Muse

Um, Gil, so I looked over your chart and you have mercury poisoning. Oh, thank you. No, it's actually, it's terrible. You have high levels of mercury in your blood, which is a very toxic poison. Can I ask you about some of your symptoms? Are you feeling fatigue? Yeah. Muscle weakness? Yeah. Okay, any peeling skin?

Yeah, it peels right off. Like wallpaper.

Uh, well, these are all the symptoms of mercury poisoning, so... I'm gonna prescribe a supplement for you of selenium, and then I would recommend that you stop eating all fish.

I mean, I eat a little bit of tuna fish. Occasionally tuna fish. Occasionally.

Okay, occasionally. Um, what does that mean? I don't know.

I don't have more than three dollops of tuna, you know, per meal. Two, three ice cream scoopers worth? Yeah, I mean, about a handful is one dollop.

You have three meals of tuna fish per day.

You gotta eat breakfast lunch today, don't you? Three squares, or rounds, if you're talking about tuna dollops.

TBTL!

It's time now for a full look at your forecast with Astrid, and maybe we can canoodle before you get into it about, um...

We're not going to be canoodling.

What? Oh, I thought canoodle meant chat. He's the handsome devil that came down from heaven to make some great songs and a dance with... and dance forever.

forever. I don't know a lot about business, but he did an internet and now the computers like him

and Wall Street is Google. I get it. I know who you are. It's been explained to me. I'm into it.

Let's talk. Well, all right. Hello. Good morning and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. The vibes will be the illest and the jams My name is Luke Burbank I am your host Coming to you From the Madrona Hill studio Perched high above the mighty Columbia Where the clouds have parted There is blue sky And it is just absolutely

Didn't know you like to get dry though

We are looking at a dry week Here in southern Washington It's going to be real nice It's going to be a real nice episode of the show It's episode of 4074 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I had a very active weekend for me. I saw a film that I can highly recommend. So who needs a movie? And I went to my local dump. I mean, trash is trash. Where they have one of the most satisfying devices I've ever seen, and I want to tell you all about it. Speaking of things I want to tell you about, we've got a big announcement.

Attention, everybody, madames, And Miss Waz

About the tbtl.net website Where our business, Too Beautiful to Biz Currently operates So we'll get into that as well Oh, and we'll talk to this guy The longest running friendo of the show Call it friendo Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships He is Andrew Walsh And he's joining me right now Good morning, my friend

Good morning, Luke I'm joining you with a cat today A cat who's up on a shelf looking at a window Usually, as soon as we start doing a sound check, he beelines it out of here. Doesn't love my half of TBTL or my third of TBTL, as it may be. Oh, there he goes. There he goes. He's going to jump down and leave. That's good taste right there. Is the door to the studio closed or open? I left it open a crack, assuming that he can use his little paw to pull it open the rest of the way. So we'll see.

We should be good, though. You mentioned being a third of the show today. That's because our good friend, the Senior VP of Finance and Operations here at TBTV, and I think kind of now maybe our official Midwest correspondent, John Sklaroff, is also joining us. Good morning, John.

Good morning, and thank you for adding senior to the title. I feel like every time I come on, you make it fancier.

Executive Senior Vice President of waiting for me to get my coffee. I want to apologize to both of you. We did the sound check. I said, can I have one minute to get my coffee? I was gone for about five minutes, and this is why. I'm not kidding you, and I can't explain this, and I think there's something wrong with me. I went into my house. The guys doing the drywall have like a boombox. It was playing the song Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, and I felt compelled to listen to the rest of the song. You made the right choice. You made the right choice. Roughly 30,000 times in my life, but I was like, this kind of slaps. And I just found myself in the kitchen standing there waiting for the song Money for Nothing to be done before I came back out. I apologize. That was very unprofessional to me.

What were you doing? I mean, were you dancing? Were you tapping a toe? Were you just staring in the middle of the distance?

Well, you know, I was honestly thinking in my head about the origins of the song, which I think pretty famously are that Mark Knopfler was having some kind of, I think, work done on his house or some remodel, or maybe he was even in a store where they sold appliances and microwave ovens. And somehow the fellas who were helping him out, in fact, not terribly unlike the fellas who were here helping me out with these projects at my house, looked over at Mark Knopfler and basically said he gets his money for nothing and his checks for free. And we got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen delivery. Like they're talking about how hard their life is and how hard their work is, truly so, and then how easy Mark Knopfler had it.

Do you think that is why the laborers are listening to? Do you think it's a common song to listen to on a construction site?

No, it's just on like 103.9 The Beast. It's also very interesting to be listening to as much just straight up over the airwaves, like kind of classic rock radio as I have been the last week while the drywall guys have been here. Because that's just not part of my life anymore. I'm either listening to a podcast or maybe NPR or whatever. but just the like we're doing a rock block we're getting the lead out just this and the straight up like dj who sounds just like you remember from the 80s it's kind of a cool little time capsule

that takes me back to my time working at a fiberglass factory i got to know the playlists so well i think it was 98 5 which i think was a cleveland classic rock station but we were getting that in aurora ohio where i worked for a fiberglass factory by the way did you know that the second sea world in the world was in aurora ohio obviously did you know that is that a famous thing i just like it's a land like john did you know that yeah it's common knowledge i mean what that doesn't strike you as odd that is very odd it's like andrew when you and i were in

springfield missouri and there was an endless supply of seafood buffets right yeah oh great

Oh, fantastic, yeah. Fresh, fresh, fresh water clams from the Cuyahoga Valley. Yeah, no, I was listening to a podcast and because I think the first one was maybe in San Diego or someplace that makes what they call fucking sense. OK, wow. But then somebody mentioned like, no, I hadn't been to that one, but I was at the second one in Aurora. When you said that, that shocked me. Now, obviously, I associate Aurora, Ohio with, like, oversized gas stations you can pull your truck into and working at a fiberglass factory. So I was kind of shocked to hear that. But anyway.

That is an odd place for that.

Yeah.

But that's why I would listen to the radio.

And I'd always hear She Talks to Angels by the Black Crows. Yeah, I didn't hear that.

Well, so now that to me, here's my question on that one. Sorry to step on you there, John. But, like. All good. Was that just, that was not the classic rock station at that time. It must have been the what? the just the sort of a rock and roll station i guess my question is was she talked to and she talks to angel by the black crows already in the classic rock rotation by the time you were at the

fiberglass factory yeah i don't know what was it wncx i don't know what they branded themselves as but you were you were guaranteed to hear a lot of led zeppelin a lot of rolling stones a lot of black crows like maybe they didn't maybe it wasn't old enough to be considered classic but it clearly fit into that genre you know what i mean so you would hear maybe some new stuff so you're right Maybe it was just called rock and roll. I feel like it was the classic rock station. And this is, you know, the year is probably what, 1999. So that song's out for maybe 10 years or something at that point. Maybe not quite. No, probably not quite.

Do both or either of you remember the moment when you heard a song that you thought of as being from basically your teenage years on the classic rock station and just how absolutely devastating that is? For me, that was you too.

Yeah. I think for me, by the time that my generation songs would be on classic rock, I was already like not listening to terrestrial radio as much, you know, you know, I think that decade difference between us.

So like, that's really showing itself there.

Yeah. You know, like by the time that, you know, Notorious B.I.G. would be on classic stations, I was already just listening to podcasts or streaming music already, you know?

Right. And were you mostly listening to hip hop as opposed to, you know, Three Doors Down or whatever the black crows of your of your generation was i i mean i grew up on like green day and like

a lot of like alternative like rock like that my first stadium show was green day but uh close proximity to new york city definitely like hip-hop biggie nas wu-tang was definitely my bread and

butter for high school and stuff how about you andrew i think for me um as i i really had to really had to explore my feelings on this topic so thank you for chatting a little bit john I think for me.

Do you have the time to listen to me whine about everything?

All about, yeah, yeah.

Everything all at once before I'm one of those mallets.

For me, the more shocking things happened when I started to hear my classic rock was getting into my oldies station. I think that was a bigger thing for me. The Kixi angle. Because probably even like pre-Kixi, more like when I was, you know, like in Cleveland, WMJI 105.7. um i would be you know turning to that stuff for more like you know your 50s and more like 60s music but then like it was less shocking

for me to hear the black crows on a classic rock station because at that point classic rock had already become more of a vibe i feel like but yes but their vibes are kind of fits into these yeah you know and like when you're like ready to hear like some cheesy beach boys song and whatever else like that's kind of sock hoppy but then you hear some led zeppelin get in there and you're like

what in the world is going on that's even worse actually because like you said if it's being defined as oldies it's like you know classic rock is what we're saying this is classic so okay fine you too it's now moved into being quote-unquote classic that was hard for me when i heard it on kzok in seattle but it when when i start hearing my music on the oldie station that's when it's time to just walk into the mighty columbia river with the rocks in my just let it take you away

just let it take you away the river isn't that a good classic rock station the river sounds like

it's gonna be more like um we're gonna have it's a lot of guitar music but more like going towards the ani defranco yeah and the john mayor i feel like that's what the river tells me as far as a call sign um i uh i saw the movie the holdovers this weekend and can i just tell you golly that's

a good movie i'm glad to hear it i haven't seen it yet that's paul giamatti again right and i I thought of you the whole film, Andrew.

I kept waiting for him to scream, I could really use a win here. That's right.

A listener sent me that. They're like, he might say it in this one.

I kept thinking, is this going to finally be the movie he says the line that Andrew invented for him?

I mean, that would be incredible, wouldn't it? For years, I've been saying there must be a movie in which Paul Giamatti says, I could really use a win here. Nobody has been able to find that line. But what if I end up being the change I want to see in the world? What if this becomes such a talking point that it has to end up in a future movie?

We have a sort of side door. I apologize for the pounding. I asked the guys putting the Hardy panel up if they could start at exactly 10 a.m. And they obliged. We actually have a side door to that whole operation, Andrew, which is we had Bob Nelson on the show many years ago. The guy that wrote the movie Nebraska directed by Alexander Payne. And so I probably still have his number. I could text him and say, could you text Alexander Payne and ask him to text Paul Giamatti to see about working that into his next film?

Into the next one. So we're not looking. Either way, I think either way, it's a reasonable request. Pretty big. Sure. Yeah. But you think it's easier for them just to work, you know, dedicate themselves to working on another project together and then getting it into that script, not just doing some.

Well, his next project is Rango three. So it's going to be I don't know if that's going to work with the narrative, but we're going to try.

Is that an animated series, Rango?

It is an animated movie that for some reason I have been dropping on you off air for the last couple of weeks. I just thought I would build on that joke that you couldn't care less about.

You know, I got to be honest with you. I don't know that I remember that. But the fact that I knew it was animated means it must have been flash in front of my eyes at some point recently.

The movie is, well, I don't want to, now here's the thing. I don't want to, I don't want to make the experience less fun for people by building it up too much. because what was actually perfect for me as a viewer was I went in with low expectations because I actually think the trailer for this movie, The Holdovers, does not really convey the kind of what's great about the film. To watch the trailer is to think, oh, this is Rushmore meets The Breakfast Club because Paul Giamatti is a teacher at this, you know, boarding school where he also went to school when he was a kid. And, you know, over the winter break, there's like a handful of kids that for whatever reason can't go home for christmas break or in holiday break so they have to stay in the school and paul giamatti gets stuck basically babysitting them and the trailer makes it look like they just the kids get up to mad cap mad capery and paul giamatti is yelling and yelling at them that's a detention um but the movie is because it's alexander pain and because paul giamatti it's just so much more interesting and nuanced than that and it's just a slow burn I've spent the first 45 minutes kind of thinking, huh, this is fine, but like this is the stakes are very low here. And then all of a sudden I'm just like trying not to start like loudly sobbing sitting next to Becca as, you know, as these characters who I just came to really root for and really have an emotional attachment to are doing their thing. But it really just kind of caught me by surprise, which hasn't happened for a while for me in watching a film.

Let me ask you this. Now, this gets us off track of the film itself, but I knew that you had seen that movie this weekend because I was not watching the Husky shenanigans. Yeah, so the Huskies had a pretty big game this weekend, which I think it's okay to spoil this. They were able to pull out a win. I'm not a huge Husky fan, but I was sort of headed on. You know, I knew it was sort of like, you know, they were going for something big here since they haven't lost any games this season. So I had it on the radio while I was doing some errands. Just in my brief listening on the radio, I heard some pretty phenomenal calls that would have made your head exploded from bad calls by the refs right before halftime to some boneheaded moves by the players themselves in the second half of the game. And then you popped on later and said, I am so glad I didn't see that game because my head would have exploded with these happenings.

The first half on my phone while we were running errands and I saw the the boneheaded call or I heard about the boneheaded call. But there was a play not to shift this in the sports talk, but there was a play where one of the Huskies ran. I don't know if you heard about this, John. I don't think you're probably a huge college football head. But there was a play where a Husky intercepted the ball and ran it, I believe, 75 or 76 yards back. should have run at 77 because he just dropped the ball at the one yard line nullifying the entire operation and it was at a critical moment in the game and if I if I would have heard that happening in real time or watched it I really would have had like a some kind of an emotional breakdown that would have been not great for me my relationship or anybody I feel like I see that

happen in college football especially I guess sometimes NFL like three times a year I'll just come across on my you know instagram feed of some wide receiver or somebody doing that and i just don't understand just hold on to the ball just hold on to the ball you know what's truly amazing

is i think i'm getting a memory now of another time this happened and i believe the team that might have committed the gaffe of dropping the ball inexplicably at the one was the university of utah youth which is ironic because that is who the huskies were playing when they committed the gaffe so i don't know if there's something going on with that team if there's something in the water or it's the magic underwear the water we've heard it's not the water we can we can verify it's not the water but anyway you're right andrew it was kind of you know again i thought about you a lot this weekend nice and i thought about you a fair amount john i want you to know because i saw you posting from that other podcast and saying it was one of the greatest nights of your life and i thought okay but weren't you at the tbtl 4000th yeah you sure about that you sure about that's different feelings you sure about that's why the best night you've ever had but anyway i was thinking about you andrew because i was trying to approach the university of washington football game this weekend kind of the way i think you've been approaching the seahawks which is if it's on and you're near a tv and you're not doing something else great if it doesn't fit in with your day like we were seeing the holdovers at 3 30. it was like okay i'm just you know i'm gonna live a normal life as normal as my life gets and if I can see the game cool and if I can't that also is fine and I really ended up being happy about that because I came out of the movie and I just saw a flurry of texts from from you and Hawk Squad and everybody else or at least from folks on our text chain I should say our sports chain and I was like great I saw a really awesome movie and my alma mater won their football game it was all fine I didn't have to watch it or like ruin the whole Saturday you

know obsessing over that's exactly why i brought that up too for those listeners who are like why did walsh take a nice conversation about a nice little movie and turn it into sports talk because i actually wanted to get at that um this was a big game in the general scope of u-dub football and it didn't really i no offense but i wasn't kind of monitoring the text chain again i was driving around so i wasn't really like super engaged with with the chain or anything but when you posted that later uh hey i missed i missed that and i'm kind of glad i did because my head would have exploded i wondered if you had sort of like if you literally were thinking you know what i'm kind of glad that i went and just saw a movie instead and i just wonder if in these in these golden years of our lives luke are you willing to take that are you willing to

take that ride with me um let me hold on let me double check are they playing little wayne

on the oldie station yet so in these in these late in these late late late stages of our life i wonder if we're just developing a different relationship with sports or if we can and if that's a good thing because like you said it was sort of similar for me in the seahawks this weekend like i got to i think watch the very beginning of the game and then in my car listen to like the last exciting three minutes of the game sitting in my car in a um not even a parking lot but a grocery store garage which i think has a kind of a different vibe right a grocery store parking lot in a grocery store garage different vibe like significantly and i'm like chowing down on some old goldfish that i had in the glove box aka andy's snack drawer just listening to the last three minutes of the seahawks game and thinking like is this that bad is is my is my new version of of watching or listening to these games that bad because this is sort of a moment too

I wonder if part of it isn't our advancing age. We've established John is much younger than us. Thanks for rubbing that in our face on this Monday morning. Just really ruining your day. No, John's. Stop the pounding, John.

I do think that I'm trying to ignore that, Andrew, which is very hard for me. Not what you said, but what's going on right next to me. But I do think it might have a little bit to do with me getting older. Like, for instance, yesterday there was an NFL game the Seahawks were playing. And I, for the first almost like probably three quarters, I was just running to the dump. I was just like carrying, you know, loads of various kind of household garbage and stuff from the construction project and loading in the back of my dad's truck and driving it down to the waste management here. Because I just thought I can't have my whole Sunday dominated by this. Like I got stuff to do and get busy living or get busy dying. Andrew, that's what I have. Really was a real shank head over here. I honestly just feel like I don't think I am in the position anymore In my life And maybe because of the limited years I have left But I just don't I don't know if I can have an entire day dominated now By a sporting event that may or may not go my way Because that's also The other thing is You block out the whole day for it You're emotionally pretty wrecked If it doesn't go well At least if you're me So I was that guy Walking around Home Depot And the local dump here with like one air pod in my ear just listening to the the radio call of the game and that was completely sufficient like it was like this is you know multiple things are happening for me here whereas you know i don't know a few years ago it would have been like it's sunday i'm making nachos i mean probably also helps that i'm not eating as much food right now and certainly not doing the big football sunday food spread but just i kind of felt good about yesterday because i was like i got a lot done the seahawks won even if they would have lost it would have just been like okay that happened I felt a little more emotionally regulated to me than it has been historically for

me yeah and for me I do think that when I got into football especially Sunday football and then when I really got into like watching two games both my Browns and the Seahawks and like I was blocking out a whole day for it it wasn't it was an excuse for a mild Sunday rolling thunder situation as you would call it like sure let's start with some mimosas and Bloody Marys and then like get into the snackage and then the then the the bloody mary's become ipas what have you you know depending on the crowd if i'm with a crowd possibly victory shots or sadness shots are involved or like hawk bombs have you ever done a hawk no no that's that's um have you done

a hard no is that a boundary for you are you familiar with the hawk bomb lore on this show john no but it sounds painful it is like one of the most unholy drinks of all time and it is a A guy who we know, Camaro Kev, was once at this local bar where they were advertising something called a hawk bomb, which was blue and green, the color of the Seahawks. But it's made with something called cool vodka and some kind of blue curacao and just the nastiest combination of things. Just sugar. And all just so that it's blue and green, right? And our friend Camaro Kev did one of those hawk bombs and then the Seahawks won. And so it became now like basically the tide shifter. So if we really need the Seahawks to turn it around, there have been more than one occasion where Camaro Kevis had to leave his home, go to the Pinehurst Tavern and down a hawk bomb and then come back home so that the Seahawks can possibly win the game.

It's good they called it a tide shifter because based on the description, it sounds like it looks like a tide pod. Can I ask you guys...

It is, and much like tide pods, it's not recommended that you eat it.

Can I ask you a question, Luke, not to go keep going into sports ball talk but like do you think for either or both of you maybe some of this less of an important on sunday football is that the seahawks just last couple years just haven't been expected to really compete there was like a decade with wilson where it was it was more of the expectation because for me as somebody who doesn't who's been open about not watching football in the last few years it was easy to disconnect because i was a lifelong jets fan and they're terrible so it's like it's easy to walk away from that do you think maybe that's helped you um be a little more free of it now that you don't expect the seahawks to be good

or really competing not so much for me because i was riveted by the 2 and 14 seahawks of the tom flores era so for me it's like i mean i'll complain more if they're losing but i don't i'm

not less interested when they're bad in my experience and for me we just lost luke to bees For me, it had a lot more to do with losing my brownies

And the fact that I had to stop rooting for a team that I loved I mean, I rooted for the Browns when they went winless an entire season And then one of the happiest sports moments of my entire life Was when they finally got a win the season after that Like three weeks in on Thursday Night Football All of it.

So I've put up with some terrible seasons, but it's the fact that I had to come, you know, since the Browns signed a quarterback who I can't watch in good conscience a couple of seasons ago. I think I said that wrong. Conscience is what I meant to say. That has made me have to force myself to separate some emotions from the game a little bit. Because even, you know, the Browns ended up winning, the Browns ended up beating a rival yesterday, and I would have usually have gotten pretty upset about that, or excited about that, I should say, as a Browns fan or whatever, and I was driving.

Those emotions are very close together as a Browns fan.

They really are. And I was driving somewhere yesterday, and I saw a person in what looked like kind of a brand new spanking clean Browns sweatshirt, just sort of a basic Browns sweatshirt that I sort of liked how basic it was. some guy by himself just walking down the street not even not even that close to the bar where I know the Browns games are shown and I just saw him and like when I see something like that my brain does sort of a somersault because at first I'm like hey it's one of us and I'm like no I can't and then I'm like oh that the thing that used to make me happy now makes me sad and then so I just rolled down my window and yelled your quarterbacks and no I'm just joking I didn't yell anything at the person but anyway so for me I think that I had you know again it's it sounds so silly for anybody who doesn't care about sports and I totally understand how this sounds but for me I think me sort of putting the gas or taking my foot off the gas pedal a little bit on NFL football has a lot to do with me trying to regulate my emotions around that I will say I just remember this I said I listened to the end of the Seahawks game in the in the car I listened to most of the end of the Seahawks game in my car underneath the grocery store eating goldfish that were mostly stale but then I when when the commanders actually tied the game up in the last minute of the game I'm like, well, this is obviously going to go into overtime. I'll run up to the grocery store and do my shopping now quickly. And so I did that thing where I didn't have any earbuds or anything. So I turned the game on on my phone but kept it super, super quiet because you know I don't want to be the guy who's blasting my unwanted audio into other people's space. So I had it on super, super quiet but then held my phone up to my face as if I was talking on the phone. But I had to hold it upside down so the speaker was coming out by my ear. so hopefully nobody noticed that they're like wow hey his camera's on the wrong side and then I'm doing self-checkout I'm holding the phone between my shoulder and my ear listening to the end of the game it turns out the Seahawks don't go into overtime they end up getting a game-winning field goal in the last like 19 seconds of the game or whatever like I think they drained the clock down to three seconds or something but either way I was getting some beer and the employee came over and said hey as he's checking my IDs like you don't happen to know what the final score was and i'm like and i can sort of hissed at him and i didn't mean to in a mean way but i was like sort of listening i was like it's not a final score yet if they make this kick they'll win and he's like okay good to know and then i had to track him down after uh they made the kick to let him know that the seahawks did indeed win so it was communal in its own way

i think i there's there's a lot there to unpack first of all i wanted that's why i squeezed it

in there i thought you might find part of that interesting well because it raises the question

and I think I'm with you somehow because I kind of tend to think it's fairly rude for people to be on the phone in public or at least I try not to do it but somehow listening to the game seems more rude so pretending like you're on the phone like you're picking the the slightly less rude thing to be doing was that kind of going through your mind like I'm not going to walk through the store blasting the Seahawk game but I will walk through the store with my phone upside down hoping people think I'm just having a phone conversation yeah now it's interesting that

you say having a phone conversation is rude I only think it's rude to the people around you if you're talking loudly into your phone right sure I mean I guess if I'm distracted and holding up the line and it seems like I'm paying more attention to my supposed phone call that could be rude but for the most part as long as I'm not getting in anybody's way or holding up a line having my phone you know in the crook of my in the crook of my neck or whatever and I'm not making any noise and nobody can hear the sound coming out of it is that rude well I think I'm vastly

out of step with with most of the people on planet earth and i certainly do that a lot but i do feel like i'm being slightly rude like when i when someone's walking through the store and they have their airpods in and they're just talking to someone they're doing me no harm whatsoever but it feels to me slightly thoughtless and i can't if they're talking to someone is that that's what

i'm getting at like if somebody is walking through with airpods on and they're not talking out loud

does that seem thoughtless no no no that wouldn't strike me as as rude but but uh but again i just I have a lot of kind of weird phone shame, I think. Like, I definitely try to go outside of a restaurant if I'm going to have to talk on the phone. Me too, me too. Like, I'm very private with my talking on the phone stuff because so much of it unfolds in public. And for some reason, it always feels, again, sort of like we're all just now living in your world or something. What were you going to say, John?

Yeah, so I feel like I oscillate on this because my initial thought was like, yeah, that's hella rude of...

If somebody's on speakerphone, it's really loud or whatever, but I'm a loud person by nature. I'm just boisterous and loud. If the three of us are walking down the aisle at a Home Depot and I'm just being loud, is that any more aggressive or rude to people for just having a loud conversation? I don't know. Is that weird thoughts on that?

This is part of where this is not consistent for me. If someone is on speakerphone talking to someone, I find that to be, in public, I find that to be deeply rude. I don't find it to be deeply rude. two people are just having a conversation in public so there's it's totally illogical it's just it's just how i feel emotionally about it i'm with you and that might be somewhat um

generational luke i'm totally with you like two people on a bus or a train sitting in a sitting in a seat next to each other or whatever talking it doesn't really bother me i mean i'm not saying it never does if they're being really loud or inappropriate and it's distracting like maybe it'll itch me a little bit but if it's just one person just having one end of a conversation on their phone or with their earbuds or whatever it drives me bananas for sure i there's a um there is a very unassuming teriyaki and pho place on um north aurora so this is not teriyaki madness

no because that i would consider to be an assuming teriyaki place do you know how i know it's do you

know how i know that they serve both teriyaki and pho because the name of the place is literally teriyaki and pho which is funny because usually fucking teriyaki it usually if it's going to be both things um it's not it's not going to be very good I want people to know that was p-h-o

new word k-i-n-g and then teriyaki which wouldn't be the worst name great great there was a um a

place in kent ohio that I saw this week and it wasn't there when I went to school there but I visited actually a couple of weekends ago when I was in Cleveland and the name of the restaurant was fa king and my dad uh felt the need to take a photo of it and then deliberated on whether or not it would be appropriate or not to send to his sisters um anyway um what i was gonna say was this the food there is surprisingly good because it's like kind of not that easy to get to and again it doesn't even really have a name it's pho and teriyaki like or teriyaki and pho or something i didn't expect to be good i tried it one day turns out they're actually actually pretty damn good as far as that stuff is concerned and so i try to go there sometimes i eat in the restaurant But I do find this the type of place where people will just have their speakerphone on. Like some guy was in there like trying to navigate some phone tree for a half hour when I was trying to eat my teriyaki last time. And he's just got his phone on speakerphone. And the next time I go in, I'm like, OK, I'm not going to eat here. I'm just going to get some takeout. But I'm waiting for my takeout. There are two young women sitting in a booth on either sides of the booth. They're not sitting next to each other in the booth. they are watching reruns of martin at full volume like my full volume like laugh track just cutting across the entire restaurant i don't some of tisha campbell's finest work for my i mean i'm sure yeah i mean it's not a statement on the show it's just like i couldn't believe that and again it's probably generational but i was just like i can't believe that you would just think that that's okay like it was so loud like again heels of laugh track going across again this is not a fancy restaurant this isn't canless but still like it's just like yeah it is so irritating to

anybody else in earshot but also the odd thing is i bet you you've been in a restaurant uh you know or a laundromat where maybe there's a tv on and i bet you that wouldn't bug you or it wouldn't bug me like if if i if i went to a teriyaki place and you know you've been to these kind of places where it's like you know that maybe the folks that are working there they are the sole kind of proprietors and they they're they're the ones that are there all day long and so they've got a tv behind the counter going or something and that kind of stuff would never bother me but somebody doing it on

their phone would seriously bother me i don't know it really depends on the situation i've been in those situations i guess it depends on just like bias like if i'm into what's on like if there's like fox news on or just not even fox news sometimes it's like that doesn't even bother me so much but like if it's some really terrible like local show like some and just like banal banter and it's blasting way too loud while you're trying to eat or something like that looks like there's some sort of like really cheap television like some sort of like dog related reality tv i don't know why i'm going after dogs here but like there's just something that yeah careful now that chintzy yeah sorry that wasn't about dogs so much as i don't know how to describe the quality of television that really sets me on edge but it's like something about like really cheap lighting and bad sound and there's something that like it does irritate me but i feel like you'd be

irritated that it was bad content but would you think it rude of the person who had it on the

television i'd probably prefer it to be off like i'm thinking of nassai teriyaki and maybe that's a very specific thing but like that's kind of a that's the place i'm talking about on aurora believe it or not is a little bit better than that as far as a as far as a vibe is concerned

Like Nassai has definitely seen better days, but like they'll just have some shitty TV on sort of in the dining area. And it's just like it's too loud. And it's either just people on couches talking about shit I don't care about or just something else. It's just like, oh, like I just really wish they could be subjected to some of that program.

There was something we really got to move on. I really got to tell you about the conveyor belt at the dump, guys. We have big things to talk about today. But I forget what it was, Andrew. this is not going to pay off and will likely live in your head, but there was something that you were unfamiliar with, and I was describing it to Becca. And she goes, how was Andrew unfamiliar with that? And I go, because there's just parts of the pop cultural world that you just don't engage with at all because it's not interesting to you. And I forget what it was. Maybe she'll remember. But it was like, there's just that whole, like the world of Wendy Williams, I don't think has come into your brain very much other than maybe you're trapped with it at Nassai Teriyaki. And I do think she has a view. She's on a view like show right now. Yeah. I don't think she has her show anymore. But I don't know why I grabbed the name Wendy Williams. It just seems like exactly the the bad lighting, the talk show talking about nothing, you know, a midday talk show. we're just kind of a thing yeah wendy williams was a was a like a radio host in new york and then she got her own show and she's sort of you know she's a real character and um and and so had this tv show that was popular and and then uh she doesn't i don't think don't think she has it anymore but anyway it's just it's interesting because like there's just stuff that that you're not interested in and and you're in the words of lucille bluth um you don't know what that is and you'll not engage with it.

Sure, yeah.

So I like that you're, I like that Nassai Teriyaki is doing God's work and making you watch Cesar Millan's show. Oh my God. The Cat Whisperer or whatever thing you don't want to be seeing. I bet you would watch a show about cats more than you would watch a show about dogs. No, no. It has nothing to do with that.

Yeah, yeah, no. It has nothing to do with like, even like Genevieve has been getting into like those, those British comfort shows. I think her specifically that she's been watching is the not Bake Off, but the like Throwing Clay one, you know, like Pottery Throwdown. Pottery Throwdown. Yeah. Yeah. And even then, like, and I know that that's the higher quality of that stuff and that it's supposed to be a little bit more soothing than than agitating. And like, I'm not in the room often when she's watching, but I'll walk in, I'll be like, yeah, just not for me. Just like just there's something about that style of production that it just turns

me off. Yeah. I think for those shows, for me, it's the ones that I'm into, which isn't any currently but like i get really into a top chef i get real into a project runway and when i'm engaged with it like i know who the players are i can be really into it but if it's something i don't have context for it just seemed like my dad's really into the amazing race i'm dvr-ing

the amazing race you're doing it for oh wow the worm has turned uh-huh oh boy the worm turned

hard last night i had him with that laser balding helmet on you what i gotta send you this picture

that's not even on the show sheet how in the world well that's the whole story is i just made him put

He saw it. He was like, what the hell is that? I said, well, you should probably try it on. And I made him wear it, and then I took a picture of him wearing it. And it's truly unhinged looking. I'll send it to both of you right now. Was there a token reference to some helmet that a character wore in the series?

Because I feel like it's some warrior helmet.

No, but on the subject, I forgot the number one thing I needed to talk to you both about today. I saw this. Maybe number two only to our big announcement. but can we do this maybe we thank some donors and then we can you know we can we can get into the other thing that i wanted to tell you about involving lord of the rings and my mom and dad which is a really an unforgettable moment in the hawk squad text chain um uh so let's yeah let's Let's thank some folks first, though.

Thank you, baby.

All right. Let's thank some of those donors who are keeping the show going. As of now. Yes. This is the first you're learning of it. I mean, always, but yeah. It's thanks to folks like Kristen Zucht of Kansas City, Missouri. Kristen will, of course, always live in our hearts, Andrew, for it.

Yes.

Picking us up at the Greyhound Station.

A true welcoming committee. I've never had a surprise welcoming committee before. That was amazing.

That's absolutely right. That was a really fun night. That was a really fun part of that trip. Thanks, Kristen. Appreciate you. Also, Ruthie Benton is in Los Angeles, California. Hey, I've been there. It's one of the rare places I've actually been. Yeah. I'm doing a TV story about Taylor Tomlinson, who is the new late night host. She's so funny. Yeah, she's pretty great. She actually grew up kind of like I did, I think, pretty evangelical Christian. And I'm going to do a profile of her because she's going to be the new Late Late host.

I'll be in Los Angeles. Maybe I'll bump into Ruthie or Ruth. Michelle Jenkins is in Sammamish, Washington. Thanks, Michelle. Appreciate you.

How do you feel about people calling sandwiches Sammies?

What about Sandoz? What about Sandoozles?

Sandoozles.

Andrew, I have strong opinions on this, actually, because I worked at a Subway restaurant in high school. You did. Yeah, my friend Chris used to call me a Sammich artist instead of a Sammich artist.

I like Sammich.

I don't know. At the time, it was very annoying. Looking back, it's actually pretty. It was disrespecting. It's pretty. Yeah, I mean. The craft. Put some respect on my Swiss. I don't like it.

I don't know why. There's a place on Lake City Way now that's like sort of a sandwich truck sort of, but they're like outside of a brewery or something, so there's like tons of outdoor seating that's covered and heated and whatever, and I think it's just called Sammich, and I don't know. There's something about calling a sandwich a sandwich I'm not down with. That's no disrespect to you, Luke, who appreciates it.

I find it cute when kids say it. I do think that we're dealing right now with an epidemic in America of every food truck thinking that they have to have the craziest name. And I don't know what the alternative is. And some of them really land for me. Of course, there's the place here in Portland that's kind of famous, Fried Egg I'm in Love, that makes fried egg sandwiches. That's actually pretty funny. But it's like, you know, I'm not surprised to hear there's a sandwich because it's like, well, I guess, what are you going to call it? Sandwich. But everybody gets real. Portland in particular is just the land of the food cart and the land of the like. There's this one little area right by where you, the three of us went to the Jolly Roger and played video slots. By the way, RIP the Jolly Roger. Yeah.

If the Jolly Roger can't stay open, I mean, what?

Exactly. if the Jolly Roger can't stay open based on the money that we all donated to the video machines at the bar there's a food truck kind of area collection around there it's just a who's who of crazy names potato champion and this that and the other James West is in Thornton Colorado and is supporting TVTL today thank you James, appreciate you Holly Snap is in Kirkland, Washington, where they make the jeans. I probably made that joke the last time Kirkland came up. But, Holly, we do appreciate you as well. And then Mary Lawrence Whirl, or maybe Whirly, is in Madison, Wisconsin. Thank you, Mary.

Great Midwest.

The real question, though, is where is Jeff? Where, oh, where is Jeff? John, you asked us to put the bat signal out to try to get into listener Jeff. The Jeff signal. Listener Jeff, party of five. Listener Jeff, has anybody, what happened to Jeff?

So I got a really wonderful email the other day. I say that sincerely, where I get these from folks a bunch. It's like, hey, my credit card's about to expire. How do I update to make my monthly donation? Which is super appreciated. Love when people get out in front of it. But Jeff's came from, it must have been from the account where Outlook masked the actual email and they just signed off as Jeff and we have a handful of folks that give monthly their name Jeff so I couldn't actually identify which Jeff uh reached out to me so if Jeff you hear this and you sent me an email only one of you did it uh so if you're the Jeff that sent me an email please just let me know your last name or an email associated with your giving and I'll help you update your donation by really yeah thanks again for for being proactive this is so bizarre to me

so I didn't know that this was an option when you first sent this email around I was like oh well could this be some sort of a scammy situation you know like what because the email address was just like a string of random letters and numbers at outlook or something and uh i hope i didn't give away too much of jeff's information there um and uh now we know and i was like oh that's weird and you said that like i guess there's a technology that if you want to send an email but you don't want somebody to email back you can you can i don't understand this technology that you would

mask your email address i'm pretty sure you can do that like i think i'm you know i'm sure somebody like our friend lynn or somebody who actually knows technology will write in and give the actual explanation but i think even like gmail there's ways i think most male clients will let you do that so you can send things maybe anonymously i'm not entirely sure maybe it was something jeff was sending it from a work email and it did that i don't know but i too initially was like this is kind of scammy but it's you know when all my uh it security training from apm nothing about this indicates that's a scam like it's very there's no like weird uh wording in here it's very clear it's specific to their monthly donation with kbtl so like i don't know it just the fact that

somebody trying to give us money is really like one of the leading indicators that it's not a scam

if i get follow-up email saying i'm a nigerian prince or something And I might get a little concerned, but, right, it seemed legitimate on its face. And so, yeah, I think this is like masking. I called it masking. I don't know if that's the appropriate term. Well, now that I know that you can send anonymous emails, I just want to make it very clear. If either one of you guys start getting, like, constructive feedback on the show, it is not from me, I promise. I have no idea. That's a coincidence.

Well, thank you to Jeff for being proactive. And thank you to all of our donors today for keeping TBTL going. hello and welcome to top story all right uh we of course need to get to our big announcement today but just very very quickly i want to mention first thing the uh dump in my neighborhood has a conveyor belt have you guys ever been to one of these is the first i've seen this and you throw all your stuff on this conveyor belt that's just like sitting still but yesterday while i was throwing all of this you know whatever garbage stuff and various things onto it at some point it just started moving and the entire collection of all the stuff on there yard waste appliances you name it all just moved down and then it was just like a pristine conveyor belt and i just i wanted to just hang out there and watch this all day long it was amazing i haven't seen that

so in other words you had this obviously wasn't your first trip to the transfer station but You didn't realize that it was You just thought you were dumping stuff out onto The floor or what have you

No I knew it was a conveyor belt but it never moved I'd never been there when it was like reset It was sort of like the thing That I talk about on the show a lot where you peel Like you don't realize there's a plastic film over Your microwave and then like a year later You pull it and it's just so clean This was that Of dumping things it was like this Big you know all this again People are throwing all kinds of stuff on there and then all of a sudden It was just pure as the driven snow the whole thing moved down and we just had a brand new thing to start with it's very satisfying and the sarlacc didn't get mad or no no no it also made me think um because sometimes i get worried i'm never throwing away anything that's like you know toxic or illegal but you know you drive in they go what do you have and i'm like household waste like and then it's like well is sawdust household waste is you know like is a piece of drywall i don't know and then i throw it on there there and i think is someone to come is someone going to come over and go sir that is not household waste but then once it moved down i was like nobody knows who made what pile so this is a kind

of the perfect crime construction i think construction debris is a category that i've

seen before so if it's mostly yeah but you still throw it on there too and here's why i don't say construction debris anymore because last time i was there it sent them on this whole wild goose chase as to what i was throwing out and it was these two very nice women who were working there but they were not construction experts nor am i and so i was like it's drywall which is just like gypsum or something it's just kind of a you know it's a some kind of rock kind of ground up powdery material that's not toxic as far as i'm aware but but they were both like okay uh okay drywall but then is it and they were trying to remember the word for something else i said are you thinking of asbestos and they were like it's not that it's something else we had this long confab where they were googling things and then decided it was fine um so i'm just trying to now just keep it easy and

say household garbage they're i don't know watermelon rinds just like here's whatever

is the most benign thing right exactly coffee grounds this is actually going to really spruce the place up you know the bad smells here at the dump guess what they're going away because i got a truck full of coffee grounds i'm going to be dumping and lemon wedges that's right first the coffee grounds then we spread the lemon wedges over and we've just composted the entire place the real maybe top story that I that I can't believe I forgot about until we started talking is that my mom sent a text out on Saturday morning to Hawk Squad my family text chain that was truly breathtaking I'm trying to scroll back to it right now and of course because in my family there are so many texts that go around this might take a moment but she here's what she sent 902 a.m. Saturday morning morning loves just wanted to mention to you all that your dad is a bit quote over lord of the rings so please don't buy him please don't buy him any more books or paraphernalia on that subject as far as christmas gifts looking so forward to thanksgiving i this man has sting in his house well right and like the i mean first of all there's just so many things from this that are kind of that are kind of interesting like and you my dad is here right now you think i would have gotten to the bottom of this but i actually forgot about it after posting it on instagram but like did they have a conversation where my dad said god i hope i don't get any more lord of the rings stuff because i mean he has a significant amount of like books and like you said john like swords that he's made and things and like you know ivory dvd known to man about related to the topic so he has plenty of stuff related to lord of the of the rings.

but did he say something to my mom like god i hope i don't have any get any more lord of the rings stuff to deal with like none i don't think any of us had any plans to give him something lord of the rings related like i wonder why exactly my mom decided to send this message but here's what's truly shocking and i only realized it a little bit later on my dad is also on this text chain he's on hawk squad of course he's part of the family he's the patriarch so what what i failed to realize in the moment was my mom sends a text to our entire family including my father telling all of us including my father that he's over lord of the ring so please don't give him any more lord of the ring stuff that was one of the weirdest things that my mom has done

and she's done a lot of weird stuff what if he wanted to say it but he didn't want to be the one to say it and so he's like hey could you just post this in the family chat and you know that way you know he knows it's happening but he's not the the one saying i don't know but wouldn't that be

the kind of message that then my mom would go offline with she would start a new text chain to all of us kids and say hey by the way your dad's kind of like got enough lord of the rings stuff so why don't we lay off of that yeah like the fact that she sent it to the same text chain

he's on is what's really mystifying to me i guess what i'm saying is like like in lord of the rings there's the mouth of sauron right who speaks for sauron but sauron of course knows what's being said they just don't say themselves is that a thing is there a mouth of sauron yeah of course oh is that christopher lee no that's sauraman who's another wizard that works for sauron they're like mouth of uh it's it's at the end of the third movie when they go to have the final battle at the gates in front of mordor like the mouth of sauron comes out to be like listen you're all lost give up concede kind of thing i'm not getting all the names right but yeah no it's definitely it's just a mouth no it's like no it's a it's a it's a I don't know if it's like a human or I can't recall if it's like another ogre or orc or whatever it's but it's like a humanoid or a human or person that comes out and speaks on so on's behalf oh interesting well Luke you know the dynamics

of your family better than we do obviously but you're saying that like okay if if this was a specific message that your dad wanted to get out there you're saying well wouldn't my mom have started a new text chain well either way we know that she didn't start a new text chain I mean you think that that is a I mean so I don't know why that makes it more or less believable either way this is strange behavior that your father would be on the text chain do you think it's more of a thing where maybe your dad just sort of mentioned something offhandedly and your mom decided to

maybe make it more of a decree that's what I'm guessing I by the way have texted my mom now I I should have done a little more research on this topic before I brought it up on the show. But I just texted my mom to ask, like, how did that conversation come about? Because that's my guess. My guess is that my dad said something casually like, you know, I've got more Lord of the Rings related stuff than I really know what to do with. And then she took that to mean that she should try to, you know, head some stuff off at the pass. Now, I will say, my dad is easy to buy for because when in doubt, if you get him something Lord of the Rings related, you feel like you've, you know, played to his interests. but uh but it was kind of funny also it's you know i don't even know if we do presents anymore for the adults like i think that we tend to i think that there was a rule made a while ago that was like just the kids maybe we just get presents for the kids because there's just like so many of us and most adults it's like do you really need i don't need any more stuff in my life you know um so i i will here's what i'll do we'll put a pin in this and i will report back when i hear from my mom maybe even if it can be arranged maybe we could even have my mom on the show tomorrow to fully explain how and why that text came about because the only thing i care about is it's

important that your family hold another white elephant gift exchange game this year so that we get more hashtag content out of it oh my god in heaven that that resulted in me spite buying

my mom and alexa i don't know if you know that story john but my mom was very we did a white elephant and she got pretty addy had bought an alexa which i think are you know going for 25 bucks these days and my mom saw that in the mix and was pretty pretty jealous that someone else got it and then it was frozen and i can't remember it might even be it was the kids i think that's

what i that's what made me think of it as you mentioned that we're only getting gifts for the kids and i'm pretty sure your mom kind of went toe to toe with a child she did for a she did

And the real issue was the gift that she was, quote unquote, stuck with was a piece of art made by one of mine, by one of the children. So one of her grandchildren had made something and she was she was visibly upset to have the gift that was made by one of her grandchildren, as opposed to the thing that lines Jeff Bezos's pocket.

You know, Luke, I respect that. Women don't get to have what they want often and often shun for speaking up and speaking out.

My mom is definitely...

Making up for an entire gender's lack of access.

What if we're a white gift elephant party, if you guys do that, you just tell your siblings everyone brings Lord of the Rings stuff to it?

Well, that's kind of, I think, what might be happening kind of subtly. Because, of course, what happened was then I found a picture on the internet of someone who had airbrushed their entire car to be Lord of the Rings characters. And I said, well, what am I supposed to do with this, all caps? And then my dad said, actually, that's pretty cool. And that's when I realized my dad was on the text chain, by the way. when my dad responded to my message and then everyone started posting different Lord of the Rings things that they were claiming that they had already purchased for our dad. And so we're

therefore kind of screwed. He's just such a chill dude. I find it hard to believe that he would want that to make any kind of decree when it comes to gifts to him, you know? No, I mean, I, my dad is

the most content person that I have, that I have ever met in my life. And I admire that about him. And I, as the opposite of that, I aspire to be a little bit more like him and like that. And just whenever he's here working, we're hanging out for days on end. I'm struck by this guy needs absolutely nothing to be happy. Like, it's pretty cool to watch, actually.

I have a quick question for John. John, you might, if you know me at all, realize that I'm a little bit chagrined right now to go back to that word. I made a Sarlacc joke before because we're talking about like, you know, I was trying to refer to, like, a monster. I thought that was good. But the thing is, I got it wrong. I think really what I was thinking about was the garbage pit scene in Star Wars where a different kind of monster is trying to get the game.

But that monster, if it has a name, it's really a story.

Well, that's why I'm getting it. I'm looking at the name here. First of all, do you know that Sarlacc-y is the plural of Sarlacc? I've found that out in the past five minutes. Do you, John, as our number one Mouth of Sauron correspondent, do you know the name? Senior Mouth of Sauron correspondent. Do you know the name of the monster, without looking it up, that is in the garbage pit in Star Wars?

No, no, I don't. And I'll say, I think you were spot on, because the Sarlacc is like that pit. They're going to push them in as the threat. Digest it for a thousand years. Right. Whereas the monster in the garbage chute, as far as I remember, that's not the big concern. It's like the garbage chute is closing in on them. That's the real threat there. It's not the actual monster. Although it does pull them down, doesn't it? Well, the monster's not helping.

Sure. I mean, remember being a kid? I remember being a kid in Halfway. sorry i'll say it again how faux new word king terrifying yeah that thing in the water in the trash water i believe it grabs luke and takes him under right yeah i think you're right i can i say

though talking about thing the conveyor belt though going back to that real quick and things are scary from childhood i think my fellow millennials that listen to the show uh for me what that made me think of luke the conveyor belt at the garbage pit or the garbage dump was the conveyor at the garbage in The Brave Little Toaster at the end of that movie, which is the most harrowing moment of a pivotal movie of my childhood and an entire generation's childhood. So that's what I was thinking of.

Thank you for shouting out to the fellow millennials and trying to lower the sort of median or mean age. I get really mixed up on median and mean. But thank you for trying to lower our average age, John. with it. Because I don't even know, I mean, I think I've heard the words of the Brave Little Toaster, but I couldn't tell you anything about it. Beautiful movie.

Harrowing scene. Well, just

to keep things even, Stephen in here, I'd like to tell you it reminded me of the end of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar that I was listening to as well. There we go. Okay, we got the age back

up again. I watched, when I wasn't watching The Holdovers this weekend, I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's at Becca's because the internet went out, and so we had to go with whatever DVDs we're lying about. That, I mean, this is well known but i mean the the racism of that movie is just it's breathtaking it is breathtaking like i remembered that there was something really unfortunate with mickey rooney involved uh where he's he's sort of pretending to be a asian person but like it is just off the

charts oh it's and it's you like to think well it's like that one bad scene like no yeah i did

not remember back to it coming back to it it's really really rough yeah like i don't really believe in censorship but i wonder if that movie should be legal it's really really really offensive it's terrible yeah it's awful it's it's just it's just really really bad so i just want to i want to let everyone know that i'm officially on the record as being anti extremely racist movies nice yeah go me all right go us because that's right go us because uh we have a big announcement today which is after careful consideration and a lot of hard work on the part of andrew and john particularly john yeah we have a merch site that is going to go active here even as we're talking about john do you have the um the ability to publish or to go live with this thing we could Do you want to do what we were talking about before?

Yeah, I've got, oh, believe me, I've got a very elaborate sound effect that I built here that is counting down. So when this counts down to zero, can you hit publish, John, and go live with, I'll write it and we'll do it live with the merch site. Is there anything you need to say, Andrew, before I activate this sound effect?

I just hope this is money for nothing.

Oh, that would have been a good idea.

Sorry. Yeah, rework that audio. Can we stop down for a minute and I'll just do that? No, all right, here we go. Ready?

So, okay, here we go.

One, four, three, two, three.

We're in the money. We're in the money. We've got a lot of what it takes to get along.

By the way, this is the Ginger Rogers version of We're in the Money. and what's crazy is she does the whole song in pig latin at the end it's the craziest thing i've ever heard yeah but that's neither here nor there the important thing is we're rich yeah i mean not quite but yes are we rich yet have we sold how many t-shirts have we sold we've already sold one billion that's going even better than i expected look at this i'm at tbtl.net i'm clicking on shop and here are a variety of absolutely handsome tbtl items that you too can purchase for you or your loved ones this is really incredible good job by the way john this looks great and andrew too you both were much man no no you you

i didn't do shit i didn't rig no i don't want to take i'll kill you i can't don't don't hang any

false valor on me this was no you you gave much more constructive feedback than i did you were

involved in in the process very much andrew so thank you thank you both and thank you uh john

this was really this was really you what all do we have on here we have it was a teamwork makes

the dream work effort we have we have shirts uh we have hoodies yeah these hoodies look nice

we have stickers i eat stickers pretty much every day i would not uh tbtl does not recommend you eat these stickers we have gift cards please don't please what a good idea gift cards and uh and then uh so what you could do if you uh have a 10 in your life uh you could buy a gift card and then

they can use it at the tbtl merch shop yeah that's a really good idea if you don't um i love i love

these designs by the way yeah uh some of them by john some of them by the listeners um i will be honest with you the thing i'm partial to which i assume will be the lowest seller and this is not because of the design which was incredible i think was it listener sophie who made this shirt that pictures or sophia sophia excuse me that has a picture of me on it i'm wearing sunglasses a drawing of me and it says if you catch me wearing sunglasses i've probably been crying because i'm listening to jeff tweede and this is honestly of the various things that have ever depicted me in my life this is maybe for me the high point like i love this shirt so much i'm not saying it's

going to be a bestseller i'm saying i personally love it i have a um and i have one of the designs that john made on a t-shirt in front of me right now not to brag when i'm touching it it's a high quality t-shirt and it's got it's a uh recreation of the um of the videos you've been making on instagram the instagram stories that has our cat faces on them and it says tbtl cat talk and it's like a a recreation of an ig story which i love john totally your totally your dude yeah looks

great um the no mountain too tall which you also designed john and good luck to all which is just it makes me happy looking at the shirt it's doing exactly i also came up with that phrase that's

also my phrase yeah i remember that i remember that you were i'm gonna be you're driving a car in new york right and luke was your passenger i believe i think i was i think it might have been

And in Chicago, maybe the back of an Uber? There you go. Where I was doing the show? I think so. I think that the cab driver or Uber driver said that to me. Actually, I don't know. Maybe, did Jen invent it? And then I made an Uber driver say it on the recording?

Oh, actually, you know what? That part does ring a bell. I remember you forcing a driver to say that phrase. This is taking a dark turn.

Also, I will be honest with you. there's this tbtl 10 with the 10 in the logo that somebody i believe somebody came up with that

right yeah that's another listener eric and i uh you know the artists both sophia and eric's names are credited under the description so if you're cruising around the website there you'll see that

that they are the designers which we really appreciate i love this tbtl 10 thing it reminds me of like um like a record almost like an album cover maybe from the 60s something about sort of stereophonic just the way it looks but i also and i'm glad i feel like i really went to bat for this And I thank you both for acquiescing I love the pocket tee I that See, that is a handsome tee. I know it's a little more understated, but I love the TBTL 10 pocket tee. I'm ordering three of them right now.

You know, Luke, I got a message from your dad saying that he's not really interested in more TBTL merch for any kind of holiday giving or birthday giving, just so you know. So if that's why you were buying a bunch of those, I just want to give you a heads up on that.

Oh, okay. Do we have any Lord of the Rings merch? Do we have the right?

Yeah, no, I'll call Christopher Tolkien and see if we can get that done. I will say, Luke, if you notice on that too, like you're talking about being a more subtle design of the pocket tee, I had a lot of fun trying to come up with like subtle but funny kind of little quips in the descriptions of the items. And so there is a reference to that being a more subtle approach.

I love all of these for different reasons, but I mean, really like nice work, John. Like this is really, this has really come together and I think people are going to love this. I also like the garbage anxiety shirt that you came up with. I feel like that's going to cause that's going to take and that's going to be some there's going to be some explaining to do when you wear that shirt around town. But isn't it fun to describe TBTL to people? They think that you have a shirt that you're wearing because you did a charity 5K. But then you get to unpack what garbage anxiety actually is.

You know, listening to the show is an act of charity, though. I think it's a charitable service in a certain way.

And by the way, we remain 100% listener supported even with the merch site because it's still being supported by the listeners. So nothing has changed about that messaging.

And the truth be told, and I think this came up when we were having an on-air meeting developing this, like this is really exciting and fun for us. But in all seriousness, the profit margins on this are not extraordinary. Like we're mostly selling for what it costs us to make these things.

so just yeah because it turns out that the t-shirts are not that and and hoodies and all of it you know the for the the place that makes them they've got to make their money and so unless we want the shirts to be and the things to be like prohibitively expensive which we don't this is really just i guess maybe marketing for the show kind of like a fun thing people can have uh that um you know involves wearing tbtl stuff out in the world but again it's all nice looking stuff too that's what i'm very proud of like this is where john great design the listeners great design andrew great tweaks and feedback i just sit back and let the money roll in that's my job do we still have a

t-shirt that says nice tweaks and feedback andrew because that's i think a design maybe for maybe for the next generation of t-shirts possibly if we can get that just just for you okay here's the

real question when do we put out the shirt of my dad wearing the laser baldness i think it's in the works i mean that is honestly like one of the best pictures i've ever taken in my life i made i we stopped playing shetland which is a british crime mystery show i paused and i said dad i got to get a picture of you wearing this thing can i actually the greatest photographs i've ever taken

i will say luke in all seriousness like uh your dad wearing the helmet aside when uh there was a discussion on the stens facebook page around how like so many of the drops or jokes of the show rather are like very Andrew centric like like the garbage anxiety for one and how people want to have like a Luke focused design on the shop and so I'm glad we

have that Luke wanted a Luke focused design well no but but so I'm glad that

so I'm really grateful for Sophia for designing what she did but one of the things that there was like a whole thread on Facebook and I just dropped in a picture I found of Google from Google of just some random guy wearing a laser balding hat and people responded very well to that so I did now is it the i'm pretty sure it's looking at the picture you sent from your dad i'm pretty sure it's the same

exact one okay okay because there is one yeah there there is one that is made by a company i think they're called capulous and i can't i don't know if this actually come up on the show for all the laser balding helmet talk or anti-balding really for all the talk that's happened have i ever described the capulous with you guys which is one that is supposed to look like a baseball hat oh yeah yeah yeah yeah but it's so ridiculously large like the idea that they thought well if we put a brim on this then people just wear this to the store and no one will be the wiser is the most

patently hilarious idea of all time and then later on that company came around and i'm blanking on the name we talked about it pretty extensively for a while um not just lids but i feel like it was a monosyllabic word the big hat the big honking hats that you could buy essentially those i mean they made a go at making that look popular that would have been the cover you needed this

might be the time for me to buy a capulus because there's a lot of cover being created by those big yeah that's what i'm saying but the thing is the big hats predated or sorry the capulus predated the big hats so there was there was a good 10 years where at least five or 10 people were walking around with a monstrous baseball hat on trying to try to apply red laser light to their scalps. Noggin boss. I was wrong about the monosyllabic part, but noggin boss. I'm on this.

When are we rolling out the TBTL Noggin? We can't call it that, but when are we rolling out the TBTL Big Hat?

I'm going to put a hard, use my senior VP. Wait a second, I don't like where this is going.

Unless after hard you're saying yes.

No, I saw a video I forget who it was, but it was an NBA player being interviewed the other day and they were wearing one of those and I cannot, I just can't. I'm kind of watching my video.

That did have a moment where a lot of folks, like NFL folks, were wearing those after the games.

It was like those hats and those big red clown shoes that I think Diplo or somebody made famous. Like their rubber boots. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Those red rubber boots that are crazy. I mean, not yuck and yums, but no. No, you know, that's all right.

That's your one veto. I'm glad. That's my one veto. I hope it was worth it. That's in my contract. I get one vouch veto.

It's the last thing in this world that brought me joy in your vetoing it.

So if you're hearing this right now, please head over to tbtl.net and peruse, and I'm using that advisedly, peruse the tbtl merch site. That's hard to say, but just go to where it says shop at the top of the page and click on that.

Can I also have a little note in there to look on top of that? I think we've talked about this before. It's drop shipping model, which helps us save some money up somewhere else like warehouse and all those things, which is great. It allows us to have a little more flexibility around these kinds of things. but there is a note with each item and i'm just gonna say here now like once you order it's a no refund situation like it's not it's coming from a company that we're working with and it's like they're literally printing it for you and so i just want people to feel very confident like i apologize if people email me about like sizing details i'm happily happy to share some stuff around but just so you know like when you hit when you hit purchase just i just wanted to make

put that out there too you just wanted to really try to bring the fun here as we're announcing the

drive in a deep left field by castellanos it will be a home run i just and so that'll make

it a four nothing ball game no that's actually a very good just so folks know it's like this is these do not exist until you manifest these by putting your credit card information into our website and once they've been manifested uh you know that you you'll get to enjoy them for years but we don't we can't really take them back so just yeah unless you want to drive to andrew's

house and like have it out with him there i don't know that's maybe another option that seems like a recipe for is that not oh that's not an option that's a recipe for ending up on andrew's uh

neighborhood email list right that thing has been going ratatatat lately yeah a lot of stuff going on mailboxes being broken into apparently don't worry we're safe we have we have that's one of the most one of the best parts of this house is when we moved in like the people who lived here ahead of us had some sort of like bunker style mailboxes installed so i'm good on that if you guys want to Send me anything valuable. Send it through the mail.

Our mail is so secure, yours and mine, Andrew, that both of us had not realized that John had sent us the T-shirts.

I know, right.

For a week. Poor John. We had a meeting, and I was like, yeah, I haven't got the T-shirt. And Andrew's like, nor have I. And John was like, weird. I sent them, and I tracked them. I see them at your respective homes. So that was on me. Sorry, John.

I think I get a veto back because of that, right? I get an extra veto.

Like a coach's challenge, I guess. Let's take that up on Wednesday's TBTV meeting. I've added the noggins to the website. Thank you.

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

All right. Emails or V-mails, Andrew? Well, you know, they say this happens to all guys at some point. But, you know, I forgot to do, I forgot to put anything together for emails and V-mails today. I was so excited about the merch store. I mean, if you wanted to chat.

Can I add in something that's email related that John had to actually flag for me? I guess I really, I feel like I did look at my TBTL email pretty recently, but this is kind of big news in my life, Andrew. I have been invited to be a part of the Talking Taco Time podcast. Oh, nice. Remember we talked about that. There was an article in probably Seattle Weekly about Taco Time, about my beloved Taco Time. And then in that article, they were talking about There's a whole podcast dedicated to Taco Time And I can't remember exactly what I said back then But it was probably along the lines of How have I not been invited on the Talking Taco Time podcast When it's such an area of emphasis for me And sure enough, Kevin from that show I guess had reached out, I had missed the email Then pinged John, who pinged me And we're now in high-level negotiations For me to be on that podcast Which I am so excited about I feel like what I need to do today is go do some research some like you know real kind of shoe leather research at my local taco time but i'm still in this mode of trying to be very very very careful about what i'm eating

so yeah good point i don't know but how was i missed so they had heard that you were a big time really so somebody put that episode in front of them that's nice somehow they got in front of that or it got in front of them and and and then they reached out and said well let's make luke's dream come true because i like i said i must have said please have me on and it worked because i'm gonna be on that show at some point so nice that's great it's gonna be probably the longest episode they've ever recorded i have much to share on the topic and much wisdom

to share although i'm guessing that almost anybody who's on there probably has a lot to A lot to share, huh? I mean, it's for the real taco time heads.

I wouldn't even say what I'm going to share with them is wisdom as much as it's rizdom. You know what I mean? I don't think you're using that properly. Oh, I think.

You're so skibbity. You're so phantom tax. I just want to be your Sigma. Freaking come here. Give me your Ohio.

What did you name the show the other day, Andrew? I thought it was really good. It involved Sigma?

Oh, it's really hard to say out loud. Sigma-ficent other. Yeah, that was a tough one, yeah.

It's a fun read, though.

It is impossible to say, but a fun read. It is a fun read, yeah. Yeah, I like that. I don't know. We could wrap things up here. I'm not trying to force this, but every time we, every time this comes up. I got to go do a live wire anyway. I got things to do, y'all. Let's put to bed. Did you have any other thoughts that you wanted to share about this? I'm going to delete this tape of me as a 20-year-old at a drunken bar. I mean, not delete it forever, but get it out of my system here.

Is it really taking up that much room?

No, I mean, I guess not. Okay, we'll leave it there. I don't want to give it short shrift, but I do keep forgetting about it. Can we give it long shrift tomorrow? Okay, sounds good. I'm a little bit – here's what I'm nervous about. I had written down a possible show title today, The Worm Turned Hard Last Night, and I'm realizing now that that sounds filthy. filthy. That is not the context in which it came up in, and that is not why I chose it. I'm just looking at that now, and I realize I cannot name the show that. Good SEO, though. Whoa, that is so filthy. Spoken like the senior

VP of SEO. Can we do something with merch? Can we work that into it? Merchant and Ivory. No, I don't know.

The newsletter was called, I Love You This Merch. i love you this merch anyway we'll figure it out funny i just we don't have to come up with a show title but i'm not even that is not a spoof like i literally had written down earlier like a show title oh the worm turned hard last night now i'm like rereading it under like a different context i'm like wow that is not what we want to go with but we'll i think long shrift has some yeah but

i also but again i would love it to i don't know if the if it helps with sending people to the merch cider. Should we just call it tbtl.net slash shop? Would that be the show title?

Possibly. The Merchant of Kelso. That's pretty good. Although

Merchant of Venice is pretty racist, right? Put it right up there with Breakfast at Tiffany's. Oh, geez, man. Sorry to end the show like this. Alright, well, listen. John, thank you for hanging out with us today. And really and truly, thank you for all your hard work on the merch site. It looks great. Yeah, it's awesome. Thank you, Andrew. Appreciate you. Thanks to everyone for listening. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have yourselves a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Pan down from the twin sons of Tatooine. We are now close on the mouth of the Sarlacc pit. After a beat, the gloved Mandalorian armor gauntlet of Boba Fett grabs onto the sand outside the Sarlacc pit, and the feared bounty hunter pulls himself from the maw of the sand beast. Okay, this is exactly... And we realize that he survived his fall during the battle at Jabba's palace ship. then do a hard cut to a repurposed imperial destroyer, which has now been taken over by the rebels. Commander Luke Skywalker, now a full Jedi Knight, training new Padawans, is using, ironically, his father Anakin's red lightsaber, which will be a symbolic, I think, visual for his battle uh with how to uh both bring about the new uh jedi order uh while still um acknowledging his father's fall from grace power out