Muse

Wake up. No, I'm so tired. It's our engagement party. All of our friends are going to be here. I don't want to talk to anybody. I'm going to sleep. Fine. Put on your Cinco FaceTime Party Snoozer then.

It's the Cinco FaceTime Party Snoozer. Sleep right through parties and social gatherings without anyone noticing. The Cinco FaceTime Party Snoozer features five distinct audio responses using my professional voice. And the Cinco FaceTime Party Snoozer comes with this amazing body brace and earphones that pipe in soothing music

so you won't need to hear a single word anyone is saying. My accountant tells me that I might be eligible for a 436 rebate now. Sure, why not? As a small business owner, that's exactly what you want to hear. I understand. Rebate, sign me up. Thanks for coming.

Take part in interesting conversations while you get much-needed rest.

We'd be on this river and it would wind around like this. Sure, why not? We'd have our fishing pole and we'd pull in the fish. I understand. We'd be flapping around. Sounds good. Okay. Nobody's fitness at all. Okay. But, you know, we caught maybe, I don't know, a dozen or so. I understand. Blue river. Okay. Really gorgeous, though.

Sure, why not? It's the Cinco FaceTime Party Snoozer. I understand. TBTL.

what's up internet what's up um it's uh people who identify as nerdy rapping about the things they love video games science fiction having a hard time meeting romantic partners losers in

other words well i'll tell you another thing once you step inside this circle the weather never changes it is always 67 degrees with a 40 chance of rain always what if my heart

stops peeding. What if I'm looking for a bathroom? I can't find it. And my bladder explodes.

Holy forking shirt balls. We're in the good place.

Well, all right. Hello. Good morning and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Here we go again. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Cup of coffee in the big tank.

Coming to you from the beautiful South Waterfront of Portland, Oregon.

Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful.

Where it is absolutely gorgeous on this Monday morning. I am currently dealing with a cat situation because...

A cat is an angel that poops in a bar.

This is where Bubbles has been residing. Bubbles the cat, my cat. Well, supposedly my cat. Probably more Becca's cat than mine at this point. But she is right behind me standing on a giant cactus scratching toy, fresh off of her performance this morning of pushing a huge glass jar of food right off of the counter and shattering it. So, well, the good news is we've got content here on this episode 4064 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

Also generated some content this weekend going out for Halloween.

Well, you know what, Western Ohio? we've lost the true meaning of Halloween.

Where I was, Becca was dressed as Barbie, I was dressed as Ken, the Ken that I was, of course, was Ken Jennings. Also, I had a meltdown at Costco.

Oh my God, I'm freaking out!

I still don't know exactly how to feel about, probably not great. That's probably how I should feel about it, is not great. Anyway, we'll talk about that. And, I'll talk to this guy. Longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, joining us today and tomorrow from the Cuyahoga Valley.

They're very expensive freshwater clams from the Cuyahoga River.

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. Specifically, I know you like specifics, Luke. The details are in the specifics. I am joining you from the arts and crafts district of my parents' basement, in fact. My parents have a very nice big basement that I believe when they bought this house many moons ago was a completely unfinished basement, but now it's very finished and very nice with a big TV room and a fireplace and an office for my father in which I've been sleeping.

What kind of arts and crafts are we talking?

But now they do have this one room, and this is my vibe. You know me. I love me a good old-fashioned basement. I don't know what that means. does it mean what i think it means and i think it means um what's the word i'm looking for uh

cleavage decotage cleavage this is for you a possible show title early early show title

at one point runner at one more

At this point in my relationship with Genevieve, she started using the word, or I heard her use the word decolletage, and I didn't know what that meant.

Oh, no, that's a lacy thing that one has on one's bust.

No, I believe it is the cleavage itself, I believe. I could be wrong about that, but I knew that as another word for cleavage, and I loved that word. I thought it was fantastic in such a classy way about talking about a part of the body, and so I started using it a lot. And several years into our relationship, Genevieve said I needed to put a moratorium on using that word. But apparently I liked it too much, and so I don't use that word as frequently as I used to. But what was the word that you just...

Well, you're a decolletage man.

What word did you use?

You're either an ass man or a decolletage man.

Yeah. They need a French word for that.

Do you have the ability to edit things out there in Cleveland?

You mean derriere or decolletage?

No, I meant the word I said. I thought that would be... The juxtaposition of those two things would be funny. One being very crass. One being a very fancy way to describe the bust. I get it. decoupage is like I think when you like cut out pictures and then you glue them on something and then you maybe varnish it down which seems like the kind of arts and crafts that could be going

on in the basement you're in. Potentially I don't see any of said arts slash crafts around but I am set up here on an arts and crafts table where I believe gift wrapping happens various crafts happen although again I don't know what they are behind me though is like my dad's workbench with all kinds of toolboxes and also i love love this move um old pill containers containing various fasteners hold on a sec hold on one sec you still there i got a uh i got some license plate fasteners here in an old pill bottle i got some well this says rug hooks but that one's empty so it doesn't make as good of a noise unfortunately but anyway this is my vibe i love this i'm standing i have a standing desk now which means i put a cardboard box your energy was different and i think it's because you're standing yes and i've had a lot of coffee but uh it's a cardboard box set atop a folding table that is my version of a standing desk and i'm loving it jerry well i'm in a very

very nice apartment in the south waterfront of portland and whenever i stay over at becca's house i'm reminded of what a titanic crap hole my real house is currently because there are things here like heat running water running water and uh comfort so um i realized this morning as i was getting all set up like this is it's very nice here it's it's nice to be sleeping in becca's actually down in salem she's uh visiting her mom down there so it's just me and the cats andrew and they've already well holly is a a true gem of a cat but but bubbles has already shown herself to be just an absolute miscreant this morning.

Oh, so Becca doesn't know about this broken glass that you mentioned. Oh, she does.

I sent her a video, believe you me. I came, yeah, I walked out into the living room or whatever, the kitchen this morning, and there was just a shattered glass jar, which, remember the last time I was here? Bubbles was busy shattering a family heirloom.

Oh, I remember, yeah, sure, of course.

So she's on a real hot streak. But yeah, the thing that their food is in, And the cat's food, I guess Bubbles got bored at some point this morning and just nosed it right off of the counter, and it just shattered. And the weird part is it did not wake me up.

Oh, you were asleep. What kind of food was on the plate?

What's that?

What kind of food was on the plate?

Cat food, the kind of food that cats eat.

Oh, I see. It was actually cat food. It wasn't human food that the cat had gotten into. I see.

I mean, a human who is very desperate could eat this, but it's designed and fabricated for cats.

Sure, yeah.

ph balance for a cat but strong enough for a woman yes so yeah so i came out this morning and there was just like glass everywhere and food and i was going to try to do the thing where i like separated out the food and the glass uh you know because it seemed wasteful but then i was like i'm not gonna i don't know the thing was the thing was you had holly who is just a absolute sweetheart and never does anything wrong true story just sitting there looking at me like if she could have pointed with her paw if she could have just silently pointed towards the other one towards the bangle cat she would have she was like this was not me and also holly holly loves her some food bubbles is i think pretty kind of sort of agnostic on eating holly loves food holly had not touched one you know niblet of this cat food that was everywhere on the floor like she could have just been hoovering it up and she wasn't because she's a good cat wait a second or or

or or two words perfect crime uh-huh you didn't do you did not see the cat knock it off i didn't see it nor did i hear it uh-huh and maybe holly stopped you know hoovering herself the moment she heard your footsteps coming down the hall what if i mean what if bubbles

Thank you.

is the biggest victim here you know what i honestly respect holly's game that would be amazing if she's doing this it's the longest of the long cons and it's kind of like when a crime is like when someone steals like a matisse from the louvre you know it's a caper you sort of just like you you know you feel bad for the louvre but you're also just like wow you know respect that would be if holly has been for the last i don't know three years that i've known her if she has been just setting up this moment and also somehow turning bubbles into a complete maniac so that she can shatter a glass bottle a glass jar of food and then eat it and then frame bubbles for it honestly I just like she's a master

criminal and I respect it do you know that they have an expression when something is stolen from the Louvre are you familiar with this it's famous no Oh, what makes you think I'm setting up a joke, Luke? I don't know.

I'm just having one of those weird moments where...

No, this is dead serious. I learned this in school. They say, you snooze, you loove. That's something that I learned in higher education. Thank you, Kent State. Hey, I took a trip out to Kent State yesterday.

Yeah, you sent me a photo from there. You are not, I think, being memorialized correctly. They're in Golden Flashtown.

You know what? Oh, no, I sent you a photo. Okay, sorry, I was a little confused there. Oh, was that the airport? I did. Yes. When I landed here in Cleveland, yes, there's a big, huge Kent State advertisement up in like sort of up in the I don't know what you'd call it, like the eaves. Like the airport has sort of a rounded, very tall, vaulted ceiling and up in it at parts, they will have advertisements. And one of them was for Kent State University. It looked like it was two young students, maybe in a maybe in a cockpit themselves. I'm not sure. Doing some sort of like hands on aeronautics of some sort. And I was, like, a little bit disappointed that I wasn't represented at all as one of their, I think, most, if not famous, celebrated graduates. But we did take a little drive out of there.

And, you know, one of their most celebrated aeronautics graduates.

I mean, sure. They could have just pasted you into the background.

These two people are flying some kind of plane or space shuttle, and you're podcasting about it right behind them.

Right, exactly. Like when Sklaroff puts our little bits of TBTL on Instagram and represents us with cats. And sometimes they just come poking out. That could be me poking out over the shoulder of one of these students. But no, I was not represented in that way. But we did have some extra time on our hands this weekend. Me and my folks, you know, we're just kind of catching up, driving, driving around, having lunch here, having dinner there. What do you do? But not in the car. No. Oh, my gosh. We did go through a drive through, though. I was shocked. Yes.

People can change, Andrew. People can. I'm worried that this baby thinks people can't change, but people can change.

I called them out. My dad and stepmom wanted these little treats from McDonald's, these little coffee-flavored iced drinks that they love, and I could not believe it. They're going through the drive-thru. I said, Dad, who are you? He said, I hate it. I don't like it. I hate it, but I'll do it.

I don't know if your parents are overhearing this, Andrew, so I don't want to put you in a tight spot down there in the arts and culture district of crafts arts and well there could be culture as well there isn't um but so it sounds like your dad is is he has begrudgingly agreed to a lifestyle where sometimes drive-through things are purchased because of your your wonderful stepmother who maybe likes that yeah i'm not sure i didn't yeah i think maybe that

is the implication there but i'm not entirely sure i was just shocked by the whole situation And also, then we kind of got off to a different conversation because the, I don't know, the slushy machine wasn't working quite right. So there was some confusion. It never is.

We have discussed this at length on this program that the shake machine, which probably is maybe in the same, you know, division of the McDonald's, is the shake machines are always broken. The ice cream machine is a problem.

Yeah, I knew the ice cream. I didn't think shakes, but certainly don't they say that you can never get ice cream cones there?

well in fact there was a company uh a small company that had um figured out some sort of device that you could put it was the size we talked about this on on tbtl it's the size of a deck of playing cards that you could put in the ice cream machine that would somehow monitor all of it and they were sued by the company that makes the mcdonald's ice cream machine because it was like they are not the little the little sensor thing that they created because all of the mcdonald's ice cream machines are broken all the time this was not part of the technology from whatever i want to say like italian company or something makes the overall machine and they didn't like somebody nosing in on their on their business model and so uh yeah this came up on the

show uh maybe a year ago i'm not trying to waste time we have plenty to talk about and i'm not trying to waste time with like icebreaker small talk here but weirdly i feel like i've had this conversation that i'm about to

bring up here uh several times i love the idea of you and i trying to like either have an icebreaker like like we just met like god i wonder how it's gonna go with this andrew guy let me have a few

icebreakers ready to go yeah so so this is a conversation i've coincidentally had several times in the past i don't know couple of weeks but um can you say your name and then an adjective that starts with the same letter as your name, Lucky Luke. No, what I was going to say was, do you have a favorite like fast food French fry? And when you hear mine, I want to know if you think mine counts because Genevieve straight up says mine doesn't count.

Well, okay, great question. I was going to say that yours is probably Wendy's because you are, of course, in Ohio. you're near dublin ohio home of dave thomas and the wendy's origin story i do think wendy's fries are pretty great i would say it's either for me wendy's or good old mcdonald's because mcdonald's is very consistent with their french fries which is i think the whole point of how they you know take their potatoes and there's some kind of absolutely what's the word i'm looking for like the potatoes that mcdonald's wants for their french fries are so kind of genetically modified it will be probably the end of human civilization will be because of how modified these potatoes are you know that's interesting i think i'm

now remembering the reason it maybe first came up was because of these commercials that we talked about and after these messages genevieve and i where they talked to like farmers and mcdonald's kind of insists that um no these are these are real potatoes there should be nothing about

this potato that gives anyone into any indication it grew in the ground is part of nature.

Their ad campaign was, I am a real farmer. Trust me. Those were the aliens growing the genetically modified potatoes.

That was DartBot.

That was. I brought DartBot with me, by the way. Not a DartBot.

I'm a good French fry now, Dad.

I have a DartBot with me in the form of my iPad, which I'm using to do part of the show today, but I don't have a DartBot with me, and so DartBot is really confused. This is the first time DartBot has ever left Washington State, and it's like, where are all the DartBots? I'm like, DartBot, we're going home soon.

This is the spiritualized song. We are currently floating in space. DartBot is like, what am I if there is no dartboard here? Do I exist?

Yeah, it's starting to smoke. It's worrying. It doesn't know what to do because it's having an existential crisis. No.

Okay, so but the French fry that you like that doesn't count makes me think it's from a place that is not considered fast food by most people. Well, that's why Genevieve thinks it's not a real sort of contender for the fast food French fry title, which makes me think, is it from Golden Corral?

No, I've never been to Golden Corral is the is the is the right, right, right.

No, I didn't think it was Golden Corral. Is it from where is it from? Just tell me.

It's a Burger King onion ring. No. Although if I am at Burger King, I like Burger King fries, but I never eat them because I get the onion rings while I'm there. Although they have a commercial now where they're advertising that you can get, you know, everything your way. And you can get half rings, half fries.

I think that the fries are too cakey at Burger King. That's what people say. I don't mind them, but they have too much cake on them.

I like them more than I think I like McDonald's fries, although it's rare that I have either. But no, the fry, when I say my favorite fast food fry is a Arby's curly fry. And Genevieve says that's not the same game.

Oh, yes. No, Genevieve is right. That doesn't count.

How does it not count? It's a fry. It has fry in the title. You're calling tater tots Mexi fries over here.

But I wouldn't say that's my favorite French fry.

No, that is true. That is true. I don't know why I threw that in there. That was a personal attack, and my apologies. It was. It was ad hominem, by the way, and I'll not allow it. We set out the rules of debate, and I broke it immediately. That is a fry. I mean, it is definitely a seasoned fry. It is a curly fry, but it is a French fry. It is a French fry potato.

Because it has potato at its core. In other words, because they also, at the Arby's, they also now have, like, jalapeno poppers. That wouldn't be a French fry to you. No, of course not. Even though it is sold on the side of a roast beef sandwich. Of course. But you're saying that, like, it has to have potato in it. And a curly fry does have potato.

so for you that makes it a french fry well it's a i mean a tater tot is not a fry i wouldn't say that it's not just because it has potato but because it is a french fried potato that is long and stringy now this does end up being curled but it's still basically the dimensions if you

were to uncurl it if possible like to me it's just such a different experience the the breading on it the shape of it like just think about this think about uh and this is easy for you andrew because you're back in the ancestral you know walsh homeland i just imagine being a years old and walking into a burger joint with your with your family and ordering fries would it have been curly fries a burger um potentially I just mean were they making curly fries like was that was that on offer when you were growing up because to me the thing is I don't think curly fries came around till I was like in my mid-20s at least oh I don't think that's true I don't think

that's for you I now I don't know that we if we grew up and we if we grew up when we were growing up if we got fast food it was usually mcdonald's so it was like you know that was a traditional french fry situation but the idea of curly fries is not a new invention i don't believe in fact i was going to tell you this is this is kind of a serious topic and i'm not going to dwell on it i don't want to get choked up but when i went to uh visit kent state uh and just kind of drive around and see the sites a lot has changed but uh one of the things that changed the most was that was the place where I had my first Arby's roast beef sandwich there was an Arby's there on Main Street in Kent Ohio it is it is not gone now it is just closed down in the saddest damn thing I've ever seen in my life the Arby's sign is gone it's just an old is it a four points by Sheridan it's nothing it's just the saddest thing you've ever seen just sitting there next to Rockne's the family style restaurant is just an old shelled out version of an arby's where i first sat down with my friend to john reed and he said you've never been to arby's before and i said no what do you get and

he said the biggest thing formerly known as a big montana yeah i believe it was called like a now it's called like a pepsi x or something formerly known as twitter like it literally has some kind

of crazy like it's called like blue origin elon musk presents the big montana but but okay so we

really do have a lot of real show to get to including my meltdown at costco speaking of things that are large andrew but i have a theory and and i'm really this is i don't for all the shows we've done together i don't know if i knew this about you that you did not ever darken the door of an arby's and i know we even did a show from an arby's but you never even went there until

college no that because it was i was i was led to believe that it was a man's game and prior to that i was merely a boy um no i already i didn't grow arby's was not part of our i don't know just universe growing up i mean they were around but it was not something my family ever had and i remember uh just i and i would see this one and i don't know why like you're in college you eat all kinds of things there was a taco bell down the street i didn't particularly like taco bell but I would eat it and then I just remember John Reed introduced me to Arby's and I never looked back

but see this is so this is the this is the core of my question is or my theory is that if you grew up eating Arby's like I did they had five for five dollars it was a big deal like you could feed almost half of the Burbank family for that if you grew up eating Arby's it's delicious you love it you have good memories if you come to it as an adult you're like what the holy hell is this situation you would think so so you but you you're one of the few late adopters of arby's i guess so

now you know i this is this is my college let's say what do you think i was maybe 18 19 potentially even 20 years old but probably no older than that so you're right like maybe i would have looked askance at it but for me college was a time of like kind of opening my mind to all kinds of new

experiences like the doors of perception it turns out was a door to an audience that's right

and it was i have no notes it was perfect in every way and i'm sad to see it go

come on come on come on come on i'm trying to do a doors song here uh-huh no i falling apart

i was gonna say now bite me babe but that comes off oh that was not bad that's not bad i just

started singing and then i realized midway through the intro of come on touch me babe Which is my favorite Doors song, by the way. I realize I didn't really have a power out to that.

Yeah, and I don't like where I went with that. But I will say the last time I went to an Arby's was in the Seattle area's Arby district, known as Edmonds. With me? No, it was by myself. Oh, Edmonds? In Edmonds? It was the Edmonds Arby's. Culturally not Edmonds, but okay. This was years ago. And I loved it. You know, they've renovated it now. I've not gone back since they've renoed it. But when I walked in there, everything was like kind of purple and splashed with color. It was exactly like 1993 in there. I thought I was going to see Zack Morris. By the way, I'm sorry.

You can finish that thought. I just have that reminded me of something.

Okay. And I got the biggest sandwich available. I don't know if it was called a Big Montana then or not. I don't know when the change happened. But you know what, Luke? It was, and I hate to say this, too big. the sandwich was too thick I couldn't this is going to get a little bit gross I couldn't take a bite all the way through it I had to sort of

of gnaw at the top and gnaw at the bottom, if you know what I mean. I was kind of taking bites out of the top of the sandwich because I couldn't unhinge my jaw enough to get it around.

You were basically going like competitive eater on it. You were just kind of like sizing it up and then attacking it like some kind of project.

Yeah, and I do something when I'm eating, and I really hate this about myself because I think I have some issues around food and growing up an overweight child and being embarrassed kind of being seen eating, which is a really embarrassing thing to say, but it was part of kind of, I was, I was teased during some formative times of my life. And, um, I think sometimes when I'm eating, you and I talk about not liking messing, messy food and like kind of getting it all over us. That's part of it. But also I think when I'm in that mode where I'm eating something really messy and gross and I start to feel maybe some, some deep seated shame about it, I start trying to eat it as fast as possible, almost like a hide the evidence kind of situation. And, uh, I, just remember sitting in that Arby's and really starting off strong, having a great feeling about everything, but then at a certain point just trying to just get this thing. I don't want anybody to see me with this sandwich anymore, so trying to eat it as quickly as possible. Let me hide this in my stomach. Exactly, which I did, and I've never gone back. The last place they would look. When I'm back in the Arby's district of the world, which is, of course, Edmonds, Washington, I'm going to go back, and I'm going to face these demons.

Good. I want you to do it over again. I want you to I'll even go with you, and I'll get some of those curly fries you've been raving about. Yes. And we'll sit there, and I want you to, as a kind of a sort of experiment, like Barbra Streisand in the movie Prince of Tides, where I believe she's a therapist. I'm going to sit across from you, and I would like you to calmly and slowly eat your Arby's sandwich and know that it's okay for you to eat a big Montana. And no one's judging you. You're safe. You're loved.

I like the idea of, you know how you talk about like kind of immersion therapy sometimes, like if you're scared of heights, well, then we're going to take you to the highest place or whatever. I like the idea of us going into an Arby's together, you ordering nothing and me just ordering all kinds of food. That would really trigger you. You sit across from me in the booth, arms folded across your chest, just staring at me, maybe even dare I say glowering at me. Do I say glowering funny while I try to eat my meal?

This might be the first time the term glower has ever been used on this program.

Am I saying that right? That might be one of those words that I read when I say it that seems wrong.

No, you're saying it exactly the way that my brain says it to me when I'm reading it in the printed form.

Yeah. So anyway, what were you going to say, though, when you jumped in before? Do you remember?

Yeah, I do. I think of that Arby's because it's up near the Safeway where me and my friends were once buying many eggs. Oh, yeah. I recently told the story on the show. we were buying a bunch of eggs and the uh at like midnight a bunch of teenage boys buying dozens of eggs and the person at the safeway uh saying drolly you're making a cake and it reminds me of this weekend when beck and i were running around various places trying to get the stuff for my costume and we were in a target in like tigered oregon and there was i just kept seeing kind of large high school boys carrying gallons of milk each each kid had a gallon of milk with them and finally by like the seventh kid i was like what's going on with that and they go oh it's a uh it's a what was the term he used it was like a mile it was like a milk mile or something and my guess was you have to run a mile and chug a gallon of milk i don't like that i just put that together from milk mile you asked one of the one of the youth yeah one of the kids i was like i was like you guys are up to something right by the way it was like noon but i was like and they weren't all together they were kind of scattered about the store but i just kept seeing you know kind of like sturdily built high school boys with a each one with a gallon of milk in their hands and i was like i was like what are y'all doing with that and one kid goes oh just milk mile just a milk mile bro and i was like i assumed that meant you run a mile and you chug a gallon of milk that sounds terrible now i've never run it sounds just absolutely awful yeah on both fronts it sounds

pretty bad it really does how can we make both of these experiences worse

hey let's thank some of our donors these are the generous folks making tbtl possible of course this is listener supported podcasting and andrew i don't ever want to i don't want to say you know some days donors are more significant than others because we appreciate every single donor. But there are some heavy hitters on this list. There are some long...

long-running and long-standing friends of the show folks like ann taylor out there in washington dc thank you my memory is and my memory is terrible so this could be wrong i think ann was uh one of the folks that taught us how to make mint juleps when we were a radio show around the Kentucky Derby. I think I'm thinking of the same, Ann Taylor,

so thank you, Ann.

Thanks to Gary Havens in Carmel, Indiana. They make something in Carmel, Indiana. I feel like either it's a baseball glove, there's something going on in Carmel, Indiana that is particularly memorable to me.

And it's not caramel.

It's not. No, it's not at all. But it's something else. I feel like it's a real Trenton, New Jersey situation. Carmel makes the world takes There's something happening there There is some kind of industrial product Or jar, there's a thing that you have In your home that if you were to turn it over and look at it It would say, made in Carmel, Indiana

I'm trying desperately To figure out what it is I'm typing in Carmel, Indiana Famous for, and it says it's the Capital of roundabouts But I don't think that's what you're thinking

That's exactly, where's my bell If you have a roundabout You know what? Have you thanked your roundabout today? If you've availed yourself of the services of a roundabout, you have Carmel, Indiana to thank for. They invented it.

It says its chief export is Chrome.

My friend, that's Albania. Totally different game. Also, Mark Bourne is in Westchester, Pennsylvania. Mark, let me tell you a little bit about our friend Mark Bourne. Mark Bourne has been listening to this show for evs, and Mark was for a long time, I believe, an over-the-road truck driver and is now a pilot. Mark likes to go from point A to point B and doesn't care if it's on the ground, if it's in the air. By ship? Next up, he's going to be spelunking. He is dominating the space when it comes to going from here to there in different conveyances.

I love it. Well, thank you for spending your spelunking dollars to support the show.

Thank you, Mark. Appreciate it. Hey, look at this. Lauren Powers. Hey, Lauren! From right down here in Portland, Oregon. I can probably see Lauren's place from here. Sorry, Lauren, I'm not peeping your place, but I'm in Portland right now. And Lauren, of course, long-time supporter of the program, and I want to say recent Portland resident, but it's probably been like three years. It's probably been

a few years now, but one of our architens. Everything that happens

in Portland feels recent to me. One of our architens, right? Exactly. Exactamundo. Also, Brittany Pendergraft. And by that, I mean, Pendergraft. Brittany, because it's a Monday, I gave you an extra R. I just did, you know what, I felt generous. But if you want to go with Pendergraft, if you want to go with the actual spelling of her name, we'll also support that. Brittany Pendergraft is in Mukilteo, Washington. Nice. Thank you, Brittany. Have you been to Mukilteo, Washington, Anthony?

What is their Arby's situation?

Well, it's funny because Mukilteo is more culturally Edmunds than the thing that you think is Edmunds.

I need some time to untangle what you just said. Do you want to take a moment? That's fine. We can all pause to really let that sink in. What I believe you just said is Mukilteo is more culturally Edmunds than the thing that I think is culturally Edmunds. So Mukilteo does have its fair share of fast food restaurants and whirly balls. Is that what you're saying?

Opposite. I'm saying opposite of that.

Okay, gotcha. I'm saying Muckle Teo is unbelievably charming.

It's very, it's right there on the water. There's a Muckle Teo ferry. It's actually not far from Edmunds. Oh, okay. What you think of as Edmunds is really Linwood. And what I think of as Muckle Teo is really Edmunds. Okay.

Well, that's simple. Brittany knows what I'm talking about, okay? Brittany gets it. Shout out to all of our listeners who are anywhere else than the Pacific Northwest.

Oh, you mean like Sandra Vasquez of Stanwood, Washington? Beautiful Stanwood, Washington. We love it out there. Stanwood is not too far from, oh, Kamano Island.

And we had quite a Stanwood contingent for quite some time. We did.

I think we still do. They're just, they're dormant right now. They're just, you know, they're hibernating. Yeah, the Stanwood Tens have represented for a long time. So a shout out to Sondra there in Stanwood. And thanks to all of our donors for making TBTL possible today. We could not do this without you.

Thank you, baby.

Hello and welcome to Top Story. Andrew, can you hear... bubbles chittering in the background no making that sort of a cackley sound when they go for

the thing oh no bingo does that too because i've got this uh i'm as i'm talking to you i'm holding this wand with a like a some kind of feathery thing on the end of it kind of like a bird and bubbles is standing on the scratching post which is shaped like a cactus and she is going just she's doing that weird i call it chittering i don't know if that's really the word for it but That's what it kind of sounds like in my mind.

No, I can't hear it. It's very, very intent. I'm in kind of a weird setup here in the arts and crafts room. Arts and culture district. Yeah, so I don't know if I'm picking up the best fidelity, so I can't hear it over here. Also, that's a pretty quiet noise, so I'm not entirely sure if I would hear it anyway. But that was not something that I experienced with my cats until Bingo came to town. Bingo, when he's chasing the laser beam, but especially the feathers. Maybe it's something about feathers and it reminds him of a real bird.

stimulate some kind of very kind of um like prehistoric thing in their brain or something certainly well it's funny because holly who's a like a beautiful tuxedo cat but she's a lady of you know she's a lady of means she just kind of like elegantly stares at this thing but but with interest and then bubbles just runs around like kramer from seinfeld bursting through the door bursting through the door making weird sounds just like shattering glass jars of food in the middle of the night um so that's uh bubbles's move my move this weekend uh andrew i will have i don't want to say updates because that would be overselling it but my move this weekend one was on friday i rototilled my little arms off and i'm still feeling the pain by the way because we pre-recorded some of the shows last week which meant on friday i actually had the whole day to do stuff around the house and the stuff i did was to rent a rototiller now rototiller that's the

thing that you stand behind and push right like it's or at least guide that's what they tell you

but that was not how it worked for me like it looks like the kind of thing where yes you will walk behind it and it will do all of the the rototilling it will it will tear up the ground and you'll just be kind of casually guiding it. That was not how it was working at my house. I was trying to get all this, basically I have a raised garden bed that somebody, the previous owners or somebody built, but it had become overrun with like tall grass. So first I weed whacked the grass down, then I mowed it, then I ran to the rototiller, then I realized that what I was going to have to do is like basically wield the rototiller just like a big shovel so instead of walking behind it i would drag it i would walk backwards as the the till as the tillers were grabbing up and ripping up the roots so i was it was it was not like a thing that was doing all the work for me it was just this like gas powered tool that i was carrying lifting putting it down in certain areas dragging it towards me like i was just using it like a shovel of sorts and uh it turns out my body is not designed for that because i am still

in a world of pain on this monday that's so weird i can't picture we had one of those growing up i know i used it very minimally i think my dad used it mostly and maybe he would just like let me use it from time to time but like my experience with it was it would like um i almost picture like the old like the old old timey farmers who are like tilling the soil but they have horses in front of them right but then they're behind the horses and they have something behind the horses that they're sort of holding on to and the horses are pulling this along and you're guiding it i feel like it was like a like well like a like a horseless plow sort of like you would just kind of walk that'll never work a horseless plow a horseless plow how will i sell my buggy whips um but anyway yeah so that was my experience with it is it that the ground i can't even imagine picking up the device that we had it doesn't seem pick upable see i think i might have gotten too

small of this is all in the weekend review video by the way where uh john sklaroff and i are talking and i'm sitting in this area of my yard um and because i i don't know if i got too small of a rototiller from the home depot or too large of one but basically i think what happens is if you have a big field of just dirt and you're either plowing it or rototilling it it goes pretty easily what i was doing was trying to break up essentially a lawn like all of this grass had a root system even though i'd mowed it down and weed whacked down and mowed it down under the surface of the dirt there was a whole network of of roots that were not easily you know torn up from the ground and that was where the rototiller which i thought was just going to like just go right through it like a knife through butter it wasn't and so I had to basically like hold kind of edge it down into the dirt and then drag it back towards myself so that was grasping it was kind of digging up the roots it was I don't think it was how the thing was designed but it was the only way to actually get this thing done and it took me many hours and I am again I'm still paying the price physically Luke is it a good kind of hurt that's a great question i don't think so uh it's a somehow pain feels better wait what is this an amc um

you know what i mean like sometimes you're like oh i am in a lot of pain but god damn it like it's good to use these muscles and also i got something done

a kind of you know a good hurt for me would be i'm using those dumbbells that i bought and i i'm i'm working out with um like what was it toya juice and juice and toya yeah i'm working out with juice and toya i got up early i made good decisions the night before i'm working out and then the next day i'm feeling it in my muscles that's a good hurt this was a hurt this is a hurt that tells me i don't know how to operate a rototiller like it connects more with a feeling of like my incompetence is it a good shame yeah it is one of those it's one of those classic it was what i think it was pearl s Buck wrote about the good shame that yeah so anyway I'm dealing with that and then also I'm dealing with legitimately Andrew this is not this is not really my move typically to ruminate on things or to to blame myself in a situation but I I'm ruminating and I'm blaming myself in a situation that also by the way I had roped Becca into which I'm I'm a little embarrassed about I I did not handle myself well at the Costco in Tualatin, Oregon this weekend.

Tell me about this, because I have, as you know, a lot of feelings about Costco. I've been talking about it a lot with family and friends during this trip. What happened?

Okay, so I bought one of those Dyson cordless vacuums from that place, I don't know, a couple months ago. and uh i you know it's a it's a great product except the one that i purchased would just shut off for no reason so the battery would be fully charged i would start vacuuming and then it would just stop and it would be flashing like there was no battery life and then if you waited like 10 seconds 20 seconds it would just start again and it would be like full battery so there's some kind of short and i thought about just trying to make it work like well whatever i have to wait five seconds every two minutes of vacuuming but it just was getting progressively worse and so i was texting with becca and i was like hey what's the deal with returning stuff to costco she goes they're the best at it they're like the nordstrom of places you can also buy tires she didn't say that but that was what i took from the conversation so uh and i was like i don't have the receipt but i have the card i bought it with and we have your her costco card which is you know how we got into the place on whatever that day was she's like yeah yeah it's super easy they ask no questions I was like cool so uh on Saturday we were running around I was getting my Ken Jennings outfit together which involved buying uh like a blue three by five cards that would say that we would write jeopardy on so people would know who I was and uh also a hair dye I dyed my hair or I sprayed my hair blonde for the outfit it was a there was a lot of errand running and all of those errands seemed to bring us it was a Saturday it was a Saturday of Halloween, kept bringing us into these kind of, you know those parking lots where you're just like, this is where I die. Like this is how it ends for me. Like it's a Chris Sullivan choke point. There's far too many people in this, trying to park in this parking lot, trying to get to where they're going, trying to buy their things. We also went to a spirit Halloween on this Saturday, which was, as you might imagine, a zoo, a complete zoo on actual, well, the Saturday before Halloween. So this was, when we got to this Costco, we were on like parking lot four of just like complete shit show. Just like every single thing we had gone to was the place everyone in suburban Portland was trying to go to on that day.

And you have the people who are also like, and this is the thing at the Costco that I sometimes go to, like it is a just disaster of a parking lot the pedestrians and it's not well laid out and so there's nobody really to blame except for i guess the planners of the parking lot um but then you have jim senegal ceo of costco is who i blame but then you have the person who decides you know what i'm gonna wait for this car to leave i'm gonna put on my blinker and stop and wait for this car to leave instead of parking maybe i don't know 15 spots down as if that's gonna make a huge

difference and i'm not oh and i'm not talking about like reserved parking spots i'm just talking about the people who like for some reason have it in their brain that like if there's going to be an opportunity an opportunity for me not to walk the equivalent of 15 parking spots then i will hold up the entire world and wait for this person to finish packing up their groceries and leave

all of that was happening in every parking lot we were in on this saturday and i'm saying all this to sort of let you know that by the time we had waited in this long line of returns at the Costco I was kind of sort of frazzled and I had actually said to Becca as we were walking in I was like I'm really glad that I grabbed all of the accessories for this vacuum cleaner because it would really suck if we came all the way out here and waited in this line and then there were some problem so i had a bag from the jefferson county land trust wonderful organization also great for holding accessories to a dyson vacuum i've heard so i had i've had the i had the vacuum i had the charging unit i had what i thought andrew was all of the little dongles and doodads for this thing and we are just waiting and waiting and waiting and we finally get uh our turn but i want to mentioned by the way all of my anger around this is is is ridiculous because becca was on this journey with me and she was getting nothing from any of this you know what i mean like i was frustrated as hell but we had spent all day trying to buy a ken jennings related outfit for me and to return my vacuum cleaner like there was zero upside for her of all of this and i was about to lose my shit and this was all for me all of the errands on this particular saturday so we're standing in line we finally get to the front and uh i have the vacuum and i i set it on the counter and i say to the people by the way people are returning like a half-eaten bagel like it's insane what's going on in this line people are literally returning partially consumed food and i go to becca like is that do they do that she goes yeah they just take anything back here i was like wow okay well this is going to be great because what i have is a 500 vacuum cleaner that I've used four times that's in perfect condition with all the accessories this should be a slam

dunk so I put it on the counter I'm just because you said I mean are there three more scary words in the story then or so I thought and you said that a while back and I'm just I'm I'm cringing

at where this is going so I put the vacuum cleaner on the counter we're chatting with the guy he's nice enough and uh he goes this is this is the critical this is the critical statement in the entire interaction andrew he says this is the most returned item we have and i know we have people that work for dyson that listen and god bless and i've had other dyson products that i've lost in various divorces and they all seem fine i think this was just a bum i just got a bum vacuum cleaner but the guy says to us this is the most returned item we have at Costco and I'm thinking what okay well maybe put a sign out or maybe don't sell it but if this is the most returned thing you have you know the good news is I'm not losing my mind the the it turns out this is there's some issues with this particular iteration of the Dyson whatever it's called animal five or something so we're sitting there and uh and we're chatting and then he goes oh that lady over there another employee she's the vacuum queen I was like okay well I don't to know about her personal life but okay so he calls her over and she just gets her phone out presumably her costco phone like you know the one provided to her by the company and starts scrolling and then just starts is having a problem is confused uh with whatever she's looking for and then hollers at someone else some kind of serial number and then goes over and then gets their phone their costco phone comes back at no time does she address me or becca like hey how's how's it going? How's your day? Oh, sorry that this $500 vacuum cleaner is not working. Did you

know it's the most returned item we have? Has the first customer service representative now disengaged with you as well? Are you, as we say, floating in space? Okay, no, they're teaming up.

He's here, but he's clearly now, in a way, he's sort of handed the reins over to the vacuum queen

of Tigard, Oregon. Okay, but he's not moving on to helping people return their bagels. He's still

standing there now we have two people helping us okay you can't tell this but I'm putting helping in air quotes okay and she is can you tell by the tone of my voice it wasn't helpful I actually

that was one of those cases where you telling me that actually did help okay good so I didn't

there's two people there's two it did help so she's now scrolling on her phone trying to find out some information about this $500 cordless vacuum that is the most returned item at the Costco. and she again doesn't ever like acknowledge us she's just go looking for something and she's just looking down oh by the way this uh this vacuum system if you will you know it it hangs on this like wall unit that you drill like you know screw into the wall and it sits on it and it recharges it and that thing has two little like little holes little ports for different attachments there's like a kind of a dust buster attachment and then there's a um a just a different

head for this thing yep and just for the i know that you're explaining this for the audience but just so you know i do have an earlier generation of it i love mine it's getting near the end of its life but i'm familiar with this whole world and also i don't know if you said this but it should be mentioned if you didn't that these are not cheap vacuum cleaners this is a vacuum 500 vacuum exactly this is a major purchase at least in my house most returned item at costco

yes so anyway so uh i have i've the attachments are in the little there's two ports and those ports both have attachments in them and the queen of vacuums is just scrolling through her phone and then she just at some point looks up and goes nope nope and beck and i were both like what do you mean nope and she goes you don't have all the parts and i was like i i thought i did i I mean, like, look, this is the charger, and these are the two things you click into, and they both have things, and she's like, no, there's another, there's a pet hair head.

Yeah, the upholstery one, the little brush. It's like the thing that you would use to vacuum the carpet, but it's small, and you put it directly on the thing, and you can, and I use that a lot to vacuum the couches and chairs, sure.

Well, apparently I have one somewhere in my house, Andrew, because I had not brought it to the Costco. and this woman it wasn't like she when i'm telling you this this is also what i was saying to becca in the car later i was like i understand that they if there's an issue like you know you have to have all the parts okay but it could i felt she could have been a lot nicer about it she could have been like hey i see you waited in a long line i see you're returning the most returned item to costco this really sucks but like we got to have all the parts because we're going to mail this back to Dyson and then we got to get you know like there was a way for her to be I think

more customer service-y with this yeah take a page from Clippy like Clippy the old Microsoft clip you know oh I see you're trying to return this how can I help you exactly or just be a

little bummed for me that I drove to Tigard Oregon where no one wants to go to return the

most can I just check the donors of the day for tomorrow nope you're in the clear go ahead okay

Very good. Thank goodness. Like, I just wanted a little empathy from the vacuum queen to just be like, hey, this sucks, but like, you gotta have all these parts. Otherwise we just can't take it. She didn't do any of that. She just like, nope, you don't have, you're missing this. And something, Andrew, something inside me, again, because this was the third or fourth place like this we had been that day, something broke. And I just started shoving the parts back into my Jefferson County Land Trust tote. And I said, well, maybe don't sell things that break. And then stormed out of the Costco. And then realized that they had Becca's membership card.

Oh, like they still had, not just that they could track you, but they still had it, okay.

Physically had it because it took her a good two minutes to catch up with me. Oh no. I had done a dramatic exit from the Costco With my vacuum cleaner and its parts after going basically yelling Yelp review of a lifetime at these people. And then Becca had to be like, I'm going to also need my membership card back. She had to basically stand there with them for like a minute while they were going and finding the card and giving it back to her. So again, once again, this disproportionately fell upon her to deal with my bullshit.

We were talking about the word chagrin the other day. And as a matter of fact, I'm a mere 20 minutes away from Chagrin Falls right now as we speak. And I feel like that is the appropriate word for probably how Becca felt in that moment, chagrined.

And by the time she got outside, I was like, I know that was a lot. She goes, it was. I was like, here's why. And I was basically making the case that I've just been making to you about like, we've spent all day in these nightmare parking lots, trying to get to the place that everyone else is going on a Saturday. and all she had to do was just be nice about the fact that like this was a complete waste of time again i was in that moment in that moment losing sight of the fact that none of this benefited becca yeah sure yeah it was all the whole day was just helping me out and she did not lose her shit

on the costco returns and she had her costume set up not to the day of the party and she said

a very funny thing to me by the way when we were in off

office depot trying to find three by five cars she goes boys and girls are so different and she goes i would have had this i would have had this figured out a lot like a week ago as i was going like what color is ken jennings's hair what color cards does he hold i'm like google image searching ken jennings on you know on google image to figure out she and it's like now you know 1 p.m or something on the saturday that we're supposed to be wearing this stuff out that night. And she just laughed. She was like, man, boys and girls are really different. Like she had her whole Barbie outfit a month ago. And by the way, it was flawless, flawless. Like she nailed it. But this whole day was just me being disorganized and me being frustrated at the fact that all the other disorganized people in the world were converging on the same places. I will stay, I will, I will take this to my grave. That lady, the vacuum queen of the Costco and Tigard tualatin whichever one it is she needs to do a little a little more hr training on being helpful to people who are in a moment that sucks like you started eating a bagel from costco you didn't like it what are you going to do bring it back by the way no no attachments on that bagel they just take it right back happy to take it happy to have partially eaten food returned but a 500 vacuum cleaner the most returned thing to costco not not not chill about that well okay you'll be surprised

to hear you'll be shocked to hear that the most interesting thing about this conversation to me is the vacuum situation itself i have a lot of follow-up questions and you can just cut me off whenever it gets too tedious but for starters um you now know the the piece that was missing are you going to be able to find that and attempt to return this again at i am assuming a different

costco well this is the the the magnanimous nature of my girlfriend knows no bounds because she said just leave the vacuum here go find the other attachment somewhere in your house and i'll just

take it back for you because she goes to go back into the lion's den in disguise she's gonna have

a mario like a it's a me mario kind of mustache going uh the vacuum queen is going to be confused why barbie is now trying to return a rollerblading barbie has just roller braided roller braided in here with all of the parts of this vacuum cleaner um so okay that's the plan are you now this is the

thing are you confident that you can find this attachment yes but here's what i think is the

problem and i blame the dyson corporation for this there's not a port on the charging station for this particular attachment don't you think if you have three attachments with a $500 vacuum that is the most returned item at Costco don't you think you would have enough ports for all of the attachments how do you make a thing that has two ports but not three ports so that there is something just in the wind Dufresne party of four what happened to the Dufresnes like i just think it's bad design for them to have a thing that goes with a vacuum that doesn't click

into some kind of storage type of deal well first of all dyson is not known for its design no secondly well they low-key that side of the what i'm really surprised about uh and this is weird because i share the same complaint only more so because mine has five attachments and only two ports now the reason you don't have a i sort of understand to a degree why they don't have a port for every one of them is because some of them are big and honking here if you will allow it i will um i will list my attachments you have the first disorders you have you have the first of all like the extender rod or the the the tube the hose or whatever um but then what goes on the end of that and that is detachable itself and then on the end of that you can put either the standard vacuum brush that you would use for vacuuming carpeting there is one of the same size shape and weight of that thing only it has a soft velvet brush inside and not even a brush but like kind of a a round tube of sorts that you use for vacuuming hardwood and you know hard any any kind of hard surface floor then you have the one with the little brush no moving parts on it just like kind of a little brush, and I don't even know exactly what it's for, but I love it equally. Then you have the long pointy one. Let's say that you're trying to vacuum underneath your refrigerator. You got the long pointy guy, and then you have the device that you apparently left at home, which is another moving part brush type of thing, only it's smaller and used for upholstery. Those are the five. Now, I'm with you. When I got mine, I was I was like, so, okay, this can hold the two little plastic doohickeys without any moving parts, but I've got three other things here. One can live on the end of the vacuum, so that leaves me with at least two more. I mean, I'm a pretty active vacuumer, or a pretty dynamic vacuumer, as you might assume, Luke, so I'm often switching things up. It's like a Transformers cartoon in my house when I'm vacuuming, but yeah, so I have a little locker, and my locker is in my bathroom. and the bottom locker is where I keep, I shouldn't be saying this, but that's where I keep all of my vacuum attachments. Nobody robbed me.

Oh, my gosh.

I've got to put a lock on that thing now.

I'm really just putting that out there.

I think you can maybe buy from Dyson like another wall unit that can maybe hang these things. I could be wrong about that. I think I looked into it, but it is a little bit clunky. Do you not have all five?

I think this one only comes with three. Okay.

You don't have like four or four. Okay. Okay.

so it has the it has the the one that's like a dust buster the kind of or the narrow thing that's for getting in like you know the fridge the crevices under the fridge okay it has um just i don't know a smaller one or something with a little brush on it with little bristles on it but nothing moves you have one of those yes that yes that one and then the one that is like the regular the default setting that was attached to the device probably for the carpeting right and then the thing that's the pet hair remover that I didn't have that's somewhere that's basically like the default setting but smaller and that one is somewhere in my house I trust that it's there I just I cannot believe that the vacuum queen of Tualatin Oregon didn't just cut me a freaking break now the thing Becca said when we got outside was she goes you know I was gonna see if we could talk him into it yeah I was like I knew it wasn't gonna work yeah yeah I really I

i hit the eject button pretty quickly yeah that kind of surprises me because i i usually i'm the type of person we call that stampy behavior by the way in in our house so stampy i stamp out of

places and stampy was the uh original version of clippy it's the opposite it's it's just a little

guy with a mustache and he stands out exactly like i'm usually saying things like by the time i get to the level where i'm stamping out of a place i'm not i'm saying something angrily but it also is confusing because all the adrenaline is is coursing through me at that point and i say things like nice real polite car and then i stamp away um actually that that's kind of a bad example because that isn't customer service but you know i i luckily this is not something that's happened to me in quite some time but like feeling like really put out and also somewhat mistreated and then you sort of like fine and you leave but you let them know you you put like a little cloud over your head right as much as possible as you sort of stamp out of there and i don't like that that's Some of my ugliest moments, of course, they probably seem bigger in my mind than hopefully they even are to the people around me and the people that I'm stamping away from. Having said that, I do think of you as somebody who will exhaust. I mean, it sounds like you just had the type of day where you didn't have those resources anymore. I feel like you're more of a sweet talker kind of guy. Like you can kind of say, OK, but, you know, who else is back there? Who else can help me? Hey, I like your broach. Exactly.

and yes and and that is usually my move and and i'm i take a lot of uh i sort of um i guess pride in the idea that i can talk people into things this just felt like kind of a a dead end to me because the vacuum queen and i don't know why this matters it shouldn't matter but she had her glasses were halfway down her nose the entire interaction it just read i like i'm not i like I'm not here and then she pulled her barrette out of her hair and it was like you are the sexy vacuum queen of Tualatin Oregon no somehow her glasses being kind of halfway down her nose in this sort of marmish way in this kind of just like I'm not I'm not here to help you I'm here to make sure that you're not trying to get one over oh one other thing that I think I said before I stamped out was I go when she said no no you don't have all the parts you're missing this one and becca said well they're all like all of the parts are here we think all the parts are here and she was nope nope this one i go i can promise you this is not a long con for me to steal an attachment to a dyson and she just like no response and then i think probably shortly thereafter was when i said well maybe don't sell things that break down all the time as i was also there's nothing more impotent than being mad at people while you're putting parts back into a land trust tote bag that has like a like a flower on it like it's the least butch tote bag of all time and and i also need to get all the parts because i do want to bring this back at some point so while i'm being mad i'm also trying to be careful about getting all the stuff back

Yeah, she...

won that one um now here's my final question and this doesn't involve the interaction or or any of that experience but i'm just curious what are your vacuum plans like are you going i mean at one point were you thinking well i have a i have a vacuum that's malfunctioning i'll just get the same one that works or by the way oh that's all i wanted yeah you didn't want cash no i did not let them take the if you wanted to swap it there you could have left the attachment from the new one with the stuff you were dropping off you know this actually might have been that actually is a

really good solution that I never thought of Becca probably thought of it probably the vacuum queen thought of that but because I was so stampy we didn't even get to that point but you're absolutely right and I I'll be honest with you I I had some a certain amount of I guess cock sureness because I wasn't trying to get money to me it's like if you're not trying to get money for something if you're just saying I just want the same thing that works you are as pure as the driven snow you are not there for any kind of shenanigans or questionable financial dealings you're just going like I bought this from you it doesn't work can I just have one that works I feel like you're above reproach when that's what you're going for yeah I just want one of the same thing I bought

this thing it doesn't work yeah yeah oh this is a missed opportunity oh if I could turn back time

is that what that song is about that is and she does mention later i think it's in like the fourth um kind of chorus uh that it's the most returned item at costco that's why i was and i told becca i was like if that guy hadn't told me that this would have been a very different situation when the person looks across at you and goes this is the thing that has disappointed the most people to the point where they do not want it any longer if he hadn't told me that i don't think i would have blown up it was like i was like i have you know i'm holding the most returned thing i'm returning the most returned thing you know there's a situation with this and you're gonna be you know like extra meticulous about this like this should be i should literally just bring in a picture of this vacuum cleaner and get my money back like just oh have you been harmed has this ever happened to you have you purchased a 500 dyson vacuum product from costco if you even just like i i'm part of a class action lawsuit at this point andrew regarding this vacuum cleaner so the fact that they were sweating me over it when i'm watching people bring in a top ramen like a flat of top ramen with one of them missing and they're like you know happily giving these people their money back i'm like i didn't even eat any part of this vacuum cleaner the most returned item you have Anyway, now I'm just spinning out, but I'm telling you this, Andrew, I will have my revenge because I'm going to go home and I'm going to search my home from top to bottom. I'm going to find that attachment. I'm going to bring it back here. I'm going to give it to Becca, and I'm going to hide in the parking lot when she's returning it.

Yelling real polite vacuum. Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

all right emails or v-mails yes i checked the voicemail line today and i found a lot of voicemails from listeners who are singing their messages to us now specifically on the theme and this happened i think this originally started with uh listener craig who uh called into the voicemail line told a story about finding some interesting things in the walls of his home when he was renovating it and he sang it to the tune of i can't remember what the original tune that saying oh this is the story of a girl story of a girl right by that 90s but it has a weird name that's it's not like amazing or something then parenthetically story parenthetically but what did that guy find in his walls i think you suggested more people tell their similar stories also to the tune of 90s songs and i think you even threw out some examples like this song all star so i'm only going to play one of these today i'm going to save a couple more for tomorrow uh but This is our friend, listener Anna, in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, telling us, no, nay, singing to us, or telling us through song, the story of something special she once found.

Somebody once told me to renovate my basement, it's more valuable than building a shed. While tearing down a wall, chipping paint, cobwebs, and all, I found this old newspaper that read. head. The year's 1908, June 18th, the date basis. Be safer and don't dare be late. So much to buy, so little time. You'll never shop if you don't go. Come upgrade your wardrobe. Hey now, bring the sad Bert down to Pike Street. Come save. Shop called Bevel Clothing. Sell for nine and a half. In case you're curious, I did post a picture of this newspaper on the Slack channel. Sorry for anyone's ears. That's pretty amazing. That's amazing that Anna doesn't sing with the accent. Yeah, yeah. That was like Amy Grant when I was a kid. I remember we listened to a lot of the music, Amy Grant, up until she went worldly. but she's from like the south and i remember hearing her in an interview and being like oh

amy grant has an accent well and also uh british singers as well i remember being a kid and even the beatles i think i guess you don't maybe we don't sing with accents well some people certainly do the pogues i'm looking in your direction sure sure but anyway that was amazing i'm the shane mcgowan of podcasting um so i i will share with you some more uh songs tomorrow in the Meantime, though, I want to leave it there because I told you that we're not in any kind of desperate situation here, but I'm a little bit concerned about the power on my computer. I'm not able to podcast today with my power supply plugged in, so I want to make sure that I got enough juice here to end the show flawlessly. A nice, easy landing like I had when I landed at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport earlier this weekend.

well okay that's a very good point we don't want to lose the recording and i think we've done quite enough i think i've exposed myself to be a real charles groden type don't you feel like me at costco would be played by charles groden oh i could see that sure sure or even possibly

i mean honestly the go-to there would be sort of the steve martin planes trains automobiles but the groden is a deeper cut and i can definitely see that didn't we have a thing the other day

Where you were trying to remember somebody And I just said it's Charles Grodin And I was correct I believe this was off air

I was telling you off air about the movie The Couch Trip which has Walter Matthau and The Saturday Night Live Funny Man You know him from Saturday Night Live Not Horatio Sands Who am I thinking of either way Chris Kattan and then you said oh like a real Kind of Charles Grodin movie I'm like oh you Have seen it and you're like no I just it sounds like a Charles Grodin movie and you were absolutely right it's culturally charles groden it certainly was the couch we can talk more about that another time we'll have genevieve on to defend herself to bring back

oh by the way i hate it when people say this but genevieve won halloween with that outfit by the

way okay you oh so you're the person who knows what it was because i she sent me a photo of it i was unfamiliar with the snl sketch it was based on i showed probably a half a dozen people that photo nobody had any idea what it was referencing

with my by myself

that was the you know it was a Kristen Wig character with tiny hands I believe

TB let's continue this on tomorrow's episode

on the Halloween that's right

spooking season

Dan Aykroyd is the person I couldn't think of before by the way

we'll do that tomorrow in the meantime thank you everyone for listening we will We will be back tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I can hear you whistling. I need you to say power out. I don't have it loaded in. Just say it.

Power out.