Muse

Heavenly Father, we thank you tonight for all your blessings you said in all things, give thanks. So we want to thank you tonight for these mighty machines that you brought before us. Thank you for the Dodges and the Toyotas. Thank you for the Fords. And most of all, we thank you for Roush and Yates partnering to give us the power that we see before us tonight. Thank you for GM Performance Technology and the R07 engines. Thank you for Sunoco Racing Fuel and Goodyear Tires that bring performance and power to the track. In Jesus' name, boogity, boogity, boogity, amen.

TBTL. Why now? What are they doing? And how can you steer clear of it all?

I mean, they're an emotionally stunted group of fundamentally flawed people doing a very silly pseudo job. I tell you, two go-go 80s Reaganauts like us, we could rule this world.

There are two types of people in this world. Those who like Neil Diamond and those who don't.

When do we get to sing, it's raining men, hallelujah, it's raining men? You wouldn't say that to Tom Petty, would you?

Look, you know, we're both taking our time out of our days to do this with you, so just have a better attitude.

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just

might be too beautiful to live well i guess i just have my first taste of the filthy side of

this business my name is luke burbank i am your host oh yeah coming to you from the madrona hill

studio perched high above the mighty columbia pretty pretty pretty good i'm laughing because

as uh the the music was ending and in fact even after i had activated the first of the audio drops that i played i grabbed my um binoculars and i was while sort of doing the opening of the show i was looking through the binoculars to check out a particular tugboat that's pushing a big old barge. Then I realized I'm wearing this cable-knit sweater, and it's kind of sort of damp and a bit rainy and cold outside, and I just thought, I am living inside of a New England clam chowder commercial. Like, this is hardcore seafaring, cozy time. I have a little portable heater right next to me that's just in the on position, just trying to warm me up. It's all happening here, folks, on episode 4061 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

Finally got around to watching the HBO documentary film about the Pink Panther Pub in Laramah, Northern Territory.

Australia is a wonderful island.

And the disappearance of one Patty Moriarty, a place Andrew and I traveled to. Lo, those, I was going to say many years ago, but it was more like a few years ago. And I've got some thoughts. Also, because it's a Wednesday, and that's the day that we usually have our TBTB, Too Beautiful to Biz meeting with TBTL, the Vice President of Operations, John Sklaroff. But today we can't have that meeting after the show because of other recording obligations and schedules this week. So we're just going to have the meeting during the show. I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. So you'll get to be a fly on the wall during a Too Beautiful to Biz. All staff, all hands. It's actually only six hands and three people. It's the three of us. So we'll talk about that. And also we have an update on the $1,000 beer cans found in a wall that I don't even know what the update is, but I know Andrew is very excited about it. Speaking of my good friend Andrew Walsh.

Cleveland! This is for you!

He's the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. And he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Hey, good morning, Luke. About a week ago or so, maybe more, I think I actually, you know how sometimes I ask permission to go on a rant on this show? Permission to rant, sir? It's always granted, by the way. You say granted, but then sometimes we get lost in the conversation. We never come back around to my rant. Can I continue a rant that I just barely, a nascent rant that I just barely started? Thank you, sir. It's about apps. Wait, I'm sorry, Andrew. Permission to meow. Meow. Oh, permission. Not granted? Permission to not have to ever ask permission to meow again. Use that freely. I love it. What do they say when they, meow at will is what I say. Well, thank you, sir. Yes, meow at will. So what was your rant that you're picking back up on? This involves apps. So this is definitely going to sound young and cool and with it. We haven't complained about technology and our interactions with it enough on the show lately.

But while you were doing your introduction, I will admit to trying to take care of a little bit of personal business here. It's going to sound like a flex, but I promise you it's not. I've got a couple of random small caliber checks here. Weird things that were left over from like leaving American public media. I'm just going to tell you, I got like twenty eight dollars and thirty nine cents here because of some mistake in my last paycheck. So this was not directly deposited. Deposited, I should say. I'm deposited. It wasn't deposited. So, anyway, point is I just got a couple of small checks here, and I was like, oh, well, during your intro, I'll just deposit them using my little app. And I got to say, banking apps really have changed the game. I will not complain about the banking apps. The fact that we can just, you know, deposit a check sitting here at our desk while doing a podcast is huge. I mean, I grew up when you used to have to, like, get out of your –

www.this and www.that. That's www.explain.

You used to have to get out of your car and fill out a deposit slip using a pen that was attached to a counter with a little chain.

Famously, there wasn't enough chain.

And then walk up to somebody and handed like the stress of depositing checks used to be so high. And now you can do it while doing a podcast. So the complaint is not with the banking apps. the complaint is with apps in general that are associated with companies but they give their app a different name yeah so you cannot find it in the long list of apps when you sort alphabetically now we have the you know our favorite apps that we move to the front of the screens and you know i have a bunch of pages of of icons that i use frequently but there are a few that i don't use frequently and i don't want to say the name of my bank here i don't know why i'm sure if anybody on to hack me at this point they could i have i i mean honestly i could guess it's probably one of like four yeah it's one of yeah it's honestly probably one of two that everybody's thinking of to be honest with you but which two but it's like not it's the the name of the app is not quite the name of the bank and it is you can't give us this would be a better story if we get

the specificity of what the app is named well i can give you that information then we'll know

what bank you're referring to yeah okay so first of all the routing number is zero no i'll give you an example that isn't the bank i'll give you even a better example which is uh it's something that is even more important than my finances which is my um garbage pick it pick up weekly yeah exactly is that what you were guessing there in the background that was my guess yeah oh dartbot you said oh i thought you had dartbot and garbage those are two things that are very important to me But, you know, I live in the city of Seattle. There is an app that reminds you when garbage day is and if there's any news regarding garbage day, like free leaf pickup, which should be starting next week. I can't wait. Do you have notifications on? I have notifications on. Do you have push notifications? That push notification saved my ass a couple of weeks ago. And I thought of you because I remember you one time teasing me, saying, like, why do you have garbage day on your calendar? Like, there's nothing you're least likely to forget than the garbage day. But every now and then, it does sneak up on you. But anyway, so the app is very helpful. What do you think? Like, okay, it's a Wednesday night. It's a little bit rainy. You're like, oh, wait, shit. Is it a big garbage night? That means are they picking up recycling as well? Or is it just garbage and the compost? I need to find that app and open it up really quickly here. Where are you going to go in the alphabet? So a Seattle garbage pickup app. G. G for garbage. Okay. There you go. Where's my bell? it's not g for garbage you want to give it another shot you're in the rain w waste w waste it's not it's not that either where where you going next come on it's raining recycling yeah you got there faster than i thought i'll be honest but it's called recycle it that's the name of the app recycle it see that's s for seattle garbage pickup right and also that's one of those things where

they're trying to subtly modify behaviors by focusing on the recycling aspect like they would like it i think if everything if people were doing less throwing away of garbage and more recycling right like is that just for the recycling portion of that for all of it it's for all of it it should be w for waste like you said yeah waste overall but i i promise you that and you know obviously like i think recycling is a very very good thing particularly when the stuff actually goes to a recycling uh you know facility type situation as opposed to just a landfill or china but that's so i'm not against i'm not against trying to modify people's behavior through small things like that that being said that's definitely why they did that don't you think they didn't name it waste they named it recycling because they want us to all have recycling at the forefront of our

mind maybe i do think that some of these other decisions are based on what is already on the marketplace, on the app marketplace.

There's a chance that anything that wasn't going to be super convoluted that starts with the word waste wasn't available anymore, maybe because of other municipalities. It could just be bad design. It could be a combination of a lot of things. But I do think that in this case, you're probably right. They're like, well, let's focus on let's focus on the positive. I had another example here to city of Seattle waste. Easy peasy. Then you're looking up C for city. But still, I think that's closer than recycle it. I'm just like, I think, I mean, this is not an emergency app, I understand. And also, of course, I have this bookmark, so it's not really an issue for me. But just, like, scrolling through now. Do you really have some breaking news?

No, I just was playing an emergency sound.

Okay. I was like, just let me get this one thing out. AM 880 Kixi. Like, if you're looking for the Kixi app, you're looking for K, not A, right? Luke, it's a Wednesday night. you're outside it's raining you need your kicksy quickly you're looking for k you can't find it you're looking for h you can't find it it's am 880 kicksy is the app like really that's what

you're gonna name it i did get some good dream landing in last night i'm happy to tell you nice nice it's just uh it was a cold and dreary night by the way i'm becoming um kind of a hermit within my own home now because there are basically two rooms that have even remotely adequate heat as of right now in my house there is the room that i sleep in and then there is this little kind of tv room area and those are like everything else has been torn out the electrical there there used to be a couple of built-in wall units which were very inefficient and i learned later actually dangerous because of the wiring so those are all gone so basically when i leave my little bedroom chamber my little cocoon and then i go down down the stairs and then through the main you know what's going to be the living room and kitchen which is a big giant open space right now it's so cold and i'm just becoming like you know so i was huddled up in my room last night with the with the heater going full blast listening to dreamland oh nice i was just like cuddled up in bed at a at a shockingly early hour i'll be honest with you but it was kind of it was kind of cozy up

oh that's not you know i had a brief moment yesterday where i thought i had some clothes to fold so i was going to put on some tv really quickly that's almost like the only time i turn on the tv these days and um because i'm better than everybody else no just because i play video games and darts and all kinds of other stupid shit that i waste my time on but um i never really know what i want to put on like that that's my issue like i'm like i got like 10 minutes most of of folding here i don't want to sit here for 10 minutes trying to choose what is the perfect 90s movie that i can half pay attention to and start from the beginning yeah for 10 minutes yet that's kind of where i keep finding myself with television these days um so i put on one of those free streamers i think um pluto tv it kind of emulates live television only it's like their app is goofy right um well that was very controversial yes exactly it's under m for might be mickey uh anyway anyway um and so it has just like channels that are dedicated to one show i think right like murder she wrote on constantly for 12 hours a day or something and then it switches up at night or what have you and i saw a uh forensic files and i was like i don't have much laundry here i've never in my life i i'm not drawn to that kind of programming at all um any kind of a any kind of a that's not reality tv but it's like kind of intimate conversation

self-disclosure and a little music thrown in too that's exactly what it is and i i'll be honest

with you i didn't i had only like one shirt and a couple of socks so i put on like a murder she wrote watch it for like literally 45 seconds and then got distracted and walked away but uh it was close i almost put my point is i almost put on a forensic files and almost leaned into

my burbankiness you know i i don't know why this is where i'm taking it but the forensic files thing well first of all can we all agree that the the laundry jackpot is when it's mostly towels oh yeah i mean that's five minutes yeah that's you know at worst and they just fold so nicely

it's not even the amount of time but it's like corner to corner squared edges what This t-shirt great. I'm tucking. I'm tucking sleeves and a t-shirt. Yeah, exactly

The the thing about forensic files is when I listened to our former colleagues the fine folks who made in the dark At APM the first season of in the dark was about of an infamous kidnapping and sadly a child dying in Minnesota in Stearns County and And my takeaway from that whole, I believe that may have won a Peabody, or maybe it was the next year, the season they did down in...

mississippi about a wrongfully convicted well wrongfully accused guy who finally got out of prison because so my point is we're doing good things with this podcast as well are we getting people out of prison yeah who've been wrongly put there no but what i took from the first season was how low the clearance rates are shockingly low in other words for major crimes the actual number of them that get solved which is there are charges brought against someone is like in many place is under 10 percent or under 15 percent which is we're not talking about shoplifting or someone bumped into someone's car and didn't leave a note these are these are serious felony crimes

and and the figure was mostly pointed as sort of like local law enforcement often at the county

sheriff level right wasn't well yeah in this yeah and in this particular in stearns county their sheriff i mean they they just their law enforcement there really really botched this investigation into the disappearance of a kid named jacob wetterling but i remember they brought up king

Like in their wrap-up. They did. They just read.

Yeah, the final episode, if I remember right, was them just reading counties and their clearance rates. And they were, King County made it, where you live and where I lived for a long time. And I guess where I'm going with this is I found that to be pretty shocking. I don't know who is exactly at fault in all of this. It seems like it's sort of systemic. But when you watch Forensic Files, you get the idea that they are solving 100% of the crimes. Because of course, what are they gonna do? A forensic files where like, they didn't figure out who did it, but it's very misleading. It's almost like it feels like it's a little pro, like it's not just a little, it's very sort of pro-police and pro, it's, you know, and my feeling about the police is there are some great people that work in law enforcement. There are some not great people that work in law enforcement. It's an incredibly complicated issue that I don't have the answers to, but I can tell you it's not working for a lot of people in this country, particularly black and brown people. And so I get a little weirded out, like if I see, certainly I'm not a guy you'd catch with a Blue Lives Matter t-shirt on. If somebody's working here at my house doing something subcontracting wise and they've got one of those kind of American flag bumper stickers, but it's got like a blue flag and then there's like a red line in it for some reason. I'm like, whatever that is, I'm probably not going for it. You know? And I'm like, I just hope that this, I hope that this, whatever this particular like thing I've hired the person to do turns out okay. And I wish them well, but I don't think we're going to go too deep on the politics. All of that is to say, I love forensic files, but it's part really of a world of thinking about law enforcement that I don't personally go for, which is they're the heroes. They get it right. They found some tri-lobal carpet fibers in the trunk. And can you believe they cracked the case?

Well, you know, now that you say that, um, forensic files used to come up a lot more on the show because I feel like you were in a pattern where that was sort of your go-to. I don't feel like thinking about what I want to put on. I want to put on something that is consistently on whether I'm traveling and I'm in a hotel room and it's 1125 at night and for some reason there's one starting now. Always. Like it was kind of an easy go-to for you. Yeah. And now that you mention that, it is true. I haven't heard you really kind of slip into that recently. And, I mean, it's because I assume now that I think about it that, you know, we all get into different media habits depending on what's going on around us. You didn't have cable at your new place for a for a long time. So you'd be kind of deliberate about which thumb drives. You watched your your British dramas on and what have you. Van der Waal. Right. So but but there's more to it than you just slipping out of a media habit. You have not gone back to that well in a while. And it may be because it's it gives you a little bit more of a of a negative feeling when you started to examine it a little bit.

Maybe that's 10 percent of it. Also, honestly, it's just the rise of tick tock. like i tried to start watching a movie last night andrew that i actually so this thing will happen on my tiktok feed where it will like show me a clip of a movie like the way that media is sliced and diced and julienned now is just it's beyond me so i will the way that i find out about movies that have been released like have been out in the world for however many years between five and ten to twenty years is i'll be looking at this medium called tiktok and somebody has made it their tick tock page to just excerpt like four minute sections of movies and put them on and because my brain is so shrunken now and atrophied that's how i'll start watching a movie because lord knows i don't want to commit to 90 minutes but i will watch this for four minutes and and it's typically it's a movie that i had never heard of or seen before but somebody will actually pretty smartly kind of hit upon an intriguing scene and i'll kind of go what is this So last night I saw a clip of a movie called Flower Which is a movie I think about kind of a young Somewhat wayward sort of teen and her

friends and i think that that's i don't i don't know exactly what they get up to but i think they're scamming a lot of men out of things and anyway there was a scene where they basically run a scam on this police officer and it was intriguing i thought it was well shot i thought the acting was good the cinematography i was like oh and then i was scrolling and then later i saw another clip where this main character i don't even know her name but she's talking to adam scott in the frozen food aisle of a store and they're having an interesting conversation and so i said you know what i'm gonna do this i'm gonna watch a movie oh and it sounds like we got a hop on yeah you're gonna get some hop-ons hey who's that is that uh tbtl employee numero uno john sklaroff joining us

hey buddy hey good morning guys or i guess good afternoon for people in the central uh time zone

right now yeah welcome now the problem is that sound effect of john joining is the exact sound effect that happens andrew when you're rejoining me after we've been disconnected so i thought Have I just been describing this movie Flower into the absolute void? But you were there the whole time, so you're up to speed.

I'm still with you. We can get John caught up. We're talking about watching movies versus TikTok and seeing clips of movies on TikTok. Luke, you can also turn that sound effect off by hitting these sounds. Okay, just wanted to make sure that you know that you are in control of that. So this movie Flower. So you got me with Adam Scott. That's exciting.

The cast looks great. It's a bunch of people that we like, and maybe it's a good movie. but it was streaming on I don't crackle or something so I first I have to go to the internet and I have to say like what is this move first of all I was like I didn't know the name of the actress I'll use that term because to differentiate her from Adam Scott this other actor I didn't know who she was so I said Adam Scott movies and then there was like one he's in called flower I was like this has got to be the same film then I have to go where is flower playing and it's like streaming on crackle I was like all right we'll see how that goes like just I feel like if it's already made its way down to crackle we may have problems Luke, it's simple.

You just go to D for crackle. Exactly.

Is that a Mitch Hedberg joke?

No, that's a callback. I was complaining about how none of the apps on my phone actually begin with the letters that they should, given what they're called.

So it's not file under D for donut. Okay, got it. Check.

This is not a situation that necessitates a receipt.

Not?

We don't need to bring pen and ink and paper into this.

Not bad, Luke, on your head.

So all that is to say, and it's just that I've shrunken my brain so badly at this point through staring at 40-second or 30-second or one-minute clips of content that I sit down to try to watch this movie, Flower, which I've now seen two clips of, both of which were intriguing. And I start watching it, and it's five minutes in, and my mind... Oh, I believe... Oh, I forget who plays her mom. It's somebody else. Oh, it's Katherine Hahn plays her mom, who I love.

I'm looking at the cast right now. Adam Scott, you got yourself a Katherine Hahn. You got yourself a Tim Heidecker?

I didn't get to the Heidecker scene. But yeah, this is a bunch of people that are typically in films or projects that I find interesting. And I probably would find this interesting, Andrew, if my brain were capable of staring at a TV screen for a total of 80 to 90 minutes. This is my problem is that, so to your question of why I don't talk about forensic files as much, it's because even forensic files is too much of a commitment now for my shriveled brain. Like, I'm going to have to do some kind of, like, fast. I'm going to do some kind of TikTok and everything else fast and bring my, like, base, whatever part of your brain it is, levels, gabapentin or something, down. i need to reset everything so that watching a movie starring a bunch of people we like is enough for me on a tuesday night gabby penton is also in flower amazing who's also in flower

gabby penton love her work she was amazing i don't want to get too far into um the topic that we'll be talking about later because i'm actually interested in your thoughts on it but um i know that you want to talk about watching that documentary about larima that was made by A Duplass, some Duplasses.

Yeah, what do you call it? If you have two Duplasses together, is it a parliament of Duplasses?

Yeah, it's a movie of Duplasses. A murder of Duplasses. Wait, what? Like crows. Yeah, in this case. But anyway, you sat down to watch that. You texted me the other night, and you're like, hey, have you watched this thing yet? Now, that's a docu-series, or is that a documentary like you sit down for 90 minutes and watch it?

It's one, it's like a long, long movie. So it's broken up into, I think, seven parts, but it's all in the same. It's not like a, it's not like you have episode one, two, three, four, five.

Oh, okay, yeah, but you did have the patience for that. So is it just about catching you at the right time or catching you with the right content?

It's about a place, it needs to, the movie needs to be set in a place.

in the Outback that you and I have been to. You have to somehow be associated with it.

Yeah, it was like yesterday when I started the show by saying someone from your past has reemerged. And then suddenly I was interested. And you were like, I'm listening. Yeah, yeah, good call. Anyway, that's my Andre the Giant impression from Princess Bride. Okay, let's do this. Let's thank some donors, and then let's have our TBTB meeting with VP of operations and TBTL employee numeric. Is that your technical title, Vice President of Operations, John?

Yeah, I think VP of Revenue and Operations. Oh, yeah, don't sleep on the revenue. That's a big, and that's, I believe. Yeah, that's critical.

It's really critical to the mission of the program. Speaking of which, yeah, we'll thank the donors here, and then I can tell you both about this Larima program as well. So, yeah, let's do that.

Thank you, baby.

All right. Let's thank some of our donors. These fine folks are supporting the program. This is, of course, listener supported podcasting. We want to thank Rob Rumberg out there in Philadelphia, PA. And Rob, I want to say sorry about your fills. The whole Hawk squad was gathered around our our televisions and our phones last night, rooting hard for those Phillies to make it to the World Series, which, of course, did not happen. Congrats to our listeners in Arizona for saying about their team.

You know, I don't have a lot of stakes in that matchup, Luke, but I was generally rooting for those cheesesteaks. But you know what made me happy? I wasn't watching the game, but when I got the news alerts saying that the Diamondbacks locked it down, I immediately saw one of our listeners celebrating in an online forum with a lot of emojis of horns and whatnot, And it did warm my heart to know that it made other people very happy, other people in our TVTL community. Absolutely.

And I do feel like now I'm rooting for Arizona, by the way, because their outfielder, this guy who's definitely going to be the rookie of the year, the National League rookie of the year. I think his name is, is it Colton Carroll, maybe? He's from Seattle. Corbin. Corbin Carroll, thank you. He went to Lakeside. He went to the Bill Gates High School. Not exactly a baseball factory.

I just think I'm just rooting for Rob Manfred because he just got the hat that just says MLB on it. I just think it is sort of with all due respect to fans in both markets. This is this is not the this is not the World Series that Major League Baseball was.

I love that for them. I love I love that. Nothing makes me happier than when one of these craven professional sports leagues gets the last matchup they were hoping for. It would be Yankees-Dodgers every day and twice on Sunday, and it would be probably Cowboys-Giants or something, or maybe Cowboys-Patriots if they could, and basketball, I don't even know anymore. What would basketball be, John? You're more of a basketball guy. Knicks-Lakers or something?

Yeah, but the Knicks are so sad, Bethek, and I say that as a Knicks fan, but maybe the Nets and the Lakers? lakers for oh boston lakers probably celtics historic franchise i was talking to becca's

nephew alexander who is an incredibly bright young man of i want to say i forget exactly how old he is but like maybe 11 or something and i was talking about the knicks and he said oh yeah james dolan is quite an interesting character oh we're talking about the sphere we're talking about the sphere the thing in las vegas that james dolan built and he said yeah i guess he just doesn't feel like you know madison square garden is really up to the specifications of uh you know of making money and they want to maybe move it and stuff and i was like are you a nyx fan he goes no i was reading a new yorker profile of james dolan the same kid who a few a few years ago a few years ago i said oh my friend elena passarello and he goes who just wrote that piece in audubon magazine his connection point for my co-host on livewire was a piece in audubon magazine

i love that does he have a does he have a like a blazer like a kind of a tweed blazer with the

patches on the oh he does he sure does he's actually a heck of a kid that's but the thing that he didn't know about dolan and you'll know about this and you rub it in his face well exactly i was like what what about the did they get into the fedoras did they get into his terrible music He goes, they did mention the music. He is part of that proud Jim Irsay tradition of like guys that own teams that also wanna be musicians. And so then they just like force people to listen to their bad music.

Luke, it's not just guys who own teams. It's guys who were born into those teams. Like both Irsay and Dolan's parents, father- Right, made the money. Right, and do you know the name of Dolan's band? Because it's tremendously awful. It's JD and the Straight Shot.

Which you just imagine he's walking around Madison Square Garden like, hey, guys, it's me, J.D. with that dumb fedora. I love that he's on him.

Nobody's calling him J.D. either. That's the beauty part. Like, he's definitely like, that's my nickname. Call me Cobra. You know, like no one's ever called. I would be shocked if anyone's ever called James Dolan J.D., but he's always wanted that to be his nickname. That's funny. Anyway, Rob, sorry about your fills. Everybody who was rooting for the Diamondbacks, congratulations. Also, congratulations to Neil Hodges of Seattle, Washington. For what? I'm not sure. For being one of our donors today.

Absolutely. For being part of a great community.

Appreciate you. Also, thanks to Joshua Johnson, who's out there in Missoula, Montana, where my father attended two years of high school at Hellgate High, which I always thought was, I found his old yearbooks when I was a kid, and I thought, shit, they named the school Hellgate. Yeah, right? That's a crazy thing to name your school. And then I realized that's the name of a geographic formation there, Hellgate Canyon, I believe.

Still, though, I mean, you're leaning into it. I almost wonder if that's why, you know, later on your dad would lean so heavily into Christianity. It's sort of correct.

Well, they could have named it after Shithole Lake, and they didn't. So I feel like that was, you know, it was the better of the two choices. Anyway, Missoula, Montana is absolutely gorgeous. And Joshua Johnson is out there helping us keep the show going. Then we've got Catherine Urbadi in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Do you know Catherine as a fellow Minnesotan, John? Do you and Catherine chop it up over at the Nook ever?

We've been in communication, I think, over on maybe on Facebook there, but not in person.

Okay.

Not at the Nook. Sorry to you. All right. Well, maybe soon. Sorry to disappoint. We've also—

Or Randham Bowling Alley hookup. And I don't mean hookup like that. I mean hangout.

Yeah. No. Thank you. I mean, we've sort of asked you to limit your interactions with listeners in person as much as possible.

That's actually agenda item three for a business meeting. We'll be getting to that. So anyway, thanks, Catherine.

I actually appreciate that because my mom listens, so it's like limited time with my family. Oh, sorry.

So that means your mom just heard me say shithole. Oh, no.

Well, yeah, that's fine. She has a pie mouth.

I'm sorry, Mama Sklarov. Also, thanks to Matthew Thomas out there in Denver, Colorado. Hey, shout out to Blucifer. That's right. And then Mary Ellen Cavallon is checking in from Lake Forest Park, Washington.

Oh, the camera district. Oh, look at me. Yes, you've got this. Learning about places I went years ago.

It only took a couple of references.

And I will forget again.

Thank you, Mary Ellen. That sounds like a threat.

And I will forget again. It's a promise.

Mark my word, I will forget again. Anyway, thank you to all of our donors. We just could not be here doing this show without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right, our top story, as I mentioned today, is that since we can't have our normal TBTB business meeting, which is a Wednesday affair for us, we're just going to kind of have it on air here. And I think there's some interesting information for the listeners, something the listeners will be kind of excited about. So where do you all want to start? John, you're in charge.

Yeah. Yes, I am. All the power is going to my head. I guess let's just kind of run through our agenda that I think was sent around by my undersecretary, Andrew Walsh. What's an undersecretary versus secretary? It doesn't matter. Okay. Let's see. Is there an undersecretary?

Now we need to get into this. Is there an undersecretary of, like, defense, labor, and are they just under the secretary? Oh, maybe.

That makes sense. Well, I'll just Google this while you're setting up the meeting. That's agenda item number three now. Number four.

Sorry, I jumped ahead in the agenda.

Wow, this is really right in the title. Under secretary is a title for a person who works for and has a lower rank than the secretary. Yeah.

There it is. I mean, I guess it means exactly what you think it would mean. The principal assistant to a member of the cabinet. Assistant to the regional manager. Assistant to the Sklarov. Ha ha, okay. All right.

All right. All right, back on track here, as we are known for doing. Agenda item one, we just want to touch base on the week review. I know we do this each week just to make sure we have a plan for this week's recording. I know, Andrew, you're unavailable, so I think the plan is Luke and I are going to do a little bit of maybe just Luke and I, unless you've had thoughts on bringing someone else into the fold, Luke.

Well, the first question is, do you know how to operate the equipment? Because I sure don't. Whatever system Andrew is using, that's something that's not within my skill set. So are you able to do the recording, John?

Yeah, absolutely. It's either going to be me or Bubbles that does it, but I think we'll figure it out. Okay, between the two of you. You don't have to worry about it.

But yeah, you don't have to worry about that.

I would be a little bit careful there, John. I'm looking forward to hearing you two do the Week in Review on Friday. Having said that, you just introduced the idea of Bubbles making an appearance, which I don't think is going to be possible because Bubbles is still down in Portland as of right now.

Until the giant hole in the floor, which leads down to the basement, is covered over.

And so you don't want to set people up for that kind of disappointment. And that is not speaking towards your skill set or Luke's, but just that, like, yeah.

But here's what you can do.

Bubble skill set.

I feel like you're, John, the proud owner. Do you use the term owner or just caretaker for a number of very adorable dogs? So just bring them in for the thing.

Yeah, I don't know what the term we, I don't know. They're our boys. That's just kind of what you're referring to as. Yeah, we could most certainly have, we could certainly have at least one of three or more golden retrievers on the call for sure.

That'll more than make up for a skittish cat in the background.

A skittish cat who is in a different state from you. Okay. Currently, yes. So I think that's settled. Luke, you and I, maybe offline, we can connect on the timing of when that will record. Okay. But unless there's any further business related to this action item. Yeah, I have a question. I'm really trying to sound official here, guys. Synergy. Yeah, go on. Go on.

Vertical integration.

Under Secretary requesting permission to address the Secretary?

Yeah. We'll make a note in the meeting a minute. It's gone. Okay, great.

um i assume then that luke will sort of take on the host position and you will be taking on the producer slash guest position in the week in review and the the gambit with the week in review is that we kind of talk about things that we've heard on the show without getting into it have you heard anything on tbtl this week luke john that you're interested in talking to luke about

would it be too weird if we just talked about us doing the team meeting i know i think i think that's exactly where you should start just do mitch hedberg jokes no i i with the last couple days i've been listening some things that have been catching my ear for sure and uh when luke and i go to record i first i definitely can you know come to the table with some uh items to hand nice excellent excellent all right so next thing uh yep moving on uh i just got a weird push notification from venmo it's like i thought i was getting money i'm not sorry that's just distracting me that's not nice to do um second agenda i am this is something that uh i know we talked about when we first uh conceptualized too beautiful to biz and people have been asking about it so we're finally close to getting uh to launching a merch shop whoa whoa yeah that's exciting yeah yeah yes uh donor supported and merch store supported yes um so we i think uh you know andrew i guess you can cut this out if we don't want to get too much into the weeds right now but i know something we've talked about a lot like what goes in the merch store versus what's um thon specific and i think we kind of all agree the thon specific thing is like that's the special thing like a coin or and i'm not saying we're gonna do this next year because it's done in the past like the sound machine like something that's like really unique and special for the show whereas i think we're talking about the merch store is gonna be more your kind of general apparel just some kind of shit yeah yeah it's like the kind of shitty stuff

will be in the merch welcome to shit hole lake right sorry yeah that's really really selling it

i really appreciate it hey everyone i'm just taking the logical extension of what you're saying I don't know if that was a logical extension

The Thon, the merch store

It's not that good stuff or it's bad stuff It's just like the unique items I think that I think we're going to like hold on to and make special So we can really have fun with them around the Thon Because the Thon, in addition to a fundraiser Is such great content And people like listening to it, right? So let me ask this

If I have the sort of right Conception of what we're talking about with the merch store Because you and Andrew actually have been working You've particularly been working hard on this, John And Andrew, you've been much more engaged in the conversation than I have. But my sense is that the idea is that it will be a fairly dynamic environment. In other words, if a joke gets into the water supply of TBTL as it's wont to do, that could become a T-shirt, for instance, or things like that. Is that the idea? This is going to be a fairly dynamic environment?

Yeah, that has always been the dream. And that's one of the reasons for folks who have been asking us about it for a while now. That's one of the reasons we want to do it right. And that's exactly what we hope to do. You know, it will be the drop shipping model, which means it's all, you know, on-demand printing and stuff, which gives us that flexibility to have a joke on Monday and have a shirt on the store on Tuesday, theoretically, you know, that kind of thing. One of the caveats, and this is good for people to know now, and this will be on the website, too, as a disclaimer, because it's on-demand printing, the company we're partnering with, they don't do refunds. It's one of these things where it's like- It is Exxon. Yeah, it's Enron. You were talking about that the other day. Right. No, but like, so like

Obviously, we want people to get their hands on some fun TBTL-related swag. But I do want people to be aware of that. We don't want people to buy something and have later regrets. So that is something to be aware of. But because of that caveat, we do have this flexibility. And that's something that's really exciting as opposed to us having to invest upfront a lot of money in merchandise and a warehouse and all these kinds of things that we just don't have capacity for right now. So, yeah. But it's really exciting. and i've been kind of tinkering with some design ideas i think i sent you guys a couple ideas by very like uh redid some of the ones i've worked on and i'm just kind of obviously the you're saying like the dynamic aspects like our number one goal of this um one of our one of our top goals i should say another one is we want to have this ready to go soon because we want people maybe there's a special 10 your life you want to get for for the holidays or you are an 11 that caught wind of this and, like, you want to get something for them, your 10, or whatever it is. We want to make sure it's available for that.

But so, John, let me see if I am conceiving of this whole thing correctly because it's something that you and Andrew have been, as with everything that's important to TBTL, it's something you and Andrew have been much more involved with.

No, no, I can't claim any credit on this. This has been all John, all Secretary John.

Part of the idea of this whole thing is that it's going to be pretty dynamic, right? Like, you know, once it's up and running and we have all the stuff kind of like dialed in, we, there could be some TBTL joke that springs up or some reference or some, something that happens on the show. And then we could be selling t-shirts with that or hats or whatever it is, coffee mugs, uh, maybe even within the same week. Like this, this is, it will be a very fun dynamic environment. Is that sort of the thought behind it?

Yeah, for sure. And that's one of the reasons why it's taken as long as it has what people have been asking about for a long time. Uh, we wanted to do this and do it right. And so it is dynamic. It's drop ship, which means it's print on demand. So that will give us that flexibility, which is super awesome. And I think we're all really excited for. I think our two biggest priorities and timing of doing this is one, having the flexibility and also two, getting things ready for the holidays, knowing that they're right around the corner. And if people are looking for a gift for another 10 or they're an 11 who wants to get a gift for a 10, those were like our two biggest priorities right now is to get this thing going. soon were the flexibility and then also the timing for the holidays.

So I guess the big question here is, are we rich? First of all, are we rich yet, John?

Rich in love.

Oh, okay. Okay, well, we need to work on that. How important is love? Yeah, we're going to need to have money. Take a look at our goal chart again. No, I think the next question is, what are we selling? because we like the idea of being able to like kind of do a quick turnaround on t-shirts and stuff like that the only idea right now is like a t-shirt that sort of has that kind of classic postcard font that says welcome to shithole lake but i'm guessing that's not gonna fly with you

no yeah i think we i think we kiboshed that one so don't don't look for that one uh so definitely t-shirts uh possibly like hoodies as well we're looking at right now okay um but there's a couple designs i've been kind of tinkering with are very basic very much like tbtl logo and maybe a thing here or there and we want to for sure obviously have the store open up with a few ideas but we're i think also maybe soliciting ideas question mark is that what we're hoping to do with this space

today too yeah i think we can do that now we can talk about how we want to do it traditionally luke and i do things pretty um um you know i say slapdash without being insulting towards us like i'm usually just like ah email me and put something in the subject line and i'll figure it out you're a little bit more i think um organized than me so i don't know if you want to create a more like kind of proper thing on the website where people submit ideas or is it just easier to say hey if you have an idea just shoot us an email quickly like what's that what's easiest for the listener

yeah yeah probably just an email like for you know there's uh we could do the web form thing and then just do like a really intricate cap show where they have to identify all the fire you know for cyber security is that the top of the fire is that a sprinkler or a hydrant

damn it another one no i think i yeah i think an email would would do good so like a t-shirt that's you know t-shirt or like whatever design ideas for a hoodie or a t-shirt that is based on a tbtl joke or a tbtl ism the one thing i've been sort of thinking about and you guys can shoot me down on this uh right here during this uh meeting but as guidance for the listeners my feeling is we should avoid anything that is associated with tbtl in our minds but is actually an outside saying like the thing that pops into mind right now would be like if jen were still part of the show it's weird that i'm using kind of a dated reference here but you know like

Jen's drop was I love Jesus but I drink a little but that's also a phrase that was popularized by Ellen you know and so you'll see that in other people's merch stores as well and every now and then I'm like oh that's right that's not just a TBTL thing so I sort of feel that like things like probably the fish you know the traffic jam Jimmy I think fish sandwich we could get it are there other is it too early to get a fish sandwich I see that all over the place

really yes Wow, okay. I'm not hanging out in whatever meme t-shirt side of the internet you are.

You're losing that meme war.

Both of those are totally news to me. I think I had sort of assumed that we were more obsessed with them than the general public, but that's good to know.

I mean, they were viral things. I hate to say this all over the place. It probably comes to my attention because when people see something like that, they send it to us. But every now and then you're scrolling on something and it's a reminder that, oh, that's right.

like we don't own that 30 rock joke can we still can we still do that can we do my idea was teachers

say are you ready for some football is that trademarks is that an issue i've been waiting all day for a sunday night so can i just yeah but make it sexy uh we'll just throw your face on

there andrew so i um i not with our former place of employment i know something that frustrated all of us frequently was how um the legal team was often very yeah no you can't do that because of liabilities or whatever and like i i don't want to be that guy but i do think we have to pay some mind to that like you know actual copyright yeah yeah yeah like i mean we we could have fun with it i think but like we could do a fish sandwich joke but i i would stray away from anything in the nfl a notoriously litigious organization well yes of course i mean i would

I would say that the, like, garbage anxiety. I think we have that one pretty much. That's like us. We own the IP on that.

Oh, that's a good point.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We could definitely, instead of maybe this is, my graphic design skills are not this good. But instead of Oscar the Grouch coming out, it's my passion. It's Oscar the Grouch coming out of the trash can. It's Andrew coming out of the trash can. Is that mean, Andrew? You're too far?

I'm fine with that. I just want to make sure that I'm not trying to steal all the ideas so it's my face all over the place. I like that.

What if that was the joke? Every shirt had your face on it.

I'm very into that. And, Andrew, I know you would love nothing more than to have hundreds of people in America wearing apparel with your face on it because that's your brand, and that's the thing that you lean into the most around this program.

Look at me. Can we just have a T-shirt that has my face on it that just says, Look at me.

How about look at me, Louie, so we can be using Levitard show in life.

I almost said that, and that's the problem. Like, if it's up to me, I'm just going to be selling a bunch of shirts in the TBTL shop that are Levitard jokes.

Now, I do think we need to launch some kind of – I need a sportswear line that has to do with Eagle Soar.

Eagle Soar, okay.

Now, John Ashcroft is no longer with us, correct? Because he was the original eagle. I mean, I'm being very serious. Like, do we, like, we've got, you know, could we make, I mean, we have really, I feel, embraced this idea of eagle soaring as a, you know, physical way to get out and be physically active. Could we make some, some kind of eagle soaring related t-shirts and, and, and would we, Would the estate of former Attorney General John Ashcroft be okay with that?

I think we can get away with that. I do want to say one thing, though, Luke. Also, I could be wrong here, but you started using that phrase, I think, pre-Ashcroft's song. It was when that older guy ran into you during a marathon. John DiLoretto. Right? And he said, and I later on somehow ended up with a little plate that said this. Ashtray, I believe. Well, yeah. Well, I don't think it was an ashtray. It was like some sort of a little like a little little decorative tray that somebody who had no action which you could put action is sure like any buckets and ash bucket. Anyway, it said you can't you can't hoot with owls at night and soar with the eagles in the morning or something.

Yeah, I was I was I was training for this marathon with a guy many years my senior named John Di Loretto. And he was a very, very kind of disciplined guy with how he ate. he didn't drink or smoke he went to bed early got up got up early and i was showing up for these saturday runs just like probably still a rolling 08 and one day i was i was complaining or just saying oh i'm moving slow today and he said to me you'll never soar with the eagles by day if you hoot with the owls by night yeah so then we started calling it eagle soaring and i feel like that yeah that might have been even before it was probably the daily show that i think really shone a bright light on john ashcroft singing of i believe he might have even written that song oh maybe maybe but by the way john ashcroft still with us yeah okay amazing who amazing who can't leave this planet and who does you know dick cheney and john ashcroft still here i'm kind of surprised that we don't hear and

maybe maybe maybe it happens more on like fox news or whatever and it just doesn't trickle down to us but like you'd think that ashcroft would be like a talking head all over the place on issues of security and whatnot right but it seems like he might have like legit retired or i just don't watch enough cable news which would jibe with the fact that i don't have cable it looks like it looks

like he has a uh he has described it in wikipedia as an american lawyer lobbyist and former politician so that's how you do it he's crossed k street and he's probably making buku bucks he also of course famously was a member and is still a member in good standing of the singing senators let me give you a let me just give you a real a real rogues gallery of people uh who were the other members of the singing senators you got john ashcroft you've got your trent lot on base and then larry craig of idaho he of the wide stance checking in he of the minnesota airport men's bathroom famous for cruising in there tapping his feet away getting in trouble and claiming he was completely unaware of the the the sort of legend of that bathroom old larry craig third member of

of the singing senators would you allow them 21 seconds of the song elvira recorded in 1995 based on the image i'm seeing this audio is gonna be rough my heart's on fire i'm so bad at recognizing faces so all these white guys look alike to me but we also have a um jim jeffords in this there's four of them there yeah sure sure that old oakridge boys song

are they singing about elvira you know getting close to halloween uh the queen or what's her title uh mistress of the damned or you know what i'm talking about sure yeah elvira like colt yeah

i mean that's elvira is that who they're singing about uh it's an oakridge boys song and i think it's just i think my guess is it's not related to the mistress of the night or whatever i think it's just somebody in the oakridge boys had a crush on somebody named elvira i could be wrong about that i will tell you this elvira i'll tell you this though what the uh the this may even be the audio that you're playing, Andrew. They sang Elvira. This is the singing senators. They sang Elvira at a fundraising event at the Kennedy Center. It was organized by the Consolidated Natural Gas Concern. Is that not the most perfect? Hey, play the hits. The most perfect organization. Like, oh, I'm sorry. Were the folks from Philip Morris busy that night? We got the Consolidated Natural Gas Producers of America. Basically, the frackers of America Like getting together these singing senators doing Oak Ridge Boys song.

Guys, I have an idea. Instead of launching a merch store, can we just get into lobbying? Can we just do that? That seems to be where the real money is.

So much more money in lobbying.

So if people have T-shirt ideas, should they – I mean, usually I would take this on, but my goodness. Should they just email you, John, and you can kind of let us know what people are sending in?

Yeah, I'm happy to get email. so tbtl john at gmail a little different than the boys uh you guys being the boys obviously i don't have to explain that to you yeah uh but so tbtl john no h so j-o-n tbtl j-o-n at gmail.com uh it's also listed my uh email on our website so if you go tbtl.net if you can't remember the email um and yeah please like and and i should say too we have so many creative and talented people in the community like i don't want anyone to feel like an obligation like oh i need to send in my design like if you feel so inclined like do something awesome but like if you just have an idea i think you know andrew and i we were talking about this like we have uh some creative talents at our disposal as well as some other places that we can pull in from so like just the ideas would be super fun and awesome to see what people would be interested in repping on a t-shirt kind of thing yeah um that more than anything is like the most will be the most helpful thing right

now but you're saying if somebody wants to doodle a doodle send us a doodle too that's you're open to

i'm not opposed to that uh for sure i mean again like we've had so many creative people do so many awesome things but like i really don't want people to be like well i'm an artist i've done things for the show in the past i i'm gonna just do that like i don't want people to put time and effort into something unless they like really or you really want to do it that's all i'm saying so please

in the true tbtl fashion i would like it to be a situation where someone conceives of a t-shirt designs it sends it to us prints it and then has to buy it yes that's the truest expression of tbtl is it's a real self-serve operation for you the creative listeners yeah there will be a markup

yeah of course well yeah god turned a profit um yeah it's really exciting yeah so anything else on the agenda my friend uh for today uh i think we're gonna keep it short keep it brief i'll bounce and let you guys get back to it because i actually have another tbtl related meeting

oh yeah you have a hard out today yeah because you're very important you're the vice president

of operations and finance right right um i will say real quick because you guys already did i know you guys already did the daily donors but um luke you mentioned a couple weeks ago you were talking to some friends of media who are like are you really like donor supported and one of the meetings i'm having today and i'm not gonna this is not giving anything away but like it's in conversation with some other companies that we're talking to about maybe helping trying to help grow audience and when people hear oh you're donor supported like people in media they it's it's unbelievable and so i had one of those experiences on a call yesterday with someone and i and i can expect that i'll be part of the conversation later today when i have or after this and so um yeah just

thank you that's it i just wanted to say thank you to everyone yeah when you when you get together with other folks that are either doing this or trying to do this and you kind of explain how our

finances work they're always shocked yeah it's like no ads none yeah right yeah you sure about

that's why you sure about that you sure about that's how you're paying for three people for this to be their job so yeah i echo i second that emotion john that we really do appreciate our donors and that we would not we would not be here without them so so thanks to everybody and thanks

to you john appreciate all your hard work man yeah no appreciate guys and i'll let you get back to it and look forward to listening to the rest of the episode uh later today talk to you

all right bye um i did andrew watch the uh the duplass brothers documentary about laram i'm guessing you didn't yet because i only texted you about this like two nights ago yeah it's usually a good a good you know that's about a month project for me to try to strong arm you into

watching content yeah you know i mean i don't know how things work on airplanes anymore do they have strong enough wi-fi that i can stream or do i have to find a way to download things ahead of

time because i believe you do have that app though and i think you probably can download to your

device yeah you know and also there are some things that if i'm going to watch it on a plane i'd like to watch it at least on a laptop screen because i really want to see it but for a documentary i could even probably watch this on my phone on the airplane right so maybe i've had

some success with downloading netflix content to my phone before the flight um every once in a while but um i have to say like it's i don't know how interesting it's an interesting story overall um i was riveted because of just this sense memory of you and i being physically there and of course this is the story of a guy named patty moriarty who there was a town there is a town i guess called larrama in the northern territory of australia kind of up there almost near darwin australia but in just the real middle of nowhere off of the stewart highway and there were about 11 people living there and then one of the local there's a bar called the pink panther pub and the guy uh who one of the people that went there all the time this guy named patty moriarty uh went missing and they never found him and they couldn't figure out what happened and many people in the town were suspects because it turns out there was actually kind of more bad blood than you might expect for a town of 12 people and so i think i heard i can't remember if i read the new york times piece about it or if i heard that podcast that was produced actually by a professor and some journalism students in australia that i thought

was really well done now am i right that like they weren't professional audio people so it was sort of a um it was sort of a what's what it was a journalism project i think it was literally like a class right and so i was just it was sort of a scrappier sound right but it was actually just the storytelling that sucked you in or was it like a highly produced glossy thing i think it was

somewhere in between it was it was less production than say this american life episode but more production than say an episode of tbt okay gotcha sure you know it's a wide window would actually that's pretty it's a pretty broad broad niche but um uh so i got really a kind of interested in this story, and then you and I were casting about for what we should do for our TBTL-a-thon that year, and then we ended up going to Australia. And going to the pub and doing the show now here is the here's the what I think is the interesting part to us and you're not to the listeners But to you and me After watching this whole thing I then went back and listened to the episode that you and I did from the pink panther

And I want to tell you something. It's not bad. Yeah, I know you that that is and I told me this already well, I I gotta say and I don't mean this as a you have a hard honestly like carrying the show is a hard job it's easier to ride shotgun every now and then I see you really stressed out in a way that I'm not used to seeing you and you know me I'm a very self-conscious person I'm not we're just joking about like being a look at me Louie I'm not a look at me Louie but I remember being there and thinking like we've traveled oceans of time as you would say to be here and we are here and we need to just not think about what these other people think of us right now we're going to record an hour of conversation and if somebody hears us across the sort of courtyard then they hear us across the courtyard i remember you being a little bit in a defensive crouch especially at the beginning of that show and me looking at you and being like we're just doing this man we're just doing now again i wasn't leading the show I'm not trying to like hurt your feelings here but that was one of those moments where I was like you know you know this is this is fun let's have some fun here and I do remember

you being highly stressed I was very very self-conscious because of the fact that we basically blew into this little and it means calling it a town is overstating it's literally a bar where some people live in essentially RVs nearby and maybe one or two kind of freestanding structures and we we came into the bar we had i think we had called ahead and talked to somebody we'd sort of gotten some permission i forget exactly what the level of awareness was at the bar when we walked in about what we wanted to do but yeah that was i'm sure that was the most insecure i've ever felt trying to do the show because also what was happening was there's like five or maybe five or six people kind of milling about so they're listening to what what we're saying um and uh as throughout the show i think there was a building thing where some people who were like don't interview me were then kind of like yelling stuff to us because it was clear that they were like don't interview us but they kind of wanted to be in on the production i

have no memory of that at all i don't even remember here's what i remember because the show and i haven't listened back since we published it but i remember you went into the little bar area and collected some vox pop some tape of the people from a guy who is featured prominently in the documentary car role and again i wasn't even there for that and we both know that like kind of just going and sticking a microphone in somebody's face and trying to do that stuff is not something that either of us are super comfortable with but i remember you so i wasn't there for that and i applaud that and i remember you came back with really cool tape that we ended up editing down and using for the intro so you had that experience and i wasn't even there for it but i remember the tape being really good um but then once we started rolling we were like kind of set up on this sort of standing it wasn't a standing desk but so we were sort of standing table on a table kind of near a railing but I don't remember anybody from the bar walking out or even looking at us let alone engaging with us I don't remember making eye contact with anybody even during that show

well of course me and eye contact is a whole nother thing there was a guy who was just a couple of times kind of who had said I feel like I remember him being like don't he might have even the guy who was taking us to the crocodile exhibit remember the guy in the orange uh-huh the the orange shirt that had probably hadn't seen the washing machine in a little while yes the vp of operations yes i believe and finance he he um i feel like it was either him or one of his or somebody else like him who had literally kind of been like a don't interview me even though we weren't trying to and then later was kind of like yelling a couple things to clarify like trying to be helpful also kind of wanting to be like a little intrigued that there's these two guys with microphones um but all of this is to say i was i was pleasantly surprised i have always carried that episode around as like i kind of wince when i think about it because i can i go right back to how like just totally insecure and nervous i felt like to the degree that like our first idea i think was we're gonna like be in the bar there's this like kind of great their bar is kind of great because it's it's real beat up but it has something like the highest bar in the the northern territory painted on it it's got all kinds of knickknacks and shit you know and i think the idea was like set up right by there and do the show like to the adoring 11 people of the town and pretty quickly i was like i don't think i have it in me for that so we were kind of in a side area we were kind of out of the way and my i felt like i was whispering the whole time because i just didn't want to attract more attention um but i'm happy to say that when i listened back to the episode it was way less bad than i remember than i felt like it was so i remember it being

Thank you. I remember it being good. I don't remember that interaction with the fella, and I wonder, I mean, I might have just forgotten it, but I also wonder if, like, I have to gear myself up so much to do something like that, that I wonder if I was just like, I had on some sort of blinders. Also, I had on headphones, and I wonder if I just sort of, in the moment, was blocking out any heckling from Mr. Orange Shirt. But I remember thinking, oh, this is a pretty good show. I mean, I think we kept it short, right? It was probably like certain 60 minutes on the dot or something. Do I have that right?

We did the four things we learned on Fury Road. Right! The conceit. Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't a bad conceit. like i'm telling you the whole thing held together so much better than than my memory of it or how i kind of emotionally had filed it away um and uh and then also yeah the guy carl that i talked to uh over kind of in the side area is he and his wife are featured very prominently in in the documentary and there was a moment where because i kind of knew sort of how it you know there's been updates and look i don't want to spoil the documentary for anyone but it is also the story has been out there for a long time so if you don't want to hear what the latest law enforcement theories are then I guess maybe mute your podcast what does that mean you can't talk on the podcast I don't know I don't want to encourage people to like skip ahead in the show or not listen

but I'll tell you what if you need to hit forward a couple of times do it but stick around we have a really good voicemail follow up that's what I was trying to account for truthfully

anyway so what appears to have happened do you remember the meat pie shop

I do that was Franz I mean, that was one of the most colorful theories But also seemed like one of the most tall tales

That she had gone Sweeney Todd on him

That she had maybe killed this guy

And then served him in meat pies Yeah, and they did a thorough kind of search of her property Which, by the way, in the documentary I don't think we picked this up when we were there Because we were only there for like a day, basically But I don't think we picked up what a true let's just say eccentric she was i don't know if she's alive anymore actually but like that meat shop that meat pie shop was a real kooky place um and you get the sense of that when you watch it because you know the way it was reported in the new york times and even the podcast was like there was fran who made these world famous meat pies and everyone else in the town was kind of like the meat pies are gross and also they're not world famous and she was she's like that kind of business owner who had over 100 handwritten signs out about various things that nobody really you know what i mean like she couldn't turn that off like little rules like don't park here yeah don't park here which actually was literally a big issue like uh between her and patty because patty lived in this like converted service station across the street from franz and uh he didn't like that people would park in his front of his house when they were going to her meat pie shop anyway the basic the probably most likely theory is that this guy that came and worked for fran who was this kind of nobody in the town really knew him he was kind of new uh he and patty didn't get along and that he probably killed patty and the reason they think that he probably did it was because he was they bugged the bungalow that he lived in and heard him drunkenly singing himself a song about how he killed patty and his dog they bugged him they bugged his house and again saying house in any the other thing that i was struck by was like how truly um how do i put this without sounding judgy or classist it's just i remember i remember we stayed in that hotel or the motel rather we stayed in the larima motel and i remember being like all right don't stick to anything burbs like it wasn't it was a pretty pretty run down place but like what are we going to do that's where we were and we had committed to it run down and also rustic

It just is the edge of nowhere. You know what I mean? So that's why it had a somewhat different vibe to me than some of the shittier places we stayed in other parts of Australia or that place where it looked like we almost stayed where it was like a murder shack, remember? Then we ended up staying in the trailers.

Tennant Creek, I think we ended up going over to a caravan park.

But the place up in Laramo was a little bit different because it wasn't like, well, we could have gone to the Red Roof Inn across the street. It was like, no, you traveled to be here at this weird place. There are no other options. But it was the one place where I made sure that I checked every shoe and sock and anything that I put on before I put it on my body the next morning when we woke up. Because it was definitely the place where if spiders were going to try to attach themselves to us in some way, that would have been the place.

I just remember thinking, when, if ever, was this bedspread washed? Oh, yeah. You know, like probably never. but all that is to say they they set up recording the devices in the place where this the shack basically where this guy was living and he they have the the had the audio for the documentary well they recreated the audio because i think it was pretty like Kind of hard to make out but they basically said we have these recordings of this guy Singing himself this kind of basically in the way that sometimes if somebody gets really really loaded They just start kind of talking to themselves him doing that more or less admitting to the crime now the thing is That was not enough Really to stand up in court. He basically said no I didn't kill the guy and it turns out that him kind of singing himself a weird drunken song was not enough they don't have a body they don't have there was no physical evidence tying him to the crime and so the guy was basically i don't know if he was arrested but he was brought in interrogated and then they just didn't have enough to really make the case so so to this day that the case remains unsolved no one's doing time over the killing of patty moriarty um so that's and but i guess i guess my point is it was an interesting thing to watch because they definitely gave a lot more a lot more um it fleshed out a lot more about that town even above and beyond what the new york times was able to do and what that podcast was able to do so if you were i'm saying to our listeners if you were very interested in that story i would recommend it's called a last stop larima i think it's on hb i refuse to call hbo max in the way that i refuse to call twitter x yes no i don't i don't i do not i don't know um what is it i don't know what that is and i refuse

to acknowledge it did i tell you uh i know i told genevieve this on after these messages but i heard my first like real life uh broadcast moment where somebody just simply referred to it as x and didn't say formally no twitter or tweet or anything like that yeah it was uh it was a sports radio station but not the one i usually listen to this is actually going back a couple of weeks i don't know why i'm you know i'm driving in the car i was probably just flipping through stations and i think it was some national sports show i think uh and the host said you know get at us on x or something like that did some sort of call out for um interaction but didn't have to say formerly known as twitter or anything like that and while i am you know i guess kind of saddened or just have a lot of negative feelings about elon musk and what he did to that platform in a certain way it was it was interesting to me it didn't give me a bad feeling it was like yeah eventually like things just have to adapt are we just going to say formerly known as twitter the

rest of our days right it's a great question i mean it's it's probably taking much longer than elon musk hoped but i bet you it will happen uh which is something for some reason i'm hoping

doesn't happen yeah because you want to put a thumb in his eye yeah i mean i yeah i guess so Wait, that's not the expression. That sounded violent.

I just find that whole, I'm basically just personally sad that this thing that I used to engage with a lot, aka Twitter, has now become kind of this sad, burned out thing. Meanwhile, Threads, for all of my excitement about it, I have to admit, like, the last post I put up on Threads was probably a month ago. Like, it just, it's weird because so many people join Threads so quickly, i thought that it was going to get the engagement i mean for one thing it's like i don't know what i don't know how many real people had following me on twitter but allegedly it was something around 15 000 uh and and if i put a tweet out there usually there was a certain amount of engagement i put a thread out it's not you know i have i don't know 500 people following me on threads so it's definitely like it's a different it's a smaller room you're playing to and it's it's weird because it just is i was all excited about it but i haven't i haven't found myself going back to it as frequently as like i go to instagram much more than i go to threads now

there's something i i've tried to express this a million times i can never do it right i'm going to say something here i don't want to be insulting the people who use threads but i'm talking more about the platform itself but maybe also about the the jubilation around it when it launched but there's something that for lack of a better word seems so goddamn thirsty about threads now i've been playing around on blue sky a little bit which is again essentially the same thing it's like you know it was supposed to uh kind of pick up the the slack hey that's another social media network uh of of twitter it was i think blue sky was created by the original twitter creator right i can't remember his name off the top of my head so it's you know threads and blue sky you drop in from outer space i don't even know if you can really tell them apart does blue sky look like twitter yeah maybe even a little bit more so and i think the idea was like if twitter was the bird but then Elon sort of killed the bird let's do Blue Sky and the mission being sort of like let's try this again but let's try to keep things a little bit more civil although the tools haven't changed at all the only difference is I don't think hashtags work in the way that they used to work on Twitter but for putting all of that aside I'm not like better than this stuff I actually like Blue Sky as it's picking up more momentum I'm spending a lot more time there at first there were so few people that it was no there's no point in me opening it up because there was no more new content there. But I've developed more and more people to follow. And there's something about like, when I open up Instagram,

And I like Instagram for the photo sharing, but I'm not a huge fan of Instagram as a platform for people to get their rants out there or whatever they're feeling about the world or whatever. Like, it's always been a bit of a clunky app for that. But then I open up Instagram now and like in between Instagram photos, there are like half published threads that try to get me to click on them. They always end after like two lines. and like and so it's like it wants me to click on threads so bad and i just sort of feel like there's just something about threads that is like come on come on andrew come on come on come on we're over here come and like i resent it there's something that i'm turned off about threads and the fact that it sort of popped out fully formed with everybody like just like all of their it's like if somebody were to make a parody of the most popular tweets on twitter and that's all it is it like all like kind of like brand content and famous people all with their perfect little japes and jokes um like fully formed about it that it's just like whereas blue sky and this could all be in my head i'll be the first to admit it it feels a little bit more nascent a little bit like hey what are what are we doing here but it's but still like still like a community

huh yeah i can't say much about that just because i have not yet been on blue sky although somebody sent me an invite to it i think i had a i wouldn't even say a bad experience but i had a sort of non-experience with mastodon well yeah like i kind of i signed up for a minute but it was almost like this is this is involves too much programming for me like i don't know i i'm the kind of person the ux for me needs to be extremely simplified and it was a little it didn't work quite click and so when i heard about blue sky i was like is that just another mastodon another thing i'm going to spend an hour signing up for and then literally never go back to but it actually sounds more intriguing the way you're describing it so maybe i will check it out 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 oh by the

way the last thing i wanted to say uh to everyone was um my takeaway from watching the hbo documentary was we are good at podcasting andrew oh good we did a good podcast from larima i remember thinking

it was pretty good and then yeah i i feel like we did a lot of good shows like some of my favorite shows um you already mentioned the town uh tenant creek i think that's when we did the we were in those little light campers yeah and we pre-recorded i believe the friday show on thursday or something like that and we were so slappy that was the slappiest i've ever been doing a tbtl yeah that's when we were trying to describe the sign we saw involving splooch the turtle that's one of my absolute favorite tbtl memories like i i could and i have gone back and listened to that that to me is like a little that's a little time capsule of joy for me hearing us cry laughing trying to describe a sign using clip art that we saw in an outback bathroom like i think there's

some good stuff on that trip i forgot that that was a tbtl-a-thon yeah that's like until i listened back to the episode from the pink panther and i was like and i'm you know we're both kind of reminding folks to help support tbtl's like oh yeah that's why we were actually there as well was but yeah that was a good week of shows on that episode like there are not that many little podcasts with a couple of dudes doing it that have been doing it for this long that do things like go to the pink panther pub and record the show i guess my point is i felt kind of i felt the less shame about us i was like that was a fairly ambitious thing that we did and we flew across the world and then we drove up to this place and then we went in and then we talked to them and like that's actually i was like i felt kind of proud of the show actually which is not a feeling

i have very often you know what i might do um because we're talking about this and we don't have a place anymore where those episodes and i think we did six australia episodes instead of just the the five because of the way the schedule worked out um and i think that sixth one was the capper i'm not sure but um uh i think that i will try to find those files and somehow share them in this week's newsletter because i'm a little bit crunched on time for the newsletter and so folks who are listening to this and never got to hear those Australia shows I'll see sign up for the newsletter this week and on Friday hopefully we can send you a roundup of them yes nice all right

you have a an update on on something that you were very excited to share with me and the listeners

involving beer cans yes okay so going back to this and I'm gonna I'm gonna give you an option here Luke it's totally up to you we got a voicemail that I believe we played on the show on Monday From listener Craig, who was talking about some antique beer cans that he found in his walls, I believe, and that they ended up being valuable. And he told us that story in song to the loosely to the tune of this is the story of a girl. Do you want to hear that again or are you just ready for the follow up? Do you have all the information you need about Craig?

I do. And I feel like we probably most of the listeners do as well. If they're this far into this episode, they're probably hardcore.

Okay, so he's

sold these cans for a thousand dollars we were astounded by that these were vintage cans that he found you had a lingering question you had a few i think but one big one was were these cans still filled with beer at the time or were they empty and what made them so valuable so craig has uh answered those questions okay hey luke and andrew this is listener craig thanks for playing

my song about my beer cans you've got questions and i've got answers first off the cans were empties they were two cans put together in a paper bag i imagined by the workers who were constructing my house back in 1940 they were put in a bag and hidden in the wall right over the stairwell where I was expanding my closets. And they were valuable because they were made pre-World War II with steel, which was a new concept, in which case they had opening instructions, which is something that collectors like to see. And the brewery went out of business sometime in the 40s so there was a very small window when this can was manufactured and uh ironically i found this all this out by bringing them along to an aa meeting since i'm in recovery and it wasn't until then that somebody suggested i check their value which i did and then i found a buyer who was very interested in them he sent me cash and with that cash i was able to finance the whole project get my wife a very nice expanded closet and some people think collecting

is bad but i got one thing to say i think collecting is good it's the opposite of hoarding And it's a very good thing to do When you're collecting Collecting big hands is a hobby That a lot of people try to do And it's kind of like a nap It's kind of like a break And I think that collecting Is a very good thing to do Thanks

So we've broken Craig So good answers your questions though i mean and gets into the sitting song i'm really bummed because

for all of my migrating of audio i did not apparently migrate the city oh that's what

that pause was there i heard you go kind of oh you're looking for audio i was trying to find

a little bit of time but no but i don't you know i need to it's a little beep this will uh just delay the show far too much. So I'll leave it alone other than to say great poll, Craig, with the sitting, sitting song at the end. That's amazing. I mean, I have to say, I love that it funded the project. I love that somebody at AA had the theory about the cans being worth, worth something. I mean, I love everything about this story.

Yeah, I do too. It got me thinking about beer pre-World War II, the idea that the steel cans were novel at the time. You found it. I did find it.

I do think there's a legit thing that Spotify would get mad at us now because it's become a real song.

Oh, I can see that.

You would have never, ever thought that to be the case. But anyway, yeah, I'm sorry, Andrew. I kind of cut you off there with my music.

It kind of got me thinking about, like, was beer not in cans before that? Was it, like, more like you would get in the prowlers? Oh, I guess. Oh, that's true. of course glass bottles and then growlers or what have you but i was like wait it wasn't like everybody was pouring beer out of growlers into their pint glasses before the war right i see

they were glass bottles yeah i bet you it was all glass and then steel was this new new fangled technology which uh sounds like it wasn't well for one thing before world war ii so the implication i'm getting there is once world war ii started we needed our steel for like tanks and for those i-beams that those guys sit on and have their lunch in the poster absolutely and so it wasn't

going to beer can i'm still doing my part i'm still drawing a line up the back of my legs

instead of wearing stockings i've got a victory garden that i'm gonna plant by the way we are i want people to know we are gonna talk we're gonna talk uh leaves and composting and things like that we have not forgotten about that we just uh we just had other things to talk about today but um yeah let's do that tomorrow eh definitely eh indeed now this song is just gonna be in my head all day so thank you Craig

This is the original, right?

Yeah. By the way, that's Brian Jordan Alvarez, who I've been following on TikTok for a long time. And this is his song, but it's remixed by somebody named TJ Mack. This is the Josh Mack version of Sitting.

Oh, okay, it's a remix, okay.

Well, but it's the one that got popular. It's the one that's on Spotify. Gotcha. It's the one that's sort of been released, I guess, if you will. And what's funny is the other day, Andrew, I saw Paul F. Tompkins on the internet by way of probably Instagram or something singing this song on stage somewhere. Oh, really? So if you think that this is just an obsession with ya boy Luke, It's also your boy Philly. What's his name on Comedy Bang Bang?

Oh, gosh, I can't remember that character. I think he only was on once, and that was years ago. I see. What is your favorite character that he does on Comedy Bang Bang? Putting me on the spot. I don't know that I could pull one on the fly like that. Also, now my brain is just sort of swimming as I even try to think of one character name. But I can close the loop on something I started the show with,

which is to say I have deposited the checks I had sitting here on my desk.

I am now officially, if I'm doing my math correctly, a 178 dollionaire. Amazing. There you go. Maybe I can buy me some TBTL T-shirts with that.

Yeah, first you have to design them, and then you have to pay for them.

How do we do an eagle-soaring T-shirt that doesn't look like it is like, oh, first of all, can I get a meow? It's a terrible eagle, by the way. Can I get a meow?

Andrew, we've already established no need to ask permission on this one.

But I need you to play it. I don't have that perfect meow. But yeah, like how do we make an eagle-soar shirt that doesn't look like jingoistic patriotism? Right. That isn't so ironic that it really does just look like. We got it at Walmart.

Right, exactly. Yeah, that's a great question. We'll come up with something. Or maybe one of the listeners will. And then we'll sell it to them.

Then we'll sell it to them at a markup.

That's right. All right, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. can i get a meow luke can i get a meow here you sure can meow power out