Muse

Hey, this is Corinne, and I don't know if this is still a thing, but I'm at the Multiplex at 11 a.m. on a Sunday, and this restroom is pristine. Power out!

I feel a real need to express something, but I don't know what it is I want to express, or how to express it.

Now, I don't know much about this podcasting business, but let me tell you, there's something about this show that just gets me hooked. These guys have a way of talking that's like having a chat with your neighbor over the backyard fence.

First thing, I never heard of you, never heard your name before you went on some news show. I think you're a liar and you want publicity. That's all you want. I don't think you can play football. I don't think you can wrestle. I don't think you're I don't even think you should be out here. There's a thousand people out here, a hundred thousand people want to get in a limelight. And you say you come out and say, first thing I want to know, what gives you the right to even be out here?

No, definitely. Yeah. Literally, no. Yeah. Yeah. No. For sure. No. Yeah.

Probably have a lot to talk about. Go. Keep things light. Don't bring up your divorce.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. We're getting medium play on three independent radio stations in Central Europe. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. As Jay would say, he's got flow. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is, it seemed like it was extra dark early this morning. I know that there are all kinds of planetary watchers and astronomers, maybe even astrologers who know the exact literally down to the like the minute of when sun rises you know it's going to be at seven then it's going to be at 701 702 i know it follows a predictable pattern but this morning felt like it stayed dark till about 8 a.m which would be like an hour and a half jump in morning darkness and i was not stay in my house if you're dark-sided not a fan i'm going to tell you right now not a fan i am a fan of the fact that it was like T-shirt weather outside, though, which is odd. Balmy here, perched high above the mighty Columbia.

I get warm and I'm levitating.

All in all, the perfect combination to bring you episode 4067 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. It's November 2nd. Also, that would be day two of my attempt to do this water fast.

Never do anything out of hunger. Not even eating.

actually right now i think this is based on the last time that i that i ate this is maybe 36 hours now or something of fasting and um i'm feeling pretty good as i am talking into this microphone but i'm learning some things about my the rhythms of my day actually even after just like a little over a day of doing this so we'll get into that probably also we'll get an update on some of the tbtl merch ideas i don't want to sell anything buy anything or process anything as a career that's right we've got a merch store that we're hoping to uh you know monetize but also just spread the tbtl joy around um this country and even this world through t-shirts and other possible things so stick around for that also we're going to talk to this guy longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is also, of course, a soulful rocker from New Hampshire. He's Andrew Walsh. He's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. It's happening, or at least we hope it's happening. I got 10 brown yard bags, paper yard bags filled with yard waste out at the curb right now. It's been raining on them for like 14 hours. You're worried that maybe they won't?

They're soggy. They've got some kind of rule they can't pick them up if they're wet.

I don't know, man. They are the ones who set the free yard waste pickup day in November. I have so many concerns. I'm worried they won't pick it up, and I'm going to have to drag the wet, soggy bags of leaves, do I say leaves funny, back into my garage. Or they will pick it up, but they'll charge me for each bag, even though supposedly free lawn pickup day started yesterday. We'll see. I'll let you know how it all goes.

Okay, let me, first of all, I want to welcome onto the program our good friend, of course, TBTL employee numero uno, and the senior vice president of operations and finance here at Too Beautiful to Biz, Mr. John Sklaroff.

Well, well, well, look who's back.

John, welcome to the program. Good morning, guys. Great to be here. I know that you've got an update on some TBTL merch stuff in a minute. And first, though, Andrew, I just wanted to ask. I.

Obviously, you and I, we sort of, let's just say, we hype things up a little bit. We add maybe 10% more energy around things for the show because we're professional broadcasters, allegedly, and we know that that makes everything kind of more exciting. Sometimes people will listen to the show, people from my real life, and they'll go, were you really that upset about that thing? And I'll go, I was pretty upset. i probably i probably threw 10 more energy on it because that's what makes this entertainment versus just literally overhearing a conversation in an elevator so are you adding a little bit of oomph to your anxiety around i want to get what i really want to get friend to friend is a sense of actually how large this is looming in your life because i could see it this is this the thing of the of the uh all the yard waste you can throw away day that you've been excited about and thinking about has this really been a pretty big thing in your mind it's been a big thing

all right you want to be honest here yeah i don't even have any yard waste out there i just go to the dump you haven't seen genevieve in months i don't you're just living at the bachelor arms with millhouse's dad here let's get real real genevieve doesn't even exist that's a character that i brought into the show just to punch things up a little bit are we getting into

stanley jenkins territory from memento by the way shout out to anyone who got that reference

it helped when you said from memento um but i will say that the truth is i have been looking forward to this day i have text messages to friends our friend rogan is also very excited about it when i when i sent him a screen cap of the city's web page a couple of weeks ago saying that it's 10 extra bags supposedly for free all through the month of November. He was very excited. He said this is a game changer. So there has been some excitement, some energy around this day. Is my anxiety really this high? I mean, it would be a real bummer to bring the bags back into the garage. I assume that I won't have to do that. That is on my mind a little bit. If they try to charge me for this, I guess it's not going to run me out of house and home if they do. It is something like seven dollars a bag, though. So I do need to I will be keeping an eye on my next utilities bill. I think it's all bundled up under utilities to make sure that I'm not charged or seventy dollars for these things, because that would that that's way too much to pay. I would have taken them to the transfer station months ago if that were the case. And they do have a bad track record, the bad track record, this department of kind of keeping track of things. So, you know, I am keeping an eye on it. But, you know, we'll see. I am excited to tell you tomorrow whether or not this has gone off without a hitch.

Have you looked around your neighborhood, and do other people have excessive numbers? Oh, that's a really good point.

No, I haven't, because I did this last night. It was one of the last things I did, and then I didn't leave the house after I took all the trash out last night. So I haven't gone around the neighborhood, but I should. Maybe I'll do that at lunch today.

I have to say, in my neighborhood, the regular garbage pickup is on Thursdays. thursdays it's today today is the day i'm talking about yeah that's nice and sync you podcast with somebody long enough eventually your garbage cycles yeah absolutely um and the thing is that they were for a while one day they didn't even come get it and i called them and then they got it like four days later which is whatever but then they also often would get it at like four in the afternoon and so on a lark i don't know two weeks ago when my dad was still here working and we had a lot in there like i mean you know household stuff but just any extra little anything i could throw in there that was non you know hazardous and i wheeled it up there on wednesday night just thinking i was being real andrew on this like i was really this was excessive but i was just outside and i was like i'll just do this they they must have taken the garbage at 6 a.m and same thing today like i took it was torrentially raining last night out here just dumping and in like a t-shirt i like and sweats i like ran out and dragged this heavy because i have to walk it probably like a i don't know but eighth of them not even but i have to walk at a significant distance up my road you know technically my driveway is the end of the county road and i know that because there's a huge sign that says end county road when you get to my driveway which makes me think am i in international territory can i commit a crime here that is not prosecutable by the county john can you look into that uh yeah i'll get one of the dannys on it thank you very much but anyway i guess i'm so i i have to it's kind of it's it's it's like um how do i put it there's no non-awkward way to wheel this garbage can because of its height my height i'm going up a hill it's usually pretty heavy and also this is all unfolding andrew in a bit of a sort of fish bowl of a lot of my neighbors i live down at the end of a dead end and so most of my neighbors are set back up behind me kind of where i'm dragging this i basically look like marty feldman in you

frankenstein going woke this way like kind of wheeling the thing up but anyway is that another memento reference that is just another i just want you to know masterpiece young frankenstein uh i so i i do this kind of awkward drag the you know wheel the thing up there or whatever there's points there's no cool way to do it at all and i all i can think of is all my neighbors just kind of going who is this guy but all that is i did it last night and thank goodness i did because this morning at like must have been six in the morning they got that garbage all I'm saying is I feel like there shouldn't be a I feel like the difference between 6 a.m. on a Thursday and Monday afternoon is too great that is too vast even 6 a.m. and like say 3 p.m. is pretty wide like those those are just totally different lifestyles if they're gonna get it at 6 a.m. then then that's the rule and I'll make sure it's out Wednesday night but this has just been for the last two weeks like they went from it being very kind of like when evs to like oh you better have that shit ready wednesday night because they're gonna be there at the crack of dawn on

thursday yeah that's one thing that i kind of started to realize in my i think it was in my former living space in my apartment in roosevelt i think that's where i learned that it they vacillated greatly because you'd think like you have roots right maybe routes you have routes yeah um that you follow you'd think that there wouldn't be a lot of variance in that but apparently there is which is why i don't mess around with this at all by the way you you know i don't mess around with it i get it out the night before i don't i don't play i don't play games i'm not here to play games no i want you to know playing with andrew you're asking um you know how much of this is real to me and how much of it is maybe kayfabe for the show i'll tell you this much i come by it honestly because a lot of conversations i have with my dad are about his garbage pickup woes now he lives in a you know he lives in almost the opposite type of community that I do like it's a suburban community it's a cul-de-sac it's like a housing you know association type of thing I think they're technically condos or whatever they're on the west side suburbs of Cleveland you know like everything I doubt he has many issues with trash pickup but he does have issues with like the size of the cans they give you these huge square cans so that their trucks can come by and the robot arms can grip them appropriately to empty them. But he's got a garage that has two cars in it, which leaves very little room for these giant cans. So he had worked out an agreement with his elderly neighbor next door where he would go and take out her garbage bins for her every, let's just say Wednesday night. No, actually, I do know. I think it was Sunday night. He would go take out her bins for her on Sunday. That's all down on a spreadsheet somewhere. And the agreement was, though, then he could put his overflow in her bins. He had something worked out. But then she died. And I hope it's okay to be spilling all of this tea. And I hope that my dad doesn't hear this. But if he does, I hope it's okay that I'm putting this out on Front Street. But what he does now, Luke, and I will whisper this so my dad doesn't hear it.

Has not reported her death.

He has not reported her death. He can continue to. He's now paying utilities at the house.

Nine months of Social Security checks piling up on the little table by the inside of the door.

People are starting to raise questions. No, what he does now, now that he's lost that hookup, is he apparently, if I understand it correctly, on garbage night, after night falls, if he has extra recycling that doesn't fit in his bin, he goes around the small little cul-de-sac neighborhood and sprinkles his recycling. This is. Which, by the way, I do not approve of.

I was going to say this is a direct violation of your personal morals, which we've discussed that exact sort of behavior on the show.

Because you said that you saw and I thought of this, actually, because you said now you're you live in a very different place, too. You live in more of a rural community, but you saw somebody with some sort of garbage bin. I don't remember if it was landfill or yard waste or whatever. And it was out there at the curb already. And you were you were tempted to dump something kind of large into their bins before pickup. And I said, you just don't know for sure. You don't know if they're going to be coming home with a pickup truck full of shit or something that they need that space in their garbage can for. I think it's a dangerous game. I really do. I think most people don't care, but if you find that person who does care, that's a dangerous game. And you know every one of those.

If you happen into a Walsh, either Bob or Andrew, you could be dealing with someone who gives a lot of thought to this sort of topic. Can I just ask John real quick?

My dad is the one who's doing this. And I will just say one last thing, that you know all of these houses have cameras, and I raised that with him. Oh, sure. You know, it's like the suburbs. Face it, kid. There are so many. It's ring light town. Ring cameras in there.

Oh, yeah, ring camera, not light.

He didn't seem phased by that.

John, is this something that keeps you and your wife up and the dogs up at night there in St. Paul, Minnesota? Do you guys, is your garbage pickup something that you even ever talk about?

Well, I don't know if this was ever a TBTL top story, but it could have or should have been. Like the year we moved here, there was a huge debate and a vote on the redistricting of the garbage in St. Paul.

I didn't make it on the TBTL, although if Andrew would have known about it, I promise you it would have.

I did, and it did. We talked about it. That's when I was getting that St. Paul newsletter every day from the start.

I stand corrected.

So the short of it is basically like they would have a bunch of different private companies and they would come through the alleys and people are complaining they would come at all different times of day and the trucks were tearing up the alleyways. So there was like a referendum or a vote or whatever and it was – the population, the people had to say and it turned out that – so now the city contracts with different companies and every company is assigned like a different area of the city. and that's just like your garbage pickup provider and recycling too and or i guess recycling is the same but yeah so we we don't put a lot of thought into it i just put out the night before all the time because it is that big like window variance like you're talking about yeah but uh other than that like it's typically pretty simple and straightforward and good and we're happy with it

but you're not running out of space you're not dealing with issues with your neighbors

you know okay so i can tie us back to the yard waste pickup so we uh recently did that in our house we don't have curbside we have to drop it off at a local um facility it's all free but i just like have to drive it over there and dump it but so we put it in the brown paper bags right but they don't take the brown paper bags to the facility you have to like dump out the waste from like in the pot it's like into huge piles and stuff and um so like whatever so i fill up the back of the subaru right and i drive it over there but now i have like 20 brown paper bags that like can't be reused for anything obviously they're like and so those go into the recycling and then what happens is that fills up my recycling bin and then i get like a backlog of recyclables so i'm just catching up from that so that is the one time a year where like i i'm anxious because i have like a bin of uh recycling in the garage that i can't put out yet that for like a week that that that really upsets me but uh no generally speaking it's not an issue i have um bigger

things to deal with in my own life right now which is the fact that um if i open my refrigerator to get a bottle of water out i now tuned into the smells in my refrigerator like things that i like 36 hours into not eating any food because i'm trying to do this little water fast my other senses are like heightening like i'm like literally like i hope i opened the refrigerator to get get a bottle of water out and immediately was hit by all the different things that are in there that i'm not eating that are like you know oh the slight smell of like an onion that's in the the vegetable drawer or whatever just leftovers just things in there and i'm like i was i'm like i don't know if i'm gonna be if i like if if i make it to like day seven of this or day 10 of this i don't even know if i'll be able to open the refrigerator and not kind of have like have to do a major willpower battle i the other thing that i've been noticing and again i'm only one day into this is so much of my day is spent thinking about what i'm going to eat at night so like my whole thing is i'm like uh i'm going through my day i'm working but i'm thinking to myself isn't it going to be amazing at like about 5 p.m when you're done with all the stuff this is also really i'm learning how i motivate myself 5 p.m you're gonna like cook something up really yummy like i'll my whole thing is i'll think of something i want to have for dinner i'll make a shopping list i'll go into town i'll get the fixings and and then it'll be like 5 p.m i'm sauteing some stuff up i've got a glass of wine going i'm watching all in with chris hayes and like that's just my perfect moment probably of my day and so yesterday i'm just going around thinking like god 5 p.m i'm going to sit down i'm going to get a bottle of water i'm going to pour it into a cup i'm going to put in some liquid iv sugar-free white peach flavored powder i'm going to put that in there and then i'm going to drink it and then i have six more hours of my life to fill before you go to bed before i go to bed before the sweet release of sleep so wait there's no solid food ever i

thought there was still some solid food at some points i mean i think there's the reason they

call this particular thing a water fast is because you're only having water there's there's intermittent fasting which is like you don't eat for a lot of the day but then there's a window of time which is one of the most unfortunate names ever which is your feeding window which i don't i don't like that term but like you know you you don't eat for a lot of the day and then you have like a three hour period or four hour period or whatever the period of time is where you eat and really all that does i think is there's i mean there's so much real science and also just totally junk science around this kind of stuff that

it's hard to know what to believe but that's intermittent fasting this is a called a water there's a juice cleanse where you're drinking juice every day but the juice actually has you know because it's apples and stuff it actually does have some calories to it not a lot and then there's water fast which is you just drink water you can put some flavoring in it if you want but

you're just drinking water that's your whole thing and you're doing this all and i'm sorry you know you set this up yesterday and i was and i thought i got it and then i was thinking about it later in the day and i was like well there's no way it's just water for two weeks okay so for two weeks like literally the human body can survive on on just water for two full am i right about this

being a two full weeks away until your gig well my gig is in two weeks i'm probably going to have to break this because um we have a dinner planned becca and i with some friends and she's going to make a whole meal and stuff so i'm not going to that that's like next week so my plan is to try to do if i can i'm gonna try to do 10 days and then i'll you know kind of maybe eat for a day or two or whatever and then just see where i'm at i really want to go into this gig feeling kind of like i'm in my clothes are fitting correctly and i'm not just like constantly in my head about my particular appearance um so it's i'm not i don't think i don't think i could do this for 14 days but i'm also not going to try because i have some scheduled things that it would be weird if i just showed up and was like none for me i'll just be putting this liquid iv in my water please while

you all enjoy this meal that becca made are you and i'm not inviting this and i hope i'm not stepping in this luke seriously or putting you in a more uncomfortable position by asking this question but here we are um have you gotten a lot of angry notes from the listeners because i get angry notes from listeners about like wanting to keep my house clean i can't imagine that you starving yourself for two weeks with nothing but water and one meal uh prepared by your girlfriend next week is um resting well with the listeners or the list have the listeners just basically

given up on you i would my guess would be given up at this point because i haven't gotten and people may jump in now but i haven't gotten anyone yelling at me i mean here's the thing i'm not telling anyone what to do with their life and i don't think what i'm what i'm doing is medically unsafe like people do 30 day water fast people do 50 days like i'm just and i think i've been pretty yesterday when i was setting it up i hope anyway i was pretty clear which is I know that this is not actually a fix for, you know, maybe some lifestyle choices that I've made that aren't super great. Like it's not a permanent fix. It's, you know, when people do this kind of stuff, they usually have see a significant weight loss. It's usually mostly water. Then usually when they resume their normal life, they, they, they go back to how things were. I sort of know all of that. Like, I don't think I have any illusion about this. And I'm also not telling anyone else how to, how to live their life or be in their body or whatever. Like, I don't think this is in any way medically unsafe though for somebody who's at my height and weight and stuff

it's it's certainly fine now i'm also not going to be for two to three months with uh water and no food according to um science so um you're good yeah no i'm set i mean this is just the beginning

of uh months and months of me no i mean this is like honestly like i said a day into it although weirdly it's just i think there's a boredom factor that i'm gonna have to kind of address and it also has to do with the no drinking too right like it's a so much of my typical day or at least i guess a surprising amount of the hours of my typical day are spent eating thinking about eating drinking thinking about drinking recovering from drinking like it's just a rhythm of my life like making a dinner having some wine watching some tv having some more wine maybe going and re-snacking on what's out there like eliminating that from my day it really means like at at six last night when chris's show was done i really just looked around and i was like okay what next what am i gonna read what am i gonna like what am i gonna am i gonna you know like i it's it's it's more i think that there's a lot of stuff that i do that's not particularly great for me that is just because of of boredom really and because of i've sort of developed these not great habits around how i spend my free time i would i would like to spend a little more of that free time doing things like reading like recreational reading not just an assignment for the radio show or something and kind of just like i'll tell you what got a lot of shit done last night andrew like a ton of stuff done like organized one of the rooms upstairs took a coat rack that had been upstairs like on that's like bolted to the wall unbolted it brought it downstairs put it in the tv room because i just had all these loose coats everywhere like put that up swept everything mopped like i just in the absent being mildly buzzed and like tucking into my third round of stir fry or whatever I just was like well I got to do something and so I just started like doing stuff in the house so on that level it was really good but on the level of am I going to be able to maintain

That's still an open question because I just am not, I just, I'm not very good at filling my free time with anything other than the stuff I'm used to, which is mostly eating and drinking.

Is, is peeing fun?

God, I peed easily six times last night. I'm talking from when I went to bed to when I got up. I'm talking from 10 p.m. till 6 a.m. six times. That's not an exaggeration. Like, it's out of control. I'm hoping this stabilizes a little bit. it is satisfying because you do feel like you're kind of you know you're like well something's

changing in here yeah it must be as clear as the polar springs water that you're drinking i leave

the light off because i'm trying to do that thing where i don't wake up oh that was just last night

but you must be peeing during the day too though generally speaking i am i haven't you know what i

haven't analyzed the the color but i will that's all you have now i know i'm not kidding dude this what i'm saying my brain is searching for like here's here's really what it comes down to my entire way of being in the world unfortunately is to do all the stuff that i sort of may or may not want to do set up my tasks for the day and then reward myself for doing my tasks for the day and all of a sudden i've taken the two major rewards out of the picture for you know whatever 10 days it's not that long but it's like so what are my new rewards you know what i mean like it would be nice if i could get it if i didn't have to always dangle a carrot in front of myself to do anything but it is very much like my new reward is drawing a new number on this

oh on the subject of calendars andrew did you see that email that came in from somebody i'm glad

that you saw it too i i want to say it might have been listener jessica i'm kind of doing that off the top of my head but i believe jennifer jennifer jennifer excuse me jennifer emailed in and said because i was talking yesterday about this wall calendar that i bought and andrew and i were both marveling that even though i bought it very late in 2023 it was kind of going all the way into the summer of 2024 and i just thought well that's an odd like it's what it looks september through june what manner of calendar is this and um the listener jennifer said am i the only one screaming

at you it's a school calendar and indeed jennifer was the only person screaming at us so far

other people are really queuing up their angry emails about my water fast so maybe they were

busy that is fascinating although like do you feel do you feel that we should should we be

full of shame for not figuring that out on the air here's my only defense and i put this on the um blue sky calendar company unless it was in a very small font there was nothing on this calendar that said school year calendar so maybe i should have just intuited because the front page was september i think what happened was i bought it at at the beginning of october but it was still a september calendar and i just ripped september off and never even thought about it again but but i guess looking at a calendar that that is presenting you the first month being september one should assume this is a school calendar. I bought it also in the school supply section of Target. So there was a lot of indicators, but there wasn't. It didn't say in big letters, school year calendar.

Does it seem to you that the school year is beginning earlier and earlier? We have three adults on the line, none of whom have children. But I feel like September might even be a little bit late these days.

August is the new September, I feel. And I don't know why that is. there's probably some kind of some sort of reasoning behind it but i mean i if i was to tell you what when i was a kid august was you know that was the end of summer and if we had to go to school the last week of august i would have been so bummed i think and i could be wrong about this

but i think it's because they maybe balanced out the school year a little bit more with longer breaks mid-year that maybe we didn't experience as much like i know that we had a i think a pretty strict five uh day like spring break or whatever um and i i wonder if they've sort of extended out the breaks or added more breaks during the school year what were you gonna say john i was gonna say

for you guys i think for me it was like school didn't start till after labor day like that was the market but i know yeah totally um earlier in a lot of parts of the country now but yeah i i will say in your defense luke speaking as someone who doesn't have kids and andrew you don't have kids and luke you're have an adult thank you for remembering that andrew always says we don't

have kids and i do have a kid she's just older than most of the people i know but like yeah

like you're not in the mindset of like uh i mean i'm glad the listener wrote in and was like hey that's clearly a school calendar because right yeah great but like i i think it's probably better that three grown men don't know the school calendar like that's probably a good indicator When do I go stand by the window? go stand by the school gates hey speaking of my child who is very much um uh exists but also is about to be 30 by the way 30. my daughter is going to be 30. she mailed me a sign like uh in a few things a little photograph of us and a cute note but she just mailed me a sign that says dad's house rules and it's one of those signs that's just got way too much writing on it for like way too small of a space and um i just thought i would share this and these are if either of you visit even though neither of you are my children if if either of you or addy or anyone else visits this house i want everyone to know these are the rules of my these are the new rules of my house because i have a sign that says this um first uh thing my day begins with coffee the way i like it if you don't make your own wow dad's rule number one dad's rules Number two, my tools are not toys.

I say that to Bingo literally every day. I'm serious. I'm always like, this is a tool, not a toy, because we both we share a love of Velcro style. I realize hook and loop style cord wraps like cable wraps.

And thank you for using the proper terminology.

Yes. So he has some that are toys for him and I have some that are tools for me. And so I'm often telling him this one is a tool, not a toy.

the lawn is a well-maintained masterpiece do not disrespect it feel that I really have to I have to stress this entire sign has got to be like six inches by four inches at the most they really this Andrew is one of those graphic design is my passion type of things that would send you to the moon purely from a design standpoint I'm gonna need a photo of this for the website oh yeah of course this will be today's show pick um here's one actually i think that you might even agree with andrew the garage is my space and will be decorated cleaned and used as i see fit

dad's rules that's i mean that's kind of the garage is genevieve space more than my space but

i feel it um let's see another one this one i think does have more to do with if you have young kids oh no no no I'm now I'm reading it okay now I'm getting it game time is quiet time yes I thought that I had I had written a whole other version of that in my mind which was when that when daddy needs a break he tells the kids to go play a game but they're supposed to be quiet I think that

means when the game is on yes I think so that is that's daddy's football game exactly I know you

got this from your daughter Luke but these feel like very I don't know like hero normative patriarchal like dad's the guy kind of thing can we reimagine some sort of game time instead of being football it's like dnd or something like that that like maybe just like just to mix it up just so it's more inclusive of like different kinds of dads and stuff have you heard the term go woke go broke

we're not going to adjust this and make this into some kind of whatever your woke liberal wet dream is this isn't a levitard show jesus please i mean why do you think sorry sorry thank you please uh clearly you have not seen the part of the sign that says what i say goes period when you own your own house you can make your own rules also imagine your dad i know whatever takes all kinds but imagine your dad putting this up somewhere this is the energy that he wants to project to the children like again you know some of us had stern dad i didn't have a particularly stern dad growing up but some people did and that's fine and i'm sure that you know they can also be great loving dads but just like putting this up like seeing this in a store buying it and then putting it up as a message to everyone else in the house about how you were going to comport yourself in the sort of like in the fatherly role in this household just seems like it's not setting everyone up for a huge amount of success as far as the family relationship

goes big al bundy vibes strong strong al bundy vibes luke let me let me tell you about a time and this is related to this, I promise you, I'm keeping it on point here, but I was at probably one of the most tasteful weddings I've ever been at. This was a friend of mine, a couple of friends of mine, they were getting married on the coast of Maine somewhere, like everything, and these are people with really good taste in style and in food and everything. It was just such a beautiful idyllic wedding, a destination wedding. and one of the fathers I believe this was maybe the father of the bride as it were decided that for his toast he was going to unfold this long kind of I don't remember if it was a scarf or a banner or something and it had all kinds of rules for the husband and it was It was exactly this kind of thing, only it was marriage-related and sexist as hell and gendered as hell.

And I'm guessing, too, that most of the attendees were probably younger or at least your age and kind of in the sort of political world that we're in.

Yes, exactly. It was a lot of journalists and stuff, but certainly there were some gay couples there that this flag would not have applied to at all. And it was just – I remember it was so cringy and it never ended. It was like, it was like, it was like a Sunday comic strip where the thing just kept on going and going because it was like a scroll. It was amazing. And when he said that, that shocked me.

How did the bride and groom react as far as you could tell?

You know what? We all just, I think, just tried to be as gracious as possible, just white knuckled our way through it.

Right. It's like everybody I mean this happens though right because it's like obviously the the you know the the folks getting married love They're presumably love their parents and and like it takes all kinds as I just said and like you know Generationally things are gonna be different. You can't like not invite your dad because he has a certain kind of vibe But also it's like this is why This is probably why you try to get out in front of some of these things As as you like to say Andrew try to match the energy like yeah What's the energy in this? How many Edison bulbs do you see at this wedding reception? A lot? Okay. Then please, no signs that say, like this one does, I am the grill master. Just leave that. That's it. Just leave that out.

That's it. That's the rule. I am the grill master.

That's the one that I think, honestly, you would probably vibe with the most. And it is the final one on the sign. I am the grill master. But that's weird.

That's not a rule, though. That's just a staking of a title.

Do you think this is a rule? Never do anything out of hunger. Not even eating. What if the last one on here was no one do anything out of hunger, not even eating?

Not even eating. Like, why is it a gerund?

All right. Let's take a break and thank some donors. And then when we come back, we will get the update on some of the merch ideas that are floating around, including probably this sign. If we can reproduce. Oh, my God. Hard pass. Now you're a hard pass. You don't want to do the woke TBTL version of this?

Oh sure we can do that Ten rules for listening to my pod I love it

Ten rules for dating my podcast Hey let's thank some donors Who are keeping TBTL Steaming along This of course is a listener supported project We can only do this because I mean, until the merch site, until our special 10 Rules About Dating Our Podcast sign takes off. Up till then, we are only existing because of folks like Melody Fedden of Canyon City, Oregon.

Home of the world's biggest mountain.

It was, I believe, a mining town. I know a little bit about Canyon City because Becca's mom grew up in Canyon City, Oregon.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Do you remember you brought up the school of, or no, you didn't. I think somebody in a Blur's Day message brought up, is it the Colorado School of Mines? Yeah, the Colorado School of Mines.

I think they're kids going there.

And I told you that I was unfamiliar with it. It was one of those things where as soon as I heard that, and then you told me a little bit of background of it, a few days later they mentioned that exact school on an old episode of yours truly, Johnny Dollar. I shit you not.

That's amazing. Yeah. We don't have time or the expertise to get into this, but I was thinking yesterday that the only conspiracy theory that I believe in is that the phones are listening to us. Oh, yeah. You know, people have emailed in and said that's not how it works. It's just, you know, confirmation bias, or you just think it's happening, but this, from a technological standpoint, here's why it can't be the case. But, you know, yesterday when I was doing something around the house that wasn't eating or drinking, I flipped on to my TikTok, and what do I see? a guy breaking down the ingredients of liquid IV water additive and I'm like really because I mentioned it to you on the show yesterday I've now wait a sec I did order some on Amazon so you think that bled through are you being sarcastic no I'm not that's definitely I'm just realizing

that's what happened that's what the sophisticated argument is not that there isn't certain tracking going on but it's not just hey there's a microphone on at all times but it's like it's very complicated that like you enter other people's networks and maybe they were even looking for paper towels and then you right you know maybe brought those cookies like there's some

very complicated algorithms yeah if you search something you're gonna definitely oh and let me just tell people let me just tell um isa webb of balwin missouri thank you isa um maybe isa thank you for this um support and and you're welcome for this advice never buy anything on the tick tock marketplace i know most people would be like why would that not even buy eating on there like most people would be like well why would you ever do that well because andrew back when i wasn't fasting i was probably having some wine and i saw this thing on the mark tick tock whatever shop I guess it's called and it intrigued me it's a little kind of tabletop thing that involves a glass jar some kind of gears and machinery and then an airplane propeller and what you do is you light this little candle and through like heat and some kind of I don't know whatever it makes the propeller spin

yeah I've seen some stuff around that

and it just seemed like well actually it seemed like something maybe my dad would like for Christmas Just because, you know, he's kind of into that stuff Sure So I thought, well, all right I'll take a flyer on this And I bought it I haven't received it yet But let me tell you All I get now Is TikTok trying to sell me machinery That fits into glass Like, it is like I have just poked a I poked a bear with a short stick As far as the amount of TikTok shop That's just overwhelming my digital life

But that's fun, though That's what, I mean my algorithm is starting to um fall apart a little bit the center cannot hold um but for a while there i was getting nothing but quirky little lamps i remember that and then they were getting weirder and weirder um and now they've kind of gone away i don't know if i'm not interacting with them enough but like isn't it fun when like the algorithm is very specific and very weird

yes except it's just it's like i get it already they just keep what happens is they try to send me something that's very similar to what i purchased and i next it and then they just keep it's basically there are so and i assume this is all in like coming from china or something like these devices there are it's on almost unlimited number of ways that they figured out if you add heat to something it will make something else spin so it's like every configure they're like you don't like this one what about this you're like it's like eating at taco bell it's like oh you don't want the uh you know you don't want the the whatever the like soft taco which has shredded lettuce beans and cheese in it what about a mexican pizza that has shredded lettuce cheese and beans oh that's another thing i've got to do during this fast i've got to really hit next on a lot of the food stuff because all i get on tick tock besides these like ads for little combustion they're not really combustion engines but whatever those things are called are just people making food and it's not making my life easier. Melissa Davis is making all of our lives easier in Milwaukee, Oregon by supporting the program. Thanks, Melissa. Yes,

thank you. On behalf of us and the listeners,

thank you for keeping us going. I'll see you at the Bob's Red Mill down there in Milwaukee. Will you? I will. That's a cool place actually. You know, famously the Bob's Red Mill, all the grains and mill, not mills, but just flour, you name it. The World HQ is down there in Milwaukee and they have store it's actually very fun nice laura cotties is in portland oregon we're getting a lot of oregon here at canyon city ball uh well ballwin that's in missouri excuse me milwaukee oregon and then portland oregon yeah and we're not even done no amber mills is in beaverton oregon hey i've been in beaverton the gateway to the nike store which i now have a um have a hookup for the nike employee store um because if somebody works at nike and they put you on this list even if they stop working there for the rest of your natural life you can go there and you can buy this is a big warehouse and you can buy all the stuff there is like half off you know i started watching on the airplane

because i had to download something very quickly in the airport um v like i i learned that like only one of my several streaming apps will allow you to download things temporarily for your flight And whichever one it is, I downloaded that movie Air with Matt Damon. Oh, yeah, sure. About Nike, you know, it's signed to sign Jordan. And, like, that is a perfect airplane movie. I would never have the patience to watch that anywhere else. But on an airplane, it's fine. Like, it's like, you know, it's like biopic-y and like, oh, we'll never sign them and going through great lengths. And it's kind of like, well, we all know how the story ends. But it's just like, it's just surface-level nostalgia. Nostalgia. I'm learning how to say that differently. You say nostalgia, right? I need to say it right, not nostalgia. I say nostalgia. Nostalgia.

I don't know if that's correct. I'm just telling you how I say it.

So if you are going on a business trip and find yourself on an airplane and in the last minute you need something to download and watch on the plane, I will say air is perfect for you. Enjoy your trip.

Yeah. I was intrigued by that movie, but then there was just the clip of Ben Affleck's Phil Knight. Just didn't do it for me. I don't know why. I think it's the same reason.

that i've never fully engaged with that um the whatever the showtime lakers magic magic time or something whatever they call that series winning time winning time and we've talked about this far too much on the program i think my problem with all of that stuff whether it's nike related or anything jordan related or magic johnson related i feel like i was living it so deeply when i was like a tween that i'm going to be disappointed by like the fact that this is made for broader consumption than me like i'm i'm too it'd be like if they made a movie about the w mms morning zoo andrew you'd be like yeah but i was i was there when this happened i was listening to it i was i was living it and so i don't even know if that's the case because i haven't watched any of them But I just feel like these these programs are made for, like, potentially my mother to enjoy, which is great. But the narrative has to get broad or the the kind of the highs have to get high and the lows have to get low in a way so that it works as an entertainment piece. But I'm going to just be constantly going. But that's Craig Elo didn't look like that.

Yeah. You know, I think I mentioned this to you off air. So it's if it sounds familiar, just go with me on this again and do your fake laugh. No, I don't actually have any jokes queued up here.

I don't think I have a fake laugh.

You thankfully have perfected it. I've never laughed genuinely in my life. I did watch Winnie.

Genevieve is made up.

He's never laughed. I don't care about garbage.

Are you the one telling my Instagram about IV recovery or whatever?

No, I was just going to say, and we still, I don't think, you know, I don't want to get in the way of us thanking Tiffany Peterson of South Orange, New Jersey. You would never do that. I would never do that.

I know. I want you to know, Andrew, I put a pin in that. I knew you did. I trusted you. I was just keeping the Oregon love rolling.

No, I knew. I trusted you, but I just wanted to.

The game has slowed down for me so much. I'm like Michael Jordan in his prime, Andrew. I know. I know all about it now. The rim looks like it's four feet by four feet. I'm distributing. I'm just like, it's all happening.

I will say that I was watching Winning Time, and I really enjoyed that sort of Adam McKay-ness of it. And, of course, it's broad in a lot of ways. And literally, like, winking at the camera at times. Like, literally a character will look and wink at the camera. And so like if you're in for that, you're in for that. And I enjoyed it. And I often was watching it thinking would look like this and having a feeling you wouldn't because of exactly what you just said. You like verisimilitude in your films. And then when the film is about something that you know so intimately, you will be turned off by anything that that strikes a kind of a false note. And I'm watching it, though. I know nothing about this world and so I'm just kind of enjoying it and then it gets to the part of the story where they start introducing talk radio sports radio specifically and I'm like first of all I don't think that style of sports radio even existed back then I think it's a more modern phenomenon that came along with sort of the the the sort of a.m. Rush Limbaugh boom of the 90s and and um not only that but it's like just so fake like the fake banter of these of these sports talk radio hosts like kind of disrespecting players or what have you is just like it is so over the top fake and also wouldn't have existed back then so the sports stuff is all lost on me and i'm like oh well that's interesting so the ball is round and orange that's okay i'm with you that i'm learning stuff and then it's like and this is what radio was like and i'm like

shut it down this is ridiculous yeah like i mean that's to me and again i haven't seen it and i might watch it maybe on an airplane someday but like the whole like using sports radio as an expositional device or as a way to sort of just very quickly tell people what you want them to think or feel about like where we think this character is at is just it's just so i mean the only thing possibly worse is in we built this city on rock and roll when they have the face the fake traffic report of the guy san francisco the city by the bay it's just like we don't know what to do here let's just have two people saying exactly what we want the listeners oh wait magic johnson will never do it oh wait we think that these lakers or whatever they're having these people say it's purely because they don't want to they can't figure out how to build in two scenes that create that journey for the viewer. So they're just going to have a made-up guy circa 1982 say a thing that he would have never said because you're right, he would not have existed. That wasn't a thing. And I was listening. The only thing that they had in Seattle that was even close to being sports radio was Sportsline with Wayne Cody. And it was not the kind of place where, like, there was the sort of, it was not hot talk around sports at all. It was just kind of, you know, Speculating about how the team might do Or reflecting on how they did But not in the way that I'm sure That's being portrayed on that particular TV show You know, just for the purposes they need it to

Yeah, they even have those like Those pin-

voices like this he's got nothing out there they need to trade him and you're just like oh my god no stop did you see winning time sklaroff i uh i watched like some of it and i don't know i just

for whatever reason i just kind of got disinterested in the story did you not appreciate

how they represented the bernard king era new york knickerbockers i no i always

i grew up a pat ewing guy oh sure no i don't know i just it was i i like the mckay thing that you're talking about andrew and it's generally something i enjoy but i think i enjoy it for a movie where it's an hour and a half and i walk out of there so it's like like an hour of every episode or whatever it is it's just like it's very it's just like banging you on the head over and over again so i think i was kind of like i'm not into the same more um i've noticed that's

starting to happen for me and again it's because my attention span is is just shriveled to nothing Maybe after I do this fast, I'll have a new attention span. It'll be exciting.

It's going to change everything.

I think it might. It just might. But like I was watching that Lost or whatever, Last Stop Larima, the HBO documentary about the situation out there in Northern Territory. And I was so relieved when I realized it was just a movie because when it's a series, you are really you're signing up. I mean, and that can be a good thing, too. When the show is really good, you're like, oh, cool, there's eight of these. But if you're just kind of like maybe that was a particular thing because I just felt like it was research for our program Because you and I went there Andrew So maybe it was a little bit more like well How long is this book I have to read for work kind of thing But I do think that sometimes I'm much more now inclined to jump into something that I know is just a one-off a movie or like a documentary or whatever as opposed to a series because that That now feels emotionally like more of a commitment than I may have in me

I want you to know that I did try downloading that documentary, but it was on an app that I couldn't download it to watch later on the plane without Wi-Fi.

Ah, right. Last Stop Laramie. I would be very curious to get your thoughts when you do eventually see it. Just because, again, Andrew, I mean, I said this when I talked about it the other day, but just what washed over me was, what a weird-ass place. And, like, you and I slept there. You and I also sat by a bonfire with a bunch of like rando cattle station guys and dudes who are making their living by shooting wild donkeys.

I still follow that young man who we met who is from the States. Like, was he from Virginia or something? And he's like a, what do you call the people who kind of drive cattle around out there? There's a specific name.

No, it's an Australian term. They don't call them cattle ranches. They call them cattle stations.

Yeah, right.

and then there's a term for yeah what we would call like a cowboy or whatever and it's it's specific to australia and i can't remember off top of my head but like we remember sitting it was i believe my memory is there was a big like steel barrel that was cut in half that had a fire going in it and we're just sitting around there in the courtyard of this hotel or motel and even motels really overstating it like with all these random people coming in in the middle of nowhere and aboriginal folks which we had noted there's a very strange kind of unspoken apartheid that goes on there where a lot of times the white people would be congregating one part of like a bar and then the aboriginal folks would be like literally staying in a different area of the bar it was i mean that was i don't even know how to unpack that but this was not the case it was people of all backgrounds and stripes just that all happened to us in this place where also a dude basically like 500 feet away was you know unfortunately met his end so somehow watching this thing on hbo it really like it really like just for the first time struck me what a bizarre trip that was for us but in kind

of a good way one thing i will say about this is what i say goes period when you own your own house you can make your own rules i got the photo i got the photo thank you sure you're welcome

hello and welcome to top story all right let's talk merch um we have this new uh merch site that we're going to be launching and how long ago was about a week ago or so john that that that you popped on and we were asking asking folks to send us some ideas um so yeah where

where are we at with that yeah a lot of awesome uh response some people in email on slack people been kind of getting at me in different various places on instagram uh so i'm happy to see a wide uh engagement hashtag engagement um yeah so i guess i was trying to think of the best way to talk about this i guess the first thing we could do is like maybe talk about the most common themes we're seeing before maybe getting into specific ideas okay um so the number one thing that people sent in an idea about whether and some of these when i say ideas some of them are like it just like literally

so number one's no mountain too tall right and some people literally just wrote that some people sent in like some vague uh imagery of it kind of thing so um anyway so that's that's number one so so a t-shirt that says no mountain too tall yeah something something with it um i know there was the artwork uh that an actual artist uh forgive me i'm not placing the name right now priscilla I think the person who put that together when that was like on the hat and You know so their cozies. Yeah So somebody specifically reference that or just kind of the idea in general of no mountain too tall. Yeah

And then I like that one because it's very like you don't it doesn't it's not even It's just kind of a nice little Sort of inspirational thing that people if you just saw someone wearing a t-shirt that said no mountain too tall You would just think yeah, they're just like, you know, they're they're just saying nothing is to nothing is is too great for us to overcome but if you know you know now do we have to though the questions what we need to build in a and good luck to all or is that off is that is that adding too much to

it you know what is you know what i find interesting about that is how you mentioned priscilla's design which was like a more delicate design beautiful design we ended up putting that on thank you gift i believe hats um for for listeners for a tb telethon and i love that design um but i could also see if we went with no mountain too tall and good luck to all almost like a faux 70s um kind of vibe with the big bubbly letters don't you have sort of like can't you sort of picture like the the old have a good day lettering is that a thing keep on trucking keep on trucking sort of maybe not quite as hippie-ish but like kind of like bubbly and happy andrew can i ask a question and

And this is not poo-pooing any ideas. Jesus. Wow. First of all, trash. No. What I was actually going to say was, I feel like that is very much, and I'm not, again, not opposed to this, is very much like your aesthetic and vibe. So, like, do you think, I mean, we could do that for no amount and too tall. We could apply that to something else. We could apply it to multiple designs. But just like, is it, are you, what I'm saying is like, is that something you think would work specifically good with this expression or just like you want that incorporated somewhere? What do you think?

I don't want that incorporated somewhere. It's just that when we were talking about that, I could see it going different ways. And for some reason, when it says, and good luck to all, the sort of rhyming of that, I could see that very bright. And what I like about that is I think it could go a bunch of different ways, including the fact that it could be some sort of bubbly, sunshiny kind of thing or a more like kind of, I can't even explain it, but almost a thoughtful, like Priscilla's design was a very thoughtful, intricate.

right priscilla's design was actually very and this is more towards my i guess you would say personal like how i tend to dress in the world priscilla's design was fairly understated in a in a in for me a really good way right like it was it was so subtle that if you if you saw it on a hat or a beer cozy you would maybe not even register it as being you know related to some podcast somewhere it was kind of it's but again i get this is this is also now we're just gonna get real i guess the three of us for me i think i think the the journey with doing the merch site is going to be me releasing um my opinions that are held because of my personal style if i have any or my personal aesthetic which is number one i don't i'm not a big writing on t-shirt wearer anyway so we want to make t-shirts with writing on them that people will want to wear and and and this i know will provide great joy in the lives of our listeners i have to kind of dis i have to i have to step back from like would i wear this and be more like would this be fun for a big group of people to engage with you know what i mean yeah yeah you're not the intended customer that

was something when i first got into public radio luke that i had to i remember we did like ball caps and like the floppy kind of dad hat was the thing my radio station always did i'm like but why don't we get like fitted or something and i was like a 28 year old and they're like john that you're not the target public radio demographic and that's something i think meanwhile i love a

a good floppy dad hat sure i mean that's dad's rules that's right actually hold on you know what i'm turning this over that's on the back don't get at me unless this hat is floppy but the point is

like yeah when we're talking about these things in general right like it's like why our own personal aesthetics are and stuff like sure yeah like we definitely want to be a part of that but it's not

but if we like because because for me it would be like everything we would sell would just be the isemayaki black t-shirt that steve jobs wore which i don't think a those are about eight hundred dollars and b i don't think that's really going to help promote the promote the show right but can i

actually use that as a segue into another idea we had so a couple uh folks wrote in just very like simply like just have something that says 10 on it like identify somebody as a 10 yes and and i will say with all of these you know well i i don't see a case where we're not going to also write too beautiful to live on too so like it might just be like the number 10 and too beautiful to live like something super simple um that maybe would be more in line with your your

uh vibe luke but then right yeah definitely like and and and i mean then the question becomes do we want it to be would people wear a t-shirt that had a very large 10 on it or do we need the 10 to be like offset to the corner this is where we're not designers at least i'm not a designer pocket on a pocket maybe but then is that so subtle that it doesn't even well also are you

guys picturing the number 10 or the word 10 right now i think 10 is yeah no i think the word is

better andrew you brought that up in a meeting yesterday i agree with you on that yeah i think

the word 10 i like that and then maybe and i don't know if we're getting too far ahead of ourselves now but this is just a this is just a um this is a brainstorm we're just throwing ideas i'm sorry

i'm just looking ahead at the list and i'm laughing okay i was just gonna say that like

you know we could get some that say 10 some that say five um i think luke at one point you threw out there like a 0.5 or something for well you threw you threw out the idea of a onesie a onesie

which i think is great and maybe the onesie could have 0.05 on it that would be great i think people would enjoy that um i'm loving uh this uh idea from i'm gonna guess it's our friend p fletch andrew the grouch i think that's really really strong now andrew i don't want to this is your this is your imagery um this is your life right so i don't want to like weigh in on it but you popping out of a garbage can in some sort of andrew the grouch fashion that seems like it

really ticks a lot of boxes for me john what is our operating agreement say about nil because uh Oh, that will definitely come into play here. No, that's fine with me. That's funny.

You mean the college sports license? Name, image, license.

Likeness, I believe. Likeness, sorry. No, I'm fine with that. I just don't want, you know, I just would feel self-conscious if it's like, if the design is too Andrew-focused to the exclusion of others.

Although what I'm noticing looking at this list is that I am not making a very strong impression on the listeners. All of the good ideas are basically related to Andrew's stuff

Which I kind of love

Let's see Walsh Walsh and Dormat Law Firm Laura and St. Pete Which I think is great See, I feel like the funny jokes Associated with T-shirts and hats and things It goes to something like Walsh Walsh and Dormat That would be a really clever T-shirt that most people wouldn't even get But if you knew, you knew And again, Andrew the Grouch, I think, is such a strong idea. I just need to really up my game so that there will be some suggestions involving, you know, me and my, you know, whateverness.

Yeah, I'm down for that. I don't know if you want to be carrying the garbage can, Luke, if that's too much, just for inclusion's sake.

I don't even think I need to be in the Andrew the Grouch.

Put me in a garbage can. I'm saying it now. Do it. Put me in a garbage can.

You're signing off on that.

I don't know if we could use The exact image that Phyllis sent it Because that was like It was used as a pin art From a thon a few years ago And that talked about actually like licensing But like a few people

Didn't that person not send the pins out So I mean how worried really are we about them

That's a different That's a whole other conversation That's an off air conversation

I forgot though that that was a design already because I was like that sort of rings a bell yes yes okay well a few people did

also our Dave I think is in New York maybe sent an idea and he said quote but better than mine because it was just like a very right stodgy like I read on sides were but like a very poorly no offensive janky janky that's the work I didn't see that so don't take that personally Dave yeah well he even said like better than mine like he just wanted to share that I think the concept

so that's very i think that's that's a strong strong idea um so with a few of those yeah as a concept i also um think that this is a really good idea from listener james something involving techno geeks with spreadsheets because i feel like we could do something visual with like a spreadsheet you know and like cut it over it's what we put in the spreadsheet or if it just says you know tech i i just that feels like one of those things again what i'm clearly zeroing in on our like inside jokes for tbtl which the average person would just think that person's wearing a t-shirt but like if you happen to bump into somebody in the wild who was a 10 they would be like oh my god where did you get that you're wearing a techno geek with spreadsheet t-shirt

can i kind of like jump in luke and say like one of my favorite ideas here and this is like related to drops and like those inside jokes is listener garrison sent in the idea of like um i think when he sent it it was like um rainier is it rainier does on the inside the bottle caps like you have to like solve the puzzle a pictogram puzzle yeah like that and so like you doing that and i i mocked up a couple of ideas when garrison and i were chatting on slack of like doing pictogram puzzles but like using emojis for drops so like i like workshopped up when it's like a cat's an angel in a box kind of thing and like using doing that through emojis yeah i thought that was a pretty fun way to like because that's also then like look if you're singing around the wild somebody can like play that game right yeah even if they don't know tbtl and then they're like what or we need to

partner with a beer company and just get that on the inside of some caps we could do that too i

guess but um i like that idea a lot to get after that vp of finance and revenue yeah maybe we should

You should just make TBTL beer like that Cleveland Browns wine I saw in the grocery store in Cleveland. I sent you a pick of that.

I love that. I think you said the Bernie Kosar fan logging in, and I thought it was Bernie Kosar wine until I zoomed it out. I was like, God, it would be great if this was Bernie Kosar wine.

I believe what I said was I bought you all a case. Please Venmo me at Bernie Kosar fan 69.

Can I ask a question this was a suggestion from listener max our friend listener max How's my breathing sticker are we does that a joke is that it did I for did we are we did we say that?

it was from a The last or one of the most recent Hey dummies videos the and

Were you in the graveyard wasn't too heavily in those videos if I'm doing them outside and I start walking You can hear me huffing and pussing. Have you considered a water fast? I need to do something.

Because you won't even be able to walk, Andrew. You will not even be able to. Today I tried to go on like a little jog this morning because I was like, well, I've still got some calories bouncing around in there. Ooh, rough. Would not recommend. So, but I'm with you, Andrew, by the way. Whenever, if I try to do a video, like a Hey Dummies in particular, where I'm in motion, it is shocking how heavy I how heavy I breathe just walking from here to there walking up you know two stairs or anything it's like I've got to learn how to not have heavy breathe into the phone when I'm trying to do something that's not particularly

strenuous yeah and by the way I do think it was the last it was the last hey dummies that we did and I'm bringing this up to let people know that if you did miss the hey dummies they're on YouTube now you can just look for the too beautiful to live podcast on YouTube and you should be able to see the

archive of our hay dummies but also subscribe to the newsletter if you're not already and yeah

you'll get it first you get to hear me heavy breathing as i throw stuff into the dump

do you first do you know how that dump video was great by the way that's also in the archive um oh wow we we went above it i was about to say we are so close to having a thousand subscribers to our youtube but it looks like we just got over a thousand in the past few days all right

Excellent. Nice. I also like Middle-Aged Mom Type, which Lisa B. in Florida suggested. That's really good.

That's great. And purely TBTL.

And that's really what I hear the excitement in your voice, Andrew, is no one's going to sue us. Jim Henson is not going to sue us for Middle-Aged Mom Type because that was regrettably something that I believe I said.

I'm not worried about lawsuits, by the way. I just like things like I sometimes get self-conscious when I realize so many of the jokes that we associate with our show are actually just other things that went viral and we never let go of them or whatever. Or just like, or like, oh, wait, I love TBTL because I love that one drop. And it's like, you like 30 Rock is what you like. But so that's just part of a self-conscious thing, not a lawsuit thing. So I like that because it really did become part of a vernacular. And also it's something that kind of started off controversial and then became sort of kind of reclaimed. Like you had said some you had said you would describe somebody as like a middle aged mom type or something.

And a lot of people didn't love that is roughly 100 percent of our demo.

Right. And now people identify themselves as that. And I sort of love the reclamation journey of that.

Totally. No, good point. Another question, because I do think that this has some real some real potential. but but will they hear about this in the northern territory splooch the turtle uh which ryan i believe suggested um and and i mean because i think that's a that was a that was a you know a top 20 moment on tbtl just us absolutely losing our minds and it's funny it's also kind of cute on a t-shirt like it's the kind of thing you might just wear anyway like uh and was that

that's probably clip art that's what made it so funny was that it was actually it looked like just the most basic basic of clip art but it also did include little lines that indicated that the turtle was shaking while it was taking a shit which is just still one of the most mind-blowing things i just but you know what i think and maybe we can reach out to listener jamie nobody was able to find the original clip art which is good for our purposes by the way but i think listener jamie using i believe her own artistic skills and maybe a little touch of ai was able to recreate that i

So we have basically, it's a real George Washington. splooch if we replace enough of it is it no longer whatever clip art that person in australia used

and something that we can start putting on merch maybe or maybe like i'll roll the dice on that found it and like cleaned up our photo of the clip art or whatever but yeah i'll reach out to

jamie see if we can do something there so i guess can i just uh just kind of give us some direction here sorry i got a dog barking here um like i think i've been telling some folks who've been reaching out is like, we probably will want to launch with like three to five designs. We don't want to like, you know, use up all the good designs. Which dog

is that Benny? That's Benjamin. How's Benny doing?

Benny and the barks. How he's doing is rude. He actually just graduated a basic training course the second time we've had to do basic training. Send him to Ukraine? Wow. Basic training? Topical. Front lines. Send him to the front lines. yeah um no he's we're getting ready to do agility training cool yeah and benny's the baby though right yeah yeah he just needs us to work off some activity and stuff as evidence by him just randomly barking at me at two o'clock on a thursday um so i think whatever we end up doing we'll probably want like three to five different kind of designs on the site to launch with and then like a lot of these great ideas we've been getting we can incorporate later when people want like a refresh on what's there so like what do we want to settle like what those kind of designs

are ideas are now and then i think we should do that i think we should do that offline yeah let's

not lock anything in now but now the listeners if any listeners want to like kind of second that emotion or anything let us know um but yeah no these are these are some really good ideas to get the ball rolling and i couldn't agree with you more john that we want let's let's keep our focus pretty tight at the beginning we have the rest of our lives to do this that's right we do

and uh you know i think that down the road you'll see us rolling out you know a whole wide variety of different products uh john didn't you say someone was even floating the idea of uh and this may be via the merch site this may be for tb telethons in the future but we may be expanding into the pet space somebody did we may be getting into renewable energy wind farms just let's you just i mean you i mean wouldn't it be great if if t if too beautiful to biz someday is a wind farm

yes sure yeah but what about the birds luke but what about the birds yeah um i yeah no somebody did ask for like pet merch and like we'll see if we can like put a product you know what we can we can yeah that could be a down the line thing the other thing uh there's i well i don't want to say what it is but i have an awesome idea actually my wife's idea uh but for a shirt but that actually can't be revealed till next summer luke oh so we got to keep this show going until next summer there's this really fun idea she's like oh you guys new merch show you gotta do oh it's this is like a very early tease this is like whoa you got me i don't know what you're talking about

i'm excited you don't don't tell me don't even tell me off air because i i need to have something to look forward to this summer since i've stopped eating right you're i hope you're eating so little

joy in my life all we have to look forward to is your funeral this summer luke if you don't start

eating you know how flipping hot i'm gonna look in that casket guys but yeah uh the point of that

was all to say to echo that like yeah we're gonna have like more fun designs and stuff coming down

the pike yeah so thanks to everybody who submitted ideas so far and keep them coming and um and and if we end up you know because we're gonna try to keep it like we're andrew was saying relatively focused here at the beginning if we if if we don't end up putting your idea into play doesn't mean it may never happen uh and we got a lot of good ideas so we're just trying to like figure out how to to work this whole thing uh the best way and we'll be adding stuff over time so it's exciting to know that that we have generated at least at least 10 good inside jokes some of them borrowed from 30 rock but regardless like there's i feel like there's enough to go on here as far as like a launching point for merch and a gas station in the outback okay don't forget that love is going to the outback to poop wait that's also a 30 rock thing should we just also do a cheesy blaster

shirt just for the hell of it there's a right way to rock in a wrong way to roll you can't just listen to your soul just remember that life is number one you can be having so much fun just remember that life is much fun you can be

Speaking of Tim and Eric, I cannot get that Cinco Party Time snoozer. No, Cinco FaceTime Party snoozer sketch out of my head. I don't know why I got obsessed with that. We used that as intro tape, I think, on Monday's show this week. That's from Tim and Eric with the voice of Bob Odenkirk. I just keep on going around the house saying, sure, why not? Thank you for coming.

sure why not and again if you actually see the real video I mean that's you if you heard that audio and thought well that's kind of funny and intriguing you ain't seen nothing yet because the mask that they have the Bob Odenkirk character

where it's not Bob Odenkirk voiceover guy the funny thing is he says my celebrity voice and you see if you see like a janked up weird headshot of some Bob Odenkirk-esque person from, like, a different, I don't know, like, a different dimension, sort of. But that sketch is great. I don't even know if it works as audio. I just couldn't get, I was just like, I need to use this as intro tape. And if nobody gets it, nobody gets it. But I've just been obsessed with it lately.

You know that I actually recorded an outgoing voicemail for somebody recently who had won on Wait, Wait. I'm guessing they were a 10. Shout out to David, wherever you are, if you're a 10. Because the script, you know, they send it to you, And it was me saying like, hi, I'm Luke Burbank. You may know me from like a TBTL. And the only reason somebody would mention TBTL is probably because they're a listener. But so I recorded it. And the whole the joke is that I'm I think I'm some big, you know, celebrity. So I recorded it. I really tried to give it the most pompous celebrity treatment, like as in the Bob Odenkirk, my celebrity voice. And then I sent it off to the wait, wait, folks. By the way, David, if you're hearing this, you are finally getting your voicemail message. Sorry. They emailed me during the last winter break. But I thought, what's going to happen when someone calls David's phone and gets this guy they've never heard of, and they don't understand that I understand that I'm not famous? Hi, I'm TV's, I am TV and radio's Luke Burbank. Like, are they going to just be like, who is this idiot?

And did you just sort of slip into this pomposity? It was written. It was written in this way.

I thought the funniest way to go with it was pompous. you know i might even have it here hold on a sec i could probably probably still have it on my

while you're looking that up can i boost your ego a little bit please please on halloween we were at our neighbor's house um you know their kids were out trick-or-treating we're just like standing around a bonfire having a drink with them and some of you know the parents in the neighborhood and one of them's like oh how's the new job how's the things going i'm talking about and somebody i was explaining somebody who was unfamiliar with tbtl what the show is and i said oh our hosts are are you like public radio fans do you know luke burbank from wait wait don't tell me they were very excited to hear that thank god so andrew just go and wait wait

so if they call david maybe if those people from that party call david this will play for them but if not this is i hope this is okay this is technically david's property but he's is this the first david is hearing this because hey there it's radio and television's luke burbank you may know me from such shows as live wire too beautiful to live or wait wait don't tell me you may have also noticed that i have my very own wikipedia page which i may or may not have written myself that's not sure why not talk about i'm here to tell you that david isn't available right now you know how busy he can get but if you leave him a voicemail he will return your call immediately i think we can all agree that's classic david thanks for coming i was trying to think of another odin kirk that i could throw in in real time anyway so david that's your voicemail message um thank you for thank you for in the most sort of in the most minute way letting the people that wait wait know that i actually am somebody who someone cares about because it is a very infrequent request that they want old lb on their voicemail

now i have a bunch of blurs days to do today but i also have a follow-up question for john i'm not going to ask it now i'm going to weave my follow-up questions uh to john's story throughout these blurs days but just

I'm just testing out my drops

keep that unmute button loose there Johnny I'm coming back to you but first we're gonna read this message from Riley that says I and our adorable cats want to wish Minnie a very happy birthday Minnie is a determined smart clever funny woman and I and our adorable cats are extremely lucky to have her in our lives we hope she has a great birthday and a great start of another chapter in her life. Happy Thursday. Heck yeah.

There's a Hidden Valley Ranch party in my mouth.

To Minnie.

I am extraordinary.

Jim says happy 40th Blur's Day to Chris, my partner, and Pawrent to Smiley. Have you ever heard that before? A parent to an animal pawrent. I cannot believe he just told that joke. This is two very pet-centric messages in a row. Jim says to, let's see here, Chris here, you had so many achievements to celebrate this year. No matter how accomplished you get, we love that you still laugh hysterically at Luke's poop stories. Smiley and I adore you and can't wait to cheer you on in your future endeavors. Happy Blurzy. Poop, diddy, whoop, scoop. Poop. Chris. would have also accepted this one 32 33 30 amen yeah somebody sent that to me recently and said i think you'd like this i said certainly do um john sclara follow-up to your halloween story at first i thought you were i no joke i thought at first you're gonna say that somebody was dressed up as luke for halloween that oh that's we'd like to see that actually all those parents were that

That was the other part of it. They were all. I forgot to mention that.

My question for you is.

Is it either best?

When you're in a social situation like that and somebody says, oh, you have a new gig. What are you doing? And you're like, oh, I work for this independent podcast now, listener supported. Blur's Day supported podcast. I would assume that you're in a better position than Luke and I are to like kind of brag on it a little bit more and say you should check it out. Like when somebody says, what do you do? I'm like, I have a podcast. and i just kind of mumble and then i and then i run away in shame um are you better at saying yeah you should check it out please we could use more listeners and i think you would enjoy it

i try yeah i definitely like oh it's like you know a very community focused just a low stakes enjoyable show where you're gonna hang out with your buddies like that's kind of how i how i say but i also do it's like i'm a 30 year old eight year old white guy so they're like oh you're in podcasting yeah checks out you know so there is like that part of it too and i'm like

so i have to i think it feels way more thirsty though if andrew and i do it as the co-hosts yeah i'm saying please please listen to this thing that i'm doing whereas you're like please please listen to this thing that i am an executive at and that i and that you know what i mean like i feel like you have a little bit more what's the word i'm looking for cachet cachet coverage like it doesn't seem it'd be like me saying please listen to wait wait don't tell me which i work on but i'm not peter sagel if i peter sagel says to you please listen to wait wait don't tell me that's like that's but come on peter that's very sad for you i no i definitely do like i will tell

people what it's about and say what a great show is and like how enjoyable it is i i don't i wouldn't go with the executive thing because then if it gets to like oh how big is your company three people that sounds well that's you just leave that part out and just tell them that we're currently

getting into wind farming

and beer making

and you started referring to it as a small wind farming concern this whole conversation bothers me alright let's hear from Summer who says I would like to wish TBTL's number one pizza correspondent Lloyd a very happy birthday Lloyd is the only 10 I know IRL and I met him during the great pepperoni scandal of 2016 I think Lloyd I lost a lot of friends this a little bit too i think was there an over order of a pepperoni for summer maybe this is ringing a bell anyway going through it with lloyd was a formative experience in my career and i don't think i would be the same without it happy blurs day lloyd from summer and of course us jesse says could you please wish could you please wish is what she wrote there could you please wish Laura in St. Petersburg, Florida a happy Blur's Day. Thank you so much. Indeed, I will. Happy Blur's Day, Laura. Now, I'm skipping ahead here, and I'm seeing more Loras, and I'm I don't know if these are all the same Laura or not, but I have a feeling they are. How about we don't, ladies and gentlemen, Scotty Doe. We got Marissa saying happy 40th Blur's Day to my girlfriend, Laura. She listens to your show every day and was one of your 10 of the weeks ones. You could give her a happy birthday from y'all here let me read that everybody if you could give a happy birthday from y'all and me that would be so amazing love the show keep it going molly also says happy blurs day to laura formerly from toledo okay i think that's the same laura hope she has a wonderful day so have oh and we met on a bff app this is important molly also says and i'm doing what i can to ensure that issue one passes in ohio in honor of her birthday yes if you are in ohio please go out and vote yes on issue one it's very important i saw a lot of a lot of yard signs

am i guessing that's a reproductive rights issue doesn't have to do with the very like a fairly for me anyway fairly confusing issue about how sort of power is distributed in the state of ohio

It is, I believe, and I apologize if I'm getting this wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's just a constitutional amendment that would sort of instill, that's the wrong word, in the Constitution. Enshrine. Enshrine is the word. Thank you. Enshrine in the Constitution. Reproductive rights. Right. And I think that's what it is. So please vote yes on that. Please do.

Can somebody tell me what the hell is going on?

annie in seattle says i want to wish the newest five jack william a happy blurs look at that a little 0.5 out there jack william i'm sure his dad billy in Bend has already started Jack listening to TBTL, and he'll be at 10 attending live shows with us in no time. Welcome to the family, little one. Hey.

Although you know what happens when you've got to change those diapers.

It stinks. Welcome to the world, Jack William. Anne in Massachusetts says, Happy Sweet 16 to my nephew Sebastian in San Diego. Seb is a kind, thoughtful, talented kiddo. Oh, yes, Seb. and the East Coastleys of the family can't wait to see him over the holidays. Seb, enjoy your day and the gift card that is belatedly in the mail. Please clap. I wonder if it's like a gift card for anything or if it's a specific store. Maybe buy yourself an Nintendo Wii.

Would a gift card for anything? That would just be a preloaded ATM card, right?

Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I've gotten those before as gifts, right?

Just money, just a card with money on it. You could just use any, like a debit card with a preloaded. Do you ever get that? No, I haven't ever gotten that.

It should be nicer to the people around you. Becky says, hi, Luke and Andrew. I'd like to wish my TBTL daddy, Amber, a happy birthday. Thanks, Amber, for introducing me to this show, being my long-distance workout encouragement person and for always having coffee. Love ya. that's happy blurs day to amber from becky in the clear no music when the music goes away you lean a little bit closer into the radio yes you do we're building we're building the drama here that's right and marissa in maryland says happy 11th blurs day to the one and only leo have you gotten your hogwarts letter yet today mommy daddy avi and i all love you and think you're the handsomest devil in columbia maryland wow this is embarrassing happy blurs day leo you handsome

devil happy blurs day everybody that was it that's it that's the one you're still doing a podcast that's how we do it that's how we do the i see we ran out of music right before the end but yeah

that's why i didn't restart it i thought it'd be a little complicated yeah no good call well happy

blurs day to everybody and that's nice last week we were doing a little kind of pre-recorded trickeration so glad we were able to really get you know get everybody on maybe a few people from last week but it's always nice to um even if andrew hates it i find it thoroughly enjoyable to give the listeners their moment to thank uh to honor each other for their birthday i don't hate

it i just hate the listeners that's all that's all obviously is that a t-shirt idea is that a t-shirt idea 100 now you have a friend in the diamond business i can make jokes like that because I'm very secure in my love of the listeners. The fact that you love the listeners so much. Exactly, and the fact that they will. And Javiv is real. We believe everything you're saying, Andrew.

I want to say a little forward promotion for tomorrow. You know, I've been in this pitched battle with the Costco company over this Dyson vacuum, and I received an email from a listener that might be a game changer. So I'm going to have a report for you tomorrow. I am excited about this. There's going to be vacuum-related updates tomorrow, If I make it, if you don't hear from me tomorrow by about nine, send somebody over, call the non-emergency line and have them come over and make sure I'm, you know, not just on the couch, on my fainting couch. Yeah. Just like reaching for my sugar-free water.

I was watching a football game this weekend that won't shock anybody. I think it was an NFL game. And I swear I saw the kicker, like the place kicker. Is that what you call the field goal kicker? Yeah. I think that he broke, like, a smelling salt and sniffed it before kicking.

I had not noticed that before. I noted that exact same thing, Andrew. It must have been in the Browns game, the Seahawks-Browns game.

Maybe the Seahawks, yeah.

And I thought, wow, I know that, you know, some of the big Hurkin folks, you know, will sometimes do that if they take a really hard shot. But, like, the kicker before making a kick, that was new to me.

Yeah, okay, it was new to you as well. All right, I thought maybe that was just something I hadn't noticed before.

I've seen people do it when they're about to go rush the quarterback and have three people trying to block them or after they get their, as they say, bell rung. But I've never seen a kicker do that. I feel like that would make it harder for me to kick. But that's why I'm not an NFL kicker. Who knows? Anyway, thank you, Andrew. Thank you, John, for stopping by. Appreciate you.

Yeah, and for taking care of all that T-shirt stuff, too. I'm excited about this. Yeah, it's going to be fun. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Okay, we'll see you all tomorrow. We've got another edition of TBTL coming your way tomorrow morning. In the meantime, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. We'll see you guys. We'll see you guys.

We'll see you guys.

Tuck in your blouse, eh?

We're not in Saskatoon anymore, Mom. People in Toronto don't tuck in their blouses. They want to dress well here, and I want to fit in, you know? Power.

Out.