an hour long but it was just she's an incredible performer and and has based on me watching this one thing A bunch of songs I don't know anything about But that I want to find out more about So I feel like For somebody who had the number one song in the world And was a very famous person I feel like Sinead O'Connor At least over here in the States For a lot of people like me Was kind of slept on As far as like her catalog Beyond Nothing Compares to You Certainly for me And I really want to like check it out Because it seems like really powerful music And I also by the way think I think part of it for me was I didn't as a kid I didn't really know how to feel about a woman who shaved her head and who was not operating exclusively for the male gaze and was also not like she all that Sinead O'Connor was doing was standing up for things that were worth standing up for but coming from a woman at that time I think I didn't really know exactly how to feel about it like I found Sinead O'Connor again I liked that song but when she was standing up for herself and standing up for the things she believed in it was strange to me because that was not something I saw a lot in the culture and it's only now at age 47 with hopefully like five percent more enlightenment that I can just realize that like she was so far ahead of her time in so many ways and was also just a kick-ass musician that I'm like I'm looking forward to finding out more about her music and I'm it's sad that it took her life being over for me to actually do that but but i think that's a

journey i'm gonna go on yeah well how do we feel about you know veves and i do this thing where we will sometimes ask our this this is a dark way of talking about celebrity but we're not we're not focusing on the mortality but sometimes when we're talking about somebody we'll say oh what's their what's the first line of their obit going to be you know i think ted danson is a good example of that although it'll obviously be cheers but when somebody then kind of later in their career comes back with another powerhouse like the good place you might start to you know there are some interesting questions about that right or you know who a good one would be would be um oh shoot i can't think of his name you love him he's in so many things we love he's in barry he's like barry's boss he's also steven root steven root office space he's in he's in a million things we love and he's and he also like he he plays a vastly different people he's news radio you know whatever here's millhouse and office yeah i mean like what is the first line you know like what define it's our way of saying like well what what is what defines this person in the in the popular imagination or the public eye um and so anyway when i read the the sad headlines yesterday about sinead o'connor and i thought it was interesting that it wasn't even the first line of the headline i'm talking about the new york times here but everywhere i think it was the sub headline was when she tore into pieces a picture of the pope on live tv it was a diff it was the defining moment of her career like people would say sinead o'connor oh maybe even nothing before they say nothing compares to you they say bald and tore up a picture of the pope right and i grew up in a in a very conservative catholic family how do you think we looked at that you know like i don't remember being like super worked up about it but also just kind of knowing that like oh yeah she's the kind of she's the kind of bad lady who tore up the picture of the pope right like or or at least maybe if i didn't think bad the one that my parents definitely don't like or my parents would be mad at that and i i think at some point as an adult i learned that that was directly a statement about the sexual abuse within the church but before I read these articles yesterday Luke I would have totally if you had tapped me on the shoulder yesterday or two days ago and said why did Sinead O'Connor tear up a picture of the Pope I would have just said oh I don't know I just like kind of standing up to powerful and somewhat corrupt institutions right or whatever I did not remember and I certainly didn't know at the time the the message that she was actually trying to get out there that it took us as a culture as a global culture decades before we saw mass prosecutions and mass headlines about the thing that she was trying to ring the bell about on SNL. And even though she rung it so loudly that it's literally the first line of her obituary and in the headlines of her obituary, she was not able to get the important message across at the time because because of the way society looked at her.

Yeah. And because of how knee jerk the society is and because people because people like Joe Pesci have a have a louder

Megaphone than her And because Saturday Night Live allowed it Like again I just can't get over that I can't get over Writing because my sense Of it is that that's oh can I throw another Thing in this was according to the Times Article that I read apparently You cannot find The NBC archive Does not feature the Performance where Sinead O'Connor tears up the Pope but it does feature Joe Pesci's monologue where he says I would give her Such a slap you want to know how far we've come and how far we have not come culturally the joe pesci talking about beating a woman that is apparently again i haven't looked this up myself but i again i believe it's in the new york times so i tend to think this is accurate that if you're searching around the snl archives on nbc you can find that joe pesci episode you can find him describing that he would slap sinead o'connor but you can't find her performance where she dares to tear up a fucking photograph So that's where we are on this Thursday.

All right, let's read some Blur's Days. I told you, Luke, that I've been a little bit frazzled. My inbox has been a little bit frazzled with stuff regarding the upcoming live show. So I'm looking at my inbox now. I'm pretty sure I have not skipped anybody. But if I did, please just email me again, andrew at tbtail.net, and I will offer many apologies and extra blurses next week. But let's start with this Blurs that I definitely received from Justin, who says, To my dearest Langley. Huh, I know, I know, I know, Langley. Langley often leaves voicemails with jokes on them on our listener line. Justin says, To my dearest Langley, Aunt Erin and I want to wish you the best of Blurs days as you turn 10 this week. Hey, we have a 10 turning 10. Kids and fantasy. I remember holding you in the hospital when you were born. Keep up the jokes. We all need them. very nice happy blurs day uh langley also cassandra says i'd like to send a blurs day wish to sarah in portland i'm super excited to be meeting up with her this saturday to go to the 4000th episode luke i'm going to that this saturday that's this saturday i plan on going

are we locked into that is that like that's definitely like that's a that's not movable because i have some other stuff yeah i double booked that i i apologize i'm going to see boy

genius at the gorge i don't know what you're doing anyway cassandra says uh to sarah in i cannot believe he just told that joke can't wait to go to the 4000th episode and celebrate her birthday in person this year it seems like not that long ago we met up on the boat i guess that's the tbtl boat have they renamed that the tbtl boat yet they have good hope you have a wonderful day my amazing friend though kind of hit the kind of hit the yeah post post on that. Hit the bass on that. Absolutely. Slap of the bass. Taurus says I'd like to wish my wife Madeline a happy 44th birthday. By the way, I think we know this Madeline. We met this Madeline in Phoenix, Arizona I believe in a basement bar many, many lifetimes ago. Taurus says happy Blur's Day to Madeline. Our son August as well as Clove and Cashew. Our two beloved dogs love her very very much. I thought their kids

for a moment I thought their kids were named Clove and Cashew and of course you know what I then thought. How do you know they're going to be boys?

We thank you for everything you do for us every day. From loving us unconditionally to making us laugh with your jokes and funny antics, you are the most beautiful and kindest woman in the world. Happy Blurs Day, Madeline. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Luke.

Jackie says, I just want to wish I... Wait, hold on. I just already messed up Jackie's message. Jackie says, I just wanted to send a quick shout out to my Blur's Day twin, Tracy. Her birthday is August 2nd. Look at me planning ahead. She's one of the best tens I know. Caring, fun, and just all around awesome. I hope to see you soon. So happy Blur's Day to Tracy, but also you see what Jackie did there. Happy Blur's Day to Jackie as well. They're Blur's Day twins. Hope you guys have great Blur's Days, respectively and together.

Respectfully, I hope you have. That's the new thing by the way Have you noticed that That's like a new kind of Way of saying like basically like Don't take this the wrong way

Oh I see yeah

But it's in the pop culture kind of lexicon now Like respectfully Yeah

Respectfully, you know, kind of like low-key or bet or other such youthful terms. Respectfully is really making a comeback.

Well, respectfully, Luke, this is my segment. So, like, could you just back off? Wait a second. What did you say? I wanted to make that joke. But what did you say the other one was bet? What does that mean? Bet.

It means you bet. So if I was like, hey, Andrew, can I do laundry at your house?

you go bet oh interesting i see i like new slang but that's too short for me because i like the longer alternatives i i think you betcha like i love a you betcha yeah i mean yeah i mean bet

is one of those things where i have to i it takes me longer to try to remember what bet means then it just to say you bet or to say sure or like no cap or like oh yeah no there's all these like Again, this is all just from TikTok. It's so sad. But I'll just be watching these things, and then people will just be throwing around these terms. And for my brain, for my very addled 47-year-old brain, to take a moment and pause and go, okay, bet. That means you bet. That means, yes, that's affirmative. Okay, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the Canadian court has ruled that you accepted this grain contract. Right? Exactly. Luke, I'm going to say something a little bit blue here. Children, cover your ears. But I'm being quite serious. You cannot use this in polite company. You can't use this in a lot of situations. But if it is an appropriate situation to say this, one of my favorite phrases in this category would be, you bet your sweet ass. Like, you can't say that to anybody, like, you know, like that you don't, you know, know very well or what have you. But is that not? I mean, that's great, right? If somebody says, you can say that to me, Luke, right? Right. I think respectfully, with consent, I can say you bet your sweet ass to you. Like if I say to you, let's say that you and I are on some journey of some sort, and I say, are we going to hit that casino tonight? And you just say to me, you bet your sweet ass. Bet your sweet ass. Which, first of all, I am giving you permission to use that kind of language around me. That's a great expression, right? Yes, it is. We can all agree on that.

Yeah, again, respectfully, with consent. As long as the person that we're talking to is cool with it.

You bet your sweet ass. It was literally a major disaster My participation today I don't know, I'm just playing drops at random

These are just things that are existing on my screen They're not a direct response to anything you've said

Okay, final blurs to hear Aaron in Port Washington, New York Do you know that area, Luke? I don't know that area at all I don't

Sounds fun, it also sounds like it's adjacent to Cabot Cove It seems like Port Washington feels like a town where a soap opera is set or where Jessica Fletcher does some of her best work.

You know what? You're right. Whenever I hear port, I always picture like a working port. And so I had it being way more industrial, like season two of The Wire. But obviously not. Ziggy at the docks. Not in Baltimore, of course. But anyway, you're right. It's probably a very beautiful, quaint little area. Anyway, that's where Aaron is. And Aaron says, please give a huge Blurs a shout out to my hermano, Doug in Bothell. I'm sad that we won't be able to get together this summer, but it was great seeing y'all last spring. Also, happy Blurs Day to Doug's five, Ellie, though she's not really a five anymore, as she will be a sophomore at Western in the fall. Whoa, I thought we were going high school at Western. That's up there in Bellingham, right? That is. It's a great school. That's where Addie went. Well, congratulations, Ellie, and happy Blurs Day to Aaron's hermano, Doug in Bothell. And that's where we'll leave the final Blursdays before the 4,000th episode, Luke.

All right. Thank you, everyone, for sending those in. Thanks, Andrew, for collating them. Again, I know you have a lot on your plate, but you love the Blursdays. You'll always make time for the Blursdays, despite all the other things you have going on in your mind related to Saturday night.

I think I'm pro-Blursday again. There was a lot of hand-wringing about the Blursdays at the beginning, but it was mostly because so many people hated it. And I don't, you know, I do enough stuff on this show that people hate that I'm not trying to have people hate me over. And so I was sort of reacting to that. But I think we've come to a place where people who want to engage with the Blursdays can engage. Those who can't can disengage and everybody's happy.

Yeah, exactly. Like if it's, you know, there's no judgment if on Thursdays, once you hear the soulful sounds of Tim Heidecker and you're like, this is not for me, you can bounce. That's all right. You know, we've already gotten the click. We've gotten the listen.

Yeah, by that point, certainly.

By that point, you've definitely, you know, you've invested enough time and then just rejoin us on Friday morning for the next episode.

episode i've always wondered how that works like i the god the fact that we're running this as a business now and i still don't know how podcasting works could be an issue but like i don't know like to count it as somebody having listened to the show how far in do they have to listen before it's counted you know like if you just hit hit play and stop for after two seconds i don't think that counts as a listen but what about 10 seconds what about a minute you know well the good

The good news is I think this is the kind of thing that you'd really need to know if we had advertisers, which we don't.

That's a good point.

So we're right now blissfully unaware of those sorts of things. But I'm sure there's, you know, somebody somewhere has developed some kind of a metric and a measuring system to know, you know, or also to what you get credit for. You said something earlier today that I actually love and I'm going to borrow from you, which is you said get it wherever you buy your podcasts. that's because you know me i'm very over saying get it wherever you get your podcast even though i am guilty of saying that in various promos and stuff sometimes like for live wire or something i'll just get a script and i just don't i don't feel like tilting against that windmill but it just feels to me like we're all everyone in the podcast industry is always saying get it wherever you get your podcast i do think it would be funny slightly misleading but funny to just say get it

wherever you buy your podcast yeah right exactly i don't even think people even say that anymore right at the end of promos like you don't even have to say that people know where podcasts are

no they still i'll put it this way it's still written it's written into many promos that i read in various things and i i sometimes i sometimes i skip it sometimes i try to tweak it uh but um now i'm gonna just say wherever you buy your podcast and send a shutter through the industry like wait what we're paying for these we're buying these what what another firewall

Another thing you could say is you can find it at your local grocer, which isn't true, but I love saying that. That's another favorite phrase of mine. I love saying that I'm going to my local grocer. That's another one you can use. By the way, I meant to say this at the top of the show, and instead I'm accidentally burying it here almost 90 minutes into the show as we say goodbye. But I want to say it once here, and hopefully people can spread the word on social media, and I will try to remind myself to say this at the beginning of tomorrow's show. But there is a little pre-TBTL 4000 get-together going on, and listener Jessamyn Specimen wrote to me. I'm reading this cold here, so I hope there are no swears in here, Jessamyn. I was wondering if you would mind.

Listen, you've already dropped the sweet-ass bomb today.

I really did, but I did not drink it. Don't act precious. Jessamyn says, I was wondering if you would mind mentioning on the pod that we're planning a TENS meet-up before the 4000th episode. It's at Big Time Brewery. That's Big Time Brewery, which is a hard word to say. That's on the Ave, University Way Northeast. You can look it up. I'm not going to read the whole address. It's on Saturday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. They are all ages, and they serve food, beer, wine, which is good because I can't stop having wine. God, I'm scared. They have older and N.A. options. Looking forward to the show. Okay, thank you for setting that up, Jessamyn, and anybody else working with you on that. But there you go. Big Time Brewery this Saturday before the 4,000th episode around the corner. It starts at 4 p.m. if you want to meet up with some 10s. Sweet.

Cannot wait to see everybody on Saturday night. It's wild, Andrew. I mean, we have two more shows, actually. We have tomorrow's show, and then we're recording a special episode to make sure the numbers check out. But we are getting ever closer to Saturday night, and can't wait to – my mom called me this morning. Well, first, my mom texted me and said, call me when you get a chance, which is not usually how my mom rolls. So I was like, oh, and I called her. And first thing she said was we stopped by the house, like the house that I'm working on. Do you need me to come and clean the kitchen for you? Oh, wow.

Which is very sweet. What does that mean, though? I mean, because you mentioned that your kitchen, I mean, the actual room is in kind of disrepair because of all the construction. Is that what your mom's referring to? Or do you also have like dishes and stuff piling up?

There's dishes piled up. There's dust from construction. I think there's a Corona with a moldering lime in it because she said not all the Corona in the world is going to clean that kitchen or something. I was like, I got it, Mom. I got it. I'm going to because when I'm living there full time, by the way, like in like a week and a half from now, whenever like basically.

Is that how close it is?

Yeah, dude. Like I have to. I mean, next, not this weekend because we're doing the 4000th, but the following weekend, I got to get out of there. And I'm going to see Big Thief and Lucinda Williams with Addy and Becca. So I've got a lot going on that weekend.

Where's that? Because I know another thing that was pulling our friends and listeners away from TBTL. In fact, I need to check in with this friend was, oh, no, I got that wrong. Never mind. It's Big Thief is playing the following weekend because it's in competition with.

Genevieve's party is what it is.

Well, that's so people are going to Edgefield. It's at Edgefield down there in Portland.

A good friend of ours. Yeah, I had that wrong. But yeah, so that's the weekend of the 5th or whatever.

Point is, I am going to be, like, very soon, I'm going to be full-time living in this hellscape disaster house. But the first thing I'm going to do, I told my mom, is, like, I'm literally going to spend a full day just, like, cleaning the kitchen from stem to stern. I have you know like actual like functioning kitchen stuff that's at my place in Portland that's all going to be up there so I'm actually kind of weirdly looking forward to it it's going to be funky but I'm going to make it I'm going to make it as livable as I can so anyway yeah that's going to be fun it's going to be an adventure it is it's going to be in yet another little plot point for TBTL and we know that's what the listeners love about the show is that it's it's ever-changing but even as it changes it remains true to its core value which is me complaining about small things like someone not letting me wear a Paris Review hat. So that's really the special sauce of the program. All right. That's going to do it for today's episode. Thank you all for listening. We will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Please join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

the more attention you pay to these things and the more diligent you are the faster you'll get better and the better you'll feel see if I'm not right thanks for your time have a good day power out