Muse

We have a witness go on record saying that they saw you in the White House parking lot with Mr. Egan, Ms. Berkheimer, and Senator Pierce.

That's correct. I ran into them by chance because I was merely getting something from my car. What were you getting? I was getting some medicine. What kind of medicine? It's knee medicine. Knee medicine. Yeah, knee medicine. I have problems with my left knee. It hurts when I crouch. What was the name of the medicine? I want to say it's called Crouch Cream. But that's not right. It's a white tube with a red label. I'm sure an intern could research this. It has a silhouette of a horse on it. And I don't know why the horse is on there. I guess horses probably have good knees, so, but I think it's called Kneezy, Kneezy Cream. I don't think that's it.

He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans! This is genius. This is genius work. Just because you like laying around your house in your underpants doesn't mean the United States of America has to see it. Is there, and I'm just guessing here, some kind of medication that you maybe need a lot of and have taken none of? Or maybe too much of today?

I stand corrected. This is compelling radio. All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheet?

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I got one kidney, one lung, a half a liver, and a pure heart.

Coming to you from the Riverhouse studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we're looking at a beautiful day shaping up. It's still, the temperatures are relatively tolerable. I think that's going to change in the coming days. It's going to get real toasty, but for now it's very beautiful here, looking out on the river. Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful. Maybe another one of those shows where we have some construction noise going on. And then I'm in my own sort of self-made construction situation here inside the house as well. I don't mean this figuratively. I have literally painted myself into a corner in this room that I'm in. What an idiot. i am in i'm in the one area of the room where the paint is dry enough that i can be sitting in my office chair and talking into this microphone but everything else in this room the paint i've like painted myself over here i'm hoping it's dry by the end of the recording because i have to leave the house to go down to portland to do an interview with the comedian maria bamford and then i have to get on an airplane and go to chicago and i may not make any of those appointments if this paint does not dry enough for me to walk on it to get out of this room i had to do hot lava i had to play hot lava as a 47 year old man a minute ago um climbing on the couch and onto this i don't know tv stand to go across the room and close a window because i can't because the floor is hot lava we do not have time for this kind of silliness anyway more on that coming up probably also this is episode 4016 in a collector series let the fun begin speaking of silliness i guess i was off uh in my numbering of the episodes yesterday so sorry if that ruined anyone's day we're back on track episode 4016 in a collector's series and this sunday is a national cinema day meaning you can go see a movie at most of the major movie houses movie chains for four dollars so who needs a movie the reporting around the story is a little bit um i have some questions about a couple of the items in the reporting for national cinema day i'd like to point out to anybody watching this is really bunk journalism so we'll probably talk about that and we'll talk to this guy the longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships you call hamburgers steamed hams yes it's a regional dialect he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning

Do you know what I just had, Luke, about two hours ago? What? A dream sequel. Whoa. You ever have a sequel to a dream? I don't think so, but I don't remember my dreams nearly as much as you do. I don't have to get into it. It's not like the point of the dream is not super interesting, but I know that the situation I found myself in, in a dream that I woke up from this morning, was a Amen.

follow-up i'm the thing is you never know for sure though right dreams twist your mind around you can't tell what's real what's reality was it just a sequel well none of its reality i mean if we're being i'm definitely sleeping that's real okay that part's real so that's real but i mean

the events in the dream none of them could be described as reality right i was pretty hot in the dream are you freddy krueger are you are you traveling through people's dreams andrew turning That's the goal, Luke. I'm not there yet, but that is the goal. I feel like there's some kind of a weird drop that you were playing for a while that's like Jim Carrey. It sounds like Jim Carrey to me, but he's saying something about how I take your dreams and turn them into nightmares. Is that Jim Carrey? I think it is, but you know what?

I don't even know that movie. It's Burt Wonderstone. Genevieve told me.

Have you ever had a dream?

Genevieve told me to pull this drop years and years ago. I think she watched this on an airplane, maybe, and then she said you should use this as intro tape. They said this was a magician's bar.

Mr. Gray. What you do is not magic. I understand. It's natural for a dying leaf to be frightened by the autumn wind. It's not about pulling a rabbit out of your hat anymore. It's about pulling your heart out of your chest. what the hell is that supposed to mean it means i take people's nightmares

and turn them into dream realities that's what good memory yeah i think that i i have actually seen that movie and i enjoyed it because what it is is a sort of send up or a uh a sort of

parody of the magic castle oh is it all the people and all the weirdness around the magic

Castle. It's like Ben Stiller is a magician, I think. I think he's Burt Wonderstone. Steve Carell, I believe, is one of the other voices that you just heard. That would make sense, yeah. And then Jim Carrey, but if you've ever, if you've obsessed over the Magic Castle the way I have and the way I know you and Veeves have, just the setting of

the film is funny. Now, have you been to the Magic

Castle? I don't think I have, Andrew, so maybe obsession

is a little overstating it. I was going to say, because it's achievable to go there. I was there a couple... I don't know. I don't have Magic castle money do you know that's the one time um it was the second time i went um and we were in some room where you know a performer was doing some some card-based magic uh illusions what have you yeah it's kind of an i mean if you don't know the magic castle in la it's kind of a kind of a famous or infamous place where uh there's always magic going on magic trick huh illusion, Michael. But there's a whole bunch of different rooms. You can kind of like stand in line to go see special presentations, or you can just kind of wander around the bar and there'll be somebody doing something with rope and knots, or you go over here and there's somebody just doing something with cards. It's a pretty, it's a pretty interesting scenario. You just wander around and soak up all the magic. But one time we went into one of these rooms for a special presentation involving a deck of cards and an illusionist. And we were sitting, I believe, in the front row and um we were there with our former colleague chris by the way luke remember our fundraiser chris who maybe was even in charge of dolls possibly american public media chris yes she was visiting from minnesota and we were in la at the time so we went and the magician slash illusionist picked me out to participate in some way i didn't have to stand up i just had to stay in my seat but like give them some sort of information or something oh but that sounds like your nightmare no it was so bad too and it's one of those things where you know how we have conversations on this show about hey you were hey I was feeling pretty awkward last night and everybody's like you're never as awkward as you think like this is one where afterwards Genevieve was like yeah you should probably just tell people you don't want to participate if you're going to act like that because like I just like I was sitting there like I figured I can always avoid getting called onto the stage or called into some sort of participation by looking as grumpy as possible because these folks are performers they don't want a no but kind of person they want a yes and yes and kind of person they want somebody who's there on a um you know like a bachelor or bachelorette party who's like willing to part like i'm just looking as grumpy as i can on like a friday night or whatever but he didn't he didn't see the signs he didn't take them in and say this is how nature says don't call on this person the front row and sir are you unfamiliar with the far side comics and so i i puffed myself up yeah i had little spikes coming out of my collar um or out of my neck but anyway yeah so whatever he asked me to do like i did but as stone-faced and cold as possible you didn't once you were sort of like i i know what you mean

and i for for as much of uh for as much as i have the show off demon i hate and

being involved in something like that as an audience member because i just i i i just feel like i'm gonna kind of ruin it accidentally i it just it's an uncomfortable position to be in

some people you're not in control you're somebody who doesn't mind probably a big having the attention on you but you're in control of that attention and and so but i i think what i would

do is i would be trying to like you said i would be trying to project to the person do not please do not pick me i don't want to be picked this is not fun for me but then i think if i was on stage something else would kick in where i'd be a little shit now i'm trapped here i might as well be like i might as well just like you know try to go along with as much as possible you're saying you kind of didn't you didn't turn that corner when you got on stage no and when you were standing there participating i should say i don't even know that i had to stand i think i just

was able to sit the whole time which really seems like a as i say it it really seems like a small

ask doesn't it no i know no because if you're being i i don't think it's a small ask because you're like you're part of the trick you're thinking of a number you're something something right are you responding are you asking you questions and you're responding I believe so

I believe it was one of those you know I wonder if Genevieve remembers this better than me or actually in a rare case of her not remembering this at all because it was it stuck with me because it was kind of embarrassing and again she didn't give me any kind of social cover afterwards either she's like yeah that was rough um but um I uh I think I had to yeah maybe guess a number maybe pull a card i don't know it wasn't that big of a deal but he was probably i don't remember the details but also like i have a real high cringe gag uh gag reflex sort of and so if this person was doing anything that was kind of like i'm here to do my magic okay he wasn't there was any wax on their mustache at all i don't know what it was but it's like i don't like this guy i don't want to be a part of this thing and i would not have sat in the front row if it were me but you know i was there with friends so anyway yeah that that kind of stands out in my in my brain

it sounds like you because a day can't go by on this show that i don't reference the netflix sketch show i think you should leave but the sketch where it's cecily strong is married to tim robinson's character and he's called up on stage on one of those at a magic show and it's just kind of one of those doofy things where he's just kind of a you know just kind of a simple guy and and the magician is sort of like you know doing all these tricks and the tricks are kind of predicated on this idea that tim robinson just doesn't get it but everyone's laughing along tim robinson is probably being sort of the opposite of how you were in that moment like he's just aw shucks he's going along with it and the patter that the magician is doing is just kind of mildly making fun of tim robinson but in sort of the way that magicians might like well sir that's not where that's not where you put your hat you know then he like pulls his hat out of a cape or some shit the sketch that was at cecily strong feels like their family and by extension of how much her husband was just humiliated on stage and did nothing to defend himself right okay yes he's embarrassed not only himself but their entire marriage yes their family everything they stand for she is not she is deeply deeply um sort of like upset by the fact that tim robinson just stood up there taking it on stage you know what i don't as you were describing that entire

sketch like in the comedy show none of it rang a bell when you got to the part about cecily strong because at the end they're laying in bed right it's like night time and doesn't wake up and say like this isn't gonna work like i can't believe that you let them i don't remember that sketch i wonder if i somehow missed it because i only know the end of it because one of our friends or you sent it to a text chain or something and so i was like i don't remember watching this that final scene i don't know how there are missing sketches that i haven't is that i know season one or something i believe it was from season one that would probably be why i think i only watched that season all the way through once and maybe that's really and this is not going to be shocking

to the listeners that is now my sort of my default like if i can't think of what to watch it's like uh i want to just i don't want to make any more decisions i think you should leave is just it's like once when i my daughter was reading one of the harry potter books you know there's a lot of them and they're thick and i was like which one are you on or how i asked her something about she goes well i'm just always reading them you know like she just gets to the end and then she starts at the beginning she's like so right now i'm currently experiencing whatever the second book but it's just this like thing that she would like to read over and over again i think our listeners can relate very on various books that's me with i think you should I just put it on it's playing I'm enjoying it I don't have to think so I've now seen every sketch

probably 11 times I I think speaking of the intro tape not that we were speaking of the intro tape but I think the closest thing I have to that is veep these days I think it used to be 30 rock for me but now for some reason when I turn on my device it's late at night I don't want to be like scrolling scrolling looking for the perfect thing I want something I've seen before you know not something I have to pay a lot of attention to especially if I'm like making a snack in the kitchen.

I just have it up on my iPad or whatever. So I'm just at some point, I think a couple of years ago, I just got in a Veep rut. And now I'm just constantly cycling somewhere through Veep.

That's interesting because Veep is very, very rapid paced and very I mean, if you've seen it a few times, then you probably know what's going on. But that's a show that I think part of why I haven't finished the whole thing is because it commands my attention because there's all this like subtlety. There's these machinations of the sort of governmental process. there's like it feels to me like i need to be like paying attention so i'm getting all the jokes and following the sort of plot as in as much as there is one to the degree that when you played that intro tape today andrew i was reminded of how much i've loved like i probably watched maybe three seasons of that show and how much i adore it and on friday i'm going to be getting back from chicago and my dad is going to be showing up and we're going to be working on the house for the next week or so and i'm already put i was like maybe i can get my dad to watch veep with me but Then I was like, well, first of all, it's a little fresh at times, just in the language department. I mean, the insults that Selena levels at people by themselves would just probably send my dad to an early grave. But also I was like, this is too complicated for my dad. I mean, I love my dad dearly, but like we will watch BBC shows together that he's watched once. And he'll be like, wait, who did that? And I'm like, Dad, didn't you already? This is Baptiste, man. This is your thing. You already know this stuff. What's going on?

um i think i probably always ask this but have you seen the movie in the loop that came out before veep it's ianucci right it's the same guy it's yes i didn't know the name but i know it's the same like kind of minds behind veep british though right well it's it's about u.s politicians and british politicians uh but yes there's a big british component of it and a bunch of it takes place in england um but also it has uh james gandolfini has a has a small surprise role in it i mean you want to talk about fast-paced rapid fire just what i heard about is it a movie or it's a movie it is so goddamn good i've probably seen it five times and i can't tell you too much about it because i'm not that smart and just it's but it is the you see so much of i mean i love veep i feel like the center didn't hold too much i think that like a lot of shows i think it survived into the trump era and i think everybody lost their goddamn mind and didn't and like the show just became nothing but i have some friends who think the last season of the best season i think it's the worst season because it's almost like nothing but how elaborate can we make this swear word you know what i mean they lean on that structure way too much i think um and but the earlier seasons i think are just incredibly smart but in the loop is like the distilled version of it like there's no i'm gonna take your hand and walk you through this viewer like it's just like you totally trust the viewer to like keep up or watch it again or whatever and you'll just find yourself shocked at how hard you're laughing i cannot recommend in the loop enough if you like

okay i'm going to yeah i'm gonna actually i'm gonna make i'm gonna make myself i mean i've been hearing about that movie and then how it was kind of the the the the sort of starting point if you will for a certain kind of television which then led to veep um i've been hearing about it for years and i've never sat down i think because i heard it's i thought it was like a really fast paced thing set in like the house of commons and i was like oh god i'm not gonna like i watched i loved the british office but it took me probably a season before i understood what the hell people

were even talking about there are some accents but it's not fully that and i think it is i think it is american politicians trying to trying to drag england into a war like it's kind of a post 9-11y kind of vibe in fact i wonder when i bet i'll bet you was made in like 2003 or something like that so it's a lot of americans uh trying to manipulate uh british lawmakers yeah i am i i need

to i need to make myself sit down and watch that now the whole thing about me trying to get this place, kind of prepare, figure out the TV plan, Andrew, figure out all the stuff. Because when my dad gets here, we will be, as we have been for the longest time, in the words of Billy Joel, O-O-O-O, for the longest time. Is that a Billy Joel song?

Yes, as is Uptown Girl, which isn't relevant. That was his do-op phase? Yeah, we don't have to get into it. But just because it sounds like old music doesn't mean it's old music, so therefore, if you're an old-y station, you don't... You know, but Kixi is so far from the dock at this point. Like it's not even worth arguing anymore.

So we there's basically two there are like two rooms that are kind of operational in this house. And it is the room that I'm in right now, which I think it was like the dining. I don't know what they used it for when the people before me. But it's just a little tiny room, which right now is where I do TBTL from. It's where I watch the Mariners at night. And then there's the kitchen, which is a teeny. tiny kind of semi-functional you know you don't know what the temperature is on the stove but again i'm kind of proud that i've figured out intuitively i'm able to cook a pizza in that kitchen andrew that's the that's the important thing and so my dad and i are going to be when i get back from chicago we'll be here for like a solid week just like living in this place and one of the things that it's kind of complicated but i mentioned it on the show before like i had so there were hardwood floors in the kitchen and in this little room that i'm in and i just somehow decided in my mind that there was something weird about the the coating on those floors that there were some kind of like it was off gassing in some way like it was making kind of a chemically almost like a kerosene kind of smell and so i when i had some guys here doing demo i had them um sand the floors down sand all of that or at least a lot of that weird finish off and maybe i was right because it did make the smell go away but what it replaced it with were these very rough kind of red like the you know i guess it was some kind of red hardwood i don't know if it's what exact material it is but it's so dusty and you can never get it clean like i'll sweep i'll sweep for like i don't know half hour and they'll be like there's no dust on this then i'll sweep it again and there will just be dust again like it's the weirdest thing and it's red so it stains everything like if you walk around in this house uh in bare feet you're just like your feet are just like red clay by the end of it or your shoes are or like there's this spot when i do the show and i'm talking to you where i can see that i tap the bottom of my foot against this white wall because it's all just like these red marks now and i want to get bubbles up here but uh she is just going to be running around picking up all this weird material on her feet so what i just and ultimately it's all going to be covered by a new floor but in the meantime who knows how long that's going to take so i've set about on the task of painting it all but i'm obsessed with trying to get it all like what i'm going to literally try to do when i leave today when i leave for portland is like paint my way out of the house like like like i'm like slowly walking backward with the roller painting and then like put the roller in the in the tray which ultimately which ideally will have no paint in it and then step out the door and lock it and then just be like i have fun drying for the next couple of days house like i i'm trying to figure out how to how to get everything covered that needs to be covered but not in such a way that i have to step across or get myself trapped again because right now i am a little bit trapped in this corner of

the room so you're comfortable painting in whatever clothes you're going to travel in

well that's andrew i've already i mean the answer is no but i'm going to do it because i don't have a better plan um it's not super messy i'm painting a floor i have a roller it's on an extender it's not like it's not like i'm painting a ceiling and it's dropping down on me I'm not Charlton Heston in the movie about Michelangelo where he's painting the Sistine Chapel. But I did already kind of ruin my very favorite hat currently going, which I'm bummed about because yesterday I was painting and I didn't realize that I had kind of like put my hand, which had some paint on it, on the hat. And so now my B-side coffee, which is a cool coffee shop on Capitol Hill, my B-side coffee hat has like a little gray paint on it. But I'm trying to get this thing all dialed in because what I want to do is come back on Friday and then like be able to just like get to the work and not have to keep moving furniture around or trying to paint things or have there be a bunch of wet paint that my dad and I are trying to step around. But there is, I mean, I'll obviously, I'm not going to stay in this room indefinitely, but I am legitimately curious if everything will be dry enough for me to leave this room by the end of the broadcast.

I know that this is just a temporary solution and you're going to get new floors because otherwise I'd advise against painting floors, of course, but even as a temporary situation, are you um using specifically floor paint yes okay that's good because yeah and then again it's good that it's temporary because this is something that we've talked about on the spotless podcast is it's really difficult to clean painted surfaces and floors obviously get very dirty and dirt gets kind of ground into the paint even if you seal it like after a while after a year or years um the paint will just take on the dirt in a way and really the only way to truly clean it

sounds like to paint it again yeah people do i mean they sell floor paint although this is technically porch paint but it's like the guy at the paint thing was like probably if you're putting this over hardwood this is probably the best thing to use um but yeah people really look at you kind of funny when you say like i'm painting that floor like that's not a thing i guess that people really do it is just purely to tamp down whatever is going on with that

other stuff yeah it does look better yeah no and i'm sure it looks better and again i think you'll be fined for what you for what it is but i just have heard all these nightmare stories of people who have actually painted like sort of intricate things on their floors like in a basement situation like a basement bathroom or what have you but then after a while it just gets it gets

trod upon luke well the guy said the only thing is you cannot he goes if a car drives Thank you. this stuff it will pick it up it will this is one of the things i tell you this so just make sure you're not driving on this i said if a car is in this room i have much bigger problems yes yes the paint he didn't laugh i don't think he understood how ludicrous that he was just trying to be helpful but like yeah uh other than that i think a lot of people when i was looking up how to clean

painted floors not all that long ago you get a lot of like how to get the grease up from your painted garage floor i think garage floors are often painted or things of of the floors that are painted i think they garages take up a big part of that diagram yeah exactly so anyway we're

i'm hoping that um i'm hoping that this will have proven because it was you know it ended up this is the other thing that happens though my first thought was like i don't care what this looks like because it's just here to keep the dust down and i'm just gonna throw this paint on and i told the guy how what the square footage was he's like okay one can will totally do you i was like all right and then i painted it last night and then it was completely not enough paint well what it was was immediately the floor started showing through the paint and it just looked like crap and then i was like well i know this is temporary but i can't in good conscience have it look this crappy like i gotta go buy another can of paint and i gotta like paint this again because even though it's temporary like i don't have it in me to just like do something that's temporary but that looks like like that looks worse than it did before and then just be

like who cares yeah you're gonna be living there for a little bit yeah it's turning into like a

legitimate painting project yeah which i kind of didn't intend for it to but i'm sure when it's all said and done i mean every little i'll say this every small thing that i do here just to improve my life even if it's temporary is really paying dividends in terms of my just overall like emotional health like i put my bed together yesterday which i had been sleeping on a mattress on the floor because i have a king-size bed and the frame was too big to get upstairs and so um i had to take it apart and then carry it up in pieces and then reassemble it and i'll tell you i was so burned out when i first moved in here of just like hauling stuff that i was like who cares this big i have this big king-size mattress it's on the floor it doesn't really matter it's like it's perfectly comfortable this is this happens all the time to people in life it does like why also i eventually want to remodel the upstairs so do i want to recon do i want to put this whole bed frame together and then i just finally did it yesterday i like hauled the stuff up there brought the screw you know power whatever driver screwdriver thing and i just put it all together while i was listening to all things considered and then i by the way to the mattress makers of america please don't ever put a handle on the side of the mattress don't do that that would be too helpful don't put any kind of hand hold on the side of the mattress like because that would just make our life actually easier like why is that so not done in the industry

yeah i don't know i'm trying to think if i ever had one with a handle it does seem like you should I've seen them. I feel like I can picture them, but I can't picture them in my own life.

I remember being a kid, and there was somewhere that was almost like a rigid plastic little narrow thing that would pop out that you could kind of grab and pull out. But, like, just put a couple of cloth loops on there. Stitch them so that there's just a little bit of space between them and the mattress. And then it's just the lack of handholds on mattresses. It's shocking to me.

I wonder if they can't attach it, sew it, I guess, in a way that is strong enough, given the weight of the mattress, that it just becomes a liability for them because it's just going to rip because mattresses are so heavy that, okay, if you had, let's say, two handles on each side and you had some movers and they were all grabbing those handles, maybe you'd be fine. But if somebody tries to, like, misuse the handle, like, it would just rip right off. And then it's just kind of like, well, we're just better off not putting these handles on there. I'm just totally speculating.

That's actually probably a pretty smart theory. All I'm trying to say is I put this dumb bed together. I somehow dragged the mattress back up on there and washed my sheets and remade my bed and then did these, like, janky things I would never do if this was, like, how I was going to live the rest of my life. but the side of the bed that I sleep on there's no nightstand there's no room for anything because it's so tiny up there so I like put some command hooks on the wall so that I can like hang my cell phone charging cable over them so I can have access to that anyway I set up this little thing I got up this morning my alarm went off my phone was fully charged I look the first thing I do is I look out and I see the river because now I'm not on the floor anymore I get up I get my running shorts out of the thing that they're in a little kind of um I don't know what you'd call it kind of like a circular kind of container thing like a bucket thing but it's made out of fabric and i got my running shorts and my socks and i put my just and then i just walked downstairs and i made some coffee and then i like i felt like oh i can live this life like this is doable and it's due to dumb things like a command hook that holds my cell phone charging cable and like uh you know some floor paint so uh i'm i'm feeling actually like pretty good about things around here but it's not because any of the major construction is moving forward it's because i'm just Thank you.

slowly i'm also worried that if i actually make this house pretty livable i'll never have the actual project finished i'll just become like a weird person who's living in like a half-built house but i've just slowly like i've george washington's axed it to where like i painted the floors you know those don't look bad okay i don't need to replace those and hey um you know this kitchen this kitchen's actually not the worst i know how to cook pizza in this oven Oh, my bedroom where it has a Holly Hobby wallpaper and it's my cell phone charging cable is dangling from a command hook, which is one of those little things you stick on. You know, like I could just get used to all of this and then someday just be like, this is my life now.

Yeah, I think about that a lot. I don't have a word for it, but it's like nose blindness for all of your senses when you move into a place. because like when we moved in here and the same was with our old apartment too like you move in you unpack a whole bunch of stuff Genevieve did I believe on both the last moves a lot of that unpacking work because she's just kind of like she she just especially moving into this house she was so excited to be moving into the house and so like everything was just like unpacked almost immediately she just was just a ball of energy coming into this place like project done project done project done but then and you might remember this there was just like that those last few things that are just like connect well if we unpack this box we really need shelves for it put it on those temporary shelves for now but like don't even unpack that stuff because first we need to find the the proper shelving and then we're gonna finish it and then we're and so like we did have like part of our basement kind of near the bathroom luke if you can picture that behind the television um we put our television in front of the bathroom to hide the shame um but there's just this area that was just kind of like the no man's land for a while where we just had a bunch of shit you know and like it's easy to just slip into life and realize that that doesn't bother you that much anymore you can pass by it and you're like if you were visiting somebody this is like my issue again we don't have that many visitors but i'm always thinking i think one of my obsessions with like tidiness if not cleanliness um is this idea of what if some if somebody were to walk in here for the first time what would they think of this place and um and there are things that you just go blind to yourself that you just get used to and just like smells I don't want that to happen I want to in a certain I want to be comfortable in my home I don't want to be uncomfortable but I also don't want to be so comfortable that I don't see the obvious flaws

that need to be fixed yeah and part of my I mean I don't think it would have been possible for me to live in this place like live here live here with it in the condition it was but part of why I didn't want to do anything was for that exact reason like part of why I was like I told you this but like my mom called me and was like do you because she and my dad had stopped by the house this was before i like cleaned it up and started the process of making it a little bit

more like you weren't really living there at this point i wasn't living here but man it was in rough

shape my mom was like do you want me to come clean your kitchen for you because like it seemed it's

and you said that's not a very suzy burbank that's not my mom's go-to that's not her love language

yeah uh and like it was like i think she said this is a person who may be in some amount of mental health crisis based on how this house looks right now and i kind of wanted it to be that way because i thought that'll motivate me but i'm like no i can't like that's i'm i still have to live here in the meantime and i can't feel depressed every time i look you know to survey the room or whatever and so i'm finding that as i do like something as dumb as in the downstairs basement where the laundry is which i had sort of kind of straightened it up but still not all the way like last night i just spent like a good hour like spraying down all the surfaces of the washing machine and the dryer and these like various shelves that were all still had a lot of like crud on them i sprayed them all down with this like clorox it's very bleachy which i love and just got everything like ship shape so that now when i go down to the laundry and i if i need to put something on this shelf it's not like covered in weird scum or something like just Stuff like that is helping me, I think, mentally a lot up here off of the old Columbia River. Anyway.

So what color are your floors?

Well, they're just gray. I was going to guess gray. I was debating between. That was the other thing. It's paralyzing because these are both temporary, but I am going to look at them. So it's like on the one hand, it doesn't matter. I was thinking I wanted something. Probably the smartest thing would have been black, something that's very forgiving about dirt and stuff. But I figured gray was. You don't think so?

I mean, I think it would be forgiving, but I don't think that would be good for you specifically. Light is really important to you. I just think black floors would have absorbed too much light and given you a feeling that you don't like. You have a nice kind of cool gray, almost like the floorboards in our last apartment, if you can recall.

It's described as slate gray on the can. I don't know what that means. Yeah, yeah.

No, I think that's the right move.

It was funny because I was talking to the guy in the paint department at Home Depot, and he was like, we have this folder out with all the different kinds of floor paint and colors and he goes I'm kind of a fan of this one and he's pointing at a color of gray that is indistinguishable from the other colors of gray I wonder if I do have a little bit of color blindness or just maybe color cluelessness like he's like I'm kind of into this and I'm thinking that's exactly like the other one okay that sounds great we'll do that one buddy so yeah anyway if you don't hear me on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me This Weekend It just means that I am still here in the room waiting for the paint to dry. That's what I want to clarify with the listeners.

So now this show really has become just people waiting for paint to dry.

It was always. This was inevitably where this show would end up, Andrew. Think about it. Hello and welcome to Top Story. It's National Cinema Day on Sunday, Andrew. And that means if you go to AMC, Regal, or Cinemark And a lot of other theaters You will get your tickets for only $4

Do you remember my story about this, Luke? It was a fascinating story It wasn't really a fascinating story

I do, of course, but can you Just for the listeners who don't remember that story

No, it wasn't a really fascinating story But Veeves and I took advantage of this unknowingly last year We were having I describe this scenario quite a bit on the show But every now and then we'll go to brunch or something on a Saturday where we don't have anything scheduled for the afternoon or early evening. And so we're having like a lunch or a brunch. And then we'll be like, hey, do you just want to see what's playing at the local movie theaters? We'll look it up on Fandango. And then we're like, oh, OK, sure. Let's go see this movie when we wrap up here. The timing would work out. And we were doing that, I guess, almost exactly a year ago. And Genevieve got us a couple of tickets on the app. I can't remember the movie, but it doesn't matter. And she kept thinking that something was wrong with the app. She's like, I just got both tickets. I thought it was $5 last year, so I don't know if they're going backwards or maybe it was just a total of $8. I thought it was a total of $10. But she's like, I don't know, man. She kept saying, are they just charging me the service fees? We couldn't figure it out. We show up at the theater, the one kind of up here by Northgate. It's called Thornton Place, I believe, right? Yes. Thornton, not Thornton, but Thornton, I believe.

Oh, I know that place well because, I mean, not so much the newest version of it, but I knew it when it was a giant parking lot because it was where I learned how to parallel park. Oh, nice. My Uncle Mike took me in his car and showed me how to drive a stick and also how to park there because for many years they were trying to develop that place, but there is a creek that runs through it called Thornton Creek, and the environmental impact of blocking up Thornton Creek stopped that project for most of my childhood. And clearly they figured out some way to get around it because now there's a big-ass movie theater.

You know, I didn't know about the history of it holding up the project, but I did know that there's a protective wetlands kind of around the area. One of those things that's kind of jammed into the urban landscape. Right. But having said all that, we show up at the theater and it's just like really crowded. Like, what the heck? And that's how we talk. And then we're like, oh, I think there were signs up or something that was like, you know, it's National Cinema Day or what have you. And that's why the tickets were so cheap. We thought we just like slipped through a glitch in the system.

Well, I went and saw the Barbie movie on Friday night. Becca and I went. And, well, I don't know what I think it costs to go to the movies anymore, but we went to a place called Century 21, which is on 21st in Portland. And I think it was a Friday night with a primo showing of Barbie. It was like $11 a ticket, which I didn't think was so bad. Yeah, it's not too bad at all. I mean, it wasn't some IMAX thing, and they have normal seats. It's not like those recliners that you don't like, Andrew So maybe that keeps the price down But here was the part that I was Shockingly surprised by And maybe I just have a completely Maybe I just don't know What anything costs anymore But I was getting the snacks And so I got Probably a medium-sized popcorn I got a Diet Coke I got milk duds And I got two glasses of red wine And it was $22 What? Yeah

that's not a bad deal for all of this in portland did you say in portland oregon

in the movie to the point where i said to the guy 22 i mean that should have been the two glasses of wine should have been 22 i listen andrew and i did something i did something uncharacteristic usually i'm just such a scoundrel when if i think somebody has undercharged me my natural instinct is like to not say shit just like whatever just happened i'm not questioning it i'm not calling attention to it but i was so kind of like i was like that's all it is and he goes yeah that's what it costs and i was like well that's amazing and he goes yeah well we try to keep it you know kind of affordable or something i was just like how how is i was expecting that to be 40 dollars

worth of movie food so it sounds like this is a little bit more of an independent theater or at least if it's part of a bigger business it's not like the amc's

it's not the amc that's why i think they have two screens good for them i mean they were showing the barbie movie and oppenheimer so isn't like one of those theaters where like they're showing you the movie is well after they've kind of you know been in theaters and stuff it's like a first run movie theater with the the legit films i was just like totally i was i was pleasantly surprised that That was how much that cost.

Well, I know you want to get into the bunk journalism here, but before that, can you give me just a really quick rundown of what you thought of Barbie? Because I haven't seen it yet, and I'm going through something weird, which is when all of the news or, you know, when everybody was buzzing about Oppenheimer and Barbie at the same time, there's no doubt in my mind that I would see them both. But the longer I don't see Barbie, the less I'm interested in seeing Barbie.

Well, I'll tell you what's funny. Becca and I were driving somewhere on Saturday And she said what do you think Andrew would think of the Barbie movie And I paused for so long That she thought I didn't hear her She was like hey I just asked you something I was like I know I am so flattered I was like I'm really trying to I am trying to do my best to think To guess at how Andrew Would feel about this movie or what his review Of the movie would be

I'm flattered that you were thoughtful about it But I'm flattered that Becca would ask that question

She just knows that you notoriously have bad takes So she's No, absolutely And I was like But the pause, I paused for so long Trying to think, okay, Andrew's doing this movie What I know about Andrew The kind of movies he tends to go for Obviously there's a huge cultural and social implication Of this movie Across gender and things like that I was like, I don't know I don't know what you would think of this movie, Andrew What I can tell you is, I liked it I liked it more than I expected to so I obviously am a huge admirer of Greta Gerwig's work and when I saw that she was writing or co-writing along with Noah Baumbach and directing this film I was like well of these kinds of movies this is probably going to be the best one that you could make it's not as I've said before Michael Bay presents the Barbie movie like this is going to be this is a movie that's going to definitely be very aware of all of the kind of gender politics of Barbie and um so i i was i was looking forward to it and then people were falling all over themselves so much talking about how great it was that then i started to move into the category of like i'm not gonna like this this is i'm this is getting overhyped for me and that was actually probably the perfect thing for me to go so i went in with weirdly low expectations um and i i thought it was i mean what they are trying the needle that they are trying to thread with that movie man is it's truly something i mean you are trying to both celebrate this icon while also being realistic about the sort of damage that it's done to women over the years with its you know unrealistic expectations and uh despite astronaut barbie and uh you know all these different things you i mean it's just it is a complicated topic and it's brought to you by mattel right movie yeah and they're not low keying mattel in the movie it is like a mattel production it's like in the opening credits one of the things that they did that i thought was pretty smart was they put they portray the mattel executives as absolute buffoons it's a room full of dudes mostly white and the chief dude and chief moron is will ferrell and like i don't i mean it was like clearly somebody at mattel understands that the only way for this movie to be good was to just be like okay you

can make fun of us if you want did you in what was that thing called the um in the flash of a scene where they show the map behind barbie did you point out the dotted line what was it the nine

dash line or something dash line that's in it kind of more than i expected oh really well what happens is um and a spoiler alert uh what the the plot is that um margot robbie is stereotypical barbie which is literally a thing i don't know if that's actually a category she's calling herself stereotypical barbie she's the barbie that a lot of people think of when they think of barbie exactly and she um she starts to have sort of an existential crisis because and what happens is somewhere in the real world so she lives in barbie land but in the real world something's going on with um this uh person i won't i won't give away the reveal of who it is but there's somebody in the real world who's kind of themselves having a crisis and they play with barbies and that's affecting margot robbie's barbie in her universe her feet flatten at some point and she's you know she's having an awakening of sorts so she has to go talk to weird barbie which is played by kate mckinnon and is great kate mckinnon's barbie is the one that got a really unfortunate haircut Somebody drew on her with a marker She's constantly

doing the splits in a bizarre way the way people would do with the barbie and she's the kind of like brains of the operation in the sense that she like she understood she understands what has happened she understands this rift in the space-time sort of thing is happening and um and so that map is in i think it's in kate mckinnon's like weird barbie layer and so i thought it was gonna just be like and for people that don't remember that conversation there is this disputed bit of like ocean territory that china claims is theirs and it is nobody except for china agrees with this including vietnam the philippines anybody who's in the in that region and the its inclusion in this map of the real world cannot be a coincidence no person who's just drawing like a childlike silly barbie map of the real world would include this bizarre thing unless you wanted to make sure you weren't alienating the chinese cinema viewers right yes and i we were reading

about this in vox because they explained things uh that's their deal and they explained it really really well but they made it sound like you only see it for like literally a second or less no it

i mean it comes up i would say you see it four times for about a second each time or half a second it's not like it's not if you first of all if i didn't know about the controversy it would

have not occurred to me at all like it was squiggle on a kid's map exactly but once but i was kind of

hyper attuned to it because i was wondering what you know what was gonna look like um so that yeah that's in the movie still and um anyway i what they're like i said what they're trying to do with the movie to affirm uh i would say women and people who identify as women um to be whatever they dream of and whatever they want to be, including someone who doesn't fit into the traditional sort of normative idea of the Barbie beauty standard. And also someone who does, if that makes sense. Like, you can't say that you're trying to make sure that you're not telling everyone they have to look like a stereotypical Barbie. But also if someone wants to look like a stereotypical Barbie, you have to let them know that that's also okay. You know what I mean? You just have, it's just like, the amount, you know how you feel like, supposedly you can't fold a piece of paper more than seven times or something uh-huh like it just because like you don't realize this because it's you know whatever fold it i mean i don't know drive a truck over you can it's like somehow the kind of like the layering of this thing it becomes incredibly impossible to do the task because of how many times it's layered now upon itself that's like trying to shoot that's like trying to to to to manage to satisfy all of the possible people interested in this film who want representation You know what I mean? And not saying any one thing is the way anything has to be. But also, if it is that way for you, that is also acceptable. And they're trying to be funny. And they're trying to and they're trying to. This is I don't want to I don't want to. How do I put this? We were walking home from the movie theater right on Friday night. And we actually went to the theater was actually a few miles from Becca's house. And we thought, let's let's just get some exercise. Let's get some steps. and so we were walking home and we were so kind of far from Becca's house that we walked by a different movie theater that was letting out the Barbie movie and a woman came out wearing like a pink shirt and Becca said oh you must have been at the Barbie movie and the woman said yeah I was there with my girlfriend she goes I felt like I had to wear this shirt I would never wear this shirt but they were like you gotta do it so here we are and we were just we were walking a few blocks together and we're going how would you think of the movie and she goes oh my gosh Ryan Gosling was amazing and Becca goes I know he was great and then I Probably because I was two Reasonably priced wines in Andrew I said don't you think it's interesting we're talking about Ryan Gosling's performance from the Barbie movie Does that indicate the patriarchy Is maybe not totally dead at the wood But just look to me like get over yourself bro But I did think it was funny That the first conversation I had in the wild about the Barbie movie revolved around Ryan Gosling

I have been hearing a lot of Ryan Gosling Buzz you're right I hear about his scenes More than I hear about people talking about Margot Robies am I saying that right or is it Robbie I think it's Robbie but Oh, okay, Margot Robbie's performance, you know, I hear about different aspects of it. Here's the thing, too, like, I still might see it, and if I see it, I definitely want to see it in a theater, and when I say that it's like, that I'm losing interest, it's not like I've heard anything bad about it, it's just that it is an interesting, Becca's right, it is an interesting question about whether or not I'd like this movie, because I don't know, because I mean, it sounds like the messaging is right up my alley, that's good, I like good, like, filmmaking, I'm actually pretty weirdly unfamiliar. familiar with gerwig's earlier stuff even though everybody says it's right up my alley um this is

a huge departure i guess this won't mean anything to you because you're not super familiar with the original stuff but like this is not francis ha this is not a super understated like mumblecore

movie where people are i mean it's the opposite i got that but but i was gonna say that the thing is i'm not really into camp though like you know what i mean like and it's so you know it does sound like there's a lot of camp in there and so like i don't know are there a lot of dance numbers like i'm not

really into musical stuff that much at the end it gets kind of musical but if you're if you've gone on the journey that far and if you've been enjoying it you kind of okay it kind of it didn't

it didn't totally throw me off they also dominate it's not like a no no it's not okay well that's

really good to hear okay there's literally as i remember only one and it's it's a whole other interesting i don't want to give too much of the movie away for you but like you know basically what happens is when so in the barbie land what's happening is barbie land is a place for barbies and the kens are very it's like it's like the script is very flipped from what the sort of our world is in other words there's you might say the matriarchy the kens just exist to serve the barbies and uh and that they you know that's all they've ever known and then ken And Brian Gosselin tags along over to the real world with Barbie and suddenly sees the patriarchy and falls in love with it. He's like, oh, hell yes. This is a thing. Like, he's never seen a male president. Like, he's like, he gets just completely, like, toxified in, like, two days of being in the real, you know, our world. And so he goes back to Barbie land before Barbie does. And let's just say when Barbie gets back to Barbie land, things are real different.

Oh, no. Oh, he's got the sports book.

He's become Kenley. Everyone's drinking brewski beers. It's great, too, because it's like an 8-year-old boy's idea. Maybe it's like a 12-year-old boy's idea of what masculinity is because he just got it from his two days in our world. So it's all pretty bad. But, I mean, anyway, I thought that was a very clever device, the way that they sort of handled that. but there's also they really i think really roast the song push i want to push you around that matchbox 20 song oh i'm like that becomes the new national anthem of barbie land and like it's funny because i got really obsessed with trying to figure out like what is the what is the deal with that song is that song just as bad as it sounds or is there something else lyrically going on that like we've all misunderstood that song for so long and i did a kind of deep dive

over the weekend you know the song i'm talking about right no this keeps coming up i don't know

i wanna push you around yes i will yes oh yeah i do know that song okay you okay you got me i do

know that song i thought for sure i did not that's matchbox 20 okay uh yes okay and basically like

it's played i mean my interpretation of it in the movie is like it's just the it's the anthem of like toxic masculinity and i just thought wow that's got a really um that's got a really chap matchbox 20s gears wait chap their hides grind their gears that's got to feel kind of that's because let me put it this way when it's barbie land you know what the national anthem is closer to fine by the indigo girls literally and then it becomes i want to push you around so i was trying to figure out like how's rob thomas taking this whole thing because i mean they're really just saying this song sucks and it's for a kind of guy who just isn't good to women and somehow he's under the impression this is a good thing like he said yeah i was playing a show and somebody uh i heard that they wanted to use the song in the movie and i assumed we'd be the butt of the joke this was like an interview in usa today that i read he goes but then um i was playing a show and somebody came backstage and they said i just saw the barbie movie and uh and they use your song and it's like first of all ken is awesome and everybody loves your song and he goes so that was a nice surprise

and i was like bro has not seen this movie yet so like is that you said you did some research on the song is it one of those songs where it's knowingly um misogynistic in other words it's like kind of the the perspective of a character that we're not because i've heard that song a million times i don't really pay attention to it it's just in the background but was that song actually written by songwriters who were kind of like into that idea or were they you know in the song talking about

a character who is bad from what from what i was able to figure out on saturday reading literally most of the articles that have been written about that song which is not as many as you might think um what i think is the guy who wrote it rob thomas you may know him of smooth fame also with carlos santana um well it's a hot one um he says that he wrote the song when he was going through a breakup with somebody who was very toxic to him and he was kind of processing and he doesn't mean physical he doesn't mean physically he wanted to push them around he meant emotionally he wanted to push them or he wanted to get some of the power back he also said to his credit that he doesn't really think the lyrics hold up super great like there's not kind of one of those things where it's like everyone is deeply misunderstood the song but it's also not like so he's saying you know yeah i was just writing things down that i was feeling and then we were making songs i didn't really think it was going to be like a big hit song for us it was just how i was feeling in that moment of wanting to kind of get back at this Thank you.

person but i never meant physically harming them yeah okay because i don't know the lyrics in front of me and that may i mean that makes sense listen people break up you can have bad breakups and you can have very toxic feelings that yeah you know is very you don't act upon them but you can definitely have feelings of destruction and what have you i know i could i could imagine like writing something like that and then being like oh that's the song that you guys are going to make famous oh oh i need to write another song called i am a good guy i respect your choices

yeah the b side of push you around it's like i believe in consent on every level um so uh but but i but again i was like you know um i i feel like uh greta gerwig and and noah bambach are they're like they're obviously very savvy people and i think they're also probably far enough in their careers that they know that like sort of taking a pot shot at somebody's creativity i think that when you're young um and you're making art or you're even hosting podcasts or radio shows i mean i used to just like just crap on things left and right and i think it was just because i was immature and also i hadn't tried to make a lot of things yet and most of my humor derived from just like shitting on something someone else had done and being like that's bad i'm gonna bond with people how much we all hate that thing i feel like i do that less as i get older because i've just made more things that are regrettable and you never know who might hear what you're talking about so i do think it was a bold choice for them to include this song because i and this is why i would love it if you see the movie and you'd be curious to get your take on its use in the film because it just feels like a pretty unalloyed burn to me on that song

well that you've definitely peaked my interest again so you've increased the chances of me

seeing this oh good finally mattel will make some money here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female

all right email or female before i paint my way out of this house guess what i didn't do today

check the voicemail line oh should we do a little do you have any voicemail roulette okay let's just do that let's give this a shot let me open it up because i was looking at the emails anything come across your transom recently sorry about this that would involve me clicking on the emails

andrew and that's not a thing that i've been doing lately because it's mostly people yelling

at me about my cat um let's see you're checking the text line me and bet in new york both got

wordle today but it was have you played that other game yet by the way i was playing it no

i think somebody said the connections game where you categorize words no i need to check that out

you like it huh i like it more than wordle it's amazing i mean it's it's a real it's a it's a real what do we call it head scratcher as far as um head scratchers go that's a honey doodle

is it called connections it's called connections and what about just playing it now for our and but the thing is now the huge spoiler alert if somebody plays this game daily and we're giving

something away we are never gonna get it in real time it is i mean we could try it why don't you

can you boot it up yeah you're looking at it here it says how to play connections i'm already so

Okay, so there's a bunch of words, and you have to try to figure out what the through line is and put them into categories. And what's confusing is there are a lot of different meanings and groupings of these words that could happen. So the game on Sunday was like, I remember one of them was like, a lot of it seemed camping related, but it wasn't just as easy as like camp stove, tent, sleeping bag. It's like you have to figure out what the connection is between these different words and put them in groups. And then it'll tell you what the denominator is for them.

It reminds me a little bit of kind of the opposite of something we did on the show recently that I consider to be the high watermark of TBTL. I'm not even being sarcastic when I say that. But when we were trying to cover Pat Sajak's retirement from a show called Not the Price is Right. What is his Wheel of Fortune? Wheel of Fortune. Somehow that story led us to my love of the game Password and you just playing an old episode of Password on YouTube and pausing it before they gave the answers to see if I could catch it or see if I could answer it. That was really fun. We should do that again, by the way. And I did not remember the aspect of it of after somebody guesses a password, they throw the password up on a board and then use all of those words that were guessed all fit into a category of some sort. Remember last time it was Quakers when we played it. So anyway, this is as people describe this to me, it reminds me of that. So an example of the New York Times gives here is like the category could be fish. It could be bass, flounder, salmon and trout. But I'm also seeing that, oh, bass could be bass. Maybe there could be a situation where it could be instruments or something. Right. So, okay. So I'm going to.

Or like on Sunday it was like all these things and Becca was like, well, this could also be things you get inside because so you might have tent and then you might have elevator and they might both be in the same category, even though you would think tent and camp stove would go together, you know?

Oh, and it has to end up even. Okay, I'm on today's, okay? So, again, spoiler alert. One of these is really obvious to me. We have mustache, we have goatee, we have beard, and we have stubble. So I've selected all four of those, and I want to hit submit. Yeah, try it. But if I burn that, I also see that we have handlebar is an option, and handlebar could fit into mustache, right? So if I'm wrong here, I'm going to see what happens.

You lose one of your guesses.

uh okay it seemed to work facial hair whoa so it gave that to me it says facial you're a natural mustache and stubble but it's going to get harder as we go along right so here's what else we have we have handlebar track dog vote doubt wheel movie tail like something that wags on the dog gear pedal follow or shadow so this is really interesting so handlebar i can't figure out what that dog and track it sort of seems like those could go together dog and track okay sure or dog and tail could certainly go together uh wheel oh here pedal gear handlebar and wasn't there a wheel there that's bicycle handlebar gear pedal wheel submit okay throw it

in boom bike parts okay andrew you are you might be the most you might be the most talented connections i wonder yeah this is a i've have it up in front of me now too although you don't need

any help from me okay so now i think it's tail track shadow and follow right those are all things

that yes yeah those are all like a private investigator would tell you they would track you

But the only thing is that would leave us with dog, movie, vote, and doubt. And I don't see how those fit together at all.

Well, the good news is you got some guesses still. I would try that. I would try the following thing.

No, I didn't give it. So tail, track, follow, and shadow did not work out for me. I have three mistakes remaining. So, okay, now I don't see connections between these.

What are your remaining words? I'm trying to do this from memory now. tail and dog yep you can see those going by the way is that how tail is yeah that is t-a-i-l yeah

movie and track vote follow shadow and doubt of course shadow of a doubt um this is uh is this a good uh should i have checked the voicemail line or not is this uh

i mean i i'm having fun i don't know if the listeners it's i will say it's a i have the visual up now it's a little hard to follow without the visual but it's a fun game right yeah let me um yeah let me ask you i feel like you you you're killing it at this game i would i think you'd be

like this is my new favorite thing well my sorry i gave that answer i'm thinking about several things at once i have a question for you about the barbie movie that i'm hoping you can answer to buy me some some content time because i want to keep plugging away at this but i by the way

one other thing andrew if you feel like you're getting stuck you can always hit shuffle and it's

Oh, that's fun.

And it's kind of a nice little reset so you can see the words in a different way.

Because I can't figure out what vote would go with. Vote. Okay, so we know that I'm trying to match vote up with something, right? And here are the seven other words again. Shadow, movie, track, dog, doubt, tale, and follow. And I don't see how vote connects to any of those. That's how I talk now.

Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it's kind of cool.

It's kind of like every man.

Yeah. I'm also trying to catch up with you here by getting the first couple of categories

why don't you click on beard, goatee, mustache and stubble get that out of the way and then bike parts were gear, handlebar, pedal and wheel get that out of the way and then you'll be where I am on this thing I mean dog track could be a thing dog track, tail I don't understand movie how would movie go with any of these things

let's see

here's my question about Barbie Yep. I kept on, you know, I knew the very basic premise that or the way I understood it was, you know, she her feet go flat and somehow that's related to her having to leave Barbie land. I thought, are there any like kind of biblical echoes of like having to leave paradise like Adam and Eve having to leave this, you know, like God throwing Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden?

not not that i remember did you hear that somewhere no it just sort of seemed like an

obvious sort of like story sort of like oh she has to leave paradise because she's no longer accepted in her land. I wasn't sure if that was part of it. No, no, she's not cast out per se. She has to go on a mission to

save somebody. Yeah, she's going on a mission to she's going on a mission to figure out what's going on with her because she wants to as she starts out, she wants to just have everything go back to how it was. She really liked her life of being kind of stereotypical Barbie and just having everything going great in her life. She doesn't really set out because she wants to be like liberating the Barbies or, you know, she's not really there for that and so and she's not being cast out she hasn't like sinned against

the barbie community or something so dogs by the way i have things too did you get it the answer

now andrew just because i i purposefully just like failed because i don't care about my new york times games rankings nationally so i just i intentionally failed it so many times it just

gave me the answer is i'm leaning towards dog track tail and follow what do you think of that

well andrew hey i've said you're one of the greatest natural players of the new york times

connections game those are i got it pursue okay to pursue dog follow tail track i got it which leaves vote so i know i will get this now because there's only four left vote doubt movie and shadowed i would like to before i submit and just get the points i'd like to try to guess why they uh group those together vote it's very clever actually once you see the answer movie and shadow now there is a movie called doubt um and that is about the catholic abuse scandal and the and the boston globe uncovering it am i getting closer no you're getting further really

It has very little to do with Boston Globe's coverage.

Of the abuse scandal. Shadow Vote Doubt Movie. Is it In the Loop?

And to think that we started the show talking about In the Loop and it ended up being the answer to the New York Times Puzzle Connections. You tricky bastards. Shadow Vote.

What? I mean, I didn't guess it. I just submitted it. and um okay things that are cast right you can cast doubt you can cast a movie you can cast a shadow and you can cast a vote wow isn't that fun yeah baby i'm in it's very i mean good job by the

way you just legit did that i just i just failed my way to the middle but like it's very satisfying

when you figure out what the through line is yes i guess the one thing is like and i'm sure they did this knowingly so to pursue they have dog follow tail track like i basically did pursue only i put shadow in there and i think that's a little confusing because really shadow follow tail track like do you i guess if you're dogging someone you're pursuing them well again i think

that's i've only played this like this is the second time i've even tried to play this but i think i think that's the exact point there needs to be some words that could live in either category of course yeah and so that's what that's what makes it that's what makes it challenging but you did really well at that andrew i'm surprised you're not playing more immaculate

grid every everybody i talk to who likes baseball and i do not play it by the way because i have no institutional memory of old baseball players but it seems right up your alley it would be i don't

know i just don't spend i should build this into my day more i don't spend a lot of time i don't play Wordle I don't like I have my little rituals of things I do like when I wake up and when I'm going from here to there but it doesn't there's no like casual gaming time or like you know and I by the way I think this stuff is really good for your brain I mean it's obviously good to to problem solve and keep your brain engaged and everything I just I don't have it scheduled and so I don't think to do it but I actually should because I do enjoy the challenge I mean I'm not great at it but yeah I'm not up on immaculate grid I the couple times that we've tried to do it i i love i love it as i mean we did it on the show once it's very fun for me i just i forget

that that's a thing still yeah uh well this is fun i'm going to share my results in the wordle group see if uh anybody bites okay good um i um i think i should probably start to head

down to uh portland now well first like i said well it looks okay i'm also in bare feet so i I figure, the worst case scenario, I have some paint on the bottom of my feet. It's better than my shoes, I think, was my theory. That's why I came in here barefoot.

I think you're right on that. Now, I have to ask you, did anybody shoot the glass? Because that's going to be a real problem. Oh, crap.

What? This whole time, these Germans have been trying to... Are they German? What are the hijackers?

Yeah, I think they're German. Genevieve loves that movie, Die Hard, is what we're talking about. But that's one of the things that drives her bananas is he tells him to shoot the glass first in German and the guy says what and then he says shoot the glass and it's like oh now I understand it in my second language like why would

Why did he understand it better in his second language?

All right, well, I'll talk to you tomorrow from Chicago, Andrew. In the meantime, everybody have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

Do you paint your parking spot? Do you paint your parking spot? Do you paint your parking spot? Power out.