Muse

It's called the Olive Garden. It's a new Italian restaurant and it is so popular that ever since it opened, which was about one month ago, they have had 45 minute waits at lunch and dinner. I mean, people are just going in droves to this place. Now, there's a big parking lot outside. It's a very convenient suburban restaurant. And when you go in, you see what they're going for, which is they call kind of an Italian garden setting.

It's a family Italian restaurant, as Steve said. It's owned by General Mills, and they have been all over the country. They started in Orlando. They have many of these in Ohio, but this is their first one in Minnesota, and it is a hit, as you can see. It is a very open space. It seats a lot of people, over 300 people, and they do have kind of an Italian decor. They have some murals on the wall like this. They have some umbrellas on the tables that feel like an Italian courtyard, and then lots of skylight. So it is a bright, open space. The tables are nicely spaced, even though they do have room for a lot of people. You don't feel crowded in there.

Now, the menu features various regional foods from both northern and southern Italy. We're looking there, and what it says is you can get those breadsticks and salad complementary with the entrees. All you can eat. All you can eat, which is really nice. Now, there's what they call the tour of Italy. If you'd like to try a number of different things, it included grilled chicken parmesan, a fettuccine alfredo, and lasagna. When you put that together with the salad and the breadsticks, we are talking a huge, huge, and the salad is bottomless. You can keep getting more and more and more. That's great.

At lunch, you can get spaghetti with meatballs for $4.25. It's a bit more expensive. It's $6.50 at dinner. But that still is a really good deal for the size of the portions that you get. All the pastas are made here on the premises daily. They do make their own homemade pastas, and they have all different kinds, from ziti to spaghetti to ravioli, lasagna, the basics as well. There's a few, a little more exotic, including manicotti.

We have a four-point rating system, four being the best and one being the worst. And we start out with food. And for food, now this might come as a surprise because we've been raving about it. For food, I gave it two and a half. I'll tell you what, we went there twice. Some things were really good. I mean, I like their soup and their salad was good, their dessert was good. Some of the other things were just okay. And one night the fettuccine Alfredo was good, and another night it was just so-so. So I think they need some fine tuning there, about two and a half.

I gave it a two and a half also.

TBTL! Well, it's really kind of simple, see. I speak into this, and my voice is instantaneously transmitted out where it's heard by well over a hundred people.

Well, you just enjoy your coffee while I tell you a funny story about my friend's cat. His name is Mr. Wiggles, and his cat's name is Benson.

Excuse me. You have one of the largest auras I've ever seen. It's been taking up this whole room, and I just... I had to say something.

Hey, you gonna finish that freaking quartzo?

What kind of disco dancing nonsense is going on here? Hey, welcome to the party.

Well, all right, hello, good morning. Welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Definitely. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I like turtles.

Coming to you from the Riverhouse studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia River.

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

It's a little cloudy, but what's been happening so far in all of the two days that I've lived here is it's a little cloudy in the morning and then it burns off in the afternoon and we just get an absolutely beautiful day with a beautiful sunset. and I stand on the one piece of plywood that seems like it can support my body weight out on the rudimentary deck structure. I stand out there and I stare at the river and everything feels okay for just a brief moment of time, which is really all any of us are looking for in this world. Oh, some of you are looking for episode 4005 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I have good news. You've found it. That is the episode number that we are on. Speaking of this house here, I spoke on quite sort of exhaustively yesterday. I am feeling really good about being here, and I think it has to do...

Things are going to start happening to me now.

...with a mop that I purchased at the Fred Meyer in Portland, Oregon yesterday.

Clean as your mom's forehead.

I will elaborate on that. Oh, and speaking of Portland, Oregon, my former hometown, my old apartment building has done me a real kindness, which is when I was there yesterday cleaning up, it made sure to to ensure that I would absolutely not miss it even one little bit.

so aloha means hello and goodbye goodbye uh we'll talk about that as well oh and

And if you have opened up your telephone lately and looked at any kind of social media, my guess is you've been seeing things about this boat-related brawl in Montgomery, Alabama, which is, I mean, it was a whole thing. We'll talk about the whole thing. But what's been happening on the Internet afterwards is an entire vibe. The vibes will be the illest, and the jams, not ridiculous. It is a vibe that I am very much here for. I hate to say it. It was kind of cool. We have lots of audio to play for you related to that whole situation in Montgomery. Oh, and we've got this guy. Longest running Cobra of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Their grace. Their splendor. And all that intricate rigging. He is Andrew Walsh. And he is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Look, I have a little irritation here at the beginning of the show that I think you can associate with pretty closely.

So this would be a rant as opposed to a rave. Because we love to do that on this show. We love rants and raves.

Do you think?

I sent you right to Rooney Town. Was that your Andy Rooney? No, it wasn't. But I love that it sounded like that. I really thought, like, I don't like this. I really thought you were going to Rooney Town.

Let me see here. Oh, you know what? I can't play tape while the music's playing. Well, guess what, Music? You've had your time in the sun.

How about this here? It may be what everyone thinks of themselves as, but I consider myself to be an absolutely dead center, normal, average American.

Do you like swearing, Andy?

I don't use foul language, and I don't like to hear anyone else use it either.

But I'm sure you're pretty progressive when it comes to women's issues.

Do you know my opinion that a great many women have one thing in common? They spend too much time and money fooling around with their hair.

Oh, no. I mean, how am I surprised that that was Andy Rooney's? Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't remember that piece of tape specifically. And I'm shocked that that comes as a surprise to me, that he had terribly retrograde ideas around women. Because, of course, he did, based on his age, based on the famously toxic culture at 60 Minutes, based on Don Hewitt's entire bullshit. Like, of course, that was his take.

Can I tell you why I have all those? This is a little forward promo for, I don't know if we'll be playing this in tonight's episode of After These Messages, but I have all of those because sometimes when Genevieve and I are doing our podcast about commercials and I have a bunch of stuff, like I have a few commercials rattling around that I want to talk about, but they don't really fit into any kind of category. I'll just play Andy's Corner.

And now, A Few Minutes with Andy.

Old man, look at my life. I consider myself to be an absolutely dead center, normal, average American. It's my opinion that a great many women have one thing in common. They spend too much time and money fooling around with their hair. I don't use foul language, and I don't like to hear anyone else use it either. It's a fancy foul language. I bet that bottle costs more than the water. When does a rainforest lose its virginity anyway? Oh, man. Oh, that's so good.

I will tell you, though, Andy Rooney once did an entire commentary about his desk. and it's it's it's lived with me because i thought it was actually really good content and it's it's something that i think about because when i am the most out of ideas for things to talk about the things around you and sometimes it ends up being pretty good

you know what i mean like desk mug microphone was telling the story because he you wouldn't

expect it but i think his his desk was a big like slab of like not live edge uh you know would but it was it wasn't just like a standard desk there was some story behind it and i remember being a kid and watching it and thinking well i guess you can talk about anything on tv you're

like i could do that uh what was i gonna say oh um so my minor i have one minor irritation with computers um okay i think it started as andy rooney and got into fran lebowitz there i don't know what i don't know what happened in between my first word and my last word um but i have a I'm not trying to brag here, but I do have like a master password organizer. What do you call those things? Like, you know, you can sign up for them and they store your passwords for you.

We only did ads for years for them, and I can't tell you what they're called.

And that's actually why I have this one, because I started using it. And I'm using the free version of it. I'm not going to say the name, because why give anybody more opportunity to get every single one of my passwords? I eschewed these password managers. I think it's called a password manager for a long time because I thought I just have my own system and it seems scary to put all of your personal information into one device. But as you know, as things have changed, I realized I could not get along without this thing. It lives as a plug in in my browser. So most websites that I go to, it automatically logs me in and it's very handy. But I have a single master password to get into this thing. It's not the most complicated thing in the world, but I don't think that you'd be able to guess it. It's not something, you know, it's pretty random, but it is a password that I do not use for anything else. You know, you have some passwords that you use, you're like, okay, I'm going to use this one for Amazon and maybe a couple other shopping sites. Maybe I use this for my audio stuff. and you're like, I'm not going to be super precious about it. But then you have, like, your bank account.

This is one ring to rule them all.

Exactly. And, like, a bank account. I never, any kind of financial stuff, never reuse those. They're all individual. And then this one, this one ring, this one password to rule them all, it's only used in this one scenario, which is to unlock my password manager. It's password, but the A is the at. It's your name, actually. But the U is an umlaut. Yep. Yep. Uh, but, uh, anyway, so I've had the same password for this thing since I've been using it for years now. And recently, and again, keep in mind, this is like a, um, it's like a little, it's like a little extension that lives in my browser. So when I need to use it, I pop it down and it kind of comes down like a little menu bar. But for the past, I'm going to say three months or so, most of that menu bar has been unusable space for me. I have a relatively small computer screen. So often like websites don't act that great on it. i have to like move things around and it's just kind of it's not good use of space honestly so this big red warning starts popping up every time i use this thing that takes up most of the real estate of the page saying your master password is too weak and i'm trying not to take that personally honestly um but it's like okay i'll deal with it later and it's kind of like i i'll

be honest with you keep telling the computer it's not the size of the password it's how i use it

Exactly. I haven't had any complaints. Right, exactly. And so, but I'll be honest with you, I kind of like my password. Like, it's just, it's easy to remember.

I've been using it for a long time. Honestly, I know some of your, I think I know the convention, because occasionally for things you've had to send me, unless this is a wild departure from some of the other stuff you do, I want to give you props, Andrew. I do like the way that you structure your passwords they're very clever and hard to I would imagine hard to crack but memorable like they're not just a am I giving you can move this to it's not a string of nonsense digits it's kind of a it's a certain convention that I feel like you invented and I like it I admire it and I will say that

like I have conventions within conventions so the ones that I share like we've had to set up various radio things like various kind of like radio related services, you know, that are directly related to our business and us connecting and stuff. And so I make sure to kind of keep that convention somewhat separate from the rest of what I do, if that makes sense. I sort of have conventions within conventions. But anyway, all of that is to say, I kind of the other day, I got so sick of seeing this big red warning, your, your password is not strong enough. I'm like, fine, I'll update my GD password. I'll give up this one I've been using forever because this website or this service, this is not me. Okay, are we answering this? I'm so sorry. Who's calling? No, we're not. It's unknown. Oh, scam likely.

It's one of the scary. No, but it's not even scam likely. It's even scarier. When it's scam likely, then you just know. When it's unknown, it is, in fact, truly unknown. It's truly unknown.

I'd be interested to see if they leave a voicemail. Keep an eye on that channel. If they do, I'll play it on the speaker. Okay, sounds good. Anyway, so all of that is to say I finally changed my master password. I kind of used – I don't change it all that much, but I make it a little bit more complicated with some more doohickeys, some more this, some more that. I'm like, okay, there. Now this machine won't give me any warnings for like the next year or whatever. That was a couple of days ago. Guess what? My password manager is still not satisfied with my password. And I'm like, dude, I just – you know, like I went in there. I changed this for you. I'm showing growth. i'm showing willingness to change and it's still like not strong enough i'm like come on man and i know that like it's important it's looking after me it's like a it's like a stern parent who just wants to protect their child but it's starting to irritate me like what do i need to do talk like a gd robot in order for this thing to think it's a strong enough password that is very frustrating

when you finally just like dedicate the whatever 20 to 30 minutes to deal with something and then they're like still not good enough i um was going to talk about this on the 4000th episode but uh we ran out of time um but that day that we were um you know getting ready to do the show that saturday i had to call apple because i was having a situation with my computer oh that's a bad date of a situation with your computer yes exactly and um it had to do with my screen Thank you.

Like, I couldn't have multiple screens on my desktop at the same time. You know what I mean? Like, normally, you can have multiple screens, and you just have to kind of, like, click on one to make it the primary. Multiple windows. Multiple windows is, I guess, the better term. And what was happening was, every time I tried to go to, like, the program that I used to play audio drops, it would whiff all of the other windows off of the screen. So I couldn't, and it would just be that screen. And then when I try to go to something else, it was like there could only be one one thing at a time up on my desktop, which I was really worried because I was going to be toggling between various things that it was going to, you know, be a problem that night. So I ended up calling. First, I was going to take this is how Andy Rooney I am. I was going to take the computer down to the Apple store in University Village and have them look at it, which this is not a hardware problem. And then it occurred to me, I could probably call somebody at Apple about this. And I did. And the very nice person there She helped walk me through it And somehow we got it fixed But she asked me what operating system I was on I don't even know which one I'm on But I told her She audibly gasped At how old it was Yes, it's roughly from the era of Andy Rooney It is so many updates

You're like, weirdly it's Windows 3.0

It's DOS I thought of it because you were talking about security And the thing she said that did kind of actually impact me was she was like, first, when she got done picking her jaw up off the floor, she said, you know, the reason you kind of want to try to stay current is because the thing you're running has a million security holes in it.

Oh, sure, yeah.

Like, every time they update that stuff, a big part of it is trying to patch, you know, vulnerabilities. And I was like, yeah, I probably should.

Well, the most amazing part of the story to me is, unless she looked it up in front of you, did you really know what operating system you're running on your computer? Not off the top of my head, but I went to about this Mac, and I'll just tell you so people can break in.

I'm running something called Monterey.

Oh, I think I vaguely remember that. I'm not even a Mac user.

And they're on, I don't know what they're on, some other Northern California locator, Big Sur or something. and uh anyway it was like i'm like five operating systems behind but i need to and i told her i was like i was trying to i mean again this she was so helpful and great like i i felt like i made a friend for life but i was like i go this is too boring to get into but like i'm doing a radio show tonight and i need to play audio on this computer and this is not the day that i can be updating my operating system i cannot yes have a bunch of things in places where i don't know where they And she was like, I totally understand. Listen. And I told her, I'm going to do it, though, when the show's done. And that was two weeks ago.

Oops, sorry for cutting you off there. I was just going to say that I feel like, so I'm looking up Mac OS Monterey, and it's actually launched in 2021. I was expecting like a 1990.

I have the 2020 version, though.

Oh, are you being serious?

No, I'm being very serious about this Mac. When I look at it, it says MacBook Air Retina 13-inch 2020. Oh, maybe the Mac is from 2020. Okay. But Monterey might be from 2020.

So, you know, it's a few years old, and you're right. It looks like it was succeeded by Ventura. Okay. Ventura, right? Wow, they went south.

That's interesting because I felt like because Apple was, you know, sort of, I feel like Steve Jobs lived up in Northern California, and that's kind of – because, like, Monterey is, you know, kind of, I think, up north. Ventura is – that's pretty far south. That's where I was interviewing the 102-year-old toy maker recently.

I see, yeah. And then, of course, I always loved Ventura Boulevard because I would hear about it in songs.

I mean, I sing that literally when I was driving home back to the hotel from that shoot a couple weeks ago. I'm just singing Tom Petty in my head as I go by various locators. There's that, but sometimes you get the Sheryl Crow, right? All I want to do is have some fun.

Yeah, doesn't she make a reference to Ventura in that as well?

Very possible. I do believe there's a lot of Southern California references in that song. Yeah, that was all I want to do. Anyway, what were we saying? Oh, it's Leaving Las Vegas, where she mentions L.A.

Okay. All right, all right. Don't, don't, don't. That's what my grandpa used to do. He would just slip in jokes like that to see if I was paying attention to his long, boring stories. What were we talking about? Passwords. Passwords. Okay.

i got it i got it out of my system there thank you everybody good well i'm sorry that i'm sorry that you've been you've been double crossed by your password management system but i would say fight the good fight don't update the password but i want that i do need to sneak into your account yeah oh right right it's a it's a sort of um it's like it's driving me crazy every time i

open it and also i don't know if this is related or not this sounds this sounds like it can't be right, but

But, you know, there's a button on this thing that says, keep me signed in for 14 days so you don't have to sign in every time you restart your computer. And I keep hitting that button, but it won't keep me signed in. And I wonder if it's punishing me for not having a strong enough password. I'm not even kidding. Like, I'm wondering if it's overriding that because it's like this dude isn't, you know, taking his security seriously enough.

It's become sentient. I think so. It's actually kind of, it's like, it's basically like passive-aggressively trolling you.

It knows what I need more than I do, yeah.

Exactly. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Look at us going to the Top Stories at 20 minutes into the show.

That's the fastest break we've been to since we left American Public Media.

Well, I'm trying to, you know, tighten things up around here, Andrew. Okay, good. Now that I'm living in this Grey Gardens, now that I'm going full Miss Havisham on it, I'm mixing my metaphors there, but between Great Expectations and Grey Gardens.

Before the sun goes up over Santa Monica, it's Santa Monica Boulevard, it's not Ventura. Santa Monica Boulevard. I don't know why, does she say Ventura at some point though? But that's the line that I think I was thinking, I had to sing it to get it out. I do love that song.

It's a good song, it tells a story I think it's I'm not even kidding Is it Leaving Las Vegas That's based on a poem One of those two songs I think it might be Leaving Las Vegas Is based on a work of poetry That I believe Sheryl Crow was a fan of And then turned it into a song I also think that song totally slaps By the way Also Sheryl Crow, one time Michael Jackson Backup singer Oh, I didn't know that That's my favorite dazzling deet about Sheryl Crow. Interesting. All right. Just a couple quick updates on the living situation here, Andrew. I'm loving it because I cleaned yesterday. And I did not realize mentally how much my sort of like feelings of, I don't know, my sort of antipathy about this place was just based on everything being flippin' dusty as all heck. so i like i spent hours and hours just like sweeping and shop vacing and then mopping when i got so i had to go to portland to clean my old apartment and on my way there i picked up like a i've got a swiffer here this is a real like um you know uh cleaning podcast content for you and you've probably done entire like seven part limited series on these swiffer deals, like the Swiffer mops. Have you guys talked about that on Spotless? Well, we've talked about

various Swiffers, but also just recently in the last episode, we were talking pretty in-depth about various mops, because Hannah, my co-host, has been very anti-mop for a long time, having used a lot of string mops as a janitor back in the day, and so she has strong feelings about mops. She has a new mop system that I'm very excited about. I'm interested in hearing if it's similar to yours. Did you name that episode mop tops or top mops had a funny name for it and i'll tell you what it was in just

a second um i don't like those string mops by the way those make no sense to me those feel like those are the applets and cotlets of cleaning like applets and cotlets were a candy when we didn't have good candy mop in the name of love was the name of the show that's you asked asked and answered that's a very very solid name I feel like those string mops I've never I have never been able to understand the idea behind them it's like let's just push this around like let's just redistribute this whatever this is so funny

Hannah's description is that exactly what Hannah Hannah's description of this episode is I hate regular mops but this mop is different this mop doesn't just push water around that's literally which but that's exactly it that's the problem with those with those string mops now i have mops that i've i'm i'm a sponge mop guy so i don't know if that's what i got andrew you did okay so not a picture and i'm looking at one is it a swiffer brand or is it not okay okay good yes like this is dunk into a bucket yeah this is what i've come

and it has the like thing that you can like wring it out like it's got the little like yes lever on it okay okay by the way those are hard to find there was one of them left at the fred meyer that

i went to what brand did you get is it oh cedar because i think they might be um phasing them out because i had an oh cedar one forever and then recently i couldn't get mop heads for it and then they were like 40 on amazon and they were going to get here by my 80th birthday so i had to get

a whole new mop it's in the other room and my headphones don't stretch that far but um uh

the

The thing about this, like, so living in apartments, I have been, I was, I've been bamboozled, Andrew, by the Swiffer, the whole, like, the Swifferization of cleaning, which is buy this thing and then buy a lot of replacement things to put on it. And I swear to God, the commercials got to me. There was, there would have been a time where I would have been like, yeah, Swiffer, of course. In fact, the other day I bought a brand new, like, package of wet, like, pre-soaked Swiffer thingies, if you know what I mean, like, that you kind of, like, have you used one of them? Do you know how it works, by the way? Like, you poke it, you put the Swiffer down on something, and then you have to press the disposable part into these little weird, like, little depressions that it kind of gets stuck in. Yeah, I don't love those. The kind I have, which is a little bit souped up, is the kind that you put a dry sheet down, but then it's got a trigger and a bottle of juice. Yeah, and I squeeze the trigger and then juice shoots out the front of it. That's my favorite. A trigger and a bottle of juice is my plan for Friday night. Let me tell you what. Actually, that's not true. I'm going to see Explosions in the Sky in downtown Portland on Friday night. What is that? It's a band, I've been told. Oh, okay. Um, my friend, uh, my friend, let me see, JD, I'm trying to use this proper nomenclature from the Stack of Dimes podcast, JD and Thunder. Uh, he is a fan and he's coming down and he got a ticket, so I'm going with that. Oh, nice. But, so I was, uh, I have been like using this kind of various Swiffer products for the last 10 years of my life and in spending a lot of money, like that little package of the, of the like pre-wetted things, it's gotta be like 10, 12, no, it's gotta be like 20 bucks or something. I mean, it's not affordable, and I was trying to use it as I was cleaning up the apartment, and it just wasn't – it wasn't really doing the job, and so I thought, let me get a real ass mop, the kind that you dunk in a bucket that's a sponge, and then you do the very satisfying thing of, like, compressing the sponge with the lever. Let me ask you a question. You said you don't know the brand, but I think I can suss this out. Is it red, green, or white? Well, here's the thing. It has a brush on one side. Yeah, they usually do. And the mop, oh, is that typical? Again, I've been out of the game. I thought that was a new invention because I haven't purchased a mop like this in probably 10, 15 years. You can't picture the color of the handle of the mop? Because if it's red, it's Ocedar. If it's green, it's probably Libman. And if it's like my new one, I have a white one that is Mr. Clean branded. I want to tell you about this. It's definitely not Mr. Clean, and it's not Ocedar. I think, is it possible it's yellow? Is yellow a color? Oh, you're just messing with me. I don't have an answer for that shit. All right, you know what? Hold on. Okay. Give me a second. All right.

Hold on, hold on. Well, sorry, I can't find it, Andrew.

Oh, my God, what a disappointment. Wow. Yeah, all that for nothing. How do you lose your mop so soon? I don't know if you've seen my recent Instagram videos, but this is a pretty big house. It's a pretty nice place. it's sitting down by the river contemplating it is exactly and it's feeling okay for just a moment um here's the point i after all of my sweeping here i then mopped which was kind of a little bit um it was a little bit of a weird feeling because what i was mopping was basically plywood like i was mopping a subfloor yeah like a thing that is going to be a thing that's going to be underneath the real floor of this house and part of why i've just been like letting everything go to seed here is because it just felt like why am i going to clean why am i going to shop vac the interior of a wall that currently has no sheetrock on it when eventually it's going to have sheetrock like cleaning something that is never going to be visible to other people felt odd to me but i broke down and did it yesterday and again i went around and i mopped everything with this mop and it is amazing i came downstairs this morning and it was just like the house it it sort of smelled different it looked different it felt different under my bare feet it felt like this is a place i could conceivably live because of the mopping now it's not plywood though right it's not that rough of a surface you couldn't mop that it would just soak in so it's like something that is well the mopping was really to get this very fine layer of dust so it was like i was more like wetting the floor if that makes sense like there weren't stains on it it was just i would sweep and sweep and sweep and there would always still somehow be like a sort of like the floor had a biome of dust yeah that i couldn't quite get rid of and then just running this mop over everything it somehow wetted down the last little micron of dust so that now there's not dust kicking up ever but this was after shop vacing everything, aggressively sweeping everything with a variety of brooms, by the way. I now am the owner of many, many different kinds of brooms. That's nice. Push brooms. Do you know they sell a $21 broom at the Safeway near my house? I did not know it was $21 when I bought it. Is it a push broom? No, it's whatever you call a non-push broom. Yeah, straight broom or straight hand. Yeah, straight broom, and I guess it's made out of recycled something, and it just aesthetically pleased me the most, and I grabbed it. I was like, you know, it's one banana, Michael. Look at it cost. And I get up to the self-checkout. It's like $21. I was like, that's a lot for a broom and dust pan.

It really is. Yeah, that's a rare thing. So you had to walk it back, huh? How do you mean? So you actually didn't know how much it was until you took it to the checkout. I probably could have. And then I bought it. I mean, I could have probably looked at it. Oh, you did buy it. Oh, I did. Oh, I thought you were saying you put it back.

Oh, okay. No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I bought it because what am I going to walk? Am I going to take a 40-second walk, Andrew, and get a different broom? Right. So, no, I bought it, but I was shocked at the price. But anyway, so I have, like, many brooms here now, and I have this mop of unknown provenance. And I'm feeling good. I am feeling very good today. I was feeling kind of hesitant yesterday. Today, and also I just cleaned. Oh, I did exactly what you said. I soaked the dishes all day yesterday, and then I washed them at night once they were properly degreased.

These are dishes that were dirty and sitting in your dishwasher for a long time, and then you realize you couldn't use your dishwasher. So you had to do the thing that I hate. Like sometimes I say, like, the reason I don't like dishwashers, even on a small kind of a short-term basis, is it's where we put dishes when they're dirty only to take them back out again and wash them by hand after the food has crusted out to them.

Yeah, exactly. And so I – but first I cleaned out the sink. So the sink has never been cleaner in the entire time that I've been the owner of this house, including probably when I did the walkthrough. I just cleaned the living Tweedle out of the sink, and I was listening to Levitard. I was really channeling my inner Andrew yesterday. I'm like soaking the dishes. Then I cleaned the bathroom aggressively. My fingers still smell like bleach. It's kind of a good feel. It's kind of a good smell. Like, I'll catch a little whiff of bleach. I, like, I cleaned the leavens of hundreds of contractors out of this bathroom in this house. I always had this move when folks were working here. I was like, hey, by all means, use the bathroom, please, if you need to. And then they would always demure. They'd go, no, we're fine. We'll just hold it or we, you know, whatever. Like, I think it's this unspoken thing where, like, if you're working on a house, maybe it's seen as kind of like a nice gesture, polite gesture to not use the bathroom. because you've got dirty work boots on or whatever. I was always very adamant, like, hey, just use the bathroom. Who cares? Everyone always said they weren't going to use the bathroom. I cleaned the toilet yesterday, Andrew. Let me tell you something. They used the bathroom. They used it. And anyway, part of my hesitance about cleaning that toilet was like, I'm going to clean a toilet that's been used by many, many people who aren't me. This is gross. I just broke down and did it yesterday. Bleached the living heck out of that whole quadrant of the house. And again, I just it's it's remarkable. I'm not telling you anything because, you know, you're a you're a person who loves to clean. But just the change in my like and I I sprayed down every surface in the kitchen, including all of the cabinets, wiped them all down, you know, wiped out the insides of all the drawers and everything. It's just like I could almost just live in this house as is right now. I don't know if I need to finish the project now because I find it I find it so actually tolerable just from making it not scummy.

This is also going to be nice. I don't think you have any trips on the horizon or at least in the immediate future right now. But like the next time you go to do a story for CBS or whatever, at least you'll be coming back to a place that feels livable to you. Because I think it would be a real mental, a mental F if you were if you were just sort of like on a plane and just kind of like, I don't even know if I really want to go back to that place right now.

Totally. And the thing that's also helping that kind of mental calculation for me is how annoying my apartment building was being yesterday as an organism when I got there. First of all, the AC was broken in some way. So it was probably like 95 degrees in the lobby, in the hallways. Also, both elevators were out of service. Thankfully, I didn't have a whole lot left in the apartment. I just had like cleaning stuff and the contents of the refrigerator that I was saving. So I threw out a lot of stuff, but then I also brought a cooler, and I put some perishable items that I could use here in there. But even that, I had to lug that down, I think, nine floors when you account for how low in the – parking garage my parking spot was you know so it was like five floors down and then three more floors to get to the parking and it's just i'm roasting and i'm just like sweating the elevators don't work i'm coming and going from the apartment because i'm taking some stuff to the trash chute and the door of the apartment you know it it tends to slam which i try very hard normally or i did when i lived there i tried to not let that happen a bunch but i also just felt like this is poor design like these doors are set up in this way and um upon i don't know which one it was one of the kind of like last going in and out of the apartment the door kind of slammed and my neighbor the one who wrote me the notes about my inappropriate cooking yeah when you weren't even home and no when i was with you and john at like my father's place yeah yeah and and the the

blasting quote-unquote blasting of sean colvin which i believe exactly at a very gentle level as most people do enjoy the the artistry of sean colvin exactly um so i i had some incidents where

i would be walking through the hall and i would hear the door would slam in a weird way like nobody came out of the apartment the door would just like slam and the person in that apartment would yell fuck you and i didn't know if they were fighting with someone or if they were experiencing a sort of maybe um a psychotic break i didn't know what was going on what i found out yesterday andrew was they were yelling at me yeah you because you've mentioned that you kind of thought that they had that was my theory but i never had confirmation because previously it was just them yelling fu which could mean a lot of things they could be yelling at um you know xfinity for making them listen to a very long verbal contract sure yeah um but yesterday i finally got like i got closure on the matter because they yelled stop fu stop slamming your effing door which again the irony was she would slam her door to emphasize this so in other words my door would slam and i think her response was walk to her door open her door six inches slam her own door and yell at me through the door yeah so i don't actually you know i don't think it's a i i thought maybe it was a mental health thing i think she's just very annoyed when that door

really you don't you don't think that it or could be both i mean they're not mutually i mean yeah

Yeah, exactly. I guess you're right. Two things could be true. But it was more concrete what was happening, which is this person gets annoyed when the door of my apartment slams, which, again, I would try I would try to make that not happen. But also it's like, I don't know, complain to Graystar. Yeah. Like if they design the doors these ways, like I don't think it's I don't think it's reasonable. Because, by the way, I hear everyone else's doors in that hallway when I live there slam. They're set on, like, you know, whatever the resistance on them or the self-closing. It's, like, too much. And I hear it all the time. And I'm just like, well, that's life in this apartment building. If I disliked it enough, I would call the front desk and go, can we put some kind of padding on these? Like, this is making me crazy. But that was not what this person chose to. They just chose to slam their own door and yell F you to me through the door. So as I'm wheeling my little cart with all my last few things from the apartment and just like sweat is dripping down the crack of my hindquarters and this person in the building who I live next to is yelling through the door, F you. I'm just like, I am not going to miss this. I am going to my house, which granted is mostly not livable, but no one's yelling at me about the door slamming. I got another, again, not to promote Amazon, but I got another Amazon delivery today, Andrew, of mini-to-mini cables just sitting right there on my porch. And again, this is privileged, by the way. I realize that. There's a lot of privilege around it. I mean, I sound like I'm complaining, but there's also the privilege that I was able to purchase a home in this economy. There's the privilege that I can order things from Amazon. There's a ton of privilege around this, and I want to just be cognizant of that. but i forgot how nice it is to not live in super close quarters with a bunch of people you don't know because the other thing that happened was i had all this stuff with me and i was passing people in the hall and i was trying to carry it down the stairs and literally like no one this is just maybe everybody was having a bad day because the elevators were broken no one i passed said hi to me offered to help me carry anything not that i would have taken them up on it but it was like I also think this building was full of a bunch of, like, people that I don't vibe with, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, because you could make a romantic argument. Because, I mean, on a policy level, I'm pro-density. On a personal level, I always wanted to rent before I had any kind of political feelings about or policy feelings anyway. Like, I just always liked the freedom of moving around. I kind of like the idea of, oh, well, there's a bunch of people and we're all in this together. Like, there's an argument to be made for that as well. But if you kind of don't like the people, there are good living situations and bad living situations.

Even as a renter, the last place that we rented, we were lucky enough for the first time in a very, very long time, if not the first time as an adult, I had no shared walls or ceilings or floors. And so like even even that was a rental property. But at the end of the day, when the business is closed up at the end of the day from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. or whatever, there was literally no consequence for playing music loud or not that I used to get in trouble with my neighbors for that kind of thing. I'm not that big of a rock and roller, but like sometimes you just want to blast music and not have to worry about it or listen to Sean Colvin at a recent decibel level and not worry about it.

Or like yesterday, I was cleaning, I was sweeping out, I guess you'd call it the mudroom or something. This house is just so weird. I do not understand what they were thinking when they built it. Part of it is that I think it was a teeny, teeny, tiny cottage built in the 1930s, and then over time, various people that lived here added on to it. None of it up to code. I mean, it makes no sense from a feng shui perspective. But anyway, I was sweeping out this weird entry area, which, by the way, is also where the refrigerator is. The refrigerator is not inside. The call is not coming from inside the house. Yeah, that sounds weird. Because the people that lived here before me, who still receive mail from the NRA, wanted a refrigerator that was so huge it wouldn't fit in their kitchen. And their decision matrix was, we'll take the refrigerator and we'll go out on the porch every time we need to get half and half. But anyways, I was sweeping that out. And I didn't have a shirt on Because I live here alone And no one can judge me Only God Or the Nest camera Which did judge me harshly, Andrew I was looking at the history On the camera And have you ever accidentally caught A shot of yourself shirtless? It is breathtaking It was really, really a wake-up call for me But anyway

I haven't taken off my shirt in 17 years

I was So I was sweeping, and what happened basically was I was about to jump in the shower. So I was in shorts and a really kind of like a T-shirt that I'd been wearing for like two days that was really sweaty. And I was going to jump in the shower, so I had taken the shirt off and put it in the hamper. And then I was like possessed to sweep out the entryway for some reason. So I'm in shorts, no shirt, I'm sweeping, and then I had to get all this debris out to the garbage can. Anyway, this is a thing I can do. again the nest cam i've got to like set it up so that it doesn't film me when i'm shirtless because that's i will never be able to unsee that image but just the fact that like that's a thing that could also happen here and there's no one around to see it and no one cares the the level of like privacy and autonomy that i'm feeling because you know it's been it's been uh i don't know three years or something since i went from living in a freestanding home to living in apartments to back to this and for all of the downsides of this place that i've been very you know overly descriptive about i'll take being able to just like walk around and blast my sean colvin shirtless yeah exactly oh man can i come over tonight can we talk andrew about this incident in montgomery alabama where you had a uh like a kind of a tourist boat i think it's like one of those kind of like old-timey maybe almost like paddle wheel there's probably a paddle wheel on it called the harriet 2 it was out for a little tour around uh whatever the waterways of montgomery are and they were coming back to dock the boat you know where everyone had gotten on and there was this pontoon boat that was sitting there blocking them and listen as a sketchy boater myself i know i have tied up my boats on various docks that i'm not supposed to but the deal is if somebody says can you move it you gotta like you gotta hop to it it's a giant tourist boat and you're exactly they're not they're not improvising like this is a dock space that is reserved for i believe i listened to an interview with the captain of the boat i think he said it's a half million pound boat jeez like the boat this boat is designated for this this dock space like that's the whole thing it's where people got on the boat it's where they're going to get off the boat you need to like if you're going to like try to park your pontoon boat there you need to be ready to move it at the drop of a hat which they weren't the captain of the boat over the pa system multiple times said i need you to move this pontoon boat by the way this captain said he's had issues with the same pontoon boat yearly like he knew where yes these people are apparently from selma and they have This is an interview I listened to of a local radio station with the captain of the Harriet 2 today. So I'm just repeating what he said. He said every year these people come down in this pontoon boat and one time they stole his gun.

golf cart what i thought this was just a random like i'm a pig parker and then i don't like to be told to move my boat this is like not according to what the captain of the harriet 2 said on local alabama radio what the heck i don't understand this story i don't think there's any story that i've reviewed and read you told me you wanted to talk about this today i was unfamiliar with it so i went and i read some news stories which i know is not the best way to kind of capture something that has gone viral but then i watched a whole bunch of different videos of this thing And I still have no idea how I feel about this. I've totally missed the cultural phenomenon, which is the Montgomery boat fight.

See, the way that it appeared to me was via TikTok. And that's a total it's so interesting because I haven't even read one news article about it. All I've seen are videos of the incident and people reacting to the incident and to videos of the incident. And I've seen it purely from the cultural perspective and 0% from the sort of hard news reporting or whatever. But I do feel – I mean I did listen to that whole interview with the captain. So I do feel like I'm – again, based on what he said, I feel like I'm fairly read in on the story as we like to say. But so what I really what I started to see yesterday on my TikTok feed was primarily black people just cavelling, just absolutely celebrating something that they were calling the Montgomery Boat Brawl. And I saw probably 10 TikToks about elements of this story before I even knew what the story was, before I knew. People were talking about chairs, people were talking about hat tosses, people were talking about a guy swimming to the dock from the Harriet 2 That and the hat toss are the things that really stood out to me I was just hearing all this stuff around it and I didn't even know what the thing was I just knew people were excited about it and they were people who I sort of, I guess, I tend to align with What I wasn't seeing was Jason Aldean fans celebrating this incident And what I was seeing was primarily black folks celebrating. And I was like, I'm guessing this is – I'm guessing I'm going to agree with that sentiment about this event. And then I did do a little more research and found out more about it. So for folks that are just hearing about this, the boat could not park because the pontoon boat was blocking it. The captain literally said, I'm calling the police. He said this over the PA system. And then the dudes that were standing around the pontoon boat, whose boat it was, they just left. But left their boat there. They didn't leave in the boat. Left the boat there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for clarifying. They just, like, left the dock. So this was part of the thing that I only realized when I listened to the interview with the captain was this guy who ends up being kind of at the center of this whole thing worked on the boat. He was a first mate, I believe, on the Harriet 2, which sounds like some kind of like this follow up to the Wreck of the Edmund. The first mate of the Harriet 2. It's a sad story, but an important one. But he – so I think what happened was they sent a small boat. They sent a – it's called a tender over to the dock so that a couple of employees from the boat, or at least this one guy, could move the pontoon boat ever so gently, by the way. I mean this is like a free service. This is like free valet parking or something for your boat. Like your boat is blocking this. It's not supposed to be there. We're not going to like put the boot on it. We're going to actually just like untie it from the cleats.

We're going to gently move it down the dock and retie it so we can park our half million pound boat that is filled with tourists who are ready to disembark, by the way, and who at some point were chanting, move, get out the way, get out the way, bitch, get out the way.

These are the people. These are the people who paid to be on this boat tour coming back. And now the boat can't park. And it immediately becomes a bunch of people scream. Like I saw the first video I saw was people on the boat that's trying to park videotaping videotaping. You can tell I'm young on their phones as as attentions continue to escalate. And it's very clear that everybody on the boat is behind this first mate who's now on the dock trying to move this pontoon so their big boat can park. I'm just going to keep on reiterating things In case people haven't seen it

So he gently is moving the boat And then all of a sudden These rednecks come Hustling back to the dock They come back from wherever they were And they confront him And they're being very physically aggressive And he just keeps pointing to this huge boat We have to park this huge boat Here, this is for us And it goes on and on And more people are gathering around him And eventually it becomes obvious that these uh these redneck boaters are they want to get physical they want to fight this guy and it's like one dude and it's like i think eight or eventually eight or nine

like sunburned shirtless rednecks yeah and let's and you brought up race so let's talk about this too so first of all there's like kind of the people who work for the boat are all wearing blue shirts that say i think Thanks for listening.

staff or something on the back so he's he's in a blue shirt but he's a black man kind of a big guy right and he's like and critically andrew he's wearing a hat and at the beginning he's wearing a hat yeah and he's out there kind of alone on this dock while i'm gonna say he's fighting with maybe it starts with two but quickly kind of becomes four white guys so that's kind of why the race kind of comes in here you get the impression that a lot of the people on the boat That's trying to park are black people And you have these white pontoonists Exactly

And they're First of all they're just being assholes With their boat and then They're ganging up and beating up A person who is just trying to do their job And when it becomes apparent to The first mate of the Harriet 2 That shit is about to go down He pulls what will go down In history as one of the more epic moves He takes his hat and he Just throws it up in the air

like we're doing this into the water he like throws it like when a referee is uh out of flags and they have to throw somebody has stepped or somebody has stepped out of bounds they throw their hat in the like he's like because in this is not before somebody's touched him this is like he's things are heated things are heated but then one of these white guys kind of throws himself into this guy right and then and then he's like oh really and then the hat goes flying but again

And it's like a beacon. One of the things that's been meme-ified so much is this hat being like a beacon, like the bat signal. Like he throws it up in the air. I've seen many memes where it freezes and it's sending out a vibe to black folks to come get this guy's back. There is a term that I've seen applied to this that I won't use as a white person, but it's like a beacon for black folks to be like, okay, all hands on deck, so to speak. So he throws his hat in the air. he's fighting with all these guys and the boat is now a close enough to the dock everyone's watching this from the boat obviously that uh a guy i think he's like i also saw this kid who's 16 apparently dives into the water and starts swimming from the boat to the dock to like get you know sort of like get this guy's back and eventually what happens is a whole number of folks i think some of them from the boat uh black folks all kind of like uh mostly uh black young black men kind of sort of posse up if you will and come to at least make this a fair fight and then the fisticuffs are thrown uh you have the rednecks are in my opinion very much given justice uh a couple of guys a couple of white guys uh come up like they want to fight and then they realize that they're now all of a sudden it's like not nine against one it's like nine against nine and then they turn around and try to leave and then the guys who come down somebody said if you show up you're gonna throw up like you can't come to the fight and then decide it's not for you and walk away like um i want to just play some of the tape that i've been seeing on uh tiktok this is a guy uh who uh let me i have i want to credit everybody who i'm gonna play This is a guy who goes by the name of BamBam2825. I'm assuming BamBam is a reference to Bama. But this is a little context about Montgomery, Alabama, which, of course, is very famous for having been part of the Montgomery bus boycott. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Montgomery and gave a great speech there, which, by the way, more on that in a moment. Anyway, this is a guy giving some context about what was going on in Montgomery that day.

As a person who was there when this first popped off, there's background information that I have to tell you guys. These white people chose the worst time and place to jump a black man. This happened at Montgomery's Riverfront at the tail end of a back to school event that MPS was putting on.

I think that's Montgomery Public Schools, by the way, MPS. Oh, some of this tape I'm going to play might have some swears or words that you and I wouldn't say, Andrew, but just heads up to everybody.

In one of the few cities in America that are predominantly black. So they beat up a black man in front of anywhere from 100 to 300 mid-income to low-income black people who are already irritated because they've been in the sun. Their kids have been dragging them around all day. There ain't no parking, so they know they've got to walk like three more blocks to get to their car. And now they have an outlet to release their anger.

that will come up as a theme too by the way this has become again just based on my tiktok algorithm a very very sort of crystallizing event for folks again often it would seem black folks who are personally and i think this makes sense deeply offended by that jason aldean song and the video

that went with it because of course i don't have that context what is you don't have to try this

in a small town con. Do you know anything about the story on that? I've only been hearing that related to this, and I didn't know what that meant. So this complete sack of shit named Jason Aldean put out a song called Try That in a Small Town. And it's just like your classic, very, very lowest common denominator, like bro country song, where it's all the things that you can't do in a small town, which is like you can't carjack someone. You can't, you know, whatever they think goes on in big cities. right and the song was actually kind of not very popular when it came out it didn't make any impression but then they shot a video for it and the video involved showing black lives matter protesters and also i believe he was in front of a courthouse somewhere where there had been lynchings back in the day like and so it's and you know people were rightfully offended by this whole thing uh and so of course that has made it now the number one country song in america because if there's one way to own the libs it's listen to like really shitty country music straight up racism just take like a song that wasn't good in the first place but now that you feel like somehow if you listen to it it will make the u.s women's soccer team less woke yeah um which is a whole yeah i mean the culture war that we are in my friend is just every day they find new depths to plumb on it but anyway so that song has been very much in the conversation lately And, you know, I find it offensive as like a white dude. I can't imagine being a black person and having a guy who's filming his video in front of a place where lynchings have happened saying, try that in a small town. So this whole thing, this whole Jason Aldean thing has come up a lot in reference to this Montgomery boat situation. Here's somebody called MGT Entertainment talking about, I think, why this for him felt like such a revelatory moment. because the police did show up and this is incredible they arrested the white people or at least detained i don't know what their legal status is but you had a moment after this brawl where the sunburned redneck presumably jason aldean fans were cuffed sitting on the dock and again i'm this is you know coming from my position of huge privilege i can only imagine what it must have felt like to be a black person seeing these roles reversed in a way that is just so rare in this country. I mean, this is a guy talking about kind of what it meant to him. This guy goes by MGT Entertainment.

Look, y'all don't understand. This picture is iconic.

The picture he's referencing is the dudes with the handcuffs and the black people not in handcuffs in this event.

It's the first time in my entire life that I see a group of black people beat the shit out of a group of white people and the cops is standing behind us in alabama we must have shifted dimensions we we must too because this shit history fucking history by the

way that's where it cuts off andrew welcome to tiktok that is not me that is just where this

man's decided to stop this video as this is yeah as long time like not stodgy but public radio producers you and i are like still in this late stage still like still coming to grips with the

idea that audio just ends like that so uh so this is you know obviously become also as i mentioned super duper memefied um this is somebody named april louise who is um on tiktok and she is Modifying the Maya Angelou Poem Still I Rise To be about The Alabama boat incident And I believe she's also sort of slightly doing A Maya Angelou impression So take a listen

You may refuse to move your little boat Though I asked you more than twice You may attack me with wet Skinned reproach But like the Alabama tide I will rise Did you not see the hat I tossed Did it not ring out as a clue That before it fell upon the soil Fifteen Would descend upon you There was no need for weaponry Just fists And the will to fight And like Goldilocks in your fairy tales The chairman found one that was just right A toast to Mr. Seamurder Who swam to my rescue Through hell and high waters When you go low we will rise to meet you surprise don't try it we rise you've also got a guy named tim

shropshire on tiktok who does comedy who uh basically is giving a speech about the montgomery boat incident in the style of dr martin luther king jr giving his speech about the montgomery bus boycott.

We saw what happened in Montgomery.

My brothers and my sisters, we saw what happened in Montgomery Where there was four white boys and four white girls Ganging on one black man We want you to know that trouble don't last always Trouble don't last always Because as the young man threw his head in the air It seemed like it was the universal sign that i'm going in for the fight i may get beat up in this fight but i i need your help and y'all help came running from the east from the north from the south from the west and from the river because somebody's winning that's something that you have to know about black people we we gonna talk about you when you act like you done kidnapped yourself but by the way

I think that's a reference to a woman in the South who claimed she was kidnapped. She's a black woman. And she claimed that she was following a toddler walking on the side of the highway. And then while she was trying to save this toddler was kidnapped, she disappeared for like two days. And then it turned out that, as you might imagine, that whole story was made up. There was a toddler walking by the highway. So I think I think he's referencing that incident, which happened in the South recently, just for some context.

Come to Galga when you swing on us. Come on, somebody. Free and last, free and last. Thank God Almighty. I didn't have the pay to watch this fight. That was better than Smiths and Crawford. That was a knockout in the first round.

At the end, he's talking about some boxing match that I didn't see. But this is the real thing, Andrew, that I think is the big takeaway from that whole incident is that we may have found the song of the summer. It is by somebody who goes under the name G-Mac Cash. And it is about, I swear to God, like this song came out within like an hour of the incident going viral. This happened all over the weekend, right? This was a weekend event? Maybe. I mean, I saw it yesterday. Yeah, I'm guessing it probably happened. That would make sense to folks being out, you know, doing touristy things or whatever. This is G-Mac Cash rapping about the Montgomery brawl. And I think this is legitimately kind of a banger.

So now we got a prize. Let me tell y'all what really happened. Heard they was jumping on my cousin. Let me off. Let me off. Cuzz came out the water like, let's get it cracking. Up came with the chair like, I got some ash. Cuzz came no shirt like, I got some ash. I got him. Even the women getting hit like, damn, what happened? Hey, this shit was kind of lit. Like, damn, it's cracking. I even seen a rock bottom like, damn, this wrestling. Seen a couple of them boys go night-night. And we got the first black man to swim to a fight. Salute. If you mad at this song, don't mention me. But fuck that. That chair going out in history. and i'm really proud of y'all montgomery broad not one but i'm on andrew that's where the song

ends i need to i need to let you know that that is how the song ends on tiktok these kids these

days they're they they hate fade outs they hate they hate ring outs it's just gotta end as an up cut that's the true story here the true story is about i mean sure like you don't want to you don't want to downplay the cultural significance but also this is a story about parking at the end of the day and that's that's your way into the story how did how did somebody not just yell uh

real polite boat um the security guard or the first mate i should say he did have a note in pink ink that he was trying to fix to the pontoon boat uh originally speaking of me did you did you

see the andrew in this video did you identify the andrew in this video because there is so an andrew in this video maybe an andrew on his best day honestly i don't know maybe not what Who do you identify with in the video? So I was a little confused. I think I've got this now, though. At the very beginning, there's a very long video that shows, it's like a full three minutes, that shows the lead up to the first punch by the white guy on the pontoon boat against the blue shirt, the black man who's trying to move the boat, right? But there's another white, and it's very far away, and shaky cell phone camera, But it looks like a white teenage, well, maybe not a teenager, but maybe a white young man in his 20s or something. And he's wearing. He's trying to de-escalate, right? He's wearing like, yeah, he's wearing like a life preserver. He has kind of Jack Harlow hair. Oh, I didn't notice that. I didn't see it that close. Kind of curly, kind of like, yeah. But I'm seeing him. And at first, I'm just kind of like, I was seeing it as kind of like literally black and white, right?

But then upon rewatching, I'm like, oh, I see. Wait, he's wearing a blue shirt. He's just got this vest on over it. He's with this boat that's trying to park. Yeah. But he's not doing much. He's just sort of like he's clearly from the videos I saw. And maybe I'm just putting this on there. It looks like he's there to support the man who eventually gets punched first. But he's not doing much. And he seems like he just does not seem like the type of guy who wants trouble or knows how to deal with trouble. and then when the fight finally breaks out there's one moment where he comes in kind of from off camera and goes to maybe pull one of what we're calling the rednecks off of the guy that they're all basically punching on the ground now he goes to pull one of the white guys off and the white guy just sort of like turns around and gives him a look and he goes scampering away and I was like that's me that would not be you I didn't do anything I tried but I'm too scared I can't get involved in stuff like this

if people were jumping on me you would defend me what did you do tell me what you did I told some people they need to move

their pontoon boat for my job yes of course but no it's just like I saw that kind of like yeah he's like I want to help here and I do not like seeing my co-worker maybe my boss whoever this is getting his ass kicked in a group by a group of people like it's a pretty horrific I'm not great with violence it's a pretty horrific thing to see but anyway he kind of goes and he's like okay that's all i got like the guy basically the the pontoon guy kind of hisses at him and he goes

running away i'm like i feel you man i think again i think you have much more courage in you hopefully we never have to test this theory no let's not which is one of the good things about me not owning really any more boats i mean i do still own one but it's just parked in the driveway right now on and it's not seaworthy as long as we stay away from the boats i don't think we're have to test your theory my theory that you do have some real courage in your heart stay away from the boats they hate the boats this man hates boats here i go once again with the email

every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female

all right emails and or v-mails yes i got a voicemail from our friend maggie middle shelf will see will see yes i was just pausing is it will see or will z let's focus on the maggie middle you know what andrew we'll see when we ask her next time we see maggie that was a that is a really good joke wordplay and this is in regards to you talking about your situation with bubbles the cat in the new house how you want to keep bubbles as an indoor cat and keep bubbles safe um but also it could be hard to kind of keep her contained in that house potentially um and so we got this voicemail from maggie about her experience with cats who um we're kind of indoor outdoor cats now i i want to say that this is kind of a sad story i know we have some listeners who um are like very very sensitive when it comes to stories about pets and pet loss um and and rightfully so so i wanted to say that if you're somebody who is um you know kind of sensitive to that stuff maybe this isn't the voicemail for you but uh i found this very interesting um take it away maggie hello smart guys i think that maggie doesn't maggie doesn't like to say hey dummies so i appreciate that maggie that's sweet of you i appreciate that

Hello, smart guys. I'm so worried about bubbles. We moved to this beautiful home in Lake Stevens, and I had a beautiful orange fluffy cat, and he was indoor-outdoor, and one day he didn't come home, and I was like, oh, crap. And so it was so sad. And then I got another cat, and he was so wonderful and just so smart and just as cute as can be. Oh, my God, loved him so much. And then I got another kitty also, and they were indoor kitties. But then they decided they wanted to go outdoors, and one day the boy did not come home. And we do have eagles flying overhead, and we also have coyotes at night. But he disappeared during the day. And then my sweet little girl went missing like six months later. So sad. Can't stand it. So I go, two years, no cats. I'm not going to have a cat. Then some friends found this really sweet black and white cat that needed a home. So I took him home, and he was going to be my indoor kitty. And then he liked to be outside, but he was really smart. And I know he's so smart. he will never ever get you know picked up or eaten or anything well

About a month ago, he went missing and didn't come home. And I'm dying. That's four cats in like five years. And these are wonderful cats. And I feel like the worst person in the world because I bring home these cats. Only, it's almost like, bring them home to the slaughter. And they're so smart and they're so wonderful. And they love the yard and they love everything about living there. And then just one day they don't come home. and I don't know if it's the eagles or if it's coyotes, but really, really sad. And so I'm super, super worried about bubbles being indoor-outdoor. It sounds so fun until they don't come home and you just, your heart breaks. Ugh. Okay, I love you guys. Bye. I mean, power out and mwah.

Mm-hmm. that's that's a story that's really hard to hear yeah i mean okay please nobody come at me for what

i'm about to say okay mostly you andrew don't come at me all right okay i i do have a question because i've been really i mean bubbles is still at becca's house right now i'm gonna go get her like later this week but i really am i'm really trying to figure out how this is going to work because the whole point of this house is really kind of like indoor-outdoor. Like, there's these big sliding glass doors and it leads out to this, you know, what's going to be a deck. And it's like, I just don't really understand how I'm going to keep her inside all the time. So one of the thoughts I had was to, I've been doing a lot of research on like, you know, tracking devices, like a thing that she wears on her collar so I know where she is and I can play a sound and things like that. There's, I don't exactly know how I'm going to handle this. But what I'm about to say that i think people will get upset with me is like let me put it this way olive is an indoor outdoor cat the cat that i used to have in bellingham with carrie and all of to this day is alive and well and does her thing maybe just happens that there's not so many coyotes in that neighborhood or whatever her great joy in life is being outside and then sometimes being inside i know like i don't i i will die if bubbles dies like prematurely like it will really like It would really, really emotionally wreck me, probably more so than the death of any other pet I've had. I'm very bonded with that cat, weird as she is. But is there an argument to her having the greatest two years of her life before she meets an untimely end? I'm not saying I hope that happens. What I'm saying is the joy that she would feel of being outside would be so— I mean, that's all she wants in life, is to be able to run around in a pasture. She's never had it. In her life, she has never, ever – and I'm not just trying to justify making her an outdoor cat for my own convenience because, again, I'm not going to start from that point. But all this cat wants in life is to just be able to walk in the grass and not be on a leash because that's the only time she's ever been outside is she's on a leash. like I don't know is there some circle of life thing about like letting a cat live their best life and then really hoping that it doesn't mean an untimely end versus her living to be 16 always staring out the window being like god I wish I was outside and I'm really asking this I'm not trying to justify my behavior or anything is there any argument to the idea that like she will get to enjoy herself and then we will really hope that she doesn't mean an untimely end

Well, I'm not the person to answer that question, but I will say that like, you know, I've had similar kind of debates in my head when we lived in New Hampshire. We lived in a small neighborhood with, you know, houses kind of close together, but a park nearby and just like a very small little corner neighborhood, not like a big street or a through fair thoroughfare through fair or anything like that. And during that time, we had I think Theo was our only cat and he was a big guy. He was a big cat, sometimes too aggressive even, and when he was, like, scared or whatever. And I was like, this cat will do fine outside, and this seemed like a good place for it. Now, there's also the consideration of the other wildlife as well. Like, Genevieve never wanted to do that, mostly out of safety for Theo at the time. And I was like, I don't know. I think he'd be fine. And I kind of had a similar thought as you. I'm just like, also, he would, like, really live life to the fullest. But then also there are the concerns about the other wildlife, about the birds, about the squirrels and chipmunks or what have you. Like, do you do you what about them? You know, and so so Genevieve was always very against letting Theo outside. And it was probably the right move. Now it doesn't even enter my mind because the neighborhood that I live in and the cats that I have like those cats would not do well outside. And I don't think I'm bingo is totally fine. Just like sitting in the window and looking out the looking out the screen. He seems to enjoy his life. lolling around eating bonbons or whatever he does um so anyway so that's i mean it's an interesting thing to raise it also reminds me of a they were paying tribute to dan lebitard's brother on the podcast yesterday uh his brother died recently and um you know it was a pretty young man and uh and they were playing they were playing clips and one of the bits on the show was his brother knew nothing about sports but he would come on and they would try to like ask him the most basic sports questions in the world like when is the ncaa men's basketball tournament what what month does it take place in and i think he said august anyway um one of the things that he raised was he asked his brother dan lebitard the host of the show would you give up one year of your life if you could be literally one of the top five players of any sport for five years of your life so could you be the absolute you know one of the absolute best sports players at the at the sport of your choice but you give up one year of your life for five years of that life and everybody basically took it you know like they're like yeah i would do that so anyway that's easy to say by the way when you think you have many years exactly that's what dan said he's like that yeah he said okay uh i'm gonna live until 95 carve off one year of me in the 90s i'm like well you know i think that's maybe the irony of them playing that because they're playing that from somebody who passed way way way too soon you know and so you don't know what life has in store for

you yeah exactly like right now it's a no-brainer for me but talk to me when i'm if i were to know that i was in the last year of my life yeah a whole different conversation so um what do you think though tennis or golf for bubbles if she does the deal what do you think would be her sport

of choice right no so i just don't think anybody can answer that but i don't think you're a bad

person for asking that right I'm I promise you so much of what I do in life and so much of how I make my way through the world is just based on pure selfishness but this isn't one of those things a hundred percent anyway which is I really it's like if she were able to figure it out if she were able to like you know kind of know and again the other problem is she's just never been outside I just don't think if she had been a kitten like you know Olive was a barn cat sure all of it literally never lived indoors we got her from a horse farm where she lived in the barn her mom lived in the barn she was born in the barn that's one kind of just like you know street smarts if you will yeah bubbles has none of that um so that's another reason to not even try this experiment but it's just like the the joy that bubbles would be feeling up to and you know before like if she were to meet an untimely end the joy that she would feel would be great And the the unhappiness that I think she would feel from just being inside this house, staring out the window also is kind of a thing. Right. Like because every time. So I had, you know, this little teeny tiny balcony on the apartment. And every time I would open that door, like after a jog, I would kind of go like sit out there sometimes. And I didn't let Bubbles out there Because she would try to put her entire body Through like the railing And she would be like 70% of her body weight would be hanging out in space And just made me way too scared So but every time I opened that door She would just like beeline In fact she came to identify When I was sweaty in a certain kind of way Because she knew From experience that I was probably Going to go sit on the balcony And so when I would be like after a run She would go to the balcony door and wait because she knew I was going to open it and she was going to try to sneak out. That's her level of wanting to go outside. So for her to live her entire life deeply sad about not being outside, I really don't know the trade-off. And I know there's going to be a lot of people with thoughts and they're going to reach out to me. I know that's going to happen because cats are a big topic on the show and people feel very strongly about this.

Yeah, now the main response, and I have like literally, I don't have my email open in front of me right now, but I think if I were to open it, I would have at least five, like no exaggeration, but somewhere between five and 10 emails from different people with the subject line catio. Everybody has been saying, I don't know if you've been seeing these as well, but the last time this came in is, you know, and Genevieve has talked about building a little one that would maybe go out of our window and that would be on top of, that would be kind of on top of this little roof that we have. And so, yeah, that is a way of getting cats a little bit more exposure to the outside. It's not a bad idea. it doesn't solve the problem of what you sort of raised at one point which is like having sort of an open format house format is that what they call them open sure open design house where people are kind of coming and going and you don't want to have to lock the cat away somewhere otherwise the cat's just going to walk outside i guess the idea is you could put them in the catio they can sniff the fresh air there are screens all around them but they're kind of trapped in there while you have guests who are coming and going and you can leave like doors open for humans i guess that's it i'll tell you what i was really paranoid about the cats mostly bingo at the party on saturday because like we had to lock them we put a little litter box in our bedroom which of course we would never do but like temporarily put a litter box in there with some water and food and let the cats hang out in there but bingo is like genevieve right like being people are over oh well i want to hang out like i don't want to be trapped in here and so i was going in there from time to time like kind of bringing people were like we want

to see the cats. Meanwhile, Professor just had her headphones on listening to Levitard. She absolutely was. She's just like darning socks in the bedroom. I'm really proud of her. She didn't

freak out. Like I'd bring various people, I would bring them into the bedroom on cat tours because people wanted to see the cats and so Bingo would sort of like play with them and Bananas would just sort of sit there and be like, I was sleeping. But she didn't freak out about it. But I was just like, I was constantly checking the door throughout the night to make sure that it was clicked, closed. I would go in there by myself just to like i just felt like i needed to put eyes on bingo at all times because in my head like i just could not see this party wrapping up at three o'clock and then suddenly in the morning and then be like wait where's bingo and then like spending the you know the rest of my days wandering the world looking for him right and that's the thing too i'm i'm like

i told you that there was there was about i don't know five minutes that i thought the bubbles had like escaped this house when one part of the like wall didn't exist like the which is a big open shell and when i tell you that i was grief stricken in that five minutes i was like i don't know how i'm gonna move on from this turned out she was just huddling in a corner somewhere but like i don't i mean so that's also a feeling that i have you know what i mean like if if if she were to be missing in the world i would be so wrecked by that that maybe that's my answer you know i'm gonna have to figure something out yeah but again it's like i it's not just out of selfishness but like i just i know she would have so much fun running around on this property that i i don't know i i i haven't decided i will i'll be very careful about whatever i do um and i'm sure i'll be narrating it here on the show for people so they can judge me oh i was pausing for a break there

but we're done with our breaks dude i literally i was like okay that's a good power out i was like wait no no you need to wrap up the show no no this is yeah we got it this is this is time to be done time to be done let me play the time to be done music yeah anyway maggie i wanted to say to maggie you know i am sorry i mean that sounds that sounds just beyond painful and you said that you i think you your last cat went missing it sounds like just somewhat recently in the last month or so and i could hear the pain in your voice and so i'm i'm really sorry i know that pain it's terrible i i hope if there's any there's only any hope left for that cat uh to come home

will be we'll be thinking of you yeah yeah exactly all right well uh that's gonna do it well uh that's gonna do it for today's show i'm looking at a hummingbird that just landed on remember that feeder that i put way too much sugar in oh yeah it's it's finally reached the

proper balance because the hummingbirds really love it now nice we have aggressive hummingbirds i'm getting but while i was grilling the other day a hummingbird uh because they're so comfortable in our yard now and drinking Genevieve's special nectar all the time. It's like buzzing me. It's like, it's kind of cool, but kind of scary. It'll just like buzz right in front of me. You can hear its wings and it's kind of like, I think it's trying to shoo me away from the sugar water. I'm like, dude,

I hate to say it. It was kind of cool.

I got Sprite inside, dude. I don't need your sugar water.

All right. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, have a great rest of your Tuesday. Go Mariners. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I'm dying right now. I had no idea there was any controversy about Moira's song. I mean, I think because like the next line is his arms were big and strong or something. I feel like it was obvious that she was saying someone helped me all night long and then someone loved me all night long. I don't know, I haven't finished listening. But I did want to confess since I'm kind of, I guess, being maybe slightly rude by saying like, I thought that the name Hercules until I was like 14 or 15 was turkey leaves. So I do think that context matters, to be honest with you. Boop. Power out.