Muse

You know, I've always considered myself a bit of an old-fashioned average guy. Give me a typewriter, a newspaper, and a cup of coffee, and I'm content. But there's this modern phenomenon that's managed to sneak into my routine and capture my attention. The podcast, too beautiful to live. Now, I don't know much about this podcasting business, but let me tell you, there's something about this show that just gets me hooked. Now, what keeps me coming back are the hosts, Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh. These guys have a way of talking that's like having a chat with your neighbor over the backyard fence. It's comfortable like a well-worn armchair that fits just right. They talk about their lives, their observations, and things that just make you chuckle, like watching a squirrel try to outsmart a bird feeder. But here's the real kicker. They talk about their kittens, bingo, and bubbles. Hearing these two grown men discuss the antics of their feline companions, well, it's a bit like eavesdropping on a conversation between friends at a neighborhood diner. bingo knocking over a vase bubbles chasing a stray shoelace it's the stuff of everyday life but told with such affection and humor that you can't help but smile you know I've never been one to jump on the latest trends but too beautiful to live has managed to capture my attention in a way I didn't expect it's like a radio drama for the digital age and I can't help but enjoy the ride TBTL

Do you believe that? I do if you do. But it's absurd. You're here to make friends. Making friends is the name of this show. I'm an older man, so you can trust what I say. Another person says, I am angry that things like this happen. I get mad about every bulls**t thing I see. So obviously a lot of opinions there to make this story seem somewhat meaningful. Oh, absolutely, Glenn.

They had been posting their stuff out on the Internet, and apparently they've been met with virtually nothing but ridicule.

If anyone touches my man, Kenny G, I'm going to be up in their face and I'm going to start some sorry, I know that you don't swear, but like, I love to say

in a few hours, you're going to be smarter than anyone you've ever met.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Spock sabotaged the system. My name is Luke Burbank. i am your host i just want you to be normal and clearly you're not coming to you from the river house studio perched high above the mighty columbia river where we are in a red flag warning according to the weather apps it is going to be steamy here hitting 100 degrees never kick a cow turd on a hot day and as you know if you've been following the program um the river house studio is a very fancy way to describe a house that I'm trying to have remodeled that does not currently have any heating or cooling. So the way that I am attempting to get through this broadcast and keep the equipment from melting down is to open the windows. That is the futuristic HVAC technology that I am using today, and it means you're probably going to hear the wind blowing through the microphone and other such noises. It's an audiophiles nightmare. But that's what we're going to have to do, my friends, because it is already roasting. It's also already time to talk about episode 4009 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

It's a Monday morning, and I'm not a young man. Hence the Andy Rooney being one of our biggest fans. So it's a Monday morning. It means it's time for some rants and raves. and by that I just mean we're going to read the rants and raves section from the Seattle Times there was a rave or I should say a rant in there about somebody's treatment at a hotel which also had me thinking about this really wild story out of New York which involves a fancy hotel bar where this 17 year old kid kept going in and trying to get served alcohol drinks and it did not work and then the kid and his friend started showing up and protesting the hotel and writing absolutely scurrilous things, provably false things about the hotel and what they were doing there. And somehow Drake is involved in the whole thing.

I'm the president of rap music and I need to work with you right away.

So we'll dig into all of that as well. And we'll talk to this guy, the 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.

Is it too early, good fish sandwich?

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Hey, Luke. To the listeners out there, where you heard Luke disappear there for a second, that was because I accidentally hit the wrong button when I went to unmute my microphone. So what we just heard there was, Andrew Walsh.

And that was on me. I just would like everybody to know that. That's one of the things Andy Rooney loves about the podcast is when we intermittently disappear. Exactly. I had to explain that in a way that I had to let you know, Luke, what happened, because you would not have heard that in the listeners, and I did. So sorry for the stumbling out of the gate here on a Monday morning. Let's hopefully turn it into content. What do you think of that Andy Rooney? So he passed away about a decade ago. So that must have been recorded before he died, I guess. I didn't even know he was a fan.

I didn't either. We've talked about him on the show so many times. And the fact that he knew before even, you know, either of us did that we would have cats named Bingo and Bubbles.

That is a good point because he must have recorded that before 2011, according to the Internet.

I don't think we're giving Andy Rooney's predictions enough credits. I recently found a racing form that he had written down in it. Well, let me tell you, Andrew, this remodeling project is going to go a lot better when I'm sitting on all those gambling winnings.

Wow. That was sent in to us, by the way, by a listener, Stephen, who apparently, I don't know. You know what? And I'll be honest with you. I don't know what Stephen's deal is, but I think I like it. Stephen wrote in a passionate plea for me to please send him that little mix of Andy Rooney quotes over top of Neil Young singing Old Man. It's a mix that I use on my other podcast sometimes when it's like, I want to talk about a commercial and we call it Andy's Corner. And so I made that like a grumpy old man named Andy. And also my name is Andrew. So anyway, that's why I made it. Listener Stevens, could you please send me that? That was the best thing I've ever heard. Also, as compensation here, I was messing around with some chat GPT. I don't even know. I was going to say chat GPT. I don't even think that's right. Whatever AI. Will somebody teach me AI? I want to make Andy Rooney say things. Like, how come I can't make Andy Rooney say things? I want to know how to do that. I feel like it should be within my skill set.

The reason that I want to really highlight and compliment listener Stephen on this work is because not only is the Andy Rooney voice pretty good, pretty spot on, but I thought the writing, the way of actually, I mean, the written voice of Andy Rooney was really good. You know what I mean?

Yeah, he keeps going to analogies. analogies he goes like to three analogies it's like listening to a couple of neighbors talk over a fence but like but then it's it's like you can sort of feel the format of Andy Rooney's style of

writing correct and also yeah kind of some homespun sort of folksy way of describing what we do now my question I guess to Stephen now that I gave him a compliment is to potentially retract the compliment did Stephen write the content or did he tell chat GPT write an Andy Rooney style intro about the podcast tbtl i think because my guess the program could write that theoretically

yes my guess and i do not know for sure but based on some other things listeners have sent in i feel like you first train it to learn the voice and then you feed and maybe the the style as well i could be wrong about that and then you feed it a bunch of facts and you see what it comes up with the bubbles and the bingo my my thought was that this was not a script that was just um churned out for the Andy Rooney voice but instead that because somebody else did this with another celebrity voice I'm blanking on it now and they had explained their process a little bit not enough for me to do it but saying like first you train the voice then you you use another program to say if I input a whole bunch of like little facts or I want you to hit these points it'll sort of shoot out something in the style of the celebrity and then you can sort of massage it a little bit and then and then feed that into the voice system if that makes sense well i felt like

that was one of the more coherent descriptions of tbtl i've ever heard well i'm not even kidding i'm not no but it's not and andrew it's an ai program that has now digested everything about tbtl that's on the internet and on the wikipedia page and whatever interviews we've done in current magazine it's if if what you're proposing is true if what steven did was you know first uh you know inputted some andy rooney audio so that the the computer i know it's not a computer but so that the program could uh you know kind of match the voice and then said okay this is kind of this is what this is how andy rooney sounds and also this is how he talks this is like the kind of stuff he says and then also there's this thing called tbtl and here's what we know about tbtl now have this guy, Andy Rooney, in the way that he likes to do these folksy commentaries, have him talk about this other thing, TBTL. And if that was all done, if the actual words were written by the program, the AI program needs to, we need to hire that program because I was, as I was listening to it, I was like, I've never, I've never really thought of the show as like, you're overhearing an interesting conversation at a cafe. Like, that's a good way to describe what we're doing here.

I love that during this writers and actors strike, you're. you are on record you are the one person but like yes you didn't say we need to employ ai you said

we need to hire ai and i love that i also we have had andrew we have we have spent untold millions of dollars on human writers over the years trying to get a coherent description of what this show is

and a dang a dang jpeg just did it it's your lucky day you just found a usb flash drive in the parking lot let the fun begin oh my oh pa it's just beautiful didn't know you like to get wet though no mountain too tall and good luck to all a cat is an angel that poops in a box that's a tuna bro peace and love peace and love slab jacking don't miss the sausage fest there's something

about the soul of a cat steven said that of everything that he did with the ai just hearing Andy Rooney say slab jacking was his favorite part. Was it this one? Peace and love. Slab jacking. Let me update the description. Go ahead, sorry.

Let me update my description of TBTL. It's like overhearing two people at a cafe playing an AI version of Andy Rooney repeating a thing that was a commercial on an AM radio show 15 years ago for leveling your sagging driveway.

Slab jacking.

oh my god this honestly might be one of my favorite shows we've done in years isn't this great i've been sitting on this all weekend oh my gosh dude what a treat i mean the implications of this i mean i mean i'm sure it'll it could sort of have diminishing returns because i'm just totally delighted by this because it never occurred to me in all of the conversation around ai and chat gpt and you know what does this mean for the human workforce and things like that that one of the outcomes could be making Andy Rooney say slapjack but like just all the other things like the cross referencing of because this show is so audio heavy the cross referencing if you will of like of somebody who says one kind of thing on the show but then having them say something totally unrelated is I mean the possibilities of that are really really big for us

yeah I'm sending this to you now so that you can go into your laboratory and chop it and screw it and mix it up and put it in a cauldron. I might be mixing my cultural touchstones there.

I do put the bore in laboratory when I'm doing these audio projects. Wow, that's amazing. Thank you, listener Stephen. You really got the week off to a good start.

Yeah, and I want to say the listeners are really bringing it with tape today because I also listened to a fabulous voice memo that a listener sent to us right before we broke for the weekend, telling a little tale of childhood that had me on the edge of my seat. And I'm going to play that for you later on in the show, too, Luke.

I actually have thoughts on voice memos right now, Andrew. But before I get to that, I want to say one quick thing, which was over the weekend, well, on Friday night in particular, I was at this concert down in the downtown core of Portland. I think it's called Pioneer Park, Pioneer Place. i always get confused because there's a pioneer square in seattle but anyway it's these like concerts and it was the band explosions in the sky and it was really fun and i ran into some tens there including the josts um zach and lauren and then there was another moment andrew that i actually i probably should have started even earlier in the show with this because now about 14 15 minutes have gone by and i'm worried already at the experience what the person who i'm about to apologize to has been thinking for the last 15 minutes which is boy that luke burbank really not a fun person to meet in public um here's what happened the band explosions in the sky is a very it's it's um you know kind of atmospheric uh my friend john who got the tickets shout out to jd from the stack of dimes podcast called it post rock i guess maybe that's technically a genre for this but it's it's kind of like it's it's music that ends up on a lot of soundtracks and things because it's kind of it's like i said it's sort of atmospheric it's a vibe right and i was really enjoying it but most of the songs would end with a kind of long sustained kind of contemplative you know moment of like a the guitars kind of decaying a little bit or whatever and it was it was a you know like I said it was sort of a vibe and a lot of the people there there were like multiple people in our general area who were crying like it was an emotional thing for folks that are really into that band I was feeling the emotion of wanting to get another drink about five songs in but it was so packed at this place I mean it was sold out it was like just shoulder to shoulder and so at some point uh the the the waves parted a little bit and i i decide i'm going to go for it i'm going to sneak over to the bar thing and get a couple drinks and

bring them back this is an outdoor concert it looked like from a photo you said i just wanted to say that because it's kind of it sets the

stage maybe you already set that up but i don't know okay yeah there's because so you're at like kind of an out it looks like kind of an outdoor festival kind of vibe yes exactly and so i get

the drinks and now i'm standing kind of on the side of this big crowd of people and john is kind of in the middle of the crowd it's i'm gonna have to push past some folks to get back to where to where he's standing and i'm trying to wait for the right moment of the song because i don't want to like be going excuse me pardon me excuse me pardon me as people are like in their kind of like revelry or whatever with the music of explosions in the sky so I'm trying to wait for the exact right moment and then that moment appears and I'm I'm like okay this is it and I've got to get there before the next song starts because I again I'm just trying to like not make I'm not trying I'm trying to not step on anyone's experience and as I'm doing that I'm kind of like kind of care and I'm also holding two drinks and trying to not spill them on people it's the whole thing and as i'm cutting through the crowd somebody goes luke and i look over and it's somebody who says hey i'm a 10 and what i wanted to do andrew in that moment was say oh hey thank you so much like that's awesome but what i did was said thanks in this way with a look on my face that i think came off as like so sarcastic and so like uh thanks dude like whatever was going on for me about feeling um nervous that i was blocking people and trying to be like not in anyone's way i think it all sort of uh came together to probably create the experience in this other person that i was like take a long walk off a short pier like that i i feel like that must have been a very bad experience for that person so if you thought if you thought that i was like hey thanks a lot dude at the explosions in the sky show i promise you that was not what i was trying to do i was just also trying to not be in everyone's way and uh and so i think it came

off weird i mean if it's somebody who listens to this show they know you well enough to know that you wouldn't and it's also just such a that would be just such a hilarious reaction oh that is thanks

dude like that's my new but that is going to be my new reaction like like bob does a bit now somebody

goes up to bob dylan hey i've just been a big fan for like decades now you've really had a huge impact on my work oh thanks dude uh that would be a funny reaction from anybody who is uh responding to just appreciation for your life's work but i do i mean listen i'm not trying to make fun of you here or say that you're off base for thinking this luke because obviously i've come on the show many times and said oh my god i had the most awkward interaction with a listener my intention was good i mean literally the last time we talked about that was when i was at a concert i mean it's not of contest mine was indoors yours was outdoors yes a lot of differences a lot of differences obviously we can all enjoy different things but um i uh anyway i just remember having that really awkward moment and feeling really terrible about it but obviously that person you know knows me and you well enough from listening to this show now if it was a live wire person i could see see them because they don't know you as intimately they don't know the real luke burbank the way the 10s do but if it's somebody who specifically said i am a 10 it means they know you and they know that you're not the type of person who's going around being like oh thanks dude you're the kind of person who's saying if you see me you have to tell me that you know me from the podcast so that i can

behave appropriately yes i i think it was also the brevity of the situation because normally you know obviously if either of us were to bump into somebody in the world who said oh hey i'm a tbtl listener we would then um like stop and say oh that's amazing thank you so much and what's your name and like there would be a whole chat that would ensue and that chat was not happening because i was also trying to get back to my spot so that also left me with a feeling of like i'm just not a person who walks around the world being recognized by people who listen to something that we do and then it's just like hey thanks on to the next right let me get on to my next thing that is it's not like i'm sure that's what it's like for people that are legitimately famous like oh i'm a big fan thank you so much and then they have to keep going it happens to me once every six months so i'm able to stop and really spend some time with the person who's noticed me for the podcast because you know i can i can give up 15 minutes every six months for this for this procedure to happen but that didn't happen in that case i was on my way somewhere and if it seemed like i was being curt or sarcastic i really wasn't so um it was nice to meet you or nice to see you again

person that i win stacked i have a question for you luke this is reminding me of my friday night uh and you might need your phone for this quiz this spontaneous quiz i'm gonna um andrew do i

Did I ever not have my phone?

Okay, sorry. Yeah, that's right. Sorry, you were probably already closing a deal. I've been scrolling for hours. I don't even know what we've been talking about. What is this new dance craze? What is a TikTok? So I knew that you were at an outdoor concert because you had sent a photo to one of the group chats I'm on, maybe the sports one, and you said, oh, I can't watch the M game.

I don't subscribe to this show to hear you talk about sports, okay?

Do you know, we got a bunch of really nice notes from listeners who were saying, like, it was so nice to hear Luke and Andrew kind of setting up the Padres game because I was going with my kids and it was like exactly what I wanted to hear. So for every for every Grumpus that we hear, there are people who appreciate the fact that we talk about multiple topics on the show and not just what one person wants to hear. I will say, though, that you sent a photo of your concert going experience. So that's why I know you were at an outdoor stage situation. I also sent some photos on a text chain that you would have been a part of. Now, I am part of a Wordle chain, as you know, that has maybe about seven people on it. I don't know, a bunch of our friends who live up here in North Seattle. The Wordle chain also sometimes becomes like an invite chain. Hey, we're having a fire at our place or we're going to the Eagles or whatever. But then that chain is duplicated in my phone with one other person, and that other person is you. and i have that chain called the whole gang so we have the wordle crew luke but then we have the whole gang and that's the wordle group plus luke which i think it was called at one point in

my phone but when you got god you got a friend and that friend is you so uh a couple of weeks ago

on i believe the whole chain text chain we got a picture a photograph from our friend camaro kev And the photo was of a beer cap, the underside of a Rainier beer cap, showing us that after years of going away, Rainier beers has brought back the pictogram puzzle that was a tradition under the beer caps. There are various theories as to why that went away. We may have even talked about it on this show. But for whatever reason, they are back now. So when you pop the cap off of a Rainier bottle, you can look at the underside of the cap and then try to guess what the phrase is that they are depicting with the most horribly smeared and drawn pictures from 1945 that you can possibly imagine.

It's just amazing to me that more of these things aren't overtly racist. I feel like the era that these drawings were in almost always is associated with something that we don't do or say anymore.

Well, I will say this, one of the theories, if you Google this phenomenon right now about the fact that the puzzles went away, one of the theories comes out of, I believe, maybe an Austin Free Press article from a few years back. Yes, we talked about that, I believe, on the program. Yes, that's saying that a woman, a black woman, I believe, after work took off her beer cap and looked at it like at a happy hour, and there was a noose in one of the pictograms. Right. And it was really upsetting for her, and she's like, I'm just trying to have a good time. You know what?

I must have internalized that and then forgotten that that was literally the issue. There's also just something about any time basically white people were doing something in like this era of the 1940s or 50s, we were probably doing it wrong. And when I look at this artwork, I think, yeah, this looks this this feels to me like you could take a turn for the worse at any moment.

Right. And for me, I mean, and again, I want to make it clear that there's only one article that cites this specific example. The company did not say this is why we have done this. It was also the beginning of the pandemic, which really changed a lot of things for alcohol sales and all kinds of supply chain stuff. So who knows? I have some bartender friends who say it was more of an economic thing. I really don't know. I don't know if we'll ever solve the mystery. But having said all of that, I noticed that Kevin was very excited about the pictogram. He posted that to the whole gang chat, as it's named on my phone. And then the other day I was sitting at a bar while you were at this concert. I was sitting at a bar and I ordered a Rainier and I'd forgotten that this was in this phenomenon had returned and the bartender put the beer cap down along with the beer. And I was like, oh, that's right. It's pictogram time. And so I took a photo of my pictogram, my beer cap, and I sent it to the entire gang. And I included you on that since you were the first one. Here is my question for you. And this is where we leave the listener behind. We left the listener behind shows ago, I think years ago. But here's where I truly leave the listener behind. Luke, from the picture that I sent you, which is a close-up of a bottle cap, but also you can see the bar that it's sitting on, can you tell me what bar I was at when I took this photo?

Wow, that's not where I thought this was going. By the way, I immediately solved the pictogram. Yeah, not to take away a victory.

The first one was a pretty easy one, right?

Yes, and I wanted to, but I was proud of myself because I'm not on the Whirtle chain. I'm not good at those things. becca was trying to teach me this new one yesterday that's in the new york times puzzles which is like groupings of words have you been on this one yet no i don't think so it's like it's like you're trying it so you'll get a bunch of words and then you have to figure out what the categories are that they go into so i like this yeah i forget what it's called but she's very into it now and um anyway i'm just so bad with i'm just bad with puzzles and anything that involves any kind of you know, complex problem solving or... intelligence these are things that I struggle with but I looked at this one right away and I was like oh keep your chin up cool and I wanted to chime in but I thought oh everyone already knows that like I felt literally proud that I knew what the pictogram was and then but then I but then it was like it's sort of like a you know when a little kid is you know wants to shoot a basket and so everyone just lets them get right up to the hoop and then somebody picks them up and holds them near the rim and then they throw the ball and it's like yeah we can we can cheer for them but let's be honest they're not that good at basketball we made this easy on that one was slightly more

difficult of it looks like i posted two here and the first one was really easy i only saw the first i only saw keep your chin up that would have been the second scroll up a little ways you're sure you don't see another one because you were in a concert yeah yeah that one you've probably already seen the answer to that one is the easier one you see a beehive a i've got to hand it to you or yes it's it's an army cot so i've got and then the number two i've got two then a hand and then sometimes they just put in letters uh right they just wrote it to the number two and the letter u i mean come on you have literally the words it the number two and the letter u that one is a little bit easy but look at the background what is that but what so that is sitting on a bar top and describe what

you're seeing in the photo it's very cropped it's it's very tightly cropped and it's blue The background here on my screen looks blue, almost in a way, I don't know if that's an effect of an overhead light that's shining blue down on something that's kind of like a white sort of marble type of thing, or if it's illuminated from underneath.

It is interesting you raise that, because the bar, I will tell you this, the bar top is blue, and I did spend, especially as I had more and more Rainiers, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out if it was indeed lit from underneath. I believe it was. I was doing this thing where I hope the bartender saw me as I was trying to, like, move my hand around the bar trying to see if I could create a shadow or if the bar indeed was lit from underneath. I believe it was lit from underneath. The reason I'm asking you about this is this is a place that you have been to a lot. However, however, I don't know. This is a clue. This is a place that is way more associated with you than me. However, this is probably not a part of the establishment that you spend much time in usually.

Okay, for a moment I thought maybe you were at the Baranoff, which is, and the reason that the bar top would be relevant was because, of course, the Baranoff in Greenwood is the place where many years ago I paid a hundred and something dollars to have one of those little, like, brass name plates permanently installed in the bar, and it did say Luke Burbank Professional Drinker, and then it said www.tbtl.net.

Do you know that for the longest time I thought they put that there for you because they were like celebrating a local celebrity and I was jealous of it until I found out years later that you bought it?

I believe it was $150. They put it on my tab.

It's not the worst deal, honestly.

It was years of fun.

Yeah, and that's a really cool bar. That's like an iconic dive bar in North Seattle.

Unfortunately, my plaque was a little – well, when it was first on there, it was a little too new. so like they had different kinds of brass screws that they would they screw like the old ones were really cool the old ones were like like the original ones probably from the 70s or 80s were a certain kind of just you know how everything that's older just has a patina it's just kind of cooler so the old ones were very cool and had this patina and then mine just kind of looked like it was kind of a little flimsy and it was too shiny but then years uh go by andrew and mine also developed a patina and then uh but and it'd be fun because you know we'd be out and about and we'd go and i'd go check on the like i'd go check on the uh you know the whatever my name nameplate or something and i recently heard that they redid the baron off they took the bar out i think they

would have taken all of those things out really they redid the baron off oh that's an interesting or something i i heard i was gonna ask you what you think the social contract there is because like what if you like because you did this years ago now you don't even live around here anymore Or do they keep track of these things?

By the way, we're still using tbtl.net, though. That is true, actually. If anyone listening to us right now found out about this show because of that plaque, that very small plaque at the Baranoff in Seattle, please let us know. Because that will mean that was a well-spent $140 or whatever it was, $150. Well, I already did, but it gives me a little bit of help with the audit is what I'm trying to say. Sure, yeah, absolutely. But so I heard a rumor that maybe those had gone away. And to your question about the social contract, I'm amazed they even put it on in the first place. Because think about this. Like, you know, a bar is a very busy place. I feel like the thing with bars is they go from nothing at all is happening to, like, way too much is happening for the staff.

Especially the Baranoff.

It is a zoo on Fridays and Saturday nights. And it's, like, it's 2.30 in the morning. morning i'm settling up my tab i've obviously had a few to where i think it's a good idea to buy one of these plates they just literally put it on like it's as if i had ordered that much you know that many drinks but they're just supposed to remember that this guy and then i write down here's what i want to have on it like that just seems like a recipe for this thing not coming together like the person working they're just like miss files the paperwork because it's 2 30 in the morning at a packed dive bar or, you know, Janice, who's supposed to go do the ordering on that, is busy because they ran out of coasters and she's trying to focus on, like, what do they say in AA? Shoot the crocodile that's closest to the boat.

Oh, I've never heard of that.

The crocodile that's closest to her boat is we don't have any coasters right now and we're, like, this guy getting his plaque is way down the list. It's a very faraway crocodile. Like, it's not threatening us currently. Like, I'm just amazed that it actually worked. Yeah, to their credit. Yeah, totally. And that it was there for a good 10 to 15 years So if it's not there anymore I feel like I got my money's worth So I wouldn't be upset about that But I will say it was fun to go in and check on that thing But you know what I don't want to have, Andrew? And we haven't even gotten into voice memos

We haven't even gotten into you guessing what bar I was at

Okay, here's what I don't want to have I did like having that plaque there I don't want to be And I say this with peace and love And no judgment No judgment to anyone In how they're living their life I don't want to be one of those guys Where there's a picture of me at the bar After I die I don't want that to be You'd think That that would be a dream for me Because I love dive bars And I get very social and very chatty When I've had a few I used to go I think it's literally getting torn down Actually you and John and I The TBTL employee numero uno Went to this place right as they were about to tear it down The Jolly Roger they're tearing that down huh yeah we were there in the last like three to four weeks of it existing did you know that at the time well yeah it had one of these notice of proposed land use actions on the bar for like the entire time i lived in portland every time i went there i was like wow this is still open okay um but like that place when you'd go over to the atm which i would occasionally do because of the video poker there was like a framed picture of you know like stew or whatever and it's like not i literally it might have said something to the effect of like not here for a long time here for a good time or whatever and you'll see this in various dive bars if there's somebody who was just kind of a local legend that person who just kind of holding up one end of the bar as we say um and then you know they pass away there'll be a framed photo of them somewhere in the bar and in one way that's a really nice tribute to somebody it means that they made friends and they connected with folks there and that's a great thing for those people I'm saying for me it fills me Probably because it would indicate That I had spent the last 20 years of my life Sidled up to the same bar Which again At some point in my life years ago That would have sounded really appealing to me

Yeah like if it was a Rogers tattletale in LA Which was a big part of your kind of experience there And a big part of your kind of Who you were there And you identified with that group of friends so much Or however you would describe them That it seems like that would have been meaningful to you

but for some reason something ineffable has shifted inside of me that when i see those things or like i remember going before the tattletale became whatever living nightmare it is now stage 512 bar or something um i remember going in there i know what a great name it just it sticks right it's a it's a terrific title it's like a rat that jumps out of you from your underwear drawer like i remember going in there one time and seeing a guy named louis who lived in the neighborhood and who i would you know sit next to on countless friday afternoons and louis was sort of right where i'd left him you know maybe five six years before and i don't know why but it was sort of like something something inside of me shifted a little bit that was kind of like oh i used to think it was really romantic for this to be the centerpiece of my life and i don't really want it to be i want it to be a place i go and have fun i don't want it to be the centerpiece of my life i don't want there to be a photo a framed photo of me at the um eagles in rainier oregon oh that is a supremely cool eagles by the way andrew built out over the mighty columbia river it might be the coolest eagles i've ever seen just in terms of actually the one the eagles in ketchikan alaska is also i just like to go to ones that are built over rivers that's really my

yeah i thought you talked about the alaska one being similar to that yeah but anyway all that

is to say um i i liked that i had that little name plate there that was cool if it's gone that's fine too but please no framed pictures of me at any bars because even though that's a tribute to some people and it's meant to honor them when i see that i now feel uh as we say the bad feeling

a little close to the bukowski bone as they say that's right and that is is that a show title

close to the bukowski bone or is that maybe that is that FFCC violation. Okay, back to the bar top.

What is the opposite of SEO? What rejects clicks?

Yeah, search engine optimization. This would be search engine optimization. Yes, not-timization, yes. Okay, so I'm looking at this bar top. We've established it's not the Baranoff. The thing is, okay, I've been there a lot. That's interesting because it looks fancy. If it has some kind of blue illumination that's either coming from above or below, that doesn't seem like the kind of place that I would hang out. But again, maybe it's You said it's a part of this establishment That I don't frequent that much

No, no, no, it's part of an establishment that you do frequent a lot

But you're saying it's part, physically it's in the part Of the establishment I don't go to a lot

I'm guessing you spend less time in this room Is it Goldie's? It is Goldie's Shoreline Casino And you're over by the pull tabs And I'm over by the pull tabs where you can sit and have some food So what happened on Friday And this is not what I was building up to It's not like a great story I was wondering if you were receiving these texts at your non rock and roll show your post rock and roll show uh-huh and looking at them and being like oh andy's at goldie's or if you were if you had if you were even seeing them but um because you you go to goldie's a lot it's a little card room casino here in north seattle but like when you go i assume you're spending almost all of your time at the tables right

well less and less i mean i uh may or may not have darkened that door at some point after the four thousandth episode and but i what we really ended up doing was mostly just sitting around i was i was sitting around eating dur's is leftover noodles so was that in the bar area because that's where i realized i was in the bar area okay it was over like kind of where the tables are but but like there's some dining area near where like the gambling goes on i've actually found that in and again if we had any listeners who had caught who had caught up to us andrew let's leave them behind again with this very uninteresting observation for me about my real life but i have found that when i go to goldie's sometimes camaro kevin i will just sit there chatting in one of those you know booths by the bar usually we get there and they're not selling alcohol anymore by the way because usually this becomes a very good idea at about 1 30 in the morning and we will just sit in one of those booths and just uh you know uh chop it up and sometimes i won't even actually go over and do any gambling because it's like really what i want to do is hang out with my friends and uh so in this case i did play a teeny bit of pie gal but mostly i was just sitting around chatting it up with neil and durs and eating some of durs's noodles because

they were delicious but still not in this part or is it in the bar part not in that yeah see that's not that's what i'm getting at here wherever you're wherever you are you're in the more gambling part of the establishment whereas it's very rare for me to do this but genevieve um was camping on friday she was coming back at sometime on friday night so it wasn't like it was like you had and a hundred percent or sort of times it was kind of like i know genevieve's coming back but i know she's going to be tired from hiking we didn't have any evening plans or anything and i had gotten done with uh work on friday around five or 5 30 or something and i was like wow this i was just sort of feeling a little bit like footloose and fancy free but in a way that i didn't want any commitment like i've had a lot of social commitments uh recently um and so i've really been sort of looking forward to I was really looking forward I have so much trouble with that word yet I keep saying it you were looking forward to going to the rural brewery I was looking for no but I was really looking forward to this Friday night I sort of had it circled on my emotional calendar of just like literally nothing like no entanglements like no dinner nobody coming over no parties no nothing like Saturday I had a friend coming over who was going to stay with us and who did and that was a great time and we had people on come over saturday and we were burning stuff in the backyard and again i'm not saying that i don't enjoy friendship or my friends i'm lucky in a lot of ways but it's just been like i haven't had andy times lately and so i thought for sure my friday was going to be like get done with work close the old laptop and just like start darting it up right away put on the mariners game whatever but i realized i'd kind of not had much for lunch and i'm kind of hungry and genevieve isn't home yet i'm like let's see i could go somewhere and like do my thing where I maybe like eat a eat a pizza at a bar somewhere and watch like the Flintstones movie and VHS as they will do at a big Mario's pizza that was a anyway and I'm just sort of thinking like well where am I'm like actually I could take the bus to Shorty's and just like be there Goldie's I'm sorry Goldie's rather I could be like at Goldie's in 10 minutes and like when you guys are usually going to Goldie's late at night like I have no interest in that by by the time it's late at night I'm ready to go home go to bed I'm not much of a gambler especially if they're not selling alcohol anymore i've got no i got no reason to be there um but here it was i was like you know what what about an andy solo trip to goldie's where he sits himself down he watches some baseball because the baseball game was about to start um pulls some tabs and orders some chicken wings that my friends always talk about getting there now i ended up ordering the wrong chicken wings so i'm really embarrassed about that i got the korean flavored and basted chicken wings which were good but i told the bartender which was maybe a little bit a weird thing to say but i was like these are good but i need to take a shower after each one of them they were made of of of honey and glue like it just like they were the messiest they were really tasty but they were the messiest wings i've ever gotten i texted kamara kev i'm like hey i'm at goldies if you have any interest in watching this game he's like did you get the salt and pepper wings i'm like no you guys have been telling me

about the salt and pepper wings for literally a decade and i forgot and i got the wrong i ordered

off the wrong menu the salt and pepper wings are dry yes i mean not not in a bad way but like they present none of the challenges it's a rub we were just we were just talking about this last week but you and i are not fans of messy foods no and the salt and pepper wings when i've probably had them at some point in my life and certainly seen other people have them a very clean experience

and yeah so that was a mistake but anyway but I'm not going to dwell on that like they were good and I got that and some tots and it really was like my perfect kind of like again like yes I was out in public but I was not there were no entanglements and then Kamara just swings by just to pick me up and give me a ride home later because he's in the neighborhood so everything really came up Andy but anyway yeah so that bar top and it's funny that you thought it was fancy Cause I'm going to be a little bit rude here, but when, if you have a blue faux, like faux marble bar top that is lit from underneath, that to me is not fancy. That is, that is a different kind of, that's going for fancy in a non-fancy place, right?

Well, it's not like aesthetically or from a, you know, from an interior design perspective, it's not my thing and it doesn't, I don't even mean fancy. I just mean they put more into it than, let's say, the Mandarin Gate. Right. You said the bar was literally disintegrating around you. Yes. It's got to be a metaphor for something. Yeah. So that's all I mean. Am I dazzled by a marble bar top that is lit from below? No. But would it point me in the direction away from the Mandarin Gate? Yes. Yeah.

What do you think of the – because to me, again, now we know it's Goldie's, So the illusion is broken. But like to see something like this, this sort of again, like sort of faux fanciness or whatever you want to call it. Like it reminds me sort of of like a like the east side a little bit. Like what's that bar that I would go to that had. Oh, it was the comedy club. But the bar in the front of the comedy club had like an ice bar. It was like a made of ice. The rail. The parlor. Yeah, I think it's the parlor. Right.

I didn't know you ever went over there for comedy shows. I do. By the way, I'm a sucker for that ice rail. I do love it. I was playing with it the whole time. There's that place, Henry's. I think they've got one down by the stadium. And there's one in the – I was in an airport. Was it? It must have been PDX. PDX has one, I think. Really? That's the signature of that – yeah. That's the signature of that Henry's franchise is that they've always got that ice bar. And I got to admit, it does work on me. I find it very entertaining that I can just put something on that piece of ice and it will stay cold.

Yeah, and I'm obsessed with ice, too. So as you well know I have some new ice trays on the way By the way I'm very excited

Andrew we have to get to the top stories But I've got some ice content for you That I'm going to send you today after the show This brings together Two of the Foundational elements Of your life Ice and hot dogs And I'm going to send it to you And I want to get your reaction on tomorrow's program

Okay that sounds Okay i'll withhold my judgment hello and welcome to top story um i just saw a couple rants and raves

this morning in the seattle times andrew that um they're not like the best rants and raves i've ever seen in fact they might not even be in the top five but they did represent to me an experience that it seems like someone is having of just kind of helplessness or, like, futility. So I'm sure that regular listeners know that, and this is probably pretty typical in different newspapers in America, different local newspapers, but the Seattle Times has something called Rant and Rave where you can just basically, something nice happened and you can rave about it or something not great happened you can rant about it. You can just send it into the Times. They didn't have very many on this Monday. There was one, two, three total, starting with a rave to the greeter at the Issaquah Costco the other afternoon who, after noticing that an older customer was in need of personal support, acted quickly to get them to help the help they needed without drawing attention to the situation. Thank you for allowing this person to keep their dignity by showing immense kindness and compassion. You are an angel. That's a nice one. Somebody was helpful. This is the one that kind of jumped. Can I ask you a question?

question about that one actually when i was reading that this morning so is the person in this case are they doing the the classic new york times journalistic gambit of talking about themselves in the third person or did this person witness this oh wow that's i assume this person

had witnessed it but that would be an interesting move if they were writing about themselves in the third i think that is a reporter recently soiled themselves at a costco i think that is what it i

I think they sometimes do that with these rants and raves. They'll just sort of say they don't use the first person. Some of them do, but some of them say thank you to the person who showed a lot of kindness to somebody who was going through a really hard day after a visit for my treatment or whatever. Or not my. I just use the first person. But you dig what I'm saying. I think that that is somebody using the third person to say I was having a really hard time and somebody was there and showed me a lot of humanity.

Well, I'm really glad this happened. And it would also kind of that would sort of check out with the general high customers, high touch customer service that Costco provides. And I really mean that like people, you know, the folks who work at Costco are great and they do a great job. This next rant was it starts off rant to lack of customer service. They're ranting about a lack of customer service. Recently, we were woken up by a hotel staff member at 2.30 a.m. because of their error. No apology or credit. so I was like oh yeah that kind of sucks like the hotel wakes you up in the middle of the night because they thought maybe nobody was in the room or whatever and then they're not giving you anything you know they're not cutting you a break on the bill or whatever and then the person just goes a streaming service double billed us for eight months no refunds so far okay my condo's garage vent has been acting up for months no plan to repair it thus far sigh I was like oh this person is just this person just feels like charlie brown trying to kick various footballs they just need like the the hotel woke him up at 2 30 in the morning they've been getting charged for hulu double uh they the garage vent is but this is the person who feels very powerless in the world right right

into the seattle times this was the only place they had to turn um i yeah it was almost like the center sort of didn't hold on that one right it's like oh customer service i can get on board with this within like the the noisy vent or whatever i was like is that customer service i mean in a certain way it is now i thought it was amazing that you included rants and raves in today's um rundown i was so excited when i saw this because first of all i love the rants and raves it's my by far my favorite part of the newspaper anybody out there if we're ever on like the newlywed show together and that is one of the questions you can get that one right andrew's favorite part of the newspaper is the rants and raves um i don't probably i don't go to it every day but i need to make it more of an appointment um isn't that true of also jen flash andrews didn't you guys in the early days of tbtl have almost a regular feature of rants and raves

we absolutely did and and i want to give a credit where credit's due i think uh jen was the one who turned me on to the entire um that that section of the newspaper and i feel like it may have that may have um sort of uh what's the word i'm looking to morphed eventually into granny time Oh, interesting, okay

Remember this? She's in the house It's granny time Oh, I remember it One of the best segments to this day that TBTL ever had

Let's see if Jen will come back on and do more granny time Actually, we should Let's just do that

Let's just get her on the line I mean, I know that she's got a real job and everything I don't want to ask too much of Jen But if it's fun for her to come on and just do a granny time from time to time Good lord, that would be great But I do love the rants and raves In fact, I'm going to say something here, but I don't want to delve into it too much. I want to come back around to it. I want to say that I was thinking this morning that TBTL should just have something called Rants and Raves. Now, Granny Time was Jen giving her Rants and Raves. I think we should. The best I came up with was Blant and Brave, but that's not. We don't want to do that. Blant and Blaze. Nope, not there yet. But anyways, we need our own version of this where listeners write in their Rants and Raves. But when I saw this was in the rundown, I was like, rants and raves. Luke must have seen the same thing this weekend that another person on my social media diet saw on my social media diet. I don't know who this person was. I'm thinking that this was somebody I know probably as a listener of TBTL, but that I follow on Instagram. I don't remember who this person was. All I know is in their stories on Instagram, they wrote another day, another great rant and rave. And so I'm like, what is this? And this is the one they clipped out and shared. This is actually from Sunday's Rants and Raves. Before I read this, I want you to know the word dancing in the sentence I'm about to read is in quotes. I just think that's really important. So picture the word dancing in quotes. Okay. Rant to newcomers.

that all at once seem to have people dancing in delight with whatever the product is. If you feel you must dance, first learn how to do so. Flinging a leg into the air is not dancing. It's just embarrassing.

And also, my garage vent has been acting up again. I am obsessed with commercials.

I don't know what in the living hell this person is talking about, but I really want to get a drink with them at the Baranoff over your little nameplate. This person is so mad at the quote-unquote dancing and delight that we see in commercials. And if you're going to put it in your commercial, hire people who can dance because flinging a leg into the air is not dancing. It's just embarrassing.

I have a theory. I think that there's a good likelihood that the person who wrote this is older because the rants and raves, let's just be honest, it's not, you know, Addie and her friends. Addie and her friends are not This is not the first place they turn To try to process their feelings The rants and raves column of the Seattle Times So presumably this person is maybe on the older side I'm guessing that what they're seeing Are a lot of commercials for prescription medication And I feel like there is a trend In fact, there's been I don't know if this has come up on After These Messages Your fine, fine advertising related podcast That you and Genevieve host But I do feel like there's been a real move in the world of prescription drug ads to deconstruct the prescription drug ad. So it's not just an ad for, you know, I'll just say Ozempic, because that's the drug I can think of at the moment. But it's like a person is in an Ozempic TV commercial, but then the camera pulls back. So she's doing her thing and, you know, she's, and then they go cut, and then the camera pulls back, and then you realize she's in a commercial for the thing. And now she's walking around and she's talking to the craft service person and the other actors and it's like we're getting really meta with this because she's in a commercial for something but now we keep pulling the camera back and i feel like there's a few different versions of this where because i mean they've just they've sort of done everything they can i think to try to sell us on whatever these various you know statins are and different kinds of prescription medications and some of the some of these commercials also the people are dancing they're excited because we're showing that even these these people are dealing with some medical challenges they're still doing exciting things like dancing and i i'm wondering if that has gotten into fashion in some of these prescription drug ads and that's what this person is responding to because when you watch certain television um because you you and you and vives have have cut the cord as they say although somebody i saw somebody somewhere saying they really don't like the term like cut the cord because you're still using the cord if it's the internet there's a cord is coming into your house at some point it's just the internet instead of the cord that was or the cable that was going into the back of the television but if you watch over the air or if you watch cable television the way I do some channels every commercial is just for a prescription medication at this point it's the only thing they're still doing so that's my

theory especially if you're watching those um what is your uh it's not reality tv and it's not a procedural but it's somewhere between the two you're like real life mystery shows well surprise

well here's one thing I DVR those so then I fast forward through so I guess I don't actually know what's going on but oddly enough i would say that to the degree that i watch those ads it does not over index on on on prescription drug ads the way you would think because i tend to think that some of that true crime is kind of a young person's game or younger person's game don't you feel like

the ones that you watch though the forensic files also do you think i'm the only person who literally works in podcasting but couldn't think of the term true crime like what how did i describe it not reality tv this is how this is how i describe true crime because it's easier to say this you know the shows you like that are not reality tv but also not procedurals but they solve a mystery um somebody should come up with a word for that i'll bet you it'd be a hot genre

welcome to my favorite not procedural but the kind of one that you like

anyway don't get murdered do you think that those are all do you think that even like forensic files i always figure that that is a legacy thing that appeals to an older generation who then like

that genre and other forms forensic files is complicated because it's on hln and the commercial breaks on hln are weirdly what's the term i'm looking for it's i think it is just such low rent television time that you don't even get like a prestige a prestige um prescription drug ad you get some you get invent help.com the place that will help you market your invention are you familiar with invent help.com you know it's sort of picture of a caveman staring at a wheel that he i think invented but he didn't get it he didn't get it patented i think i have the most glancing familiarity with this i think i might have seen one commercial once or something but man that is that is a great idea because everybody thinks that they've got the the world's next great invention it's like are you a moron who thinks

you have good ideas yes well you should pay us some money so that and by the way your your product will never come to market but we will get some money from you while you delude yourself about

your banana grabber like giving up the animation right invent help is one of them and then there's

like a lot of cash for gold and then occasionally you'll get shack and that cartoon general doing some yeah getting getting up to some shenanigans some shack nanigans um but weirdly enough like i mean it should be the demo it should just be it should be wall-to-wall prescription drug ads i feel like where i see those ads a lot are on uh well cbs sunday morning sure and also network news so if you if you watch network news even even if you watch uh cable basic cable news programs like i do oh my gosh is this weird i am so excited to watch all in with chris hayes tonight he's back because and and i haven't had a proper television setup you know what i mean like i i I had the, on Friday, before I went to Explosions in the Sky, one of my favorite places to be rude to the listeners, I was hanging around here because the cable guy was here trying to figure out how to run the coax to this room. But, like, now I can, so tonight I have a whole plan. I'm going to, like, make me some dinner. I'm going to watch my Chris Hayes. I'm going to watch my Mariners. Like, I'm very excited about, like, as everyone else is cord cutting and cable cutting and time shifting and getting younger and younger with their content viewing. I'm getting older and older and I'm very excited to sit in front of what is still now probably a relatively old television because it's about three years old and watch my programs.

You know, I'm not 100% sure Chris is back from vacation. I don't have MSNBC anymore so I get most of my... I'll take an Ali Velshi. ...my Chris Hayes news from his personal Instagram page. I'll take a Mehdi Hassan. I'll take a Jen Psaki. I just wanted to prepare you for that in case you were kind of like you haven't had cable in a while. You're preparing for this moment of sitting down and seeing your friend on television. It might not be Chris, although he might be back tonight. Who knows?

Ex-friend. After we forgot to play his video message in the 4,000th, I think it kind of did a number on our friendship. But now this other story, which I'll just throw out because I teased it, is pretty wild. I saw this last week, this story in The New York Times that the headline is, A wealthy teenager, a five-star hotel, and a bizarre defamation fight. This was Liam Stack writing in the New York Times. The trouble began in August of 2021, according to the claims in an unusual lawsuit filed in July, when Theodore Weintraub was 17 and attempting something of an American rite of passage, buying alcohol with a fake ID. He tried and failed many times. But instead of going to a bodega or a midtown dive bar, he repeatedly chose the bar in one of Manhattan's most exclusive hotels. attached to a restaurant run by the celebrity chef Jean-Georges von der Richten, this is the first I've heard of this person, where a cheeseburger with fries costs $60. Bartenders don't see too many teenagers flashing fake IDs at establishments with a $14,500 bottle of wine on the menu, so Mr. Weintraub stood out. Again and again, staff members refused his increasingly aggressive attempts to buy a drink, the lawsuit said until finally in 2021 the hotel banned him entirely like what a weird way to try to get a drink if you are a teenager is to repeatedly go to the same place that's told you no and you just keep trying eventually they banned him from from the premises so he then comes back some night with his parents he appears to be very wealthy his parents appear to be very wealthy um they live in the neighborhood he the chutzpah on this kid they go he and his parents go to dinner at the place and when they walk in the staff says you're 86th dude um uh you are not allowed uh what's his name again um i don't have the story in front of me i'm sorry it's funny because i printed the story out so that i could find things on the fly i'm holding the story and you listen to this and i can't find this kid's first name anyway theodore thank you they like go Theodore you're not even allowed in here and this was by the way the first his parents had heard of it that's what I say the balls on this kid like actually as I'm reading the story I'm

wondering if the kid is all there actually no I think I mean that was going to be my own fun take on this whole thing I mean this is a story of about a lot of entitlement and yeah and and stuff but it's also about I think somebody who is probably struggling with some sort of mental health I guess you're right

You know, it's funny. I read the whole story and it hadn't occurred to me that that might be the subtext of this, because what this what Theodore Weintraub ends up doing is after he's been kicked out, after his father kind of says, OK, I'm sorry about this. we'll take care of it like apologizes to the staff he and his friends so he's got a friend roped in on this start protesting in front of the hotel with these wild signs um saying that the hotel is a holocaust denier saying that um that they were in league with jeffrey epstein i mean just like it abs and apparently doing this on multiple occasions until and by the way speaking Speaking of that New York Times kind of journalistic remove, Andrew, there is a point where a complaint is filed with the staff of the hotel over the sign that Theo Weintraub is holding up, or his friend is, that says that the hotel is Holocaust deniers. By the way, how that even comes up in the context of the hotel experience would be wild. Do you need any more towels? And by the way, six million Jews didn't die during the Holocaust. How is a hotel even a Holocaust denier as an entity?

Right. I mean, I assumed it was just like accusing the owners of the most horrendous thing possible or the management. That's what I think so.

But I mean, I think if you start to break it down, you wonder how that if you were staying at a hotel that did didn't that did deny the Holocaust. How would that present itself in the lodging experience? Like, when does that come up as they're checking?

Well, my guess is just saying in the same way that I don't go to certain establishments in Seattle because they're owned by a man who did atrocious things to women and never was held accountable. Well, it doesn't mean the bar itself did that, but I do not support those those businesses.

So the things this is reading from Liam Stacks piece, things reached a fever pitch when Drake stayed at the hotel last month. In one video posted online, a man can be heard chanting the Mark helped Epstein as Drake and his entourage leave the hotel. The lawsuit said that – oh, by the way, this hotel and bar have now sued this person, Theo Weintraub, for defamation because of standing outside with these signs that are saying wildly made-up things. The lawsuit says that a melee erupted outside the hotel when Mr. Weintraub and his fellow protester tried to keep a celebrity who was unnamed in court documents but whom the video shows to be Drake from re-entering the hotel. That resulted in the other protester being, quote, punched in the face by fans of the celebrity, according to the suit. The celebrity, comma, who is Jewish, later complained to hotel management that he was disturbed to hear someone screaming about Holocaust denial as he tried to come and go from the hotel, the lawsuit says. So we can piece together, A, Drake is Jewish, I did not know that, and B, Drake was the celebrity, it's Drake, that's the celebrity I'm talking about. Drake did not like having to hear about alleged Holocaust denialism as he was coming and going from this fancy hotel in New York.

And it just sounds like a general campaign of harassment. I mean, of just like making people uncomfortable. I don't usually spend a lot of time worrying about the the the experiences, pleasant or otherwise, of a A-list celebrity checking into their hotel. But I mean, this story is really irksome to me because, I mean, in a certain way, it sort of feels like the New York Times is kind of like, look how quirky this story is. I mean, it's like, no, this is like a weird like there's something broken with this rich kid who, again, like, you know, I think it's a combination of just being very disturbed, but also growing up and probably some incredibly I mean, if his parents were taking him to this restaurant for dinner. well then he also grew up with a lot of privilege and it's just like i don't know man it's kind of

an ugly ass story well i'll tell you who is unfazed by all of this edward the superintendent of a nearby commercial building um as far as crazy things we've seen this rates a two he said we see a lot around here i love edward what what has edward seen i know that was a 10 let's do a

profile on edward edward let's just sit down with edward weekly and tell drake drake complaining

to the front desk about the about the holocaust denialism charges being levied at the hotel

that's a two that's a two edward yeah yeah also wasn't i don't know if you mentioned this he was like saying that there are rats in the hotel i think like physically wasn't that like pestilence

wasn't the kid probably i mean he's clearly the you know clearly the kid was willing to say anything so i wouldn't i wouldn't be surprised but like i just loved that was to me the little cherry on top of this piece that was edward going this is a two man i know edwards you should see

what goes on at night yeah he's the main character of this story 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 you said you have um a v-mail that had you on the absolute edge of your seat now

I wanted to just say very quickly to close the loop on this because I said I have thoughts on voice memos oh yeah so I was uh Becca and I were on a walk yesterday and she was uh we were talking about how she one of many things that I admire about her is that she is a really good friend and she's really good at keeping connections with friends um and one of the ways that she and a lot of her friends communicate they used to use Marco Polo and now they just use the voice memo on their phone but they'll just like if she's walking home from work one day and she's got you know 20 minutes to kill she'll just record a little voice memo about what she's been up to or what she's been thinking about or whatever and just send it to her friend and then her friend will just like listen to it whenever she gets around and then she'll just send back a voice memo responding and they'll just do this you know not because of any big huge event but it's just a way of staying in touch and I loved that idea like it felt like so much less of a lift than I'm gonna call you mm-hmm and we're gonna like have a made a time and yeah we're gonna have a 45-minute conversation there's something very intimidating about that to me and and I guess my larger thought is I'm very bad at maintaining friendships then I thought hey I could send Andrew voice memos and I thought I mean I appreciate

it but there are other people that you probably yeah talk to you slightly less

Well, that was the thing. How insane is it that one of the places my mind went with, I could stay in touch with Andrew better.

I could just go back to episode, when did I start? Episode 1500 and just start going back.

I mean, if there is a person I am not under communicating with in my life, it's you.

I really appreciate you thinking of me, though. That is really sweet.

What do we do here other than send each other hour and a half long voice memos five days a week? It's total insanity.

That is bananas. I forgot about Marco Polo, but I do like that. You know what is somewhat ironic about this is I don't set up a lot of phone dates, but literally just before the show started, I got a text from a friend. Well, I'll just say Kiki Lolo, our dear friend Kiki Lolo, who used to work on TVTL. Speaking of Drake. She had sent me an article about the – you had mentioned this on the show a while before the news had broken. And I think I bladed it out of the show, as you like to say. But there's some news about APM severing a relationship with an advertising concern that did not go so well. Do we need to be coy about that? Well, The Verge, I think. Oh, so it's out now. Kiki just sent a, because we had seen an internal memo about it. And, you know, I want to keep good relationship with APM. I didn't want to be leaking information that wasn't public. leaky do you love me but anyway leaky do you love me is that a show there is a bit of news about a business relationship um at american public media that i was wondering why it was taking so long for the press to hear about and write about and apparently it was written about this weekend

uh it's just oh my goodness you know what it's just so sorry chris hayes i've canceled my viewing appointment and i'm gonna sit down with i'm gonna put on uh i'm gonna tie a a bib around my neck i'm going to get a knife and a fork and i'm going to just eat this story i'm dying to read what

they've written about this anyway i'm assuming so this is published in the verge so i assume that's hot pod writers who did it because i think they have a there's some oh oh no it's the apm

lawyers andrew we are not allowed to talk about their relationship with cadence 13 anyway so all

of that is to say yeah i had not been in a lot of touch with christine lopez christina lopez sometimes i'll uh see a vanity license plate and take a photo of it and send it to her because she's uh collecting those i believe she's obsessed with vanity license plates uh anyway so that's the extent of our relationship but she as we were talking this morning about this piece uh via text she's like let's set up a time to talk she's like and she literally said what you just said luke she said like i want to set up a time to talk where we can actually like talk for like 45 minutes and that specific time that you just said and like i like that i also had to say like okay i'm really busy the next two weeks so can we do it in three weeks which is maybe absurd an amount of time to wait to have a phone conversation with a friend but also i am looking forward to it but you're right i love this voice memo story um i forgot about marco polo entirely that was

basically just a voice memo app right yeah and i i don't know i mean i'm assuming your phone certainly my iphone has this now like it's pretty easy to record a little voice memo on your phone and send it to someone. So I don't know if that made the Marco Polo app kind of slightly superfluous or not, but I thought it was a clever idea.

Anyway, speaking of voice memos, let me bring this back to the listener. This is a pretty long story to be told, but it really is good, and it's got a really interesting moment of reflection at the end of it as well. So I'm not going to tell you anything about this other than that this is listener Rebecca. Hey, Luke and Andrew. This is Rebecca from California. When I was in fourth...

grade i walked to school with some friends who lived across the street and one day when i came out of my house in the morning by myself to cross the street this sort of jalopy pulled up with three or four teenagers in it love the use of jalopy they can find my glasses calling me names never had seen them before no idea why they'd do it but they did and i didn't want to go back in my house because i felt like they'd find out where i lived but i think they figured that out anyway I didn't want to go to my friend's house. I just waited until they kind of gave up and left. And then sometime later when we were going to school with my friends who were all, we were all between fourth and sixth grade, this car pulls up beside us and they start making fun of me again. And the other kids didn't know what was going on, but some of the older kids said something about it and provoke them and I remember the car opening in this jalopy and one of the kids dropped their books on the sidewalk made a big kind of crash sound got out and started chasing us so I ran and tried to get to school right so then from then on we were always kind of on the lookout for this car and which came by and tried to do the same kind of thing make fun of us and chase us and one day on the way home from school we were walking four or five of us and another kid who hadn't been with us before uh we're walking and they came by we saw this car and everybody scattered you know they run to try to hide and get away from them and i'm taking this kid with me nico and he's like what are we doing what's wrong i said we want to get away from these people it's a long story i don't want to explain and we're hiding kind of crouched down beside the wheel of this tire in a parking lot and i'm looking for these this car and he's like hey look what i found i forget whatever i'm busy he's like no no no and he has a wallet in his hand and he opens up the wallet and there's a ton of cash in there and i didn't i don't think there was any id or anything he's like what should i do and i'm like i don't know we gotta go like they actually came in the parking lot and we're like running from them anyway we got away from them and he's he said I'll just talk to my dad about it figure out what I'm going to do with this money where we turn it in whatever so when I caught up with him later I said what happened with the money he's like I got it it's like hundreds of dollars I said I want to give you some of it because we both found it I said no Nico we didn't and he's like no no no I wouldn't have found this money if we hadn't have been running from these people who were your enemies and chasing you. So you deserve some money. But anyway, I didn't take any money because I didn't think that made a lot of sense. And I said, what did your dad say? How come he's letting you walk

with us still, even though, you know, we're being chased by these people? And he said, no, I didn't tell him. And I realized the takeaway is, you know, none of us and like four or five different families told our parents about this. And this was an ongoing thing. It went on for months and we were really scared of these people but none of us told our parents so i don't i don't know why but we i don't think we ever did and thinking about it i actually figured out one other thing nowadays even now when people stop in the street and they're like walk across the street you know and they stop for you and you're supposed to cross in front of them i don't want to i will not do it and i just say go go go go and i've always thought how bitchy of me you know why am i why am i doing that it just seems so rude why not just walk across the street but i feel like they're in control when i do that and i don't want them to attack me and i'm like where did this come from and i realized that those people when they they the jalopy pulled up in front of my house and i was going to cross the street to my friend's house they were like go go ahead and then they played chicken with me they'd move the car up they'd honk at me they they'd act like they were gonna hit me and then i go go go go no no no no go go go go go they play this game with me that's been with me since fourth grade and i really hadn't remembered until i started thinking about this story anyway i don't know if that's a power out but that's what i got yeah i'd say

that's a power out wow that's intense that's really intense what is going so these were kids in this car it sounds like but older kids i'm assuming like high school kids or something and it's like this this pattern of harassment i mean even for me somebody who was bullied a lot i deserved it no uh no i'm just joking but no but like this this like this campaign of harassment is is so odd especially if these are like high school kids like there's something they got you know this is like kind of what my parents would always say like Like as they would try to unhelpfully puzzle out why I was the victim of bullying and just be like, well, you're giving them something that they want, you know, and that's such a blaming the victim way of of putting it. But it's like these kids harassed or these high school kids harassed a child, a fourth grader, and somehow the reaction gave them what they want for their bullying needs. and they just continued it i mean it sounds that sounds horrific looking over your shoulder to go to school every day hoping you don't get harassed by a car full of high school kids and like it's

you know it's part of uh listener rebecca's adult life has been now shaped by this you know down to the like when that whole i mean heaven forbid rebecca ever visits seattle and she's at one of those four-way stops they want her to cross and she wants them to go but they want her to cross you could stay there for days yeah just with trying to wave each other on but like yeah that's intense it's also uh you know i wasn't bullied per se and certainly nothing nearly as systematic but i do remember being i guess what i'm about to say is i wonder i just don't know what i don't know what it's like to be a kid in 2023 i don't know what it looks like i don't know if this kind of stuff happens but i do know that when i was growing up um most days when when we would leave the house we would be would there be what felt like about a 50 50 chance of getting our butts kicked like it would be like oh that one kid who's older who if he catches you at the school like not in school like i wasn't worried about in school being bullied but i'm talking about like summertime you'd be hanging out somewhere and that one kid would show up was kind of menacing um or like we got chased for our shoes one time by a car full of like older boys because i had saved up for these jordans and like that was in the era of like you get your shoes stolen and i remember peter williams and i just running through like climbing over fences in backyards and running away from this car that was like pulling up it was like something out of back to the future where like we get to an alley and the car pulls up at the end of the alley and then we're like and we go the other way like there was a lot of that in my life as a kid a lot of kind of like oh if we go to this thing and then those kids that are from the other neighborhood show up they're gonna there's gonna it's gonna get weird there's gonna be the threat of physical violence Will it happen or not? I don't know, but it's always out there. But that's different than a consistent pattern of the same. Usually bullies just have short attention spans. They're bullying you, but then they're on to the next thing. Yeah, right?

Or it's circumstantial in a certain way. Like, well, for me, it was like, well, that kid's there, and so they see me doing something, and so they go after me in some way or another. But, like, yeah, this particular thing, because it doesn't sound like these are classmates. These aren't people who are holding a grudge. you know they're too they're too far away in age and also i think it's interesting um the the

thing that rebecca said about how none of the kids that were getting basically harassed told their parents yep that's another very weird and that's something you can probably weigh in on um because you were unfortunately more the target of this stuff but like is there an impulse to like not want to bring your parents in on it it never seemed to help it seemed like if you brought

adults in it just made everything worse like either you'd you'd make the people who were your bully is even more mad at you or it would just it wouldn't or like i say like and again this is the 80s i'm not trying to throw my parents under the bus but like i think that they were concerned about it but didn't know what to do and my dad was not like somebody who i think was a target of bullying growing up i think he was kind of more of a cool guy um and so i just think he was like kind of like well i don't like what you know like probably just puzzling well why like what is it what is it about your reaction and it's true i mean this is the thing and like now i feel Like I'm victim blaming Rebecca, which is not what I'm trying to do here. But like the reason certain kids like me got bullied was because of I mean, at some point somebody realized they got a certain reaction out of me that they didn't get out of Tony, you know, or whoever else. And like, what is it? What is that vulnerability that and I don't know if this is still true today. Like, I know that they're still bullying today, but I think it's taken on a very different shape. And I think it's taken, you know, in the the all of our, you know, the digital tools and everything has kind of changed the shape of what bullying was like and sometimes some incredibly scary ways. But anyway, in humiliating ways. But yeah, what it is? What is it about that type of bullying where it's kind of like they realized, oh, well, if I do this to Andy, he's going to be what? i don't know on the verge of tears or i would maybe get mad and frustrated and then shoot my mouth off back at them which would then you know it's like a circular thing but there were other kids who were just like and like other nerds this is the thing that always astounded me is like there were cool kids in my classes and there were nerds in my classes but they were like benevolent nerds you know and like they could just like go about doing their own thing that should have been the name of your organization benevolent nerds but like then for some reason I was the one who was both a nerd but also had like a toxic relationship with everybody and it was unclear why but anyway oh man

well I'm sorry I mean I'm sorry I really am andrea as your friend as a person who is going to be sending you a voice memo later today i am really sorry that that was your that that was that happened to you so much i just can't even imagine i mean childhood is hard enough without people actively fucking with you yeah right um and and then also for rebecca i'm really sorry that sounds really scary and and and i you know i can imagine how in adulthood there are still elements of that that that play in your mind you know when you learn that kind of stuff at a young age it you know it stays with you so

And also, though, for whatever it's worth, a really well-told story, Rebecca. Yes. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, there was the found money.

There's Nico. Yeah, exactly. Nico, the jalopy, like you pointed out. I have a feeling that Nico never told his dad about it. I'm wondering about that, too. Because if Nico wasn't going to talk about the bullying... Also, I love that Nico wanted to share the money, though. Yeah. That's thoughtful.

I'm team Nico, sure.

But if I'm Nico, I'm A, not telling my parents about the bullying. Well, I don't know what I'd say about the bullying. I'm not telling them about the money. I'm definitely not telling Rebecca that I kept the money. I'm wearing new Jordans, and Rebecca's like, huh, Nico, where'd you get those new Jordans from?

I'm buying new friends. Exactly.

Anyway, well, thanks for calling in with that voicemail, Rebecca. Yeah, really interesting. All right. I think we're going to call that good here on this Monday. I'm going to try something. This sounds like a humble brag, and it's not. It's really what it is, is I did a very bad job of organizing my morning, Andrew, and I missed my normal earlier window for my jogging. So I am now going to try to find a shady area to do a little bit of jogging today. I'm going to hydrate, but I'm going to do probably the last thing that they recommend when it's 100 degrees outside. So if if tomorrow when after the intro tape plays, you don't hear from me, it's because it's because I expired from the heat.

Oh, wow. That is that's dark. But also I hope that you remember it and leave a really long pause. Just to keep everybody on their toes.

All right. Thanks for listening, folks. We'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, have a good Monday. Take care of yourselves. Try to stay cool if you can. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Peace and love. Peace and love. Slab jacking. Power out.